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“Abbs, for Christ’s sake, listen to my voice.”
I shook my head, managing to get an arm free as my knee came up between us. I punched, hitting something hard, not knowing what, but I heard a grunt. My other arm was released as the weight on me suddenly lifted.
“Fuck,” he said.
My eyes widened as he stood beside the bed.
Damien? I couldn’t focus on him. My eyes kept darting to the blood dripping down his neck where my nails had dug into his flesh.
A loud hiss echoed in the room and I leapt for the blood. I hit his chest hard, but he’d been ready for me because I was thrown back onto the bed again.
“Abbs, baby, please.”
That voice, I knew that voice. But my mind played games with me and I didn’t know what was real anymore. What was happening to me?
My eyes darted around the room, unable to see anything clearly.
I lived in a red fog.
“Abby!” the voice said louder. Footsteps approached me, and with it, the scent of blood grew stronger. “It’s me, Damien.”
Damien. Was he here? Who was trying to hurt me? I didn’t understand what was happening.
Hands suddenly grabbed my wrists and held them above my head on the bed. Instinctively, I reacted, squirming, fighting, and screaming until my voice crackled.
I struggled until my limbs gave out. Then I moaned while rolling my head back and forth on the pillow. The weight lifted off my wrists, but I lay unmoving while I listened to the footsteps fade away.
A door opened then slammed shut.
It was gone. The scent of blood was gone.
Panic gripped me and I scrambled off the bed and ran for the door. I fell on my hip halfway across the room and crawled on my hands and knees to the door. To the blood that was on the other side.
“Please,” I cried. “Please.”
I slapped the door with my palm over and over again until I couldn’t any longer. Then I lay on my side on the floor and clawed at it until everything went black.
“No fuckin’ way,” I shouted into my cell as I paced back and forth across the scuffed hardwood floor. “I can't do this. Screw it. The witch is way past saving. We’re too late.” I didn’t want to say her name or it would solidify that the girl in that locked room was Abby.
“It’s the poison in her blood, Damien. It eats away at your insides until every sense focuses on one goal—blood.” Balen’s voice was calm, but forceful. “This will pass. Trust me, I’ve been there.”
I kicked out at the ragged, cheap area carpet that had pastel stripes and frayed ends. “She’s crazy. That girl is not her anymore. I'm telling you, we’re too late.”
Balen sighed. “Unless she has tasted blood again, it’s not too late.”
“No wonder the Wraiths wanted to kill us if we drank from a vampire.” I paused outside the door of the bedroom and peered through the small double-paned window Jedrik had installed, so I was able to check on her without entering the room at night when she was in a blood frenzy.
“She’s been lying on the floor for hours.”
“It’s a thousand times worse at night,” Balen explained. “Keep the door locked and leave her alone. It took me weeks to learn that being around anything with blood pumping through it made it a fuck of a lot worse.”
I never wanted to enter that room again, yet somewhere inside that crazed girl lying in there was Abby. “How long?”
Silence.
“Jesus Christ, Balen, I need answers. It’s taking everything I have not to walk out that fuckin’ door and leave.” But I wouldn’t. I knew I fuckin’ wouldn’t, because it hurt to see her like this. It ate away at my insides like acid, a slow burning pain that was destroying me.
