Wicked Soul

Chapter 17

SEVENTEEN

LIV

The vampire gracefully got to his feet faster than my eyes could track.

I got up too, though somewhat less elegantly, and waited with my hands wrapped around the bars. I couldn’t hear anything, but my heart thudded unevenly in my chest. If my kidnappers had expected me to be eaten by now, what were they going to do once they saw I was still alive? Even though I was very much hoping for “give up and let me go,” it wasn’t the option that kept tap dancing before my mind’s eye. More like “knife to the throat,” or “burned at the stake.”

There was a clanking of keys on the other side of the heavy metal door, and then the lock clicked open.

The same two men who’d kidnapped me entered the room. One of them had a mop and a bucket in his hands, the other a large plastic sack. I paled when I realized they’d probably been meant for disposing of my body and wiping up any leftover bodily fluids.

“Well, would you look at that?” Mop Guy said when he caught sight of me by Warin’s side. “You’re still alive, huh? What’s the matter, vamper? She not your type?”

Sack Guy barked a laugh. “Could’ve sworn I saw him eyeballing a rat the other day. “Oh, well. Guess we should let you use the can, then.”

I stared, entirely taken aback by this turn of events. Nothing about these guys had given me the impression that they’d stick to the Geneva Convention, to put it mildly. “Oh, uh…” I didn’t like the sly look that passed between them, but I was pretty thirsty and could use a trip to the bathroom. Pushing aside my unease, I stepped over to the cage door. “Thanks.”

“No problem, darlin’,” Mop drawled. He leaned his tools up against the wall and reached into his pocket for the key. “Come on, vamper. Don’t let the pretty girl wet herself—at some point you’ll get hungry enough, and you’re not gonna like her soaked in her own urine, are ya?”

Warin’s face remained stoic as he slid his wrists through the bars. I looked on, puzzled, until Sack pulled a long metal chain from the wall and sauntered over to Warin with a mocking smirk.

“There’s a good bloodsucker,” he jeered while he wrapped the thin chain around Warin’s outstretched wrists. “Not so f*****g cocky now, are ya? Dumb fuck.”

“Cocky” wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe my vampire companion. He’d remained remarkably placid since waking up with a stranger trying to perform CPR on him mid-nap—even the goon’s insults didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest. I eyeballed the thin chain around his wrists and wondered why they’d think it offered them any safety if he decided enough was enough. It was wrapped around his wrists multiple times, but so thin I was pretty sure even I’d be able to snap it if I was motivated enough.

“Come on then, girl,” Mop said, jingling the keys in the lock before the door slid open. “Let’s leave those two to it.”

I stepped out of the cage, but hesitated when I saw Sack grab a wooden stake from the wall before he turned back to Warin with a s******c smile on his bloated face.

“What are you doing? Don’t hurt him!”

Both goons turned toward me, incredulous.

“Don’t hurt him?” Sack repeated in an imitation of my worried tone. “Don’t hurt him? Would you listen to the deadwhore!”

“You got any idea how many of our kind he’s hurt, you stupid cunt?” Mop growled. “How many humans he’s sucked dry? You’re a fuckin’ race traitor. Just wait until he gets hungry enough—we’ll see how much sympathy you have left while he’s tearing you apart.”

“He’s just a kid, you sick f***s!” I snarled, giving Mop a shove so I could push past him and wedge myself in front of the tied-up vampire and Sack. “Don’t. Hurt. Him!” I didn’t exactly have a plan for how I was going to keep the two men from hurting him—or me, for that matter—but I hoped my bravado would at least make them reconsider.

“Liv. It’s okay. Go.”

It was the first Warin had spoken since the men entered the basement, and he sounded so… calm. I glanced at him over my shoulder, unable to comprehend how he could possibly still be so damn Zen. He was the one tied up and about to experience t*****e-by-stake, for f**k’s sake!

Piercing blue eyes met mine, and the commandment in them nearly made me lose my balance. Something in that gaze pulled on me, like a vortex. “Go with him.”

I blinked, too stunned by the weird sensation of floating as much as his insistence that I leave him to his fate. “I… are you sure?”

“I am. Go.”

I shook my head to clear it and turned back to the two goons. Sacks’ stake was aimed at my chest now, and I suppressed a shudder. I might not be allergic to wood, as the urban legend suggested vampires were, but I had no doubt I’d take getting stabbed in the heart with a stake about as well as your average movie vampire. Shoulders slumping in defeat, I stepped around Sack’s pointed weapon and back to Mop.

He greeted me with a rough shove in my back, making me stumble across the basement toward the door.

“Ungrateful w***e,” he sneered as he followed me out the basement and up the stairs. “We should’a let you piss yourself.”

He led me all the way up to the first floor, which seemed as neglected as the living room, and pushed me into a small bathroom.

“You’ve got two minutes” he said, shutting the door behind me. Apparently he had enough manners to let me pee without an audience.

A quick look around the moldy bathroom explained why—there was no lock on the door and the small window had been boarded up, allowing only a few cracks of light to enter. There was nowhere for me to escape, and nothing I could use as a weapon.

