“To the naive, ignorant cattle,” Lord Draven toasted. “May they ever be unconcerned about the threat to their necks.”
Laughter came from the crowd—and even as my stomach roiled, as I felt myself teetering on a knife edge above an abyss, I forced myself to join in.
“Here, here!” many others cried—and the glasses were upended—drained.
I didn’t have one, I noted with a spike of panic. But then, not everyone did—but then again, Theo and Mill were nearby—and Mill was watching me.
Why did he keep staring at me like that?
Lord Draven said no more. He seemed to vanish, in fact; the brief glance from the drinkers, lifting high their flutes of—blood—to Theo and Mill, and back again was enough for him to dematerialize. The party returned, as though it had not been interrupted at all: the music restarted, and the dancers returned to their dim pools of blue and purple and green light.
“He may not be prompt, but he does give engaging speeches,” Theo said, still looking down at the dance floor.
“And brief,” I said, eyeing their drained glasses with what I hoped was a hungering eye rather than disgust.
A stocky vampire appeared and, without a word to them, placed a hand on Mill’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear.
Mill glanced at me again and nodded his head. Then he and the stocky man turned and left without a word, disappearing into the crowd.
Theo was nodding his head to the beat, the glass still in his hands. When the lights below strobed, I could see the bright red streaks inside the glass, all that was left of the … the drink.
I rubbed my hands over my arms. Goosebumps again, and because of the temperature.
Why had I even come here? My mysterious texter had lured me here, baited me with answers, like a worm dangled before a fish—and for what? There were no answers that I could see, nothing that would help me stop Byron. Had I been supposed to meet someone?
Whatever the case, it hadn’t happened.
And I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that these vampires would believe my lie for very long. More than ever I felt exposed standing here, especially now that Mill had gone. And the way his gaze had fallen upon me time and again …
Did he know? I needed to get out of here. Even if he didn’t—even if none of them had any clue. Because despite the fact that Byron might have enemies in this place, Lord Draven’s speech had been perfectly clear: vampires did not think of humans as anything more than food. What an idiot I was, to think this would be a good idea.
Best to leave—to get home, and to text my mystery “helper” from the comfort of my room, where I was not surrounded by hordes of vampires.
“How about you and I take a little walk?” Theo suggested. His eyes looked darker, somehow, as I glanced to him, jolted out of my thoughts. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.
“I was actually just thinking that I probably should be going—”
There was suddenly a cold gust of wind, and Theo was standing close to me, his lips pressed to my ear.
It was incredible how quickly he had gotten so close to me. I hadn’t even noticed it until it happened. Byron had done the same thing, and the fear made my breath catch in my throat.
“Nonsense,” he said, his voice as smooth as silk, and he turned me around gently. He wasn’t aggressive, but his hand was resting on my lower back—barely a touch, but I didn’t think it would be wise to refuse him—and so I allowed him to guide me to double glass doors behind us.
The night air was cool on my face, but I felt hot with fear. My skin burned where his hand hovered over my back.
He steered me along between the glass-topped tables with ease. Then he opened the door for me, the panes frosted and dark.
My heart was in my throat, choking me. It took everything I had not to puke it up—not to bolt.
Surely he knew. And surely the other vampires around us did too—it would be written all over me, in the way my body moved, rigid and stilted and mechanical. Yet except for the usual passing glances, we were paid no heed at all. Theo guided me to the edge of the balcony. Distantly, I could just appreciate that the view was breathtaking. Tampa Bay stretched out before us, the lights from the surrounding buildings glittering like fireflies on its still, dark surface.
The wind was strong up this high, and it whipped across my cheeks. It felt like standing on the beach. Stray curls flicked toward my face and I caught the scent of my shampoo, strong and floral.
Could Theo smell it on me? Could he smell my flesh?
Had I given myself away via simply what I was?
I kept back the shiver, fought off the chill. Whether Theo was by my side or not, him or any of a hundred other vampires in this place—up here I was completely, utterly alone in the world.
Theo had acquired another champagne flute on our way. He leaned casually on the glass railing.
He swirled the glass. Blood lolled about, thick and crimson and metallic.
“This view is just spectacular, isn’t it?” He sounded so calm, so conversational, no hint of the menace his voice had carried a moment before.
Something was off about him. He had been so cordial to me the entire time we were inside. But as soon as Mill left, his demeanor changed. He hadn’t lost his poise or his charm, but he seemed … hungrier, somehow. Like his drink was laced with testosterone.
“Don’t you agree, Elizabeth?”
“What?” I said. Idiot. That was the name you gave him, remember? “Oh, of course. Very nice.”
He snickered, and then stood up taller. He really was very handsome, but in a very different way than Byron was. More...animalistic in his magnetism. He moved to stand in front of me again and traced a finger down the side of my cheek.
Almost exactly like how Byron had.
My skin felt like it had been seared where his finger touched.
“So tell me, Elizabeth …” He smiled wryly. “Why did you really come out here tonight?”
