Never had I been so wrong about someone before. It was time to include Lucien in one of our talks.
Koda was right, of course: a side door sat on the eastern side of the building, and Koda ran to it as the sky lit up with lightning again, blinding me. The thunder followed almost directly after, and I wondered if we were literally caught in the worst part of the storm. You shouldn’t be outside at a time like this.
I watched, water dripping down my face as Koda set his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t pull it open, though. He didn’t even try. “What are you doing?” I shouted, most of my voice getting lost in the rain.
Koda lurched away from the door, letting go of the knob. His white shirt was drenched, the fabric clinging to the lean body underneath. I saw his arm muscles tightening, and he lumbered into the grass, not even sparing me a glance.
What was happening?
I started toward him, but froze the instant I watched him fall to his knees, grabbing fistfuls of his hair. His shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths, and I could’ve sworn I watched his frame grow a little wider. Or maybe that was just because of the lightning and the storm, the heavy rain clouding my vision.
“Get inside,” he growled out, not looking at me. He hardly sounded like himself. He sounded as if he struggled, wrestling with something I could not see. Koda sounded similar to how he did that day in the library.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I skedaddled it out of there before he could say anything else, before whatever was inside of him snapped. My feet brought me to the side door, and with a slick palm, I threw it open. Thank God it wasn’t locked. I was able to get inside and close the door.
I shouldn’t have lingered. I should’ve kept going, but I didn’t, and through the small glass square on the door, I watched Koda in the rain, thunder and lightning once again lighting up the sky. No longer was he on his knees; he slowly got to his feet, his back bent until he was standing. Almost painfully slowly his spine snapped straight, and his head turned ever so slightly, a look of pure hatred on his face.
Again, it was like he was another person than the Koda who had been desperately trying to explain what had happened before—I’d be lying if I said it didn’t frighten me.
I’d also be lying if I said it did. As I watched him through the glass, I was a strange mixture of emotions. Worried, hesitant, but most of all…curious. Ever so curious. Koda could flip a switch and act like a totally different person. Did he have some kind of disorder? Was he one of those people who had more than one personality? I always thought the news and TV shows sensationalized it, but with Koda…how the heck could I deny what I’d seen?
Koda was slow to turn to face the door, letting the rain pelt him. I saw his mouth part, sheer hunger on his face. Maybe it was wrong of me, or maybe it was smart, but I flicked the deadbolt and locked the door, locking him out.
There were probably entrances on all sides of the building, so he could still get in if he wanted, but at least I had a head start on him.
I turned away from the glass, breaking eye contact with him. I dripped onto the floor, the dress’s skirt clinging to me with each step. Once again, caught in the rain. Once again, sopping wet like a feral cat caught outside with no shelter. I loved it, really.
Please note my sarcasm.
The air in the dark hallway was cold, and I wandered down the hall, rubbing my hands along the sleeves on my arm. It was useless, though. I wouldn’t get warm until I was out of these clothes.
I vaguely recognized where I was—near the door to the basement. The cellar. Whatever the heck you called it. An off-limits area of Grimmstead I shouldn’t go. Not only shouldn’t; I wasn’t allowed.
The lighting on the walls was near nonexistent so far down the hall, probably because no one was allowed down there. My wet boots took me down the hall, my intent to go to my room and change clothes, find Lucien, and…tell him all about what happened with Koda, which I honestly should’ve done before.
Frankly, I wasn’t certain why I didn’t. Why I kept it to myself. It was like…my thought process was hazy, because I couldn’t come up with any good reasons for me to not have already told Lucien about it.
It didn’t make sense.
You know what else didn’t make sense? Me, stopping in front of the one door I shouldn’t stop by. The basement door. A cold metal door whose latch normally sealed it off from the rest of the house, but for whatever reason, it was undone.
Right now, the door to the basement was wide open.
Don’t go down there, Felice, I told myself, trying to knock some sense into me. Don’t go down there. Nothing good happens in creepy basements. Nothing but murdery stuff and things you probably don’t want to see. After what happened outside, do you really want to play explorer?
