I blinked the blur from my eyes, slowly recognizing the upstairs living room in the crappy house we’d been imprisoned in. Two motionless bodies lay on the floor. When I looked closer, I recognized the nearest corpse. It was Mop. His head lolled at an unnatural angle, neck broken.
I gulped, but before I could even process the gruesome scene, Warin kicked open the door leading to the outside. Cooling wind brushed aside the warm summer air as he leapt into the night. Broken soundbites and blurry flickers of light passed us by. He was running so fast my eyes couldn’t track our surroundings.
I closed them tightly and buried my face in Warin’s shirt to avoid throwing up from motion sickness. At least this was faster than an ambulance.
When he finally stopped several minutes later, we were standing in the driveway of a large McMansion, surrounded by impeccably manicured bushes and a trickling fountain. It was such a vastly different neighborhood than any part of Chicago I’d ever been to before that I only managed to gape up at the fancy building in confusion. It wasn’t until Warin, at a human pace this time, walked up to the front door and rang the bell that the surrealism of it all gave way to more practical concerns.
“I think I need to go to the hospital,” I said.
“I’ll take care of you,” he said, his voice still gruff like it’d been after he was tied up. At least he wasn’t staring at the blood soaking my shoulder and chest anymore. “I just need to feed first.”
I blanched. “Uh, I don’t think I have enough blood left for you to—” My stammered protest died when the door opened, revealing a pretty blonde woman.
“Warin! Thank the stars! We thought you were…” She quieted, her eyes zeroing in on my disheveled form. And then, from behind her pouty, red lips, her fangs lengthened into daggers as her pupils blew wide.
Panic pulled on my hazy mind at coming face to face with another predator when I was already too weak to fight, but Warin simply shouldered past the woman as if she hadn’t just gotten a fang boner in the middle of greeting him.
The entry hall was exactly as magnificent as you’d expect from a mansion like this. White marble floors spread out into a wide staircase leading upward, accentuated by black and gold accents around the two open doors on either side.
Movement caught my eye as Warin stopped in the middle of the open room and put me down next to a slim marble pillar. I clutched it tightly to keep on my feet and watched as my savior-slash-potentially-still-murderer turned to the three newcomers spilling out from one of the open doorways.
From behind us, the blonde woman joined them.
“Brother.” A tall man with auburn hair and eyes as piercingly blue as Warin’s stepped forward, clasping Warin’s shoulder. “Have you been hiding in a grave again? You’re filthy.”
“Aleric,” Warin acknowledged the redhead. “It has been so long. What brings you here?”
“Your loyal subjects were certain you’d been kidnapped,” Aleric said, his eyes twinkling with mirth. “They requested my aid in retrieving you.”
Warin cocked a dark eyebrow and turned to look at the three other people in the hall. He didn’t say anything, but his displeasure was nearly palpable, even to me. After a moment, he returned his gaze to Aleric’s. “There have been disappearances in my territory. I investigated. I apologize for my subordinates—they should not have disturbed another Ancient unnecessarily. But if you’ll excuse me. I will need to feed. We will catch up later.”
Aleric’s blue gaze flickered to me. “Your snack seems to be leaking.”
Warin spared me a single glance. “Bring her to my bedroom.”
And then, as if that wasn’t the creepiest thing to say, he walked off, leaving me alone with what I was now very sure were four vampires.
They all stared at me, fangs lengthening, as if I were a doe who’d accidentally waltzed right into a lion’s den.
Only the rushing in my ears drowned out the steady drip of my blood hitting the marble floor.
5
The blonde who’d opened the door for us took a small step closer to me, her gaze locked on the blood dripping down my thighs past my makeshift bandages.
Holy shit, holy shit, hoooly shit! And I’d thought the night couldn’t get any worse after Mop sliced me open and threw me into a cage with a very hungry vampire.
I fidgeted anxiously, doing my best to keep an eye on all of them while still clinging to the column for support. How the hell did you chase off a herd—pride? Flock?—of vampires? I was pretty sure lying down and playing dead—the most tempting option right then—wasn’t going to do me any favors, and I was fresh out of bear spray.
Mother above, if you get me out of this, I swear I will never read another vampire novel ever again!
“Lay off.” The big auburn-haired man—Aleric—stepped into the center of the semi-circle, shielding me from the other vampires’ greedy looks, and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. It nearly made my knees buckle. “Warin claimed her. Has he been gone so long you’d really sink your teeth into an Ancient’s meal?” Then he turned to me. “C’mon, bloodsack.”
“I c-can’t walk,” I stuttered when the pressure on my shoulder indicated he was expecting me to follow along.
He arched a contemptuous eyebrow at me, heaved a deep sigh, and then swung me over his shoulder in one, easy scoop, like I was nothing more than a sack of grain.
I groaned in discomfort, and was thoroughly ignored as the tall vampire swooshed up out of the hall and down a wide corridor, faster than a human could have moved by far, but not as swiftly as Warin had run to get us here. He stopped in front of a heavy-looking black door with a keypad attached to the frame. Faster than my eyes could follow, he punched in a code.
The door beeped and swung open, allowing the vampire to walk inside in three long strides.
Once in, he unceremoniously dropped me to my feet. “Stay here.”
And then I was alone.
I stared at the now closed door, too dazed to fully comprehend what had just happened. Not that it really mattered how I’d gotten here, as much as it did that I was locked in a vampire’s bedroom, waiting for him to come have dinner.
The thought that I should probably try to call for help briefly flickered and died. The fanatics had taken my cellphone when they kidnapped me, the bedroom door was locked, and I didn’t see any phones or computers in the surprisingly modern room. Only two nightstands and the king-sized bed Aleric had dropped me by filled the large space, and the sheets on the bed looked to be simple, light gray cotton. Not blood-red or black silk, like I’d kind of expected thanks to my paranormal romance novels.
Apart from the entrance, there were two more closed doors on either side of the room. I assumed they led to an en-suite and a walk-in closet, respectively, but even if Warin had hidden wooden stakes and PIN-free cell phones, I didn’t have the strength to look for either.
I sank down on the bed with a pained groan. There was nothing I could do but hope Warin would remember his promise not to harm me. And that hopefully, he’d bring me to a hospital before it was too late.