Not a hospital, I reminded myself. I’d been to a mental hospital and this definitely wasn’t that. This was a prison with doors that always stayed locked. The people here didn’t get rehabilitation plans and they didn’t get weekend visits home. There were movies about this place, books, fucking franchises. It was a thing of mystery and terror.
The scent of the iron fence in my hands reminded me of blood. I took my hands off and looked up at the sharp spikes at the top. Was that really all we had to deal with? It seemed too easy. Shouldn’t there be barbed wire? An electric fence? A swooping spotlight and barking German Shepherds?
We started to climb. Our words had dried up the moment we saw the place with our actual eyes. I don’t know whether it was fear, awe, or some combination of the two but I didn’t mind the silence. I was giddy with anticipation. Doctor Orson worked here. There had been one small article online talking about thenew hire. Of course, that article didn’t offer much else other than that. How could they when Doctor Orson was a mystery?
My arms and legs shook and my lungs burned as I scaled the fence. I wasn’t sure I had the energy to do it but I was motivated. After a few minutes of gasping and sweating, I finally found myself on the other side with the others. We stood there, waiting for something to happen now that our feet were officially on Verfallen soil.
The howl came again, much louder than before. It seemed to grow from the ground and I eyed the bottom of the building, trying to see evidence of a basement. There were no windows though. Not for the basement and not for any other floor. No, that wasn’t right. There were windows but they’d all been covered with thick sheets of metal. All the windows except for one. I stared at the light but saw no sign of movement.
“This feels like a trap,” Mary commented, craning her neck like she could see around corners.
“It was almost too easy,” Thomas agreed.
“I think the hard part is getting inside the building, not climbing the fence,” I said.
“Shouldn’t the hard part be getting back out?” Thomas asked. That made everyone go silent while we considered for the first time that maybe we wouldn’t be able to get out after getting in.
“Come on,” I groaned, stomping forward. “It’s not like they’ll lock us up here if we get caught.”
“No, the howling man will just kill us,” Mary grumbled. We spent the half hour wearing ourselves out by walking around the building. There was no obvious way in or out. I wasn’t even sure if they used the front door anymore, it was boarded up with metal. We decided to split up and I was currently standing in front of a small metal door that had a flashing red light above it.
This had to be it but now that I’d found the door I realized how dumb this entire venture had been. How was I going to seeOrson or find out anything about him here? I considered finding the others and telling them it was time to go.
This was weird, right? I kept telling myself I’d come here as an adventure, not because of the obsession with my therapist. The truth was I would have never come here if I didn’t hope to learn something about Doctor Orson. While staring at this stupid impenetrable door I realized I was on a precipice. This single situation could be explained away by my interest in Orson getting the better of me, along with curiosity about the infamous Verfallen Asylum. I could brush this off and shut myself down from trying to find out more about Orson.
If I didn’t brush it off and accepted this wasn’t going away—that I didn’t want it to, that I wanted to indulge in it… then I wouldn’t stop trying to find things out about him. I wouldn’t limit myself to the one-hour, weekly visits. I’d keep texting him, keep googling him, and keep showing up places where I thought he might be.
Thinking about giving him up made my stomach twist in knots. It felt wrong.
Guess I’m a stalker now. I blew out a breath and wondered if stalking was an official diagnosis in the DSM-5.
Just then I heard a beep on the other side of the door and some type of bolt moving inside it. Then it creaked as it began to open. I stood there watching with wide eyes as the man in question stood in front of me. If this wasn’t fate, I didn’t know what was.
Doctor Orson stilled in shock when he realized I was standing in front of him. I only just decided to stalk him and literally got caught thirty seconds later. I really wasn’t made for a life of crime. I kept fucking it up gloriously.
His purple eyes swept left and right then he reached out, gripped my arm, and roughly tugged me into the building. The door slammed back shut and he glared at me. Looked like IWas finally going to hear his angry voice. I pressed my thighs together and tried not to look excited.
Chapter
Four
At this very moment, I wanted to murder Bree Hamilton and I knew exactly how to do it since I’d murdered before.
I could never have anticipated she would be this much of a pain in the ass. It was going to be simple. She was young and dumb—naive, modern, coddled.
That’s what I thought when I first heard her name uttered. I remembered the night vividly because it was the last victim I’d taken before uprooting myself from Maryland and finding my new patch of earth in this sleepy New England town.
I loved to kill and I especially loved when my victims' blubbering and begging actually resulted in something interesting. I’d thought he’d lied, to be honest. I mean, how ridiculous to claim you had a half-human child.
“She’s—” he had gasped in a wheezy inhale. I’d punctured one of his lungs with a slim knife when I’d snatched him. First, was the confusion—why would a vampire attack another of his kind? Then there was anger and fighting. Which didn’t last long since he was restrained in a chair. Now he was begging.
“She’s?” I had asked, my eyes tracing the line my knife would eventually take across his throat.
“My daughter. Half… half vampire,” he had gotten out eventually, gasping for breath.
“Stop being so dramatic,” I had sighed. It’s not like a vampire needed its lungs. “Explain to me why you’d leave a dhamphyr alone.”
“Wanted her… to have… a good life.”