I should go. I should find Lucien, change out of these wet clothes.
That’s what I should do, but what I did do and what I should’ve done were two totally separate things. My heart told me to go into the basement, so I did. I inched forward to the dark doorway, not a single light to be seen except for the dim light in the hall. It was only because of the first-floor hall light that I was able to see the steps and avoid tripping and taking a tumble.
Yeah. Because breaking my neck here would be so fun. So ridiculously fun.
My eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness, and the air grew chillier as I went down the stone steps. Once I was done with the stairs, I heard a sneeze—yes, a sneeze. A tiny, cat-like sneeze—and I turned my head to see Midnight sitting near a lantern on the floor.
The lantern’s light was dim, but it was better than nothing. I headed toward him, wondering if Midnight was the reason the door was open. Did Lucien come down here and Midnight followed him? Maybe Lucien knew and didn’t want to lock the cat down here.
Or maybe that was just my mind trying to come up with a reason that made sense.
Things here hardly made sense, this much I knew already.
When I reached Midnight’s side, I crouched to pet him. The cat immediately let out a purr, and my eyes turned to the lantern. Was there a way to turn it up higher? I grasped the top metal handle, picking it up. A tiny orange flame burned in it. A small lever of sorts sat on the bottom side of it, and I turned it, watching as the wick in the center grew, thereby having more to burn. More to burn meant more light.
Jeez. This lantern was ancient, but then again, so was this place.
After I stood with the lantern, Midnight rubbed against my feet, letting out a short meow as he trotted deeper into the basement. Right now it looked like I was in a hall, but it seemed to go on, much as the house did on top.
Now was not the time to play hide and seek with the cat in the basement, I knew. Still, I didn’t want the feline to get lost, so I hissed, “Midnight! Get back here!” Yeah, because getting a cat to listen to you was easy. Anyone who’s ever owned a cat knew differently.
The cat didn’t answer or come back, because he was a cat and not a person.
I should set the lantern down and walk away, head up those stairs and act like I never saw the open door to the basement, but the thought of leaving the cat down here all alone was too much. I couldn’t do it.
Clearly I was way too much of a cat person.
Instead of doing what I should’ve done, I headed deeper into the basement after Midnight. The hall seemed almost impossibly long, but that was also probably because of the darkness ahead. I couldn’t tell where the cat was, because he was black, and the lantern’s light traveled along with me as I went.
Stupid cat.
Cobwebs hung on the stone walls and ceiling, the air damp but nothing wet. No leaks in the foundation. However old this place was, it held up pretty well over the years. The cold air made my wet clothes feel even chillier, and I shivered as I passed under a stone archway. Wooden crates lined the walls, and I wondered what was inside of them. Old decorations for the house? Items from its past? Its past was a confusing and long one, but I always found things like that i
nteresting.
I stopped when I spotted some old paintings leaning against the stone wall. They were the only paintings in sight, everything else just boxes and crates. The frame on top was backwards, and curiosity got the better of me. Suddenly the phrase curiosity killed the cat kept replaying in my head, over and over. Quite apropos for the situation.
The frame was nearly as tall as my legs, and it was kind of heavy, so I ended up having to set the lantern down on a nearby crate and use both hands to pick it up and turn it around. It was…not quite what I was expecting, but also fitting, giving the creepy nature of this place and the ones who lived under its roof.
An old painting of some guy. You know the kind, the ones that you saw in history textbooks. The kind of painting that meant whomever’s portrait it was came from money. At least the dude in the painting wasn’t one of those pasty guys with the white, towering wigs.
He was—I suddenly realized as I stared down at his slightly off-centered face—kind of cute. A man who had not yet reached middle age, someone with white skin and brown hair that was parted and combed to the side, a style that men these days did not wear. His face was clean-shaven, gaunt and slender. Sideburns dominated his profile, as did his nose, which was very Roman and almost a size too big.