My mind whirled, trying desperately to come up with any sort of reason that would make sense. It was a vampire meeting, of course; shouldn’t that be reason enough? What other reason would a vampire have for coming to this sort of event?
“I—” I started to say, but he shook his head.
“Never mind. It doesn’t actually matter.” His mouth parted in a wide grin—and a long, thin pair of fangs extended where his canines should have been.
Chapter 19
If I was honest with myself, since first meeting Byron, since finding out what he truly was, this was how I thought my life would end. It all led to this moment, now, fangs meeting my flesh, blood spilling out of me, filling my captor’s mouth—and I would die, slowly, in pain, unable to stop the blood being pulled from my fingers, my toes, and then my limbs, and finally from my heart, swallow by vampiric swallow. How long would I be conscious? For how long would I scream, feeling it?
And what next?
Would the police find my body? How long would it take for my parents to realize I was actually missing? Probably some time tomorrow. They would spend most of the day furious at me for sneaking out, not actually knowing that I was already dead. Then they would start to worry, and eventually call the police. They would look and look, probably track my text messages that led me here … and who knows?
Maybe they would find my lifeless husk with this stunning view over the balcony.
In that moment, Theo’s fangs bared, I realized that all of the fights I had had with my parents had been stupid. Really stupid. And that I had not, in my seventeen years, left anything behind that was worth talking about.
Nothing good, at least.
That, in combination with simple survival instinct, cemented it in me: my time to go was not yet, could not be, would not be.
All of these thoughts flew through my mind inside of just a fraction of a second—and then I was glad that my dad had forced me to take those dumb defense lessons as an elective in my junior year. Ducking my head out of Theo’s r
each, I threw my arm up. I saw his eyes widen, another fraction of a second—then my elbow slammed the bridge of his nose.
It hurt more than anything I had ever felt before, but it was enough to throw him off for a half of a second—and I turned to run, not checking to see how much damage I had done, if any. Theo unleashed a deep, predatory snarl that seemed to sound in my ears like an air horn.
My chest went cold—and then Theo grabbed the back of my neck and yanked me backward.
I fell into him. It was like slamming into a wall. The wind shot out of me. Stars erupted against my eyelids, pain radiating from the back of my skull.
He grabbed for my shoulders, but I pulled one free. He snatched up my wrist instead, locking it in place.
He was really strong, and I could tell that he was not going to hold back anymore. He’d underestimated me the first time, and he was not going to make that mistake again.
Worse: this close, I could see that my elbow hadn’t hurt him in the slightest. If I had hit a human that hard, it would have broken their nose. But Theo might as well have been made of solid marble; it had only made him angry.
He laughed, his face a sneer, his fangs still visible.
He thought this was funny. He knew he had won.
Not yet, pal. He pulled me closer—
One chance, Cassie.
—and I slammed the heel of my right palm into his eye.
Apparently vampires’ eyes were still somewhat vulnerable, because he cried out in pain. Doubled over, he clutched for his eye with his free hand.
I tried to reach down to my boot, but he was still holding onto my wrist, and yanked me closer to him again.
He sure recovered quickly. And now he was just even more pissed.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me back into his body, pressing my chest to his.
I held up my arms as high as I could to protect my neck and face.
He was too strong, and I couldn’t do anything. Try as I might, every fiber of my body screaming, I could—not—move!
Panic flared—fear unlike any that had flooded my veins with icy terror before. This was it—this was actually it. I was going to die.
Theo looked down at me almost lustfully. His fangs bared. His eyes were aglow with madness, an animal desire for my blood.
NO!
Fear-fueled adrenaline pulsed through me, granting me a last-ditch, desperate burst of strength—and I thrust out, fingers hooked into claws—and sunk them into his eyes.
Theo screamed.
He released me in an instant. Already scrambling backward, I stared as he gripped his eyes with both hands—and from beneath them, shining black liquid ran down his cheeks.
I stared at my fingers—also black.
I wouldn’t eat with my hands ever again.
My brain caught up to me. You’re free! Go!
Right. Twisting on my heel, I leaned into a run—
Theo lunged at me from behind. My feet went out from under me—and both of us toppled, spinning, a tangle of limbs—I pushed myself up onto hands and knees and skittered across the stained wooden deck as fast as I could.
The back of my head slammed against a cement wall, and the throbbing pain and spots returned. I collapsed on the floor, my back to the wall.
I was trapped. The doors were somehow farther away than when we had walked outside.
Theo was getting to his feet—and laughing, a maniacal cackle that carried out over the bay. Every last semblance of humanity seemed to have departed him.
Black ooze smeared his cheeks like tar.
He lumbered closer. My heart beat madly. My eyes darted, seeking salvation. But I had no way out. He was between me and my only exit. And I knew that all of those other vampires inside would not help me, even if by some miracle I managed to make it past him. In fact, they might decide that they wanted me for their prey instead.
Maybe it was better to just get it over with. I didn’t think that my heart could take any more, anyways.
But wait—
The stake. Theo sneered. “Why the long face, Elizabeth? What? You didn’t think that I knew?” His face hardened. “You must have taken me for stupid.”
