Chapter 4 #2
“Tainted blood. Be careful who you let in, and if you do start feeling sick, tell me immediately. And before you say anything, I know that’s not why you refuse to bite. Your ‘no biting’ rule feels more like a shtick than anything else,” Maria hissed.
Layla scoffed. “Is that what you think I do? I scare the patrons off?”
Maria’s easy smile faded. “I think you do worse. Some have reported finding your past patrons dead. I understand being hungry, but perhaps think of the business before hunting its customers down.” She began to walk off as Layla bristled, but they both tensed at the scent of fresh human blood filling the air.
A bright red pool of it seeped beneath one of the curtains lining the hallway they stood in.
Layla did not have to look into the room to know how much blood had been spilled.
If the sounds of flesh tearing and the slowing struggle of a human were any indication, there was more blood outside their body than there was inside it.
Maria turned back to Layla, a sly smile turning her lips up.
“If you wish to make more tonight, I have a cleaning job that just became available for you.”
While Layla had no problem pretending for the night and damning her morals, that amount of blood was currently too much to face. Her fangs had yet to retract from the smell alone, and already, the adrenaline pooling in her veins made her body heat and her heart pound.
“Not tonight,” Layla said through gritted teeth. She pushed past the reaper and nearly stumbled into the fresh air outside, gulping it down until her fangs slid back into place.
The unwanted presence of men nearby helped distract her from the approaching blood fury. Even just their grating voices had her spine straightening and her focus turning from pure hunger to anger.
Three men—gangsters, as determined by the guns in their holsters and their matching tattoos—crowded around one man almost huddled against the building.
Shadows hid their faces, but Layla caught the glint of a Saint badge and the handle of his own gun on him.
Any other time, she might have run. A Saint and a reaper had no business together—especially not outside an illegal blood house.
But watching this man get cornered by people the Saints had considered to be beneath them for years made her hesitate.
The man looked like he had just walked out of the ocean.
Water soaked his clothes and plastered his hair to his head.
Even in the low light, Layla noticed the disturbing gauntness to his pale cheeks and brilliant red vessels in his bloodshot eyes.
He looked as close to death as a starved reaper, and Layla might have assumed he was one if it weren’t for the human warmth of his blood beneath his cool skin.
“I just need help. I need…to see…” Each word emerged with a gurgle, as if water choked him from the inside out.
The gangsters looked unimpressed. One turned his nose up at the man, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“Maybe go to a hospital. We’ve had enough rats recently to know any human suffering an ailment only means to do us and our workers harm.
” He plucked the Saint badge from the man’s jacket and tossed it onto the ground.
The silver honor hit the pavement with the dull sound of metal scraping against cement.
“This means nothing here. You cannot walk into reaper and gangster business and demand our services. We all saw how quickly you people fell at the Alhambra. Your empire is crumbling just as fast now.”
Layla tensed at the threat in his voice.
It might have been two months of the Saint empire’s decline, but their power remained abundant in the streets.
She still remembered how swiftly they had locked her away for a vague suspicion—things would only be worse at the blood house if Saints had another reason to survey it.
She stepped closer to the group of men and shook her head.
“Leave him alone. Or else you’ll have the rest of them after us soon. ”
“How long are you going to defend the Saints?” one of the gangsters demanded. He straightened, his jaw going tight as he brandished the gun at his belt. “As far as I’m concerned, one less Saint is a blessing for us all.”
No part of Layla wanted a fight, and she hardly had the energy to defend her decision anyway. She was almost grateful when a new voice snuck between them and drew their attention away from each other.
“I need a refund,” snapped a young Black woman, no older than Layla.
She stood with her arms crossed, one foot tapping while her eyes darted around everyone in the alleyway.
She was outfitted in a nice dress, various pearl strands draped around her throat and dangling from her ears.
Her shining aura did not belong in a dingy place like this, yet she stood like she owned even the air.
It took Layla a moment to notice the rapid and intense beat of her pulse.
Despite standing several feet away, she sensed the overwhelming heat of the woman’s blood thrumming beneath her delicate brown skin.
“For what?” a gangster asked.
The woman let out a sharp breath. Her golden-brown eyes seemed to glow. With anger or pain, Layla could not tell. “It didn’t work. I paid for good venom, and it did nothing for me.”
The mention of venom made Layla think of the patron she had just served and how each moment passing meant she moved farther away with a lethal dose of venom. Layla glanced out of the alleyway, impatience building as the conversation carried on around her.
“Buy more,” the gangster said.
But the woman’s chest heaved with a frustrated sigh.
She groaned and walked forward, her shoulders tense and trembling.
Her scent overcame Layla suddenly. Bitter and putrid, it washed over the alleyway, burning Layla’s nose.
It took every ounce of strength in her not to gag.
Her fangs emerged, and she backed away, hissing.
The woman snapped her gaze to Layla. “You. I’ll take yours.”
Layla opened her mouth to refuse, but the cornered Saint member fell into a fit of coughing so bad, blood sprayed from his lips.
The smell alone was enough to make Layla’s skin heat.
It overrode the woman’s odor, and she found herself gazing at the fresh blood dripping down his chin.
Layla didn’t realize quite how vulnerable she had made herself until the woman’s hand came swiping up to touch her fangs.
The moment her fingers made contact with her teeth, Layla reared back and slammed her hand into the woman’s throat.
She flew into the wall, her head snapping against the brick hard enough to leave a smear of blood behind.
Any other day, Layla might have worried about fresh human blood being spilled so close to her while she was on the brink of a blood fury, but the substance that came from this woman could only be described as rotten.
The woman’s face had changed. Red covered the whites of her eyes like crimson curtains, and black veins spiraled out beneath her lips and across her cheeks.
