Cold-Blooded Creatures (Bleeding Souls duet #1)

Chapter 1 Zion

ZION

His screams were so delicious. A hypnotic melody reverberating off the damp concrete walls of our underground. Each echo caressing my ears melted into a new rush of electricity running down to my lower back.

The steel restraints pinning the man’s wrists and ankles spread eagle on the large worktable in the center of my workspace had been worth every penny. Lucia’s handiwork was impeccable.

“You know, I could do this all night.” I traced the inside of his trembling thigh, his brown hair crusted with blood. “Over and over again, until you can’t keep your shudders at bay and the shivers up your spine reach the highest point, sending you into madness.”

Was it wrong to enjoy breaking someone until they’d do anything you asked?

It couldn’t be that bad if it made your pelvis spasm.

“Please,” the Assistant to Ilasall’s Head of Military pleaded. “I ca— I can’t take it anymore.”

“Your lips are so pretty when you beg. I can’t wait to cut them open.” I stroked his quivering bottom lip with my thumb. “Open up.”

He gulped, but obeyed, sucking my finger into his mouth. His slick and wet heat enveloping me tightened my core. Surprisingly, he didn’t try to bite it off, not like the female soldier before him.

He was petrified of me. Good. Maybe he’d finally break and give me what I wanted. We had to know the security changes to continue smuggling residents out of Ilasall. Their update postponed the day we’d storm the city, one of the three remaining that we were aware of.

I plucked my thumb out and wiped his sticky saliva on my mottled jeans.

“Why did you increase the number of guards along the wall?” I asked.

Sauntering around him, I admired his tanned and sweaty skin, so bright compared to the shadows lurking in the corners of the humid basement, and came to a stop behind him.

“I don’t know!” His head swiveled frantically in search of me as he thrashed in the restraints, the rattle of chains such an exquisite melody.

Oh, how I loved this part. Such a straightforward tactic, looming over a person where they couldn’t see or smell you, only hear you take breath after a breath in their blind spot.

The muscles low in my stomach knotted as all I could think about was the combat knife I’d left on the silver table on the other side of the naked and chained man.

I’d sharpened it yesterday, specifically for him—my new doll to carve up and bleed.

No one knew what that knife meant to me. Including Gedeon. Black rubber handle and a seven-inch, stainless steel, double-edged blade curving to a point. Inconspicuous enough to avoid any questions.

He begged, “Please, let me—”

“Let you what? Finish?” His wince gave life to my wicked smile. “I’ll recite the deal once more. Tell me about the changes in Ilasall’s security, and I’ll see to it that you reach your finish myself.”

Insanity had claimed me twelve years ago, consuming me from the inside out until all that remained was a need to hurt. A craving for torture. A thirst for blood.

That was what war did to you. It erased your morals, smothered the good, and taught you how to find beauty in cruelty.

“I told you before, I don’t know anything,” he puffed out with such a lovely bit of firmness, then fixated on the ceiling, as if the grayness of concrete could restore his strength. “It’s above my pay grade.”

But a tear betrayed him, leaving the protection of his eyelashes and rolling down his cheek. Mesmerized by the shining path, I leaned in. Muscles pulsed beneath his clenched jaw as he turned his head away, full of so much ire for me.

He’d been here for five hours and still had fire left inside. Usually, they’d give up an hour in. Two hours, tops. This one was different, better than the others. The most entertaining plaything I’d had in a while.

Sure, someone doing your bidding in the bedroom did bring you pleasure, but not like this, twisting your guts, your knees barely holding you up and your eyelids twitching from the depravity rumbling deep in your bones.

“Liar.” I lunged and licked the tear away. A tangy flavor exploded on my tongue.

Was this how dread and panic tasted?

So addictive.

“You were the one leading the security change program. You also designed the new system yourself, which means you know how it works.”

His neck muscles strained to get him as far from my tongue as possible. “No, the ones who told you…they lied.”

“I don’t think so.” I took in each aspect of his face, amazed by the sensation blooming in me at the speck of dried blood in the corner of his bruised lips.

Not nearly enough.

His aquiline nose was fractured right above the curve but was no longer bleeding.

The bags under his eyes had faded from red to purple, the swelling having decreased enough for him to open his gray-blue eyes.

Their shade was like the ocean I’d visited often in childhood, when the water changed color right before a storm, a nature’s announcement of the viciousness about to be unleashed.

“Your eyes are so ethereal,” I murmured, thinking about the way I would devour him if he wasn’t from the city of Ilasall, part of their security force, protecting their methods of enslaving half the population to bolster the power of those at the top of the food chain.

Maybe that was why I viewed him and the others as my personal canvases, blank sheets to draw on, to paint, to color in. In shades of red, of course.

“Why don’t we play a game?” I strolled toward the small utility table sparkling from the harsh light overhead, illuminating only a small part of the underground sprawling underneath our central building.

