4. Gray

Thieves. We had heard it many times. The accusation was hurled at us like it would hurt us or make us feel bad about it. When I met Ryder, he was trying to steal from our family. He was looking for a rare heirloom that someone had paid him a million dollars for.

I caught him, we talked, and I ended up helping him. He gave me two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was the first time I had ever made money. The feeling was euphoric, that I could provide for myself. I was a sheltered blue blood vampire who had relied on his family to provide for him. The thrill of stealing and working with Ryder gave me a sense of purpose that I never would have felt if it weren't for him.

Right now, I was regretting my decision to join his band of thievery. Our information on Laima's was either outdated or we were being set up. Currently I was trying to run at my vampire speed only to run like a normal person. The shop was protected against every supernatural, shooting each of us with something that neutralized our abilities and released giant trolls. Now I knew how Ryder felt being so slow.

"We need to split up!" Ryder yelled, looking over his shoulder.

"No, we need to stay together," I yelled back, grabbing a small knife from the holster on my chest and throwing it at one of the trolls. "We need to find a place to hide."

Soren grabbed my arm as I grabbed Ryder taking a sharp left into the woods behind the small town, the shop was in. This felt like a really dumb idea since we were not familiar with the area, but I couldn"t think of anything better.

"Fuck!" Soren yelled when a troll cut us off, swinging his giant mallet at us.

I pushed Soren forward before dragging Ryder to our right, barely missing the mallet. We rolled as I grabbed a small vial of acid from my tactical vest, throwing it at the troll to slow them down. Soren climbed another troll, producing a short sword and stabbing him in the neck before jumping off to run with us.

Another troll and a few men were quickly right behind us when I heard a roar knowing one of them was going to swing at us. Then I noticed the cliff. We were running too fast with nowhere to go.

"Jump!" Ryder yelled.

My instinct was to stop immediately, but I pushed through that feeling jumping as far as I could over the ledge. The sound of an arrow flew past me, a sting and then pain radiated from my shoulder. I grunted as we free fell, wondering what the hell Ryder had up his sleeve.

It was a long drop and the closer the ground came to us, the further my heart creeped into my throat. About a hundred feet from the ground Ryder threw something on the group. A gust of wind shot up at us, lowering our speed and making our fall less

impactful.

I rolled away from my injured shoulder, looking up to see no one was following us.

"That information was fucked," Ryder growled. "Who the fuck gave us that information?"

"Joseph," I growled. "Or his sister."

"That fucking asshole. Did you pay him for it?" Ryder sat up, looking at me.

"Half now and half when the information came through." I gritted my teeth against the pain in my shoulder as I sat up. "Soren?"

I looked over to see him on his back with his arm over his face. A moment of panic hit me before he grumbled something about heights and how he hated trolls. I chuckled feeling the lightning sharp sting radiate in my shoulder.

Ryder stood up looking around us, on high alert. We had no idea where the hell we were and unfortunately, I hadn't studied the maps of the surrounding area because I thought the information we had been given was going to be fine. That was my mistake, and I wouldn't make it again.

"Where the hell are we?" Soren said, scanning our surroundings.

"I don't know," I said, getting up, turning to Soren so he could pull out the arrow. He had a gash on his face, probably from an arrow.

He pulled it out quickly, the squelching sound of blood was the only sound we heard in the gorge we were in.

"Fuck," I growled.

"Our only bet is to walk that way," Ryder said, pointing just ahead of us. "Since we can't use our powers yet, we better get moving before one of the trolls or the men that were with them decide to come down to make sure we are dead."

"How long do you think we will be powerless for?" Soren started walking. "It's such an awful feeling to be so slow like you Ryder."

"Screw you. I don't know, the longest void spell I've seen is two weeks, but that would be too expensive for a shop owner, but I might be wrong." Ryder walked next to him as I pulled up the rear, the steady stream of blood wasn't slowing down.

"Someone is going to have to stanch the bleeding in my shoulder," I said, feeling sluggish, my limbs felt heavy, my body was shutting down.

My vampire healing had been affected, and an unfamiliar feeling was washing over me. As long as I was fed, I never tired and I never had a wound that didn't heal.

"Shit, without his power, he won't heal," Soren said, coming up to me, turning around so he could see the wound. "He's bleeding too much; we need somewhere to stop for a moment so he can feed, and I can dress his wound."

