Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

I paused, holding up a hand to indicate to Angie and Lauren to do the same. I took a deep breath and pressed my ear against the door, listening, half fearing what I would hear.

Someone was murmuring. Were it not for the heated tone of the conversation, I doubted I would be able to make out the words. As it was, I could, just about…

My friends followed my lead, pressing their ears against the wood, and I gazed at them with wide eyes, one finger over my lips as I strained to hear.

“It doesn’t matter,” one of them spoke. “They’ve seen us, Navan!”

“I am aware,” came the growled response.

“So what do we do? We can’t keep them locked in there forever.”

“We have no choice for the time being,” a distinct third voice replied, similar in tone to Navan’s. They all had similar, hard-to-place accents.

“I wonder how much of a problem it would be if we just… smothered them,” a fourth voice added, and our breath caught in our throats.

“Forget it, Ianthan,” Navan’s deep growl returned. “You know that’s against my code… We’ll have to give them Elysium.”

“Elysium? Do we know if that will even work on humans?”

“It will. It just requires the right concentration.”

Elysium? Work on humans? What are these men?

It seemed that Lauren couldn’t take it anymore. “Please, let us out!” she cried, and began banging against the door with her fists. “I swear, whoever you are, we won’t breathe a word! Just let us go!”

The voices had fallen quiet. There was the sound of a door opening, and then swift footsteps just outside, moving toward the far end of the corridor. Another door creaked, and then all was completely silent, save for the soft crackling of flames.

It seemed they hadn’t been aware that we could hear them. Which left me with the terrifying question of why they wanted privacy.

What are they talking about now?

What are they going to do to us?

I sensed those questions trembling in my friends’ eyes, too, as we inched away from the door and gaped at each other.





Chapter Six





I didn’t know what was happening—all I knew was that we needed to get out of here before whatever they were, returned.

We raced around the dingy room, picking up any objects we could find that might help us break the boards covering the windows. But there was nothing we could do to get the wood loose. We’d need at least a hammer to have even a chance, and there was nothing close to that in here.

I had been afraid to try the door again, because it would make a lot of noise and draw their attention, but it seemed we had no choice. I hurried back to the door, Angie and Lauren right behind me, but we had no better luck than before in trying to pry it open. Not even a minute had passed when the sound of footsteps returned.

My chest constricted as I staggered back, instinctively gripping the arms of my friends and tugging them with me. Whatever those four were, they weren’t human. There was nothing human about that experience of being picked up like I weighed nothing, then flung through the air so fast I couldn’t breathe. Not to mention that unworldly heat that had coursed through me the moment he touched me. The rational part of me didn’t want to believe it, even though I knew it was true.

A bolt drew on the other side of the door, and it opened ominously. I wanted to look away, close my eyes, but I stood there, rooted to the spot, and stared. The tallest man—Navan?—entered first, followed by two other young men, all of whom we had seen just a matter of hours ago, outside, by the fields.

I blinked hard, realizing there was something different about them compared to when we had walked into that fiery room. I was sure, absolutely positive, that they’d had wings— the same kind of black wing we’d found down by the creek—but now there was nothing shadowing their backs. Nothing at all. They donned black shirts, and the only evidence proving that my initial vision hadn’t simply been a hallucination was their skin: it was still ashen.

“Wh-Why’s your skin that color?” Angie stammered, apparently hoping—like I still was, deep down—that they were human after all, and perhaps simply part of some weird cult.

Navan took another step toward us. His gray-blue eyes took us in, one by one, before settling on me. His lips tightened, and then he held out his right hand, palm up. Resting there were three small cylindrical containers, each about the size of my thumb. I had no idea what was inside them, because the walls of the little containers were opaque, made of some type of metal—and the fact that he was holding them out toward us, like I should know what to do, just made the whole situation even more confounding.

He continued to stare at me as though I were the only person in the room, a hard frown on his face.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said suddenly, startling me. He had been so still, I hadn’t even been sure that he was going to speak. “But you weren’t supposed to see this. We cannot simply let you go as you are.”

“As we are? What have we discovered?” Lauren croaked from behind me.

“Something I don’t think you’ll be able to comprehend. All that matters is you get out of here, right?”

“Yes,” Lauren, Angie, and I said in unison.

“Then it’s simple—each of you take a vial from my hand and drink its contents.”

I stopped breathing for a moment. “Wh-What? What is it?” I asked, recalling that allusion to something strange called Elysium. For all we knew, it was some kind of poison or dangerous drug.

Not that I had any idea why they would want to poison us, or give us dangerous drugs. Then again, I didn’t have any idea about anything in this scenario.

Navan’s intense eyes bored into me, and it felt as though everything else in the room fell away. I blinked, my heart pounding.

“You don’t trust me?” he asked, and to my surprise, the tiniest of smiles curved the corners of his lips. I really hadn’t been expecting that from this growly man, and I wasn’t sure how to respond for a moment.

“I-Is that supposed to be a joke?” I stammered. “Of course we don’t trust you. Who are you? Why are you keeping us captive like this?”

It was hard to read the expression on his face, though if I were honest with myself, there was a part of me that didn’t mind having to stand there and scrutinize him… he was undeniably handsome.

Stop it. That is completely not the thing to be thinking about right now!

But it was almost as if he could read my thoughts, because that curious smile deepened, just a little bit, and his eyes seemed to sparkle as he held my gaze.

“Captive? I believe you were the ones who broke into this house.”

“We didn’t break in,” I snapped. “The door was open and the only reason we were out there was because we could hear someone in pain and we thought maybe you needed help.”