I inched my fingers toward the edge of my boot. I kept my eyes on him, showing him the depth of my fear. I didn’t have to lie at all about how terrified I was. If I was slower than he was, then I was dead.
Even if I was able to get the stake, I could still be dead.
My fingertips touched the smooth wood, and I felt a thrill of hope, like a breath in my lungs when I was desperate for air. I pulled it closer, wrapping a finger around it.
Theo licked one of his fangs. “You were the stupid one to come here.”
Then he lunged—
I was ready. Ripping the stake free of my boot—and scraping the tip along my leg on the way—I drew it up—
His face hurtled toward mine—reached me—
And I slammed the wooden point in between two of his ribs, right where I hoped his heart was. He gasped, almost frozen in air for a moment. Then his full weight slumped against me. I shrieked—he wasn’t dead; the stake hadn’t done it!—but then I shoved, and he rolled limply off.
His face was unmoving, a last glimpse of fear captured on it. Dark blood was oozing out of the corner of his mouth, and also from the wound in his chest.
It coated my hands, thick and black. Tear welled. Revulsion was like a kick in the stomach, at all this darkness everywhere, staining me—and guilt, guilt that I’d killed, even though my own life had been on the line …
As I watched, his body started to almost sink into the floor beneath him. There was a pool forming beneath him of the same dark substance that was leaking from his lips. It was disgusting, and smelled putrid, like an animal carcass in the heat. The skin on his face started to pull and ripple, like it was turning to liquid. The bones on his hands were prominent for a few seconds, as well as the bones in his knees, his elbows, and even his cheekbones. And then—they all started to soften and decompose, so quickly I could not even make out the features of his face anymore—the features of the creature who’d tried to kill me. In the aftermath, the night was quiet. No horns honked below, and the breeze off the bay was still, like death—like Theo, or what was left of him.
I was alive. There were no bites on me.
The stake had worked.
So my mysterious texter had been looking out for me.
Each heartbeat felt like a relief. I clutched my hands over my heart, my back pressed against the railing. My hands, legs, and shoulders trembled, and I didn’t think that I would be able to stand if I tried.
I wondered, somewhere in the back of my mind, if I was going into shock. That was what happened to people, right?
I had to find a way out. I had to figure out how to get out of here.
But how was I going to cover up the blood all over my arms?
The best answer I could muster was my jeans. Not the same black as Theo’s blood, but still dark nonetheless, and combined with the lighting back in the suite, I could maybe get away with it. Of course, that didn’t mean a vampire wouldn’t smell it on me … but maybe, between the champagne flutes of human blood, I’d get lucky and they’d be distracted.
The job I made of smearing it away wasn’t perfect—far from it, in fact. And I could see, too easily, where the ooze lay thickly over the denim. But it was as clean as I was going to get with the tools I had.
And that meant it was time to leave.
But as I pushed up, and caught sight of the increasingly tarry, pulped mass that had once been Theo, a wave of nausea—at what had just happened, at the fear of Byron, of being detected, of slipping past that mass of murderous creatures—swept over me. Legs threatening to buckle, I clutched the balcony’s rail, and vomited over the edge, loud, racking spasms that emptied my stomach of every last drop, till I was retching and bringing up nothing at all.
Finally, it petered out.
Forehead pressed against the railing—
it was cool in the night, a small blessing—I pondered on the fact that if I lived long enough to ever get to a therapist’s office, I was going to make that son of a bitch a rich man trying to reconcile myself to the events of the last few days. Something moved at the corner of my eye, past the congealed mass that had been Theo’s body.
Standing at the door, Cro-Magnon brow furrowed more heavily than I’d seen yet, was Mill.
He glanced at me, barely standing, nearly mad with fear, then his eyes traced their way over to what was left of Theo’s body. He took it in quickly, calculation rolling through those eyes …
… And then he looked back at me.
His body was rigid, and his face was unreadable when his gaze finally found mine again, but it wouldn’t have taken a brilliant mind—just a barely functional one, like mine right at that moment—to read the dark thoughts that were written all over his face.
Chapter 20
I held the stake out in front of me like a dagger. “Don’t come any closer!”
Mill took a step toward me.
My hands began to tremble in earnest, but I kept the stake pointed in his direction.
“I’m serious!” I said.
Mill lifted his hands in the air. “Listen, Elizabeth … if that’s your real name …” He nodded his head in the direction of Theo’s body. “We aren’t all like him.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. My brain felt like it was thundering along on a freight train, a hundred miles an hour in any direction. Part of me hoped with everything that I had in me that he was telling me the truth. It was too dangerous to hope for that, though. All I could believe in that moment was the power of the stake in my hands.
“Aren’t all like him? So that means that what, ninety-nine percent of you are?”
“No,” he said. “More like ninety percent. “
I rolled my eyes dramatically. “And what, you fall into that ten percent?”
He nodded.
“What makes you think I would trust you?”
Mill lowered his hands slightly, and then shrugged his shoulders. “There is nothing I could say now that is going to convince you. But I know something that might.”
No One Will Believe You Page 11
