Chapter 6 Maeve
Maeve
Guards led us through various hallways and corridors, and the smell of food emanating from somewhere teased my nose. My stomach grumbled in response, and I clamped my hand over it. We seemed to walk miles through hallways, but in reality, I was just shuffling and weak.
I pushed myself to take every step forward. I hadn’t realized how much being in one room had impacted my overall fitness, and that was a worry. I’d never be able to overpower a vampire if I couldn’t manage a short walk through an old house.
Because I was almost certain now that’s what they all were. They seemed to match enough lore, anyway. And more than that…I just felt it. Like a gut instinct that I was somehow right.
Dad had always laughed when Granny had referred to her gut or feeling something in her waters and I hadn’t fully understood what she meant, but I did now.
It was like knowing a fact without any doubt it was true despite having no proof to back it up.
I would have called it faith, but it was more visceral than that. There was no room for doubt.
A scream echoed from somewhere deeper in the house, and I flinched before looking around.
“What was—” I started my question in a whisper but Ciara grabbed my wrist, halting the flow of words.
She shook her head, her lips pressed together, her gaze boring into mine.
Okay…so talking was a bad thing to do. I automatically flexed my fingers as Ciara’s grip relaxed and then I rubbed my wrist. Shit. There was some strength in that woman—which only added to my… I hesitated over the word theory.
Certainty. It added to my certainty that I was in a house of vampires.
I was a human inside a vampire nest, which made my situation unlikely to continue, if I was honest with myself.
People in this house were already injured, dead, or dying, if the screams were anything to go by.
There was no best outcome, either. Being kept as a blood slave would be no better than being drained dry all at once.
There was certainly an irony if I made the biggest discovery of my career—and could prove it to the world—but died to do it and before I could tell anyone at all. I almost rolled my eyes at myself.
Dying wasn’t an option then. If I could prove vampires existed, I was going to damn well stay alive to do that.
The guards drew us down a corridor that sloped downward, and the air became damp. Damp but not truly wet, which was interesting. Anything below ground level here should have been flooded, but we appeared to be approaching some sort of sublevel.
I trailed my hand against the rough stone wall, and it almost vibrated under my fingertips, sending a hum up my arm.
Magic. The word appeared in my head and it was another certainty—the same way I knew I was among vampires.
Some instinct deep inside me just understood things no rational person would ever believe.
And anyway, how else could I be in an underground room in the bayou?
It just didn’t happen. What was that saying about excluding the impossible, and whatever remained, no matter how improbable, being the truth?
I almost laughed at myself. Perhaps it depended on what I considered the difference between impossible and improbable.
Although… Sherlock Holmes and me. We would have made quite the pair.
The guard stopped in front of a low wooden door set into the wall.
The earthy, damp scent was replaced by something sharp and tangy, something almost coppery.
I could taste it, and it irritated my tongue.
It was as if I’d been sucking on pennies, and I swallowed against the bitterness of it, coughing as it caught at the back of my throat.
I glanced at Ciara. She’d wrinkled her nose and looked almost frozen somewhere between disgust and horror.
Her gaze darted between the door and the guard, and her chest no longer rose or fell, as though she’d stopped drawing air in, like she didn’t want this smell inside her or she didn’t want to risk taking in a breath.
A stain had formed at the small gap where the door met the floor, as if liquid had crept under the threshold, before absorbing into whatever porous material the floor was made of, and it was too dark and shadowed to tell the color, but I could guess what that liquid was.
The guard flung the door open and gestured into the small room.
Ciara hesitated.
“Get in there, wolf,” the guard snarled, and half pushed her through the doorway as she tried to step over the dark stain.
It still glistened wetly in some patches, and I stepped over it as I followed closer behind Ciara. She still seemed the safest person to stick with, although I had a hard time drawing my breath now, and my blood rushed through my ears, creating a pounding sound that drowned out most other noise.
“You okay?” Ciara’s words were muffled and muted as she looked at me.