I did my business as quickly as possible, attempting not to touch any surfaces in the process, and drank from the tap until I was no longer thirsty.

“If you’re not out in three seconds, I’m coming in,” Mop shouted from the other side of the door.

“Chill, dude. Some of us can’t just shake dry,” I snarked before I opened the door and stepped out into the dingy hallway. “Why—” I didn’t get to finish my sentence, because just as I exited the bathroom, Mop grabbed a hold of my long ponytail and ripped me off balance.

I squealed and flailed, but before I could right myself, Mop threw me against the wall, smashing my face against the hard surface. When he pressed his heavy body up against mine, pinning me there, sick dread settled in the pit of my stomach.

“There’s a good s**t,” he hissed, and I felt the tip of a knife against my neck.

“You sick son of a b***h! If you try to r**e me, I’ll rip your f*****g balls off!” I tried to stomp at his feet, but he pressed the full length of the blade against my throat before I could get him, and I froze with a curse.

“I wouldn’t stick my d**k in you if you were the last hole on Earth, race traitor,” he rasped. The sickening hardness pressing against the small of my back suggested otherwise, but I wasn’t about to goad him.

“Your vampire friend, however… Did you know they like to f**k after they feed? And trust me, we’ll get him to feed. We just need to make you a bit more irresistible, don’t we?” The blade sliced through the skin over my collarbone, sending searing pain through my chest and arm.

I cried out and tried to elbow him in the gut, but he had me completely immobilized against the wall. He cut me again, a long, languid movement across my shoulder, making me scream once more.

Mop grunted, his excitement at my t*****e evident against my backside. He reached down between my legs to lift my dress up, and I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything else. How I was going to plunge that blasted knife deep into his gut the second I got the chance played before my mind’s eye. I clung to it with all my might.

But instead of ripping my panties off, Mop ran the blade over first my left and then my right inner thigh.

“There we go,” he rasped before l*****g the shell of my ear. I cringed away, and he laughed and finally shifted his weight off me. “All ready for your big date.”

I wanted to punch him so bad my fist ached, but all I could do was lean against the wall and draw in shuddering gasps of air to try and control the pain radiating through every cut he’d given me. He’d sliced through both my dress and b*a straps, and blood dripped sluggishly from my wounds.

“You sick f**k,” I said. It sounded like more of a whimper than the curse I’d wanted it to. “You call the vampire a monster when you’re the one abducting and abusing me? You’re pathetic.”

“Oh, don’t you worry—once he gets a look at you, t**s out and blood dripping, he’s most definitely going to a***e you,” Mop snarled. He fisted a hand in my hair again and yanked me along, pulling me back toward the stairs.

I stumbled after him, hissing at the pain in my scalp as well as my wounds, as I tried to both keep my dress up and not fall down so I’d get dragged along by my hair.

I made both sets of stairs still on my feet, but when Mop pushed the door to the basement open, he gave me a hard shove between the shoulder blades again, sending me sprawling to the floor.

I landed with a cry, the rough concrete scraping my knees and adding to my injuries.

“Dinner’s ready!” Mop sang. “All nice and juicy. Think she looks more appetizing now?”

A deep, inhuman snarl answered him. It sent goosebumps up and down my arms and made every hair on my body stand on end. It was the sound of a predator.

Sick dread filled my veins like icy lead as I turned my head to look in the direction of the sound.

It came from Warin. Only he didn’t look like Warin anymore. Instead of the handsome young man who’d seemed so calm and so human, a creature taken straight out of a horror movie stood there instead. He still had the same pale features, but his face was twisted in a furious snarl. Long, deadly fangs protruded from below his curled upper lip, gleaming with menace, and his eyes were pure demon black. Dark blood marred his skin and shirt from what looked like multiple stab wounds. He was still restrained by the thin chain, but from the way his muscles bulged, it looked like he was fighting against it with all his might. Like a trapped animal.

“Up you go!” Mop said as he grabbed my ponytail again and lifted me to my feet. “Since you love vampers so much, why don’t you go give him a big kiss?”

He dragged me by my hair toward the cage, paying no mind to my desperate attempts at scrambling backward and away from the furious monster.

I tried to bite, kick, and claw at my kidnapper as he unlocked the cage door, but he was much stronger than I. Mop threw me to the floor and I landed, sprawling and scraping my knees once more.

The cage door slammed shut behind me with a metallic clang. Sealing my fate.

I scrambled on my hands and knees to the farthest corner and curled up in a ball so I could keep my dress up and stem the bleeding form the deepest cut along my collarbone at the same time.

“Here ya go, vamper,” Sack said. “Perhaps she’s more to your liking now.”

And then he cut Warin’s chain with his hunting knife.

“Hope it was worth being a race traitor, deadwhore,” Mop called as they made their way to the basement door. Sack barked a rough laugh before the door shut behind them with a heavy clang.

Leaving me alone in the cage with the furious vampire.

I looked up, only to find him staring down at me, fangs extended and pitch-black eyes glued to the blood seeping between my fingers.

A deep growl emanated from him in unceasing waves.