Still, he was cute. You know, for a painting. Standing there in the dim light, I couldn’t help but wonder who this guy was. Was he a Grimmstead? Was he some ancestor of Lucien’s? They didn’t look too much alike, although they did have the same hair color.
I was about to lean the front portrait forward and peek at the ones resting behind it, but footsteps echoed down the hall, alerting me to someone else’s presence. Someone who wasn’t Midnight.
Releasing my hold on the front portrait, I grabbed the lantern, wondering what I should do. If it was Lucien, he’d probably be pissed, and I didn’t want him to be upset with me. Mostly because of that dream—it was a dream I thought a lot about, if I was honest—but also because I had to talk to him with a clear, level head about Koda.
I saw a light growing further down the hall, and someone rounded the far corner, coming from deeper in the basement and carrying his own lantern to see. It wasn’t Lucien, thank goodness, although the sigh of relief I wanted to make didn’t quite make it out when I realized it was Payne.
Pale, blood-obsessed Payne. What in the world was he doing down here? Sacrificing animals to his dark overlord?
Okay, that was a bit excessive and totally dramatic. Reel it in, Felice.
Payne’s footsteps halted the moment he spotted me. He carried a…bucket? Oh, Lord. Oh, no. I did not want to see what was in that bucket, I knew. I started to take a step back, but I must’ve hit the back of my heel on an uneven stone in the floor, because the next thing I knew, I was falling. Too clumsy to catch myself, the lantern landed on the floor and broke, the oil and glass going every which way. The fire inside didn’t spread; it simply went out.
“Felice?” Payne’s even voice broke through the damp air, “Is that you?”
It was dark all around me, but I was able to see him approaching. He…he no longer carried a bucket. Just the lantern. What? I blinked, but no matter how many times I blinked, it still didn’t magically reappear.
I knew I didn’t make it up, so then where did it go? Did he set it down while I was falling and I was too busy trying to catch myself to see? Did buckets turn invisible here? I just…
As I sat on the floor, I reached for my head. The wet sleeves on my arms were itchy, and I…I had no idea why I was thinking about a bucket. I hadn’t seen a bucket. Did I? My mind was hazy, fuzzy, and it took me an unreasonable amount of time to remember the fact that I’d been caught outside in the rain with Koda.
Right. Koda.
If I was running from Koda, why was I here?
Payne did not rush to my side, but he measuredly came to me, step after step. I was too confused as I sat on the floor to do much of anything but stare at him as he walked to me. Payne knelt beside me, carefully setting his lantern on the floor. The orange light danced across his pale features, almost making it look like he was tan. His white hair was ruffled, his grey eyes reflecting the orange hue.
He was a devastatingly handsome man in his own right, his skin like porcelain.
“What are you doing down here?” Payne asked. He gently moved aside the broken lantern.
One of the glass shards rested on the fabric of my dress. “I don’t—” I was about to tell him that I didn’t quite remember all of the details, that I was running from Koda, but my finger nicked itself on the sharp edge of the glass shard. I let out a gasp, bringing my finger to my face.
Already a drop of blood had oozed out, coming from the small cut that had happened so fast, I didn’t even realize it. Did I grip the glass piece that hard?
Payne’s hand shot out, grabbing my wrist almost immediately once he noticed the blood on my pointer finger. His hand curled around my wrist harder than I would’ve thought he was able to, and even though it didn’t hurt, I let out a whimper.
Just like Koda, it was like Payne changed. He didn’t stare at me as he would another person; he stared at my finger and the blood on it as if that single droplet held the answers to the universe and beyond. Like I was no more than the sum of my blood.
Maybe I wasn’t. If this place had shown me one thing, it was that nothing I thought was true. Common sense, common decency and logic—they were worthless in the halls of Grimmstead.
“Payne,” I whispered his name, leaning forward as he pulled my hand toward him. My finger held no more than a drop or two of blood, and yet Payne acted as if those few droplets were exactly what he needed. So focused and intent on the blood, his expression made my stomach harden and twist.
