Page 35 of Little Fangs

“We’re going to kill you,” one of the vamps snapped.

The third vampire was quiet as his tongue flickered between his teeth.

I’d lived in Willow’s End for so long, it was strange not to know some of the residents by face. But I rarely came here in the middle of the night, so in some ways it made sense.

“Harry, Elias,” Caleb said. “We’re not going to kill our new friend, Harlan.”

“We’re not?” one of them scoffed.

The third stayed quiet—almost like he couldn’t talk.

“Micah has our bracelets,” Caleb said. “And—”

“Sir,” Sonya’s now soft voice spoke.

I tried to stay calm, but my muscles were twitching, and every twitch had the leather rope burning me slightly. They were wet—either with something, or my own sweat, but it was creating something unbearable on my skin.

“Muriel has left,” Sonya said.

Leroy, behind her, gasped. “She’s taken Micah’s things.”

“That damned woman,” Caleb said, slamming his fist on the table, right by my head, crunching into the wood. Something in it made the gag in my mouth become loose.

At that moment, static broke out from the toolbelt they’d taken off me, shortly followed by Micah’s voice, calling out to me.

If it hadn’t been obvious that I’d been harboring Micah before now, then that had really given it all away. I stared at all their glaring faces, slow smiles creeping in at the corners of their mouths.

“Well,” Caleb said. “I suppose your trip was wasted.”

“Guess that means if we kill you, we don’t need permission to enter your little cabin,” the other vocal vampire said with the biggest grin that didn’t seem to translate too well in his hooded eyes. The glint of red in them was like a bright photo had been taken.

“That’s definitely something,” Caleb said. “Leroy, make sure to dig a—large hole out back for this one. I bet we’ll get a week’s worth of feeding from you.”

“Or just one.” The other vampire grabbed my leg, and his fingers were almost claws, searing marks into my skin.

“Let’s save that for when Micah gets here.” Caleb then held a small purple glass perfume bottle and squeezed the end, sending it directly to my face.

Then darkness. The world stopped.

Numb. Cold. Thoughts trying once more to connect with other thoughts.

Words broken to letters, letters to sounds my brain couldn’t make.

Then sounds I couldn’t even recall.

The concept of a sound itself.

* * *

My eyes snapped open to a burst of heat.

I was upright now. Staring at a wall consumed in flames. The amber waves traveled up, curling old ornately designed wallpaper, beating itself into the wooden structure. Fire was one of those things that was eternally hungry.

Feeling came back into my body, reminding me this was real, this was happening.

Bright orange flames licked at the leather bindings around me. The ache in my jaw had me forgetting how to use it—open, shut, side to side, my teeth grinding with a pain that forced my eyes shut even with the fire coming up around me.

I dropped to my knees once the final leather binding had snapped into stringy fibers from the flames. My hands broke my fall and protected my face, but forced me to feel the ache in my upper arms and wrists. Thin painful grazes and cuts were in clear view, like I’d scraped them across a gravel path. That’s what the ropes had done.