"Dammit," Ryder whispered, holding me while I felt Soren unsnap my tactical vest and cut my shirt. "Pack his wound quickly and I'll carry him until we can get far enough away where they hopefully won't follow."

"This fucking sucks," I slurred, but Ryder looked at me like I had said something in French.

Immense pain radiated from my shoulder as I felt pressure in my wound, making my legs buckle and my vision go blurry until everything disappeared for a moment. Usually at this point I had already healed completely.

"Drink." Soren pushed a bag in my face as I opened my eyes, seeing Ryder still in front of me.

The smell of blood made my mouth water as I quickly drank from the straw. The blood was rich on my tongue, tasting like the best thing I had ever had, instantly replenishing my body. My vision returned sharper, my limbs didn't feel sluggish and even though my wound wasn't healing, it was less painful.

I finished the blood pouch ready for another one, maybe even two, but I knew we would have to ration these out for who knows how long. Hopefully we could find a food source so we could keep our supply untouched, but I didn't want to risk putting us in that position.

"Come on, I'll carry you while we let that work its magic," Ryder said, bending down to pick me up.

"I'm good," I said, giving the bag to Soren.

"Gray," Soren chastised me.

"Let's keep moving," I said, walking even though my legs felt shaky with exhaustion.

I felt their eyes on me as they followed, but we didn't have time to argue.

"As soon as we find a good spot far away, you are resting," Ryder said, walking beside me as Soren pulled up the rear.

"You got it, boss," I said, hoping it was sooner than later.

As vampires,we don't need a lot of sleep. We can sleep, but it isn't out of necessity. As soon as we found a spot to hunker down though, I immediately passed out. It wasn't until the next afternoon that I woke up feeling refreshed that they told me I was out for almost two days.

"I've never slept for so long," I said, putting on a new shirt.

"We all slept that long," Soren said, sitting on a log. "Whatever was in that spell either zapped our energy or the magic that makes us who we are has been suppressed. I can barely feel myself getting back to normal."

"They have to be hiding more valuables behind such a powerful spell," Ryder said, biting a piece of beef jerky. "I still can't feel my wolf and it's making me feel antsy."

"I don't feel at a hundred percent, but I feel a lot better than two days ago," I said, attempting to run and sure enough I was faster, but not as fast as I normally was.

"Good thing no one followed us while we were passed out," Ryder grumbled looking around. "We would have been screwed if someone found us while we were incapacitated. I'm sure we still have the magical signature and they could have seen it was us or the culprits who tried to steal from the shop."

"Small miracles," Soren said, getting a few things out of his bag with a map and his phone, which he immediately tried using, but I didn't think we would get any service down here. "Dammit, no service down here."

Grabbing the map, I looked at it, immediately spotting the area we should be in, but the map was blank. Nothing was put in the spot we had fallen off and every other map that we had was blank where there should have been a gorge or even a mountain range.

"This feels purposely left out or no one has had time to actually map out this area," I said, going back and forth between two maps trying to get a rough idea of where we had landed.

"Or no one has survived to record their findings," Soren said with a grin, always catastrophizing every situation immaculately.

Ryder laughed while I rolled my eyes.

"You're a ray of sunshine," I said, looking back at the maps to find the best way out of here.

"I'm just being realistic, we don't know what's down here and I wouldn't be surprised if we found something dangerous," Soren said, leaning back against a rock, like he was on vacation, soaking in the sun.

"He's not wrong," Ryder said, looking through his pack. "It"s awfully suspicious that this isn't on any major map we own."

"Looks like we might make money on this," I said, pulling out a map that gave me the best view of the mountains on either side of us. "I'm sure we can sell this to a couple of cartographers who'd love to know what's down here."

"Lindsey might know of one," Ryder said, leaning over my shoulder.

"Perfect, let"s make sure we don't die," I said, just as a loud roar sounded in the distance.

We all looked in the direction it came from, then at each other. Whatever the hell we had just heard could be the reason no one had ever mapped out this area.

"Dammit, I hate being right," Soren said, getting up to set up a perimeter.

I glared at my brother who had a knack for setting things into fruition. Let's hope we didn't end up dead down here. We had a job to do and people were depending on us.