It was as if her face, a bronzed picture of beauty, had begun to crack and splinter.
Her jaw unhinged in a guttural scream that ended in choking as she collapsed.
Black and red fluids fountained from her mouth and eyes.
Her skin seemed to melt with the substance as her body sloughed into a puddle of blood and guts.
At once the woman had become nothing more than rotten, necrotized flesh.
Layla had seen many horrific things in her life, but never had she seen something as disturbing as this.
No reaper, no matter how cruel, could have justified feeding on such a poisoned corpse.
Layla still felt the woman’s touch on her mouth. Her hand drifted to her lips, where her fangs had dug in and drawn blood. She thought back to her patron that night—the woman with the mask who now carried a vial of her venom—and how Layla should have been tracking her by now to get it back.
“What did you do?” one of the gangsters demanded. His partner stood behind him with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. Even the Saint member, who had only just recovered from his coughing fit, looked dumbfounded.
Panic clutched Layla’s chest like a fist made of flames.
She backed away from the carnage, her hands shaking as she traced the steps her patron must have taken out of the alley.
There was no point in trying to answer the gangster’s question.
Not while someone still existed with her venom—the very thing that could have caused such a macabre end.
Layla sprinted, grateful for the rush of fresh air against her face.
She gulped in breath after breath, occasionally catching whiffs of her patron, albeit faint.
With adrenaline spurring her on, Layla caught up to the young woman’s fresh tracks in the ice-slicked streets.
She found her hurrying across the way, mask and vial in hand.
Layla almost slumped with relief. Her pace quickened, and she barreled right for the young woman.
Before they could make contact, however, something heavy slammed into her.
She fell backward, the snow cushioning her fall as her head hit the ground.
Layla tried to roll onto her feet, but a man pressed her into the ice, his body—nearly twice her size—pinning her arms and legs to the spot.
Blinking with surprise, Layla’s eyes met angry amber ones that she had once known to show her tender love.
“Sterling—” she gasped.
“You don’t know how much trouble you’re in, Quinn,” the Saint member snarled.
At her full strength, Layla would have been able to overpower him with the perks of her reaper affliction.
But now, with her body starved going on a month now, she could only fight the urge to bite into the flutter of blood rushing through his jugular.
The cold touch of metal from the gun he pressed against her chin didn’t help either.
A light giggle sounded nearby, and Layla cursed as the young woman ran off with her venom.
Had Layla been fully fed, she would not have fallen into this trap; her mind would have been able to focus on her surroundings, rather than just on the hunt before her.
Now Layla was no better than prey trapped by a worse predator.
She glared up at Sterling, whose own frown had not let up.
“Kill me then. Fucking kill me,” she snapped.
Venom seared over her words, and even Sterling looked taken aback by her conviction.
His gun hand faltered a bit, but he did not let her go.
All Layla could think about was what Valeriya had said to her when she had found Layla standing on the roof of the Clarice five years ago, Saint bullets in one hand and a gun in the other.
When a reaper has had enough—when her grief has grown longer than her days and immortality has become more a curse than a blessing—she wants nothing more than to drive the blade into her own heart.
But now is not your time, Layla. Ma chère. Give me the gun.
Even unspoken, the words tasted bitter on her tongue. Layla wasn’t sure she could believe them anymore.
“This is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it, Sterling?
” she hissed. “Because you’ve always been so fucking jealous that Elise liked me more than you.
She loved me. You tried so hard, but you were never enough.
Not for her, not for Josi, and never for Tobias.
You’ll never have another family, no matter how hard you try—” Her breath caught as Sterling shoved the gun deeper into her throat.
She felt her own pulse beating against the barrel, saw the fear mixing with anger in his eyes.
How similar they once had been, the two of them—orphans shrouded in darkness and begging for something light.
Perhaps in another life, they would have grown together rather than apart.
Maybe Layla would have been able to convince him that the Saints caused him more hurt than healing.
Looking into his eyes, she saw herself amid the hate.
How long could she belittle him before it came back to hurt her just as deeply?
Her fangs, bloody and slick with her venom, dug into her lower lip.
The pain nearly matched the anguish in Sterling’s gaze, but Layla ignored it and allowed her own blood to spill over her chin.
When it hit the ground beneath them, all she could see was Elise bleeding out and dying on the floor of the Alhambra with Sterling’s bullet in her chest. Layla hissed and forced as much ice as she could behind her next words.
“If you don’t kill me now, I’ll kill you. ”
Much to her surprise, Sterling shook his head and loosened his grip on her arm.
The pressure of his body on hers lessened, but she still felt the heat of his ire.
“I won’t give you that satisfaction. You owe me an explanation for whatever the hell is going on, and you owe me the location of Elise and Josephine. ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Layla gritted out.
“A drug is spreading and it’s killing people. It’s coming from this club.”
As if on cue, a commotion sounded at the blood house Layla had just escaped from. Sterling looked up, and the moment his gun slipped away from her throat, Layla took her chance. She shoved him onto his back, her hands going around his neck.
Sterling gasped for air as her fingers dug in.
Blood burst from the vessels in his eyes, and Layla tightened her grip, feeling the rush of satisfaction and pleasure coursing through her veins.
It wasn’t until he began to writhe beneath her that she felt her senses return.
The bloodred mist over her vision receded, and she released him, her hands stiff and trembling as she took in her actions.
Once again, the poison Layla had tried so long to nurse into dormancy shifted in her system.
Memories of the Alhambra and the heads she had torn from bodies under the wrath of Dr. Harding and Stephen Wayne’s poison emerged.
Her rage then had nearly consumed her. Now Layla almost let it happen again.
She released Sterling and bolted before he could finish catching his breath. The pull of the beast lurking within her only grew stronger with each step she took back to her lair.