Die By the Drop: Shivers and Sins Volume 1

by Kaia Bennett

  “Let me go, you sick fuc—”

  He tossed me away from him. I gasped as I hurtled into the air.

  Expecting a bone-jarring crash to the ground, I squeaked when an arm of steel caught my waist from behind. I let out an ‘oof’ as my spine impacted a hard torso, and looked down to see a pale, bare arm.

  Who wears a T-shirt in November?

  Who throws a grown woman with the ease of a beach ball?

  Who catches a human being midair with one arm?

  “Stop!” I rasped, my voice all but useless from the stomach-churning lack of air. “Let me go!”

  With a casual flip, my attacker parked my ass on his hip, bouncing me like a toddler. He screamed louder than me, just to show me no one could hear. The man who’d thrown me laughed and unbuckled his belt.

  I found the breath to scream, eyes riveted to the dangling brass buckle, but a calloused hand gripped my mouth. An immediate hush fell over the night. I dug my nails into my captor’s pale hand, hard enough to draw blood, but still, he held firm. The Pale One shoved his hips into my ass and pressed me flush against his body, gripping my mound. The cold palm against my pussy immobilized me with fear. The hard hand over my mouth stifled my screams. But I did scream. My fury died under his palm when something sharp ripped into my throat.

  For a full second, I thought the Pale One had slit my throat. A knife maybe? And in the next heartbeat, because his mouth locked onto my neck like a vice, I thought he must have a razor blade clenched in his teeth.

  The world blurred. Blistering pain overwhelmed my panic, but I didn’t die or choke on my own blood. Instead, the hideous pain of tearing skin was replaced by the stinging ache of suction. His tongue burrowed into the wounds to open them wider as they flowed.

  Not a razor blade. Teeth. He bit me!

  The Pale One must’ve filed down his teeth into sharp points, because his attack felt precise, unlike the gnashing I’d expect from normal teeth. Wetness trickled down my neck. I shivered with revulsion. Either his spit or my blood dripped over the curve of my collarbone.

  You psychotic fuck! What’re you doing?

  I wanted to write them off as gothic idiots, a couple weeks too late for Halloween, but they terrified me with their strength. The more I struggled to get free, the more he tore the tender flesh, the harder he sucked from my wound.

  Self-defense training hadn’t prepared me for a freaky-strong assailant who wanted me to have the hickey to end all hickeys before he raped me.

  Rape.

  The word tolled in my mind like a bell as the guy in the hoodie approached me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t look at him, stalking forward for a taste, not while the man holding me rubbed my mound and sucked my neck with sloppy vigor. I didn’t want to see Hoodie Guy unbutton his pants all the way as he prepared to shove himself inside me.

  I focused on the fight again. I clawed the hand covering my mouth, only to have my hand wrenched away by Hoodie Guy. I snapped my gaze to him as he closed his hand around my wrist. He smiled into my wide eyes and squeezed. I felt bones break like twigs. I screamed and jerked, but still remained trapped, my raw voice still muffled. Pain shrieked along my arm as Hoodie Guy yanked my swelling joint into the air.

  I sobbed against the Pale One’s palm, while the other stretched my arm taut as a bowstring. My jacket—and the sweater beneath—ripped like tissue paper. Cold air raked goosebumps on my arms. The heat of a mouth blocked out the chill before Hoodie Guy bit into the artery at the bend of my elbow. My blood and his spit mingled as he clamped down and sucked.

  Why are you doing this to me?

  I wrenched my head to the side, desperate to make eye contact with one of them so they might answer me. Why me? Why were they biting me? I hoped the desperation in my eyes would appeal to their humanity, but my efforts went unheeded. Whatever drugs these lunatics were on had fried their brains. Had to be drugs. I shuddered, thinking I’d become the victim of a bad batch of meth. Horror stories about drug binges and cannibalism flashed through my beleaguered mind.

  God please don’t let them be cannibals. Please let me get out of this alive. Please. Please.

  We all tumbled to the ground. I sat on my ass, pinned to the Pale One, still sucking on my neck like a straw. I strained against unyielding planes of muscle bracketed by two long legs, while the other man knelt beside us, drawing blood from the veins in my right arm. I kicked. I dug my heels into the ground. I struggled to gain leverage, until two iron grips encircled my ankles, jerked my legs straight, and sat me down again.

