Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

“Look,” I said, frowning. “I apologize that we barged in here—but I assure you, it was only because we heard someone yelling and we thought one of you might need medical assistance. You seem to not want any help, so let us go now, and I give you my absolute word that we won’t tell anybody, not even the pol—”

Before I could complete my attempt at negotiation, Navan’s outstretched hand suddenly retracted, withdrawing the vials, which he stowed in the pocket of his pants. His shoulders convulsed, and there was a ripping sound, and then something rose behind him… wings. Large, black, hooked wings shot out from behind his shoulders, and then…razor sharp claws emerged from his fingertips. He bared his teeth, revealing a pair of white pointed fangs. His very skin seemed to darken, along with his eyes, as his whole being turned into what I could only describe as a beast.

We were so stunned that it took us a few seconds to remember to scream. Lauren’s went off first, then Angie’s, followed by mine. We rushed to the back of the room, pressing our backs against the wall as if we could sink into it and emerge on the other side.

The creature before us growled so deeply, the noise rumbled through my very core, before he spoke, in the same voice that… Navan had just been speaking in.

“I told you this was going to be a lot less pleasant. So we’re going to have to do this the hard way, it seems… Perhaps a night in here will help you reconsider.”

He remained standing before us a moment longer, as if he wanted us to drink in his monstrous form and burn it into our brains. Then his wings, claws, and fangs retracted as suddenly as they appeared. He turned, revealing the shredded back of his shirt where the wings had burst through, and stalked out of the room, the others following him silently. The door slammed shut and was bolted once again.





Chapter Seven





“Remind me which genius suggested we go chasing strange noises in the middle of the night?” Lauren wheezed, about five minutes after they had left the room. It took us that long to discover our voices again.

There was no humor in her tone, just pure shock, and neither Angie nor I could bring ourselves to answer.

The first thing I did was grab hold of my friends’ shoulders, squeezing them so hard they yelped, as my brain just wanted to be triply sure that we were not dreaming. We weren’t.

We had stumbled upon some kind of supernatural creature. Not even my rational mind could doubt that any longer. What I had just seen was far too real, far too visceral—no amount of special effects could have pulled that off.

Then what on earth were they? And what were they doing here?

“T-These men are not human,” Angie finally said.

“Glad I’m not the only one who noticed,” Lauren murmured, removing her glasses, which had misted up, and wiping them on her shirt. “So, maybe we should stop referring to them as men.”

I looked around the room again, desperately hoping to find some loophole we had missed the first time.

“We’ve got to get out of here before they return,” I whispered.

It was maddening to think that there were less than a few inches separating us from the outside; if only we could figure out how to break through the damn windows. I used my flashlight to amplify the light in the room given off by the two gas lamps on either wall, trying not to miss a single detail.

I walked around the room slowly, examining everything—from the clock on the wall that had frozen at 9:05 AM, God knew how many years ago, to the chintzy floral green sofa, blanketed with dust.

An idea slowly occurred to me, and I gazed directly up at the ceiling.

It looked rickety, to say the least. There were fifteen long beams, stretching from wall-to-wall, and on top of that, it looked as if there was nothing but the floorboards of the room above, no plaster or cement. If we could somehow…

“We need to build a tower,” Angie whispered, and I looked at her, realizing she had followed my gaze to the ceiling.

“A tower,” Lauren repeated, now also staring at the ceiling. “You really think those wooden boards are loose enough?”

I let out a breath. “We can only try. And we’d better do it fast.”

Navan had said we would stay the night here, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t visit us again to intimidate us.

And so we scrambled about the room, deciding the best way to go about this—which furniture to use, and in what order. We chose the small dining table first, then a coffee table, and above that, a basic dining chair. We were lucky the ceiling wasn’t very high.

I took a step back, staring at the end result. It really didn’t look safe, and I had no idea whether it could take my weight. But there was no time to doubt.

“I’ll climb it first,” I said, figuring that Angie was a bit too short for this, and I was more athletic than Lauren and would do a faster job.

“Are you sure?” both of my friends asked.

I nodded curtly, and then stepped onto the table. I climbed slowly, wincing each time the tower wobbled, but managed to make it to the top without the whole thing tumbling down.

Breathing heavily, I looked up at the ceiling and stretched out my hands, beginning to feel the floorboards, my flashlight clenched between my teeth. It was as I had hoped—they were loose—and from here, I could even see gaps, directly exposing the room above.

I just had to hope nobody was up there. When the guys had left us, it had sounded like they had retreated deeper within the ground floor of the house, so hopefully that was where they were staying.

I fumbled with the floorboards within my reach. They all felt pretty weak, like a hard enough shove could dislodge, maybe even crack, them. The wood had gone soft with age, the nails rusty and loose. This old house really was a wreck.

Lauren handed me up a piece of wood Angie had found in one corner, which had probably broken off from some piece of furniture. I gripped it hard, and pressed its tip between one of the cracks, using it as leverage until the board loosened and gave way, creating a hole directly above me. I then worked on the boards on either side, until I had created just a large enough gap for me to squeeze through. Given how fragile I had just proven the floorboards to be, I felt nervous about trusting them with my weight but… Here goes.

I placed my hands through the hole and gripped its edges, and managed to haul myself upward, until my head and shoulders appeared above the floor. I gazed around anxiously at this new room. It was dim, except for the light trickling through from the hallway. The windows were boarded up here too.

I lifted myself the rest of the way, until I was up through the hole and on all fours, floorboards groaning beneath my weight. I looked back through the hole, and my friends gazed up at me, their eyes shining with fear.

“There’s nobody up here that I can see,” I whispered down. And then I paused, realizing that it made no sense for them to come up, too. Not only was I worried about the floorboards’ strength—perhaps they were the reason those creatures appeared to be sticking to the lower floors?—but also, we were much more likely to be caught with the three of us lumbering around.