✧ 55 ✧
Ilya woke up to the flickering glow of candles. Eerie revolting noises surrounded him; Sipping sounds. Slow wet swallows. Humming threaded through the air mixed with moaning.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the dim ceiling above, and then his body caught up, registering a fresh wave of pain. He was lying on a wooden table, half-naked, leather straps fastened tightly around him. They stretched his arms up and legs down, leaving him unable to move.
His double-fractured wrist was still trapped in its cast, but the sling that once supported it had been removed. The weight of his arm pulled at the break. Pain shot through him like lightning. He screamed, but no sound escaped—a tape sealed over his mouth, smothering his cries of agony.
He heard laughter.
"Look who just woke up."Bright red eyes stared straight through his soul. "Sleeping beauty."
"Hello there, handsome." A grin stretched on a pale white face against bloodstained teeth—No. Not teeth. Fangs.
IV bags hung around him, dripping a dark purple liquid into wine glasses below. His green irises with a purple glow followed the thin tube, tracing the steady flow of that strangely colored blood.
It was his.
Two IV needles were buried deep in his arms, the metal biting into a vein, while two more were lodged in his thighs. The tubes twitched every time he moved, tugging at his skin, reminding him they were there.
Ilya was trapped in this creepy basement—ancient, suffocating, as old as a Victorian church left to rot. The air felt heavy with the scent of mold, sour with age. Greenish-brown stains smeared the brick walls, seeping into the cement mortar. Some looked decades old.
The 'leeches,' as Beast used to call them, gathered around Ilya on both sides of the table; all twelve seniors of them.
He was their main dish tonight.
The vampires raised their glasses for a toast, savoring this new variety of blood as if it were a rare vintage.
"Cheers," said an elder in a black clerical cassock, a chipped fang visible when he smiled. "To a ravishing experience... For eternity."
Their glasses clunked together, "Hear, hear."
Ilya's eyes darted left and right, watching in horror as his own blood drained from him like a vacuum pulling the life out of his veins, only to be poured and sipped like wine by the elders.
A long-haired brunette cackled when the blood touched her lips; the mere scent of it made her ecstatic. Another senior took a slow sip, closing his eyes briefly. "Ah. Delightful."
They were not in a rush to finish. As if enjoying a ritual, swirling the glass before drinking.
While the vampire elders breathed in their pleasure, Ilya spotted a familiar face: a middle-aged lady wearing a white bonnet—it was Anne. Maggie and Martha's mother.
Her blue gaze was fixed on his large green eyes. A glass of purple blood was in her hand, just like the others. She drew near. Her face hovered inches from his, and an unsettling smile stretched across it. She lingered there, eyes closed, taking in the sweet aroma rising from his open veins.
Then she leaned in and licked his face, a long wet lick that made his skin crawl.
"Mmm," she moaned. "Good to see you here, darling."
When she finished, she pulled back with a grin, showing her sharp fangs. Then she joined the blood-tasters as if she opened her meal with an appetizer.
Ilya's heartbeat was music to their ears. They laughed when his eyes fluttered, losing consciousness.
Their faces started to blur. Cold shivers traced down Ilya's body. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes and slid slowly down toward his ears, silent and helpless.
This is the end.
He felt the life being sucked out of him. The remainder of his blood pumped, slow and uneven, through his veins; barely strong enough to keep his heart beating.
This is my time to die.
He closed his eyes only a minute before a knock on the coven's door disturbed the senior's special meal.
They stopped sipping and stared at the double door.
"Who in the Devil's name knows about this place?" The chipped fang priest announced with an authoritative voice. "Did any of you fools spill our secrets?"
The others shrugged and looked at each other in denial.
The knocking came again—louder this time. Harder.
The priest gestured for the guard to open the door. "Open it."
Once the guard moved to the source of the heavy knockings, the doors swung open, hurling the guard across the basement. His body slammed into the back wall, cracks splintering through brick as dust burst into the air, swallowing half the room.
It wasn't that easy to barg into the coven. The guard almost instantly emerged from the wreckage, stepping out of the settling dust with a snarl.
The senior vampires hissed toward the person standing at the doorway. No. Not one person, but two; The first stood proud on two legs, while the other crouched low on all fours.
Strands of color streaked through the ends of her raven hair. A ripped-in-the-middle black dress flowed nicely against her white complexion and toned body as she descended to the coven. She walked gracefully down the three steps of stair in her leather boots.
Wrapped tightly around her pale wrist was a chain.
At the end of that metal leash was a collar on an ugly creature's neck. A thing so hideous and ripe that it would make any living being puke. A disgusting female stuck between a zombie and a werewolf transformation.
Rotten flesh dangled down her non-existent chin. Her eyes, as white as milk, reflected the lights of the basement's candles, declaring a threatening battle.