  A frantic glance down the length of my body confirmed my worst fear.

  Another one? Three of them?

  A woman? No, a man. His shoulders were broad, but long hair fell over them and a dark flannel shirt, blending into the night.

  I knew he wasn’t the first man, who still suckled my neck. Pale One had only just now shifted his hand from my crotch to my left breast, never once relinquishing his suction on my neck. I knew he wasn’t the man who sucked at the bend of my arm. Hoodie Guy’s greedy mouth still mined my veins like an evil nurse drawing endless pints of blood.

  Those two hadn’t moved except to drag me to the ground.

  Which meant the man between my legs had just joined us.

  The long-haired one slid his hands up my thighs and over my hips. The Pale One lay on the ground and pulled me flat with him, my arm still held aloft by Hoodie Guy, sucking the bend dry.

  Long Hair only released my hips to unbutton and unzip my jeans with rough fingers.

  No!

  Twigs, dirt, and leaves crunched under my ass as he stripped my jeans and panties off. I redoubled my efforts, not caring about the pain in my shattered wrist, and the leeches affixed to my neck and inner arm.

  Naked from the waist down, my shirt rode up my back in the struggle, pinned between my spine and Pale One’s body.

  I felt a shocking touch of softness amidst the cruelty. The third man’s hair had to be longer than I could see. He still sat over me, looking down with glowing eyes. Silken hair tickled my groin, my hips, my navel. A soft sweep of the tips brushed against my labia and over my clit before resting on my stomach. The sensation made me shudder. A drop of wetness escaped my opening. I clenched my thighs to silence the involuntary hint of arousal, but my body no longer answered to me. The third man’s huge hands clasped the tops of my thighs and pried them apart. His calloused fingers scraped the vulnerable skin, summoning goosebumps.

  Long Hair, who’d stripped off my jeans, took me from naked to exposed when he placed one of my legs on the other side of Pale One’s. I felt the tendons in my thighs wail in agony as the third man pinned one of my knees to the ground, holding the other as far open as he could, while I lay braced against the first man’s body.

  And I thought you were the gentle one.

  I struggled to close my legs, only succeeding in dragging a sharp branch against my outer thigh. The tip broke the skin. Leaves stuck to the bloody cut like my attackers stuck to me.

  Long Hair lay on top of me and pumped his hips, scraping denim-caged hardness against me. Tears spilled from my eyes. He inhaled me, rubbed his nose over my chest, and tugged my shirt down to expose the tops of my breasts. When he dragged his tongue across my pounding heart, he pinned me with his stare. I froze, staring back like a mouse caught in a viper’s sights.

  Down my body he nuzzled, nipping and sucking at my quivering belly. I tried to make myself small, concave. The futile act only pressed me tighter to the firm body at my back. I couldn’t escape the greedy mouths biting and licking me.

  But the man topping me, his lips felt different, soft and full. He trailed them over my skin, savoring the texture, and leaving trails of saliva in their wake.

  I should be fighting.

  Why can’t I fight?

  A rush of air hit my neck as the suckling mouth pulled away. A groan of raw pleasure sounded in my ear. I shuddered as hot breath wafted across my swollen folds.

  “Fuck!” The pale
one’s gravelly voice echoed and he licked my neck like he’d lick a plate clean.

  A wave of shame flushed through me. I sobbed, disgusted by the pounding arousal in my groin. Fear? Did people react this way in terror? The night air cooled my juices but couldn’t stop the flow. My spine bowed at the conflicting sensations. My clit thudded, each beat a punch to the face of my modesty.

  I’m not fighting because I’m weak.

  A vision of my dead and defiled body on the forest floor flashed in my mind. I would be a corpse twisted in the night, my last words a scream no one would ever hear.

  But, I wasn’t always weak, was I?

  Teeth sank deep into the flesh of my inner thigh.

  Pain. Arousal.

  I used to be strong.

  Hunger.

  I’m stronger than this.

  Hunger, something my attackers and I shared. My hunger to survive startled me out of self-pity like a slap. My mind lit with one urgent thought.

