Page 34 of Fangs

A guttural growl vibrates through the stone floor. Then another. And another.

I look up.

The masters are rising from their thrones. Thomas’s face is twisted into something feral, his nostrils flaring. Cain’s eyes have gone dark and hungry. Lord Peter and Lord Francis are on their feet, their bodies coiled with tension.

“Blood,” one of them hisses. “Someone is in heat.”

Chaos erupts. The girls scream, scrambling back from the tables. Platters crash to the floor. Chairs scrape against stone. The masters stalk through the hall, their heads turning, their nostrils working, tracking the scent.

I realize with dawning horror that they are tracking me.

I press my thighs together, my makeshift pad suddenly feeling like a target painted on my body. The blood. They can smell the blood.

The scent hits them like a physical blow. Thomas’s head snaps toward me. His eyes lock onto mine, and a slow, predatory smile spreads across his face.

“There you are,” he murmurs, and the words are a death sentence.

I bolt from the table, shoving past a cluster of screaming girls. My shoes slap against the stone floor as I run for the nearest exit—a side door I spotted earlier, half-hidden behind a tapestry.

“The north wing,” I hiss to myself. “Get to the north wing.”

Footsteps thunder behind me.

“Lucy!”

Out of Control

Iburst through the side door and into a narrow corridor. The air bites cold against my skin, stone walls weeping thick, sour moisture that coats my tongue. The passageways twist and claw at my memory. I halt, my chest heaving, fingers clawing at the ripped parchment map.

I’m a fool. I traded safety for a whispered phantom in a fever dream, and now I’m a livestock wandering an abattoir.

Behind me, the stone floor groans. The Masters stalk. Slow. Patient. Absolutely certain that I have nowhere to hide. Every frantic breath I draw merely seasons the air for their palate.

I round another corner and nearly plow into a servant. She gasps, her eyes rolling back in terror, stumbling against the masonry. I wrench past her. I can’t stop. My muscles burn, screaming with every violent propulsion forward.

The corridor vomits me into a wide, arched passageway. Through jagged, leaded windows, the gardens writhe, drowning in a suffocating morning mist. Beyond them, the north wing looms, a monolithic slab of dark architecture brooding against the gray sky.

I’m close. The invisible hum beneath my skin vibrates violently, dragging me toward this maw.

I slam into a heavy oak door bound with iron bands. Locked. I hurl my entire weight against it once, twice. It scoffs at my desperation, completely unyielding.

Footsteps scrape the flagstones behind me. Closer. The rhythmic, measured cadence of executioners.

My eyes dart wildly. There—a narrow servant’s entry, half-swallowed by a shroud of velvet-heavy dust. I rip it open and plunge into pitch blackness.

The passage closes its jaws around me. The walls press in, suffocatingly tight, smelling of dry rot and centuries of forgotten servitude. I run blindly, one hand raking raw against the rough stone to guide my flight.

The heat between my thighs throbs like an exposed nerve. It feels like a beacon broadcasting my exact coordinates, a wet pulse calling them to feast.

What am I doing? Searching for a dead man’s myth because a stranger with midnight eyes whispered instructions into my slumbering mind. I’m losing my goddamn mind. I’m trading my life for ghost tales.

A heavy wooden door blocks my path. I throw my shoulder into it, and it groans open, spilling me out into a vast, forgotten space.

A cemetery.

Tombstones loom in crooked, drunken rows, their chiseled inscriptions worn down to smooth, toothless slates by the passing eons. Weeping willows droop over sunken graves like mourning ghosts. Thick moss and clutching ivy strangle everything they touch. And in the center, nestled among the rot, an elaborate chapel of blackened stone rises from the earth.

I sprint toward it, tearing around its perimeter until I find the crypt entrance. The stone lintel bears a well-carved name in deep crimson letters: