Chapter 36 The Bite #3
To the left, leaning against the wall, a tall black-haired girl caught my eye.
She was movie-star stunning, with sun-kissed, flawless skin and a figure to die for.
She placed a hand behind the head of a dark-haired man beside her and kissed his neck.
Groaning, he arched his head back and closed his eyes.
After a long moment, she pulled her mouth from his neck and ran manicured nails down the side of his face as he looked at her with glazed pupils.
She smiled, revealing her teeth, but they weren’t teeth—at least not like any human teeth I’d ever seen.
Two were shaped like blades, and they were covered in a red, shiny smear.
Confusion racked my senses. It had to be some kind of dress-up party trick. Red liquid trickled down over her lips, and she licked it away with a sickening grin.
Then I noticed his neck.
Cold washed down my spine like a wave rolling over and over again, my pulse pounding in my ears. I squinted through the ghostly haze, struggling to believe what my eyes had seen. Two puncture marks pierced his skin, blood oozed in a sluggish trail down his neck, as if a snake had bitten him.
She was drinking his fucking blood.
Horror drained all the alcohol-induced heat from my face. I fought the urge to cry out as I ripped my arm from Dahlia’s grasp and staggered backward.
“For fuck’s sake,” Dahlia muttered, stopping.
We drew the attention of a nearby couple, and they turned and stared. A man and a woman, with pale porcelain skin, and red-shaded lips. White fangs peaked out from underneath. Their eyes changed color as if their irises glowed from the inside . . .
A cloak of frozen terror bled through my veins, filled up my heart, my mind, my whole body; it disabled everything.
“You’re either brave or excessively stupid coming here,” the man said, mildly bemused. Danger leaked from his pores.
The large room suddenly felt too small. The walls started to press in. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.
Dahlia glared at them, not an ounce of fear on her face. “Where the fuck is Karson? He sent for us.”
Their lips moved back down, and both faces reverted to normal-looking people, albeit exceptionally good-looking ones like the others.
I blinked. Was this all one gigantic hallucination?
Had I gone temporarily crazy? Was my delusional disorder raising its ugly head again?
Or maybe there was something in the fog, some kind of drug fucking with my mind.
That had to be it. That had to be it. Drugs—either in that haze or in those drinks Mackenzie poured me—were fucking with my mind.
“Why didn’t you say? We almost had an accident. He’s in the back room, past the bar and down the hall,” the girl crooned, her heavily made-up eyes narrowing on me, her smile cold.
An accident.
Her words shot a fresh bout of dread through my mind and brought me to a realization I was forced to comprehend. Dahlia yanked at my arm, reefing me abruptly forward.
“I—”
“Shut up, Amy.”
She didn’t need to repeat it again. Even if I could get words out, I was unsure of what I might say. I was shocked to the point of being speechless. I followed her in a numb daze as she pulled me through a sea of people.
No, not people, vampires. Bloodsucking vampires.
Darcy, the sweet, intelligent boy, was right.
Shit, shit, shit!
What did that mean Karson was? I wanted to turn back, wanted to run.
It felt like each step we took brought us closer to the gates of hell.
I’d entered a world that I knew instinctively there’d be no escape from.
With a thumping heart, racing mind, and quivering legs, I was pulled by Dahlia past the end of the bar into a long, thin, cream-colored hallway.
I glanced up at her. She was confident; there was no fear on her face, only anger.
Which was a good thing, unless of course she was saving me for a fucking snack. That was a bad thing. Definitely a bad thing.
I whined in the back of my throat.
A couple leaned against the wall, a male vampire with his teeth deep in a young blond woman’s neck, and I watched his throat move up and down as he swallowed. The girl groaned, as if in the grip of ecstasy.
I dropped my gaze, my stomach churning, but glanced up again as a soft draft swept through the hall. A dark-haired vampire’s nostrils flared, and his head jerked in our direction, like a hawk who’d spotted its prey. His eyes locked with mine. Hollow, bottomless eyes.
I was cold and simultaneously hot. I curled my fists so tight my fingernails dug painfully into my palms, and I trembled uncontrollably all over.
“Fuck off,” Dahlia said as we swept past.
I lowered my head once more and held my breath, waiting on tenterhooks for sharp teeth to rip into my neck. My heart boomed in my head. If he touched me, I was going to fight.
I only drew another breath when we reached the door untouched and felt elated relief for the briefest of moments.
Dread replaced it. I knew what we might find on the other side of the door could be something much worse.
Time slowed down. Everything became crystal clear—sharp and in focus.