  Fight or die.

  Maybe they’d let me live, but I didn’t believe they would. I refused to die like this. I refused to fade away, quiet, while lunatics defiled my body with their creepy fetish.

  I couldn’t take them on in a fist fight—one had overpowered me with ease—but my fists weren’t the only weapons at my disposal.

  I had no name for what I was about to do, no way to explain the thing that made me different. For years, I pretended I’d cultivated a stronger intuition than others, and nothing more. Acknowledging anything else—even to myself—made normality impossible.

  For the first time in over a decade, I ripped off my mask. Unchecked, a version of me I could only call my higher self, floated outside my body. Assessing the scene below, I confirmed my suspicions. Three men fed from my half-naked form. I watched in horror while my torso and limbs spasmed, then descended into bloodless death.

  From above, the group hierarchy unfolded like a written book. The first to attack had pierced my neck, but the weakest fed from my arm. The new attacker fastened to my thigh—focus on him, he’s the leader.

  My femoral artery pumped into his mouth. Full lips covered my torn flesh. Raven hair tumbled over his shoulders and draped my thighs like widow’s lace. The way he moved, the way his hands roved my skin, he looked like he was tasting the cleft between my legs. I lingered on my own still form and disappointment surged in my ghostly form.

  Traitor.

  The girl wore my skin but had none of my impulses. She vibrated with vicious hunger and need. My eyes drift closed and I transferred my focus to the leader. I sensed his satisfaction and rode the sensation right into his head.

  I dove, spirit-first, into the leader’s mind, and stained him from the inside out, like ink on paper. I clung so close to his insides that his goosebumps became mine. My cold skin flushed with the blood he’d stolen.

  Unprepared for the wrenching throb between my—his—thighs, I tuned into something new. So this is what it feels like to have a hard cock?

  No, this is different than what Manny feels. His throbbing—it’s like a drill between his legs.

  I shook off the distraction of peeping around inside the opposite gender, and focused on a more startling revelation.

  His heart! beatingbeatingbeatingbeating. So fast! He should be having a seizure.

  Blood pumped through the leader’s chest like a toy train on turbo speed, in a never-ending loop. The insistent, desperate throb started in his heart and ended in his painfully-solid shaft. When he drank from me, it was like being high, like falling, like coming over and over again. My blood eased his ache.

  Our ache.

  I fell into his arousal, his hunger, his need, his feral carelessness, and whispered through the dormant caverns of his conscience.

  Stop. Stop!

  He jerked his head high and stared as if he’d heard my voice.

  You want me alive. You need me alive.

  With the eyes of my spirit, I held his feral stare. No time to flinch, but goosebumps crawled down my spine as my mouth filled with the acidic taste of revulsion. Tangled within my gift, both of us inhaled the same sharp breath. Erect with desire, his hips pumped into the ground between my calves. My spine bowed in response, echoing him.

  I knew how delicious it would feel for him to lay his hips against mine, for the soft skin on the head of his cock to cling to my slick folds before slipping inside. Juicy, clenching heaven wrapped around him, so tight it felt real. Blood and slick pussy mingled as he fucked me in his mind. He’d hit that spot within, flooding yet another unwilling cunt over and over, wrenching pleasure from my pain, tearing me apart from the inside out, breaking me, the crack of my hips and my screams of agony driving him harder to the finish line. The moment just before he came within me would be the sweetest, so sweet he could blow right now. We needed to finish, to find ecstasy right now—

  I wrenched his mind away from pleasure to the truth.

  Now I became the predator, forcing his memories to the forefront of his brain.

  Men and women, ripped to shreds by his thirst, danced like puppets to my mental command. C’mon, asshole, make the connection before I pass out. Keep feeding and I die. Fuck me while you feed and you’ll lose all sense of how much blood you take. We don’t want that, do we?

  My mind lit like neon, with a thought not mine.

  Witch! I shivered at the slow drag of his tongue against my wounded thigh, cringing at the vile images flowing through his poisoned brain. Sweet. Sweet. Witch blood.

  A sick, twisted serial-killing fuck was ranting about witches and sweet blood in my head. New cult maybe? Satanic worship? He thought I was a witch for fuck’s sake.

