I hopped over the desk and peered into the back room. No one there. I was relieved to see no bodies on the floor, but it didn’t untie the knot that had taken up residence in my stomach.
“No one is here. You can stop pushing the bell.”
Peter held the bell down for another long moment.
“You can keep pushing the bell, or we can try to find Caroline,” I said, showing my fangs.
He was a distraction, and worse, he was wasting time that should be spent saving my friend. If he continued to waste my time, I was going to show him why vampires had fangs. He could be my first victim.
My eyes darted to the veins in his neck. I licked my lips. Come to think of it, I was kind of hungry. Power rushed below the surface of his skin. I took a step toward him. Power that could be mine. It’d probably be a hundred, no a thousand times better than the bagged blood I normally survived on.
He grabbed some papers and threw them at my face. I batted them away, losing sight of him.
“Do you have control of yourself now?” his caustic voice asked.
I blinked at the empty space in front of me and looked around. He stood by the open doors of the archive, more than ten feet away. How did he get over there so fast?
“Are you coming?”
Annoying little brat.
I stalked towards him.
“You really should get that hunger under control,” he said as I passed.
“It is under control.”
“Didn’t look like it to me.”
I gave him a fake smile, one that was more of a grimace. “Looks can be deceiving.”
I’d like to think I wouldn’t have snarfed him down like a chocolate shake, but stranger things have happened. It worried me that I’d been temporarily consumed by blood lust. I didn’t have the same excuse as other times this had happened. I’d drunk my morning supply of iron yesterday before turning in and gotten my dinner’s share when I woke up.
If hunger wasn’t what sparked this episode, what was? And could I handle the answer?
I didn’t want Liam and his merry band of psychos to be right. That I needed to be watched and monitored and controlled because I was a danger to all those around me. Not after fighting this hard for this long to stay free.
It was an aberration, brought on by worry. I needed to shrug this off and focus on what was important. Caroline.
The large, empty room was filled with stacks upon stacks of manuscripts, most of which were pretty old. Each had their own bin on the shelves and either lay flat in that bin or, for oversized papers, were rolled into a cylinder.
The controlled environment kept the temperature cool in here with little humidity. The lights were lower intensity to protect the fragile paper and ink, so there were no windows and only a few desk lamps.
It was easy to see at a glance that the room was empty. No sign of Caroline.
“She should be here, right?” Peter asked. He looked as uncertain as I felt.
I didn’t like this. She said the library. This was where she could normally be found.
“Yes.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
But I’d find out.
I’d already tried calling her several times on the way over here, but Caroline hadn’t answered.
