Page 225 of The Monster and the Masochist

She stared up at us with wide, terrified eyes, and I wished I could kill the man who had hurt her a second time.

I glanced at his corpse, the constant pulse of fury a relentless beat in my ears.

He hadn’t suffered enough. I would take more time with the next one.

This little girl said the angels wouldn’t listen, and maybe that was true.

But we were not angels.

We were something much worse.

The girl was looking at me with something close to hope in her eyes, and I felt something sharp crack in my chest.

“We listened,” I said, my voice a low growl. “We came. Now you are safe. Stay here, we will take the rest of them too.”

To my delight, the brave girl nodded, her mouth a firm line.

“I hope you send them all to meet the god that abandoned me,” she whispered, and I felt myself grin.

I would.

I would send them to meet her god, because I knew the devil personally, and even he wouldn’t want these men.

The vampire stood up, and I turned back to face the way we’d come.

There was more work to do, and I was still hungry.

It only took four easy steps to carry us into the hall again, and seven more paces to the room that held my next victim.

Much like the first door, this one wasn’t locked, but this girl’s screams began the second I entered the room.

She was begging.

Begging someone to save her.

Cassandra once begged like that, and the little girl’s screams triggered some deep, primal part of me that had been designed to protect.

I succumbed to another explosion of fury as I was possessed by the memory of Cassandra crying alone in that dark cage.

So many nights she had cried, until one day, she stopped, and she never cried again.

I couldn’t let that happen to this girl, too.

Cassandra would never forgive me.

Time seemed to slow as I turned my attention to the man who’d made that little girl scream.

The idiot was foolish enough to rush me, and his movements triggered my predatory instincts.

He made it several steps, but… bullets are faster than pedophiles, and in less time than it took to blink, I’d shot him wordlessly in the ankle.

With a scream, the man dropped to his knees, and his pathetic blubbering shattered through the room as I descended on him.

“What the fuck! How did you fucking get in here!? STERLING! STERLING THERE ARE–”

Whatever he was going to say next was cut off as my foot connected squarely with the side of his hideous face.

Blood and teeth went flying in a sanguineous arc as the man buckled before me.