Page 125 of Blood Lovers

Not if I beg.

Not if I starve.

Not even if I dig my own grave, crawl inside it, and let the wet earth swallow me up.

I shall not find it.

CHAPTER THIRTY - SYRSEE

They never came back.

Lucia is staring at the open door where Paul just disappeared. She does this for several moments. Then, like she’s been given some signal, she walks over to it and pushes it closed.

When she turns, her lips are forming a wicked smile. Her hands are clasped in front of her, and her bright green eyes are dancing with the ideas swirling in her head. “Let me be clear, dear Syrsee.” Her voice is feminine and soft, like her dress, and her hair, and her nails, but I don’t find her feminine at all. “Door number two still involves giving Ryet your blood. There is no way around this tonight. Paul has worked for hundreds and hundreds of years to make this moment in time and he will not be deterred.”

My brow started to furrow just a few words into that short statement. And now I’m frowning. “Then what is the fucking point?”

“The ‘fucking point’”—she kinda sneers these words at me—“is that in the end you will survive and they will not.”

I’m still frowning. My brow is still furrowed. And everything about my expression must reek of distrust because Lucia sighs. “What? What is the problem?”

“I think you’re lying, that’s what.”

“Why would I lie?”

I shrug. “How would I know? I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you.”

“Exactly.”

“But here’s what I do know. I don’t think Paul likes you.” This is so true, I don’t need to see the confirmation that flashes across her face to believe it. “And I don’t think he can die.”

“Hmmh.” But she’s smiling when she grunts this sound out. “Well, you’re right. He cannot die. Not by any means we have available to us. But he can be imprisoned.”

“How?” I’m a little surprised at my bluntness. I mean, she’s terrifying. Not anything like Ryet, or even Paul. She’s something else. Some other species. Some other kind of monster.

She’s very pretty, so not the hideous kind. But wasn’t that part of Grandma’s warning? They like beautiful things? So why wouldn’t they make themselves beautiful?

But Lucia reminds me of… I dunno. A powerful woman, obviously. And powerful women are frightening in a different kind of way than a powerful man. Everything about Lucia feels… personal. And nothing about what Paul does or says comes off that way.

People with personal vendettas are looking for a certain kind of outcome.

Suffering. That’s what Lucia is after. She wants to make Paul suffer.

And that’s a whole other kind of evil.

Lucia points to the bed. “Go on. Climb in.”

“What?”

“I need to bleed you, Syrsee. Paul likes to have bags of you in his freezers. Like it or not, that’s going to happen. Even though you have chosen door number two.”

I look over at the bed and really see it this time. There are chains attached to the stone wall. I point at them. “What are those for?”

“To keep you in the bed, obviously. Now hurry up. I don’t know how long he’ll be gone and we have a lot to go over if you want to be here in the morning.”

“Paul isn’t going to kill me.”

Lucia raises one eyebrow. “Is that so?”