“You should probably work out what you actually want sooner rather than later, Dorian,” Patrick said, not unkindly, before he took off.
It was a sentiment Dorian shared. But he had royally messed things up with Poppy from the very beginning, and now it was very likely he had caused so much damage that there was no repairing their relationship.
“Ha! What relationship?” he muttered as he moved through to the west wing. There was no circumstance in which he could have had any semblance of a normal relationship with the young woman. The only reason they had met at all was because Dorian had earnestly sought out her club. He had always intended for a client to pay him handsomely for Poppy.
He’d never wanted her for himself – until he did.
In more ways than one.
Dorian was surprised when he saw the woman he was currently obsessing over loitering outside his office. “Poppy?” he wondered aloud. “I thought you were outside with everyone else.”
Poppy’s sodden hair was plaited down her back, dripping loch water onto the floor even as she stared at Dorian with a serious face.
“I wanted to talk to you whilst everyone was still outside.”
“What about?”
She breathed in deeply. “Let me see the other club members. The ones who aren’t dead.”
Dorian pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. In truth he’d expected Poppy would ask this eventually but that didn’t make it any less annoying.
“What purpose would that serve?” he asked, exasperated. “You didn’t want me to show you what happened to Ross. Why should this be any different?”
“Are you honestly asking me what the difference is between you forcing me to watch a man get dismembered and me asking you to let me see the current state of those still alive?”
“But there’s still no point. They’re all doomed to die sooner rather than later.”
Poppy grew a little paler but she stood her ground resolutely. “Just show me. I can handle it. It’s my responsibility to shoulder the knowledge of what’s happening to them. It’s my fault, after all.”
Dorian sighed, then with some reluctance waved for Poppy to follow him along the corridor and up the stairs to the first floor. He stopped in front of one of the locked doors, throwing a key card in the air before catching it and using it to open the door.
“It’s not your fault, though,” he said as the door clicked open. “It’s mine. You’re saving people. Remember that.”
“Yes, at the expense of others.”
“I was going to kill them all until you suggested a compromise.”
Poppy looked at him, confusion apparent across every inch of her face. “Why are you trying to make me feel better? You’re the one who’s revelled in my misery up to now.”
“Maybe I’m getting sick of it all,” Dorian replied, so quietly that Poppy almost missed him saying so. But then she saw the inside of the room and forgot all about asking for an explanation from him.
“There’s nothing in here,” she said blankly.
“That’s because it’s an observation room. The wall over there is –”
“Let me guess; a one-way mirror?”
Dorian nodded as he made to pull up the blind that covered the wall. He glanced at Poppy uncertainly. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
“No. But I need to.”
Sighing once more, he pulled on the blind. Dorian knew what Poppy was going to see and how she would likely react; even so, he kept his eyes on her face to observe her change in expression nonetheless.
Ross Bridges was long gone, of course. Angelica Fisher was missing her eyes, whilst Craig Hunt’s teeth and tongue were gone. Megan Lo was missing both of her legs. She lay sobbing uncontrollably on a bed.
But Poppy’s face stayed impassive. Dorian couldn’t read her expression at all, though when he glanced down and saw her shaking, white-knuckled fists he realised she was fighting to keep from reacting as much as possible.
“Francis Greene,” she whispered without once taking her eyes away from the tortured, half-mad people in front of her, “I’m giving up Francis Greene.”
“And saving?”
“Ruby MacMillan.”
“Which one is that?”
“A first year,” she replied without looking at Dorian. “Dad’s a policeman. If she went missing the investigation would never stop. And she’s a good person…as good as anyone in the club could be, really.”
Dorian couldn’t help but be impressed with Poppy’s answer. He hadn’t known she was taking the reaction to members of her club going missing into consideration and yet, here she was, doing exactly that.
He moved over to stand behind her, gently twisting her wet, braided hair over a shoulder. “Can I –”
“Later,” she interrupted immediately. “Later. And I said I didn’t like it there. It hurt too much.”
“I told you that was because I meant for it to –”
“Which means you could do that again. Stick to my arm. I want to leave now.”
Dorian fulfilled her request numbly, leading her back out of the room without another word. She left the west wing at a speed that suggested she definitely didn’t want Dorian to follow.
“But when’s later?” he mumbled to himself. Poppy would be surrounded by her friends for the rest of the day – it was so warm they’d likely stay outside until late at night. Which left –
When Poppy goes to bed.
Dorian grinned wickedly at the thought, knowing that it was entirely inappropriate to corner Poppy when she was literally in bed. It was what she’d sacrificed Ross Bridges for, after all.
But he was desperate for her blood and, perhaps more than that, he was desperate to prove to Poppy that using her neck instead of her arm needn’t be painful at all.
Feeling a twitching below his stomach, Dorian forced himself to return to his office and the mountain of paperwork he had to content himself with until Poppy retired for the night.
And then his fun would begin.
*
Poppy
Poppy had had a long, exhausting day. Most of it had been distractingly great; part of it glaringly not. But she knew she needed to be aware of the current state of those she’d sacrificed. Dorian had been right, before, when he said Poppy had to see things in order to acknowledge that they were real. That they were happening.