A tapestry of dried blood stained the timber door frame, and above it there was a thin crack in the plaster.
Nothing really, something I wouldn’t normally notice, but now it became a deep trench after an earthquake, ready to split apart and suck us down.
The lights in the hallway flickered. The nightclub noise droned on. But all I could hear was my own breath, my own heart, the blood hurtling through my head.
Dahlia reached out and clasped the gold handle on the red door.
Red again, I thought. Carefully selected to fit in with the surroundings.
Whoever had designed it had a sense of humor—or was it a supreme arrogance?
A dark underworld existed in this place appropriately named “The Bite.” A place where the worst of humanity crawled into the dark depths in plain sight, not even a stone’s throw from an oblivious world.
Either way, the color of the door was practical; the blood would blend right in.
My heart hammered so hard I thought it would be visible through the thin silk fabric of my top. My mind screamed.
Get out you stupid fool! Get out!
I gathered my fear and buried it. This was not the place to crumble. Intuition told me the creatures would prey on weakness. Then we stepped into hell as the walls of reality tumbled around me.
What we found surprised me; the large room was warm, welcoming, luxurious, full of slow music and laughter.
It was a complete contrast to the nightclub that preceded it and filled with well-dressed people, or vampires—I didn’t know which.
It could have been any upper-class bar, anywhere in the world.
Except of course it wasn’t.
I scanned the room. There was a large wooden bar with gold trim to the left.
People were seated on matching bar stools, drinking.
Deep-burgundy velvet curved seats were fixed against the wall with mahogany coffee tables in front of them.
There was a wooden dance floor in the middle, and a few bodies moved together in a sexy rhythm.
I realized I couldn’t hear the thump of the nightclub. This room was soundproof too.
Good for disguising screams.
I looked for Karson, but I couldn’t find him. I wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. A couple were seated in the corner, kissing passionately. His hands slid over her scantily dressed body, pulling her hard against him.
Another girl with long brunette hair sat on a couch, her face weirdly expressionless as a vampire sucked from her neck. Another fed from her wrist. Was she high on drugs?
Dahlia let go of my arm, but I stayed close by her side. We stepped toward the bar and a cool breeze hit me, swirling my hair in front of my face. I looked up to see a large industrial-size fan hanging above the bar, and it swiveled slowly back and forth across the room.
“Shit,” Dahlia muttered.
Her face set into tense lines as she moved her feet shoulder width apart and shifted up on her toes, ready to move.
Her hand flexed by her side above a knife on her belt.
I didn’t know where the knife came from or how she even got in with weapons.
I had no time to think about it, though.
A group of five—four men and a woman—appeared like ghosts in front of us.
Not ghosts, vampires.
They stood in a semicircle several feet away, nothing extraordinary about them, other than their beauty and the speed with which they’d arrived. They appraised us like lambs in a slaughter yard.
“Fresh meat,” said a guy with shoulder-length brown hair in a voice so soft I wondered if I’d heard it correctly. The girl, tall and blond with striking blue eyes, smirked.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Hello, ladies,” crooned a fair-haired male with exceptionally large muscles.
“Don’t even think about it,” Dahlia drawled. Her hand resting on the handle of the knife. If he moved, she’d fight, but she couldn’t take down all of them—there was no way.
To say I was scared was a fucking understatement. I was terrified. I tried to compose myself, breathing hot air through my nose and out of my dry mouth. I scanned the room, seeking Karson, looking for help, looking for escape. Half the room watched on. The other half seemed oblivious.
There was no help, and there was no escape.
The fan hit us again and time moved in slow motion. My hair shifted forward and cloaked my face, the scent of Coco floating up my nose. They say before you die your life flashes through your mind. But I didn’t think of my mom or dad; I didn’t think of Nerida or Tom. I didn’t think of Ethan.
I thought of no one but Karson. Karson holding me in his arms, running through the forest. His gaze focused ahead and worried. Worried. The soft kiss on my forehead. He had speed, yes, but there was no way he was a vampire. No way at all.
I ignored the mental voice that cried out, What the fuck is he doing here, then?
There was no sound except my heart thudding in my ears.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The vampires’ faces changed. They became something hard and horribly unnatural, their eyes shining with a clawing, desperate, feral hunger.
The air strangled my throat. Sweat trickled down my back. The world faded as Karson collapsed from my mind. All I could see were their faces, twisted into demonic proportions. Fangs like knives slashed from their mouths as they tore toward us.
A scream rose from the bottom of my stomach, caught in my throat, and never left my mouth.