Or maybe that was because, with us being this close, I could smell the musky, woodsy scent he had. Like pine, like nature balled up and bundled into a man, and a handsome one at that. A peculiar, bizarre, almost creepy but handsome man.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Payne spoke, drawing out each word as if they were his lifeline.
No. The lifeline here was the tiny pool of dark red on my fingertip.
As I watched him stare at my finger, I couldn’t help but feel my heart begin to beat harder, pounding away in my chest. It was almost too much, looking at him as his silver gaze was fixated on my finger. The way he stared, the way he watched it…
I wanted him to look at me like that, not just my blood. Not just my cut. Me.
Was that wrong? I wasn’t even sure where that thought came from, but once it flitted into my head, I couldn’t push it away. All panicked thoughts invoked by Koda were gone, vanished as I gazed at this man.
Something had to be wrong with me. This was the man who, I was ninety percent sure, caught and killed animals on the property to drain their blood. He wrote with the blood, kept it bottled up in perfume jars in his room. He was obsessed, and not in the hot, dangerous kind of way—although, right then, I was kind of leaning more toward the latter.
Payne was handsome, there was no denying it. His pale white skin, the silver in his eyes, the whiteness of his hair. His face was angular and smooth, his chin square.
His grey eyes glimmered, almost flashing a brighter color. Payne said nothing as he moved my hand toward his mouth, parting his lips. I knew what was going to happen before it happened, but that didn’t stop me from watching with bated breath as my finger disappeared in his mouth, his lips slow to curl around its length. His tongue ran over my finger, warm and slick, picking up the blood. Tingling heat crept up my spine as I watched.
It should’ve been weird. It shouldn’t have felt erotic, but…it did. It totally did.
Payne’s mouth lingered when it shouldn’t, and I wondered if similar thoughts raced in his mind. Perhaps I should pull my finger away—that’s probably what a smart person would’ve done in a situation like this—but I couldn’t. With the orange light dancing along his features, he was a demon of my dreams. A pale demon of blood.
<
br /> After what felt like an eternity, Payne withdrew his mouth slowly, glancing at me in a similar way. Like I was his world, the moon to his sun. Like I was everything to him. “Saliva—” He began to explain, but I cut him off.
“I know,” I said, knowing exactly what he was going to say, how he would defend himself and what he just did. What I didn’t know was why he still held onto my wrist, why my hand was inches away from his mouth, allowing me to feel every breath he took. “I know,” I said again, this time softer, leaning forward.
It was almost magnetic, what I felt inside. I wanted to—no, I needed to. I needed more. Needed to feel more, to experience more. In this moment, I needed him regardless of how freaked I’d gotten over the clearing in the woods, in spite of the blood vials in his room and the papers taped to his walls. I needed him so much more than I should, a carnal, voracious desire that would not go away until I had my fill.
I leaned forward, forgetting everything around me as I pressed my lips to his, softly, tentatively, a whisper of what could be. Payne didn’t kiss me back; his eyes remained opened, clearly shocked at my forwardness. Heck, I was, too—but forward or not, I couldn’t deny how badly I needed some relief.
Payne still held onto my wrist, though his fingers began to loosen around me. Our hands fell to the wayside, but he never released me fully. He pulled his head back only an inch, breaking our kiss enough to say, “Felice…” Whatever else he’d wanted to say, whatever else he’d hoped to tell me, was gone, because the next thing I knew, I grabbed him by the collar and pushed him back.
If we went my way, we ran the risk of rolling in the glass, but by pushing him to his back, we could avoid that pesky issue.
Suddenly I straddled him, his back flat on the floor, his lantern glowing softly beside us. He’d released my wrist as he laid back, giving me full control whether he realized it or not. I didn’t even care that my dress was wet or that tiny waves of pain emanated through my finger. The only thing I cared about right now was the man lying under me.
Grimmstead Academy: A Villainous Introduction Page 15
