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What. The. Fuck.
“Vampire hunters,” I breathe, nausea coiling in my stomach. I grip the edge of the table, my knuckles turning white under the pressure.
“Ah. This is the first you’re hearing of them,” she guesses, and I don’t bother responding. My reaction is obvious enough. “If I can offer you one bit of advice, Calla—assume everything you believe to be a myth is real. Because it most likely is.”
I sit in silence, unable to form a coherent thought, much less an intelligent response.
“You could escape all of this,” she says. “If you do as I ask, I can bring back your normal, vampire-free life. Consider what that would mean for you, Calla. You would never have to experience being taken advantage of by the supernatural again. Never glamoured or fed on by a vampire…” She sets her tea down and stands, walking around the table.
I track her movement, my pulse kicking up the closer she gets to me. Before I can attempt to move away, Selene shoots forward at a speed too quick to see and grabs a fistful of my hair in her grip. I cry out as white-hot pain sears across my scalp, and Selene yanks my head back, exposing my throat as she bares her fangs. I don’t have a moment to yelp, to beg her not to bite me before she sinks her fangs into my throat.
A scream tears from my lips before she presses a finger against them and the sound stops. My head spins in confusion and the rapid blood loss, and I faintly wonder if I’m being glamoured into silence.
Pain ripples through me like sandpaper in my veins, and I squeeze my eyes shut, screaming internally. I can’t move, can’t try to shove her back or pull away. Wetness tracks down my cheeks, and a whimper slips through my lips when her grip tightens for a moment before she pulls away from my neck.
When Selene steps back, licking my blood from her lips, I fall against the chair, my shoulders slumping with exhaustion. My eyelids flutter, fighting to stay open as darkness threatens to claim me. My vision ebbs in and out, and there’s a dull ringing in my ears.
Selene speaks, but her voice sounds far away and muffled. “Hmm, perhaps now I understand why those boys keep you around.” She flicks her tongue along her bottom lip, smirking at me. “Youaredelicious.”
Nausea rolls through me as I grip the table in front of me until my knuckles turn white, pulling myself upright as best I can.
She says nothing more before turning and walking away.
I glare at her retreating form and grab the linen that came with my food, pressing it against the puncture marks Selene didn’t bother to heal. It takes me at least three attempts to stand. My knees keep giving out, dropping me back into the chair. Tears burn my eyes, and I grit my teeth, hauling myself upright once more. This time, I’m able to stand. I use the table to walk, hesitating when I reach the end. There’s still a good ten feet to the hallway without any support. I take a deep breath, putting one foot in front of the other until I make it there and fall against the wall. I manage to use it to make my way back to the room I woke in, closing the door behind me before shuffling to the bathroom where I collapse against the vanity. I stare angrily at the sickly pale reflection looking back at me. She is all too human. Weak.
I drop the bloodstained linen into the sink and back away from the vanity until I hit the closed bathroom door. My knees buckle, and I slide to the floor, pulling my legs to my chest. I bite my lip in an attempt to stop it from trembling, but my chin still quivers as my vision blurs with hot tears. I can’t hold them back, not now that I’m alone. They fall down my cheeks, the lump in my throat quickly growing thicker, and the pit in my stomach heavier than ever.
For a moment, I miss how things were. Anything is better than this, including living in a mansion with four vampires who did anything and everything to keep me in the dark. Now, knowing… well, likely not everything, but a lot more than before, I have even more questions that are making my head spin. I shove a hand through my hair to push it away from my face and wince when my fingers brush the bite mark on the side of my neck. Having experienced both ways of being fed on—the pleasurable and the painful—I would take being bitten by one of the guys over another vampire any day.
I sigh and tip my head back against the door. My best friend’s family are vampire hunters. Super inconvenient when I live in a house full of them.
As far as I know, Brighton has no idea what her family does. She doesn’t know about vampires—Kade made sure of that when I told her about them. Either she honestly had no idea before I blabbed, or she was a damn good actor that day at the waterfront.
Chewing my bottom lip, I tear at the skin there, choosing to focus on the discomfort of that instead of the weight in my chest. I may have gotten answers to some of my questions, but those only prompted more questions. I still have no idea what the guys were planning before Dante swiped me off the street the other night, or how I would’ve been involved in it. I suppose that’s a problem to address once I’ve made it out of the clutches of the psychotic vampire in the other room. But as it stands, I don’t have a fucking chance against her.
7
Gabriel
When I was a new vampire, following my sire around like the lost puppy I was, we spent a short period of time in Washington, feeding our way through the city, from the seedy bars and nightclubs in the downtown core to a small bed and breakfast we spent one of our first nights together after I’d turned.
Of all the things I can remember from my time with Selene, I wish I could forget that night. We’d spent it drinking at a tiny, hole-in-the-wall pub not far from the B&B. It was long past midnight by the time we stumbled in for the night, of course waking every visitor in the place, as well as the owner. Instead of apologizing, which I immediately sought to do, Selene grabbed the guest closest to her and ripped into her throat.
The rest of that night is a blurry memory filled with terrified screams and blood. So much blood. I lost myself in it. The moment the crimson spilled onto the soft white carpet at my feet, my world narrowed on one thing—feeding.
Between the two of us, we tore through every human in the place. When we left the following morning, there were bodies littered all over the floor and staircase. Blood soaked into the carpet and hardwood, splatters going up the crinkled wallpaper in every room.
We had massacred two dozen humans for no other reason than entertainment.
My stomach roils at the memory; I’ve never told the guys the story of how I turned. They’ve gathered over our years together that it was less than voluntary, and they know who my sire is, but that’s about it. I don’t want them to know what I did or the monster I was. My reluctance to share has nothing to do with them—I trust them all with my life—and has everything to do with my own shame.
I give my head a firm shake to try and clear it.I need to focus.
Selene likely still has property in the vicinity, but even with my connections to the local government and law enforcement, I’m unable to track them down. By now, to protect herself from her growing list of enemies, any property she owns in the city is no doubt in someone else's name. I didn’t consider myself one of her enemies—not until she came after Calla.
The four of us sit around the dining room table, drinking mugs of microwaved blood. It’s taking the chill out of my bones, but that’s about it. I still feel weaker than I ever have before. I scowl at the slight tremor in my wrist as I lower the mug to the table.
“We’re going to find her,” Lex says, and I flick a glance across the table at him. His usually bright white hair is faded and dull. It isn’t styled—it’s not even combed. It looks as if he got out of the shower, ran a towel over it, and called it good enough. He's wearing a wrinkled black hoodie, with darkness in his eyes that is mirrored on the others' faces as well. I’m sure my appearance is similarly dark and disheveled.