  We’re both crazy. He thinks he can drink blood and I think I can read minds.

  Temptation flared. He wanted me, wanted the instant gratification of feeling my death.

  Flashes of his own memories assaulted me. Fragile human bodies broken by his strength, by the strength of his henchmen. Mangled corpses choking on blood and screams.

  If you fuck me now, you’ll kill me.

  Relief whispered through me—powered by my weakened veins—at his nod. He circled a hand over his belly.

  Empath. Back off now, but feed again soon. Build up her strength.

  His cock heated like a branding iron. I could almost see the glow radiating from his shaft as I untangled myself from him. I let my spirit fall into my body, weakened from my trip though his vile memories. My pussy clenched—in want. My folds swelled to bursting and the wind on my bared skin felt like strumming fingers. An ache settled into my channel, a spike of pain struck my clit like ice, sending jagged shards of pleasure all the way to my swollen nipples.

  Warm blood trickled down my neck, caressing my breast as my head lolled to the side.

  Hear me, witch. I’ll fuck you yet. I’ll have you making so much blood, I’ll be able to stick my dick in your veins. Baby, I’m making so many plans for you.

  Panic seized me when he lowered his head again.

  No! No!

  The touch of wet heat soothed the ache building between my thighs. The thick muscle rolled around my clit. I drew double with pleasure.

  And, as he continued to stroke shudder after shudder from me, dread.

  Some sense of the horror awaiting me coiled like a serpent in my belly, even as arousal trickled down my inner thigh.

  Giving my swollen clit a last lick, Lead Pervert stood and backed away, smacking his lips. Cold wind caressed my bare legs, teasing my open entrance with a shaft of ice.

  “Let go. Get off her.” A hard hand slapped the weak one on the back of the head. His boot flashed out, kicking the Pale One in his side. The Pale One, who’d licked my neck just moments before like a delicacy, dropped me in the dirt like garbage.

  “What the fuck, dude?”

  For the first time since this all began, my body was my own, but I couldn’t move a muscle. I blinked tears into the dirt and listened to the deal I’d made with the devil take shape.

  “B
ack off. Now, Vaughn!” I saw a blur of movement and heard a crack. In front of me, the man ran his fingers through tousled, white-blonde hair. The color reminded me of Eighties punk rock. The death glare he gave me as he spat blood from his split lip forced me to close my eyes. No one should see all that hatred staring back.

  “She’s coming with us. I want her alive."

  Darkness, blessed darkness, soaked up the oil left by my foray inside his mind.

  Nothing inside me now but me and the feel of my own fear, my own body.

  “Liam,” the leader called to the weak one. “Carry her to the car.” The voice sounded as though from a vast distance. Hands jostled me, pulling my jeans on. Hoisted over a meaty shoulder, my spine went limp, and the world faded to black.

  Death would wait.

  3

  I started back to consciousness, sputtering as my throat closed around sweet, coppery liquid. Bands of hard muscle surrounded my reclining body, but the world spun. My stomach roiled and my body swayed to a rhythm I couldn’t place. Not until zig-zagging shafts of light forced me to squint through a dirty window.

  Light?

  It’s daytime.

  I gripped the leader’s thigh with one hand, a fistful of cracked vinyl upholstery with the other. Cradled in possessive arms, and staring at the faded leather of a car door, I catapulted in the air then thudded backward into the seat.

  Pothole. Car. Moving. No, not moving. Speeding, rocketing past patches of light where sunshine pierced the pines.

  I’d never felt less safe, less relieved to be alive.

  I should’ve let them kill me.

  As if in agreement with my foggy mind, my stomach heaved. I lurched out of the arms of the leader and instinctively in the direction of the door, clawing at the slippery handle. It refused to budge and the contents of my stomach refused to stay down. A chunky wave of acid scraped the back of my throat raw. A half-eaten burger and the beer I hadn’t finished—how long has it been since I ate? A day? Longer?—splashed against the seat, the leader’s feet, and dirt-crusted floor mats. I heard his groan of disgust, felt him shift to kick off the vomit. His harsh movements and the speeding car shook loose everything I’d swallowed. By the time I’d reached the dry-heaving stage, I prayed for death.