Now she had seen what her choices had done. And still she had willingly given Dorian a name, knowing more than ever that she couldn’t let the same fate befall the people she cared about as she had Angelica, Craig and Megan.
And Ross, Poppy thought with a shiver as she turned over in bed. With the weather being so balmy she had taken to wearing the over-sized, grey t-shirt that Dorian had given her to bed, though she hated it with every fibre of her being. It was the only thing that she didn’t want to claw off her body in the heat, though, so she tolerated her hatred for it.
For a few, quiet minutes Poppy’s mind was blank of all thought but one. For there was another conclusion Poppy had definitively reached when she’d seen what had befallen the people she’d sacrificed: she needed to find a way for everyone to escape.
Not just those who still had all their limbs – everyone.
Nobody deserved the fate she had forced upon them, even if Dorian was now insisting that it wasn’t her fault or responsibility to feel guilty on their behalf.
She resolved to try and scope out a possible exit plan over the next few days without arousing suspicion. Wondering if she could rope Andrew into the exercise under the guise of mapping the area – something he was very enthusiastic about – Poppy settled further into her pillow, facing the wall as she allowed herself to finally drift off to sleep.
What felt like barely a minute later but what could, in reality, have been hours, Poppy thought she could hear her door opening and closing. Just as she turned to see who it was and prepared to shout at them, a hand swiftly clamped across her mouth as the person slid underneath the duve
t and pressed their body against her back.
Dorian.
Poppy turned her head as best she could to see the detestable monster disguised as a man behind her. She bit into the meat of his hand in protest, though he didn’t so much as flinch.
“Keep your voice down and I’ll let go of your mouth,” he murmured, his lips brushing against her ear. Poppy’s face grew hot at the sound, which only caused her to bite down harder on Dorian’s hand for a moment before letting go.
Dorian chuckled as he shook his wrist. “That’s better. You sure you don’t have fangs? That hurt like a bitch.”
“What are you doing in my bed?” she muttered testily.
Poppy flinched as he snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her in closer against his body. “You said later. This is as later as it can get. I’m hungry.”
“You honestly couldn’t wait until the morning this one time?”
“Not when I’ve waited two weeks I can’t. Are you wearing my t-shirt?”
“You gave it to me. It’s mine.”
He nuzzled into her hair; it was disgustingly affectionate. “I’m not complaining. I rather like seeing you in a t-shirt and little else.”
When he slid a hand along Poppy’s thigh and underneath the hem of the garment she reached down and slapped him away.
“What are you doing, you perverted prick?”
“Choice words. I’m hungry, and I’m horny. At this point they feel like the same thing.”
“Go fuck a goat, then!”
Dorian only laughed harder into her hair before smoothing it away from the nape of her neck. When his teeth grazed against the skin there Poppy tried to move away. Dorian, of course, held her firmly in place.
“I’m not letting you drink from me in a situation like this,” she protested. “You’ve somehow made it even weirder than it was before.”
“It won’t hurt, I swear.”
“You’re breaking through my near-unbreakable flesh with your teeth; of course it’ll hurt.”
Poppy tried to kick Dorian away. He trapped her leg between his own, only further locking her in place.
He wasn’t joking when he said he was horny, Poppy thought despite herself as something very distinctively hard prodded against her hip.
“Of course that part will hurt,” Dorian murmured, tracing his lips along the line of Poppy’s shoulder and back again. “But cutting your arm to ribbons hurts more. And it’ll feel much, much better once I’ve bitten through…I promise.”
“What are you, a vampire?”
“No. They don’t exist.”
“I find that hard to believe coming from someone literally wanting to suck my blood.”
“None of my kind would willingly drink blood over eating your flesh, normally. It’s the equivalent of eating stale bread instead of a steak. You’re the exception.”
Dorian’s hand found its way under Poppy’s t-shirt during her distraction, tracing his fingers across the skin from her navel to the top of her stomach. She sucked in a breath in response.
“S-stop doing that,” she stuttered as her body grew hotter and hotter with every passing moment. She didn’t like how Dorian was making her feel in the slightest, yet he didn’t seem to be listening to her at all. “Fine! Drink your stupid blood however you like. Then get out of here.”
“As you wish,” he said, the words tickling her neck before he dug his teeth in. Poppy knew, by the concurrent change in sharpness of his fingernails, that Dorian could only break through her skin by dropping his human form slightly to use his ‘real’ teeth, which unnerved her.
Just how much of him changes in order to do this?
But when she twisted round to try and see how much of him had changed, Dorian weaved a hand through her hair and held her head in place. “If you move it’ll hurt more,” he explained in a soft yet excited voice. “I don’t want that. Just…trust me.”
Though Poppy didn’t trust Dorian about anything she wasn’t exactly in a position to dispute him. So she stopped trying to turn her head, her body tensing up slightly in trepidation at the oncoming pain.
The breaking open of her neck was sharp and hot; it took a few seconds for her nerves to acknowledge that something bad had happened. When the pain hit her head Poppy let out a gasp.
