I’d spent some time contorting myself in my bathroom that night, trying to use the phone James had given me to take pictures of his script on my back. It made me dangerously soft, damn him, but I wanted it - I needed to keep the image of it as some kind of proof that there was more between us than just blood and stories. Twisting every which way still didn’t give me a clear shot, but I was so focused that I didn’t see the cadaverously thin creature behind me before he got his hands around my throat.
James…
“How’s my doll?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. This was everything I hated; too many variables, outcomes not settled, questions still raised about who to trust. And worst was having my girl, my sweet scribe under the protection of someone else.
I could hear footsteps as Steve left his bedroom shutting the door behind him. “She’s fine. Suspicious little thing. Aura took her out back and they were shooting up my pines like Annie Oakley.”
Laughing despite myself, I mused, “I met the real Annie Oakley. She performed with her husband in London in the late 1800s. Face like a bulldog but when she let loose with those pistols, there was nothing sexier. Thighs like steel bands, too.”
Steve grunted. “I don’t want to know.”
I was halfway through taunting my friend with the memory of a particularly disastrous encounter I’d rescued Steve from which resulted in the two of us being chased out of Moscow by Alexandra Feodorovna’s Royal Guard, when my connection to my doll flared low in my gut, searing like a flaming torch had passed over me.
“Where is she?” I growled, my fangs were suddenly long enough to tear into my lips.
“What?” Steve’s tone sharpened, too, “She’s in her room, I-”
“They’re hurting her!”
What have I done?I repeated the same words, over and over as I raced toward the mountain, to her. I’d promised her that I would her safe. I’dpromisedher.
Meghan…
It took everything in me not to scream, but I still flopped like a gutted fish as that fucking bitch drew her razor-sharp fingernail along my stomach, leaving an ugly slash of skin behind her. I heard the mocking laughter of those other bloodsucking fucks circling the two of us, but I didn’t give them the satisfaction of hearing my agony.
But it was only a matter of time.
Earlier...
"Awaken, whore!"
I rolled over on my back, still coughing from being choked out by that Nosferatu-looking asshole to see … "Miles?" I gasped, "What are you-" A kick to my ribs sent me onto my stomach and curled up like a potato bug from the spike of pain.
"You do not speak to your betters, flesh." He was ostentatiously examining his nails, ignoring my wheezing attempts to gather my breath again. "But it will be your very great honor to meet your new mistress."
There were footsteps behind me, and a smell - god, it was unspeakable. A scorching odor of spoiled meat, the foul scent of rust and iron, the nauseating mist of a thousand heavy perfumes, and a pointed black boot that shoved me over onto my back again. I could feel her before she stepped into my view, feel the screams from a thousand different throats.
"C'est la pute qu'il protège?"
She had an irritatingly false little girl tone, accompanied by a childish titter that set off the sycophantic giggles of the crowd. Because yes, the fucking demented bitch who just called me a whore was the Blood Countess herself, and the walking corpse had brought quite the crowd of bloodsuckers with her.
"You….” Gisane Laurent was beautiful, but with a viciousness so obvious that it would make it impossible to draw anyone to her without the help of someone pretty. Someone like my James. "So ugly. Does my sweet Sorin lack for blood bags? He is reduced to this?"
I cowered as the 800-year-old bitch circled me, clawed hands on her hips, her high, polished black boots boasting a spiked heel that I was certain could disembowel me, along with a tight, red silk dress low enough that the ancient sociopath’s tits were ready to fall out.
There had to be at least thirty, forty black-clad leeches behind her, and my heart sank. I could only hope Aura, sweet, slightly odd Aura who'd been so nice to me and taught me to shoot her gun, was already being spirited to safety by Steve. Because no way was he taking on this crowd of malignant fucks and surviving.
And neither was James.
Dropping my head back onto the dirt, I chuckled a bit. I was so fucked.
I was hoping for a quick end because I’d never been good at enduring pain and I was terrified about what I would become if this lasted very long. The most vivid memories I had from childhood were of the couple who kept me the longest; god-fearing Christian folk who didn’t spare the rod, as the good book said. Or the belt. Or the back of their hand. She was constantly punishing me for swearing and that only made me howl an endless stream of profanities when they beat me, just out of spite. It was the only thing I could control.
With these murderous assholes? Fuck them.
I moaned and gagged on my own blood as Gisane backhanded me, the smell of her - that horrible, spoiled meat smell - making me wish I could throw up on her. But I’d puked up dinner about an hour ago as that fucking Miles had been working me over.
