Not man. Creature. Vampire, to be exact. Here in the daylight of Ordinary that doesn’t make vampires burn. Here inside the boundaries of Ordinary unnoticed, because all the vampires were gone.
Ancient. He was built a lot like Old Rossi, his silver hair cut in a short, executive style. His eyes were black and shockingly devoid of humanity.
There was a nightmarish smoothness to him, as if all his edges were rubbed down to frictionless curves, as if he had been poured into shape instead of tailored by bones. Snake-like. Fluid.
Creepy as hell.
“Yes,” he said as if I’d asked him a question. “I killed Sven. Sent him to my prideful brother. Still he didn’t come to me. So I took his toy. The one he turned. Poor, breakable thing.”
Ben.
“You will not do this,” I said. “You will not hurt my people, my town.” My words came out even, but my heart was pounding. Hard. I knew he could hear it, feel it.
He lifted his upper lip in a snarl. “Since he will not come to me, you will send him a message even he will understand.”
I backed up and threw my hands in a block.
But vampires are fast. I didn’t blink, but my eyes still couldn’t track his movement. He wrapped one hand up in my hair, yanking my head to the side.
I kicked out, punched. He yanked my head harder, and shook me like a rag doll. I heard bones in my neck crack as my feet left the ground.
I yelled, fought, thunder echoing my anger, my fear.
Vampires are inhumanly strong. And even though I was tough, a Reed, I was still human.
He pulled me to him, wrapping me tight against the hard, cold, slippery length of his body, wrenched my neck bare.
I screamed as agony pierced my flesh, two hot, jagged fangs hooking down into my neck, seeking my pulse.
Every muscle in my body went lax as if I’d just been injected with Novocain.
Turns out being bitten by a vampire isn’t as sexy as some of the movies might make one think. Although that might have something to do with the fact that this vampire hated me and would rather see me dead than show me a good time.
This was not good. Not good at all.
“Listen to me, Reed bitch,” he said, teeth still buried in my flesh. “You are alive only because you are my final message to my brother.” He slowly lifted his mouth from my skin. I was numb everywhere except for where his fangs pierced me.
There I only felt endless pain.
“He brings me theRauðskinna.Or I take everything he has,” his fangs slipped free of my flesh, and I almost blacked out from the agony, “and burn this world to the ground.”
He shook me again. I would have screamed if my body were responding to my mind. But the world had become too heavy, folding down on me in layers and layers and layers. Everything was watery, fading, dark.
I wondered if I was drowning. If the ocean had risen up to swallow me whole.
Cold sand, concrete-hard slapped against my back...
...had he thrown me?
...someone was screaming in the distance.
Sirens.
And not the call-the-sailors-to-their-death kind of sirens.
Police cruiser sirens.
“Tell him,”his whisper echoed in my head. “Or I will tear each of you apart until I find the one who makes him scream.”