“Shh,” Dorian whispered quietly against her neck as blood began to well up and break from where he’d bit her. He cleaned the escaped blood with a deft tongue before returning to the wound itself, sucking and nibbling and licking at it until the pain had well and truly subsided. It was replaced by…something else.
Poppy didn’t know how to describe it. It didn’t feel overly good, either. She supposed the closest comparison she had was receiving a really deep love bite.
But they only feel good in the moment, and you have to actually want them, she found herself thinking as Dorian continued his slow yet assured assault on her neck. The hand in her hair fell down to her arm, then her hip, whilst his other hand continued to creep higher and higher up Poppy’s stomach. The prodding she had felt behind her grew larger and harder; Poppy didn’t know what to do.
What Dorian was doing was somehow, inexplicably, more sexual than any sexual encounter Poppy had ever actually had. And she wasn’t exactly vanilla when it came to the bedroom, either.
“Dorian, stop,” she bit out when she finally came to her senses. What was going on had to stop. It had to –
When Dorian’s fingers swept below the lace of her underwear Poppy bit her lip. She couldn’t cry out, otherwise Andrew or Rachelle or Casey or, lord help her, Fred, would discover what was going on.
Dorian squeezed Poppy’s leg between his own as his breathing accelerated faster than hers. She knew he hadn’t taken enough blood yet; he was deliberately taking his time. The hand on her stomach had finally crawled up high enough to brush against her breasts; Poppy wonder if Dorian would dare to touch them deliberately.
Part of her wished he would.
But then he broke from her neck with a few final flicks of his tongue. “I feel so much better now,” he sighed contentedly.
“…I’m pretty sure you’re still horny,” Poppy bit out before she could stop herself. But what was she hoping for – for Dorian to push things further than he already had? Ten minutes ago she would have staunchly refused such a suggestion.
“Mhm,” was all Dorian said. He shifted his body weight slightly, dropping his hand from Poppy’s stomach to rest beside her.
“Dorian?”
“Here…” he mumbled, in a manner that very much implied that he was drifting off somewhere else entirely.
Poppy’s face flushed with anger, embarrassment and a frustration she didn’t want to own up to.
“Dorian, don’t you dare –”
But it was too late.
He’d fallen asleep.
INTERLUDE IV
Francis’ reaction to the group of ‘scouted’ club members had been much the same as everyone else before him. But he hadn’t been sedated and taken away for surgery yet. No, he sat by mute Craig Hunt with terror in his eyes at whatever fate was going to befall him.
When three unfamiliar people were brought into the room by the woman who was in charge of sedating them, Francis backed away into a corner in panic.
But they didn’t want him.
They wanted Angelica.
“Shame someone already got her eyes,” a woman with greying hair and a wrinkled face said, “though her performances across the board for the first two weeks was very impressive indeed. Yes, Jane, tell Dorian I’ll take her.”
Jane turned and left the room without another word, leaving the older woman with her two companions. When they moved forward to take hold of Angelica she bolted backwards in a literal blind panic, kicking the bed she’d been sitting on over in the process.
“Come now,” the woman scolded, “don’t be like that. If you struggle this will only be worse for you.”
Angelica wasn’t listening. She thrashed against the people gr
abbing hold of her, kicking and clawing away at their arms and legs.
The woman’s expression grew dark. Everyone else in the room – save for Megan, who couldn’t – receded as far back as they could, knowing in their very souls that something terrible was about to happen.
None of them could have expected the woman’s body to wriggle and stretch and transform into what could only be described as some kind of snake. A massive, coiling, silver snake, whose scales and teeth flashed beneath the artificial lights set in the ceiling overhead.
Someone screamed; Francis didn’t know who. It might have been him. But nobody could look away as the snake – unseen by Angelica – darted towards her, unhinged its jaw and swallowed her whole.
For half a second Angelica cried out in shock, but with a sickening crunch she fell silent.
Nobody else dared to even breathe.
The snake swallowed a few more times as Angelica moved down along its throat to its stomach. And then, as if it was nothing, it turned back into a mild-looking, grey-haired woman. She glanced at her companions as she dabbed at her mouth.
“That was far less refined than I wanted it to be. I’ll have to have words with Dorian about keeping his humans separate for clients in future. But no worries, what’s done is done. Come now,” she motioned to the other two, one of whom opened the door for her.
When all three of them were gone nobody dared look at each other. They couldn’t comprehend what they had seen. But it had happened nonetheless…and was most likely going to happen to them, too.
I should never have told Fred about Ross Bridges, Francis thought numbly, somehow certain to his very core that his confession had something to do with his current position.
I should have kept my mouth shut.
THOMAS POPE
Fred
“Fred, watch your feet!”
“Huh? Oh –”
Fred narrowly avoided stepping into a narrow crevasse in the earth that would have resulted in a seriously painful twisted ankle.
Rich laughed. “Not like you to be so clumsy! Better pay more attention to where you’re walking.”
He murmured a thanks in response, though Fred knew fine well why he hadn’t been paying attention. His mind – and eyes – were elsewhere. Namely on Poppy and Andrew.
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