The expanse produced a constant chill clinging to your skin and coaxing your most sinful instincts out.

It inspired me to come up with endless creative ways to have fun with people I’d tie up to that worktable, a single light bulb above it—perfect for one-on-one games.

The scent of bleach curled the hairs inside my nostrils. Cleaners had a hell of a job the last time I’d brought a plaything down here. Enough blood had splattered everywhere that I wondered how it all had fit inside that tiny body to this day.

As the drawer scraped and squeaked, it dragged me out of my dreamy state. I had to get some oil on these hinges. I was the one supposed to do the torturing, not the other way around, and especially not by a metal drawer being my torturer.

I picked out a sterile syringe, its package crinkling as I inspected it. I might have been a butcher, but hygiene remained a priority for me.

“What— What is that?”

That was all he’d managed to get out.

How cute.

“Something fun. Well, for me.” I selected a tiny clear glass vial—a new toy I got delivered this morning. So many ideas on how to use it for more lovely purposes swirled inside me that I had to consciously will them to simmer down. What could I do? I had an active imagination.

Dismay latching onto him drowned his muscles in convulsions, and he yanked on the restraints with renewed energy, but I paid no heed to him. There was no way he could escape—I’d tested the restraints myself. Well, I’d used them for other purposes. But a wriggling body was a wriggling body.

“Calm down or it’s going to hurt.” I drew up the transparent liquid into the syringe, disregarding his attempts at freedom.

I had to get the dosage right—I couldn’t kill him without getting answers.

Gedeon wouldn’t let me live it down. Which also limited my options in methods of information extraction.

They had to follow a single rule: leave him alive.

Unfortunately.

“No, don’t, please, please.” He yanked and yanked on his shackled wrists and ankles.

A few air bubbles floated at the top of the syringe, and I pushed the plunger. A tiny squirt of medicine—technically, it was medicine. I just wasn’t planning on using it for its intended purpose—misted the air at the tip of the needle.

“Come on, man. I like my playthings obedient,” I drawled. “I don’t have much patience left, and when the last drop runs out, I won’t play nice anymore.”

He froze with a bewildered look, chewing at the thought that what I’d been doing to him for the past few hours was nice.

I was nice. He still had most of his blood inside his body.

I took my opportunity and stabbed his upper arm, quickly injecting him. He tugged the chains in a futile attempt to break out, and clinks and clangs of metal clashing against metal caused my eyes to roll back.

Truly, the zipper in my jeans was maddening. I considered getting a quick release here and now—finishing on his face would be extremely fun—but it wouldn’t satisfy me.

It never did.

“See this?” I lifted a miniature bottle with plenty of liquid left inside.

“It’s a neuromuscular blocking agent. A short-acting paralytic that relaxes your muscles and prevents any further tension in them.

It’s quick-acting, so you should already feel it working,” I said as his jerks grew sluggish, terror warping his features as random syllables left his mouth instead of coherent words and sentences.

“The thing is, despite your muscles becoming immobilized, you won’t lose consciousness.

It also doesn’t affect your pain receptors. ”

I wished I could see the realization dawn on him, but his facial muscles had sagged beneath his bruised skin. Crouching down, I brushed his unmoving chest. No more heaving, no more panting.

“Oh, and I might have forgotten to mention one more thing. You see, the human body needs muscles to breathe. Your diaphragm is the pump that sucks the air in and pushes it out. But if you order it to relax, it does. In other words, your lungs will beg for air, but your body will not do anything to aid them.”

I went off circling him, needing him to come up to the surface before I could proceed with my plan. A twinkle caught my attention—the blade of my favorite knife compelling me to come closer.

Oh, this was going to be so much fun.

Gasps filled the air, followed by rough coughs. “Pl— Please. Please.”

“It took you a few minutes. I thought I might have killed you.” I winked at him. “It’s a good thing the drug doesn’t work for long.”

“I don’t know anything,” he cried out. “You’re torturing an innocent person.”

Innocent. Such a simple word, but it made my teeth ache.

“See, that’s the thing. You say you’re innocent, but could you say that to everyone at Ilasall? You don’t partake in your population control methods?” I spat out, my voice coated with the disgust people like him stirred in me.

“Their bodies are made for this. If they don’t accept it, it’s not my fault.”

“Sure. And you are made just for my blade.”

He licked his cracked lips. “It’s the only way we can survive.”

At last, we were getting somewhere.

“Doesn’t mean it’s right. Now tell me about the new security system and I’ll let you go. Well, in a sense.”

But he remained silent, making no further attempts to convince or beg me.

If he wasn’t willing to play anymore, I wouldn’t be either. It had been weeks since I had a chance to unleash myself on a rat from the city and I was going to take my time.

A surge of madness slithered up my legs and back, bristling the hairs on my nape, and the basement’s shadows narrowed my vision to my sparkling blade glinting on the steel table.

It always persuaded my playthings to talk.