I watched her lips move but my nodded response was automatic as I surveyed the room we stood in. There was a drain in the middle of the floor, and more dark staining soaked into the floor around that.
Other than that, there was one small bed—barely even a bed—in the corner. It had some sort of rickety frame and a mattress so thin it might have been steamrolled into shape. There was a rust-spotted, time-marked mirror on one wall and also a bucket in the corner, and I wrinkled my nose.
Two of us.
One bed.
One bucket.
Lots of stains.
This room was so different from the faded elegance of where we’d been kept before. And where the hell was Penelope? Were they picking us off one by one? I swallowed. What chance did that leave me?
“What the hell are you thinking?” For a second, Ciara’s eyes seemed to blaze red. “You can’t just put us in here. They’ll come, you know. My mate will come. What do you think you’re going to do then? You can’t explain this away.” She gestured around the small room with her arm.
I shivered. Small room was a kind way to describe it. It was little more than a dungeon.
The guard laughed as Ciara folded her arms and scowled at him, her eyes returning to that dull red color.
“Stay here.” The guard laughed again as he reached for the thick, wooden door to pull it closed behind him.
Ciara made a frustrated noise as the door thumped shut in the thick wall, and she closed her eyes as though willing her patience back into place.
Her hands were fists at her sides, and I could almost see her counting, seeking that imaginary ten that too many people believed would make any situation okay again, but she was perfectly still.
“So.” My voice came out louder than I’d intended as I walked and sat on the bed. Exactly as I’d expected, it was hard and uncomfortable, but I attempted to look comfortable as I lounged against the wall.
There’d be a plan. If Ciara was what I thought, there’d definitely be a plan.
Hopefully, though, the plan wasn’t using me as her food source as she waited for rescue. I glanced at the drain. It seemed a current possibility.
Ciara glanced at me before putting as much room between us as she could, leaning against the wall, her hands behind her back. “So…?” She raised an eyebrow as she prompted me, and her eyes had returned to their usual, familiar color. A human color.
“What’s the plan?” I shrugged. I hadn’t rehearsed this part. I was full-on winging it. “You going to drain me dry?” Well, shit. Winging it didn’t mean ramming my foot so far into my mouth that I choked on it.
Ciara’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again.
But only air came out before she closed it a final time and just looked at me.
It was a hard stare, too. Like I was suddenly sitting in front of my high school principal, and that had never been a pleasant experience.
The memory of her royal blue shoes—shoes that never matched any of her outfits—and the sound they made as she’d stalked the hallways or moved around her huge desk to sit behind it and stare at me for the billionth time across an ocean of wood—haunted me for a moment, and I lost my ability to string words together.
“The drain…” I mumbled. “Stains. Red eyes.”
Ciara tilted her head as she watched me, but she didn’t speak.
I closed my eyes. Something about her gaze was a little unnerving. The laser focus, perhaps, although I didn’t feel like prey. More like she was studying something she didn’t understand.
“What’s the deal with the eye color?” There. A sensible question. “And what’s a mate?” I added, although I had a pretty good idea. It was self-explanatory, and a term I’d only really come across in refences to the supernatural.
Sometimes, it made me think that finding my exact other person would be a bonus far exceeding the existence of repeated wading in the swamp of online dating. There seemed to be nothing to catch in there but cooties.
Yes, the idea that fate would provide all I needed in a man was…reassuring. As I considered the supernatural world, an image of the mad prince returned to my thoughts. There was something about him… despite his alternative dress sense. He definitely needed dragging into this century.
I grimaced. Not that I was offering… Not that I was offering at all.
I pushed him from my head. I didn’t have time for intrusive, unwanted thoughts about men I didn’t know…even if something about him piqued my interest. My professional interest, of course. Only ever that.
Ciara sighed and looked down at the floor. She looked down so long that it seemed she wasn’t going to say anything in reply.
When I grew uncomfortable, and shifted my position, she finally refocused her attention on me.
“It’s a lot,” she said.
“What’s a lot?” I worked out a kink in my left calf, massaging the spot idly with my fingers.