Page 12 of Darkest Kiss

"Dose her," he tells the other guy.

My heart pounds and I struggle in his grasp. "No! I won't tell⁠—"

The guy grabs my head and pulls me close, then sticks me with a syringe. Then he shoves me back a few steps. I slap my hand over the stinging spot, my mouth opening and closing. "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"

The two guys exchange glances. "I hate how long it takes to kick in."

"I know. We should ask them to fix it to work faster."

I pull my phone from my pocket. "I'm call... ing... the... po... lice..."

By the end of my sentence, I feel like I'm stuck in quicksand. One guy leans in, bored. "Shut the fuck up. You're not doing shit. In a few minutes, you'll only be able to freak out and drool everywhere."

"Which can be helpful, depending on what you're doing," the other quips, like it's normal to be abducting and drugging girls in the middle of the day.

He's got jokes.

I feel myself start to crumple, my body no longer holding itself up. My mind flashes to the girls I saw on the porch.

Those wide, fearful eyes.

Oh god.

"Careful," one guy says to the other, catching me just before I fall on my face. "I think she's going to the auction. We could clean her up, right?"

"No!" I scream. But I don't actually; my mouth opens an inch. No sound comes out, just a stream of spittle. I have the odd sensation of my heartbeat slowing as the drugs rush through my bloodstream.

It's euphoric, in that it's distracting me from the very real danger in front of me.

"Maybe auction." One of them hefts my weight and starts to drag me toward the door. "If not, we can have a little fun before we move her to the Dollhouse."

Heat and the intense desire to vomit roll through me. Their hands grab me and one laughs, but I can't seem to swivel my eyes to look at him. "Oh yeah. She's definitely a doll now. Isn't that right, Sleeping Beauty?"

The other guy grunts a laugh. What in the hell are they talking about? My mind spins. These guys are insane.

And right now? They're walking out the front door, carrying me, not a care in the world.

Now I'm definitely going to die.

Chapter Four

Rian

Where is she?

I've been stationed outside my lovely Noemi's book store for hours now, and yet the window remains dark. One day, I could chalk up to her being gone. Maybe she's got a cold, or she made plans with friends.

I've never seen her with people. It's one of the things that draws me to her.

As much as I want to be here all the time, I can't. I have other duties to oversee. People to kill, crime scenes to burn to the ground. It's funny, though, that I should miss a single day of surveillance and then come back to a silent bookstore.

Now it's been almost five days. The shop door is boarded up, which is in itself not concerning. But there isn't any other sign that things are abnormal.

Standing across the street, in an empty second-floor apartment, I press my hand to the window. I desperately want to get closer, see if there are any clues to her whereabouts. But I can't blow three months of surveillance detail over the lovely Miss Caruso if she's just going to stroll back onto the scene tomorrow.

Five days, though. Five long days of watching and waiting. I've walked back and forth down the length of the apartment, peering through each and every privacy-coated window, trying to get a better view.

Something in my gut tells me to push further. And my gut is never wrong.