Chapter 26 – Lily
LILY
“Anna?” I whisper.
She rests her clammy cheek against my bare knee, and I freeze.
“Amber,” she corrects. “It’s Amber. You remember me, don’t you?”
Get rid of her Cass warns, but I push his thoughts back.
He persists but I don’t listen. Cass’ eyes are cold, but his tone is colder.
It echoes through my head and drips with pure hostility.
He wants her gone and to get this over with, but I’m torn.
I’m horrified by Amber’s unexpected presence but overwhelmed by the urge to protect her.
I can’t get the memory of her fragile body twisting and flexing on that hospital gurney out of my head.
The broken sounds that filled the room. Her face twisted in agony and a terrible kind of ecstasy.
“Of course I remember you, sweetheart. Will you come up and sit with me, sweetheart?” I ask, offering her my hand. “You don’t need to be down on the ground like that. Come on up so we can talk.”
She looks up at me through clumpy lashes, dark pupils blown so big you can hardly see the color of her irises. With a lazy shrug, she rises to join me on the couch and awkwardly squeezes herself between Cass and me.
“You’ve got yourself a real handsome one,” she slurs, gesturing to Cassini. “Good for you. Does he do your friends too, or are y’all exclusive? I wouldn’t have pegged you as a blood donor, but I guess it takes all sorts.”
Cass recoils as she winks luridly and edges away from her like she’s infected with something contagious. She leans in to stroke my hair, and her jaw wobbles uncontrollably as her eyes chase an invisible shadow.
I ignore her question and touch my thumb to her chin, tilting her face to the light. “What did you take tonight, Amber? Did you do a little molly?”
She giggles and starts rubbing strands of my hair between her fingers with a twisted grin. “I did a lot of molly. Lots and lots. Nurse Lily…your skin is so soft. So, so soft. I love soft skin.”
That explains it. Aside from everything else, this girl is rolling.
I’ve seen it a thousand times before. Too much MDMA coursing through her veins, frying her serotonin receptors and flooding her with dopamine.
She’s that loopy kind of horny. The kind that makes you want to roll around on a soft carpet and show your underwear to strangers.
My heart aches. Is this what’s happening to Megan?
“Soft skin, soft skin, yummy, yummy soft skin…” she babbles absently.
I’m trying to focus on the poor drugged-up girl in front of me, but I’m becoming overwhelmed again.
I can feel it. The light from the beady eyes that watch us from the shadows.
The vampiric thoughts that leak in from every direction.
Loud and savage. Each calling for blood or delighting in violence.
A symphony of sex and death. Death and sex.
Somehow, Cass’ voice cuts through the cacophony and drills somewhere deep in my head. He sounds much angrier this time.
I’m serious. We don’t have time for this. She needs to go.
I just want to make sure she’s okay. She’s fucked up. Have a little compassion. It’s your kind that did this to her.
My words hit him square in the chest and force him back.
That stung, and I’m glad. It’s petty of me, but I want to punish him a little for last night.
For playing mind games and turning me away like that.
The memory is too painful and too embarrassing, so I turn my attention back to Amber, whose tongue is darting in and out of her mouth, licking her cracked lips obsessively.
Lily, come on—
Get out of my fucking head!
Cass’ voice dissipates into nothingness, and for a moment there’s relief, but it appears that all it did was make space for the other undead thoughts to come faster. I’m still trying to pick through the noise and find something useful, but I can’t follow the threads—they’re too chaotic.
I move her hair away from her neck and expose the tattoo on her shoulder. “Where did you get this tattoo, sweetheart? Did someone do this to you?”
“We all have them.” She sighs as she rubs her palms against the couch rhythmically. “All the good girls do.”
My stomach turns. “What do you mean, all of you?”
She tilts her head, looking at me with those vacant eyes.
“Everyone who works for the Sixth. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the houses or the clubs or just running errands.
You get the mark. They call us familiars.
” Her fingers trace the raised skin absently.
“They say it’s for protection, but really it’s so everyone knows who you belong to. ”
“When did they give this to you?”
“First week,” she mumbles. “Right after they brought me in. Said I was special. It hurt, but they said the pain meant I was becoming family.” She giggles and lifts her hands to rub her cheeks.
I keep my voice gentle. “And if you wanted to leave?”
She sways as she squeezes her face between her palms. “You don’t leave your family. The mark makes sure of that. Other vamps see it, they know to bring you back home if you wander off.” She looks directly at me, then hiccups. “Don’t worry, you’ll get one too.”
I exchange a worried glance with Cass. Whatever expression is on his face, he’s trying to mask it. He gives me a tiny shake—no—as if telling me to back off and drop the subject.
“You should drink some water, but not too much, okay? Take it slowly,” I say, trying to process what she’s saying and ground myself in the present, but I feel as nauseous as Amber looks. “Do you want me to go get you some?”
She pouts, and with her bottom lip jutted out like that, she looks like a kid. So young. Too young for a place like this. “I’m sorry, Nurse Lily. I can’t stay. They’re going to be so mad at me if I don’t do what I’m told.”
“Who’s going to be mad, sweetheart?”
“The twins!” she exclaims, then her eyes widen, and a grin spreads across her face. She releases her grip on my hair and clasps her hands together like she’s having a life-changing revelation. “I want you to meet them, and they definitely want to meet you. I’m gonna call them over!”
Before I have a chance to protest, she’s already beckoning to two men sitting across the room. Two men who’ve been watching us the entire time. Four pinpricks of golden light fixed on our every move.
They rise in their matching white suits—no shirts underneath, low jacket buttons revealing sculpted, hairless chests. They stride toward us in perfect unison, and with each synchronized step, the dread in my stomach grows heavier.
They reach us in seconds, and when I look to Cassini for reassurance, his expression is a terrifying storm of fury and dread.
“Cassini, you finally decided to join us,” one says, a smirk playing across his lips. The red light cuts just under his sharp cheekbones, casting terrifying hollows.
Despite the terrifying emptiness in his eyes, he’s beautiful—they both are. Beautiful in the same way the angels in Renaissance paintings are. Pale skin, soft round lips, and sculpted jaws. They’re identical except for the small scar that cuts through the left eyebrow of one.
“And I see you brought a delicious treat,” the other interjects, turning his attention to me. “What is this lovely creature I see before me?”
He offers his hand, and I tentatively reach mine out.
I don’t want to touch him, but I also don’t want to make a scene or upset them.
Despite their beauty, these men think only in images of sadistic violence.
I can’t make out the words, but all I feel is fear.
All I hear are screams. For a moment, the sound of them drowns out every other voice in the room.
I hold my trembling hand steady, and one clasps it with his icy fingers.
With a wink, he dips his head low and pushes his nose against my skin, inhaling deeply, then he kisses it.
He darts out a reptilian tongue and tastes my skin, so fast I’m sure I imagine it.
His brother does the same, and they turn to each other and smile.
“Told you,” eyebrow scar says.
“Told you,” the other goads.
Their touch ignites a frenzied kaleidoscope of images in my head. Each one more violent than the last. Broken fingers. Bloody bindings. Broken spirits.
Cass, I don’t like this.
I’ll fucking kill them if they touch you again.
Cass stands up and moves in front of me, his large frame blocking me from the twins. His tone is even, perhaps even friendly, but I know he’s seething. “Roel, Ronan. This is Lily. She’s my chattel, and she is under my protection.”
The way he says “protection” makes my skin tingle—a balm against the raw wound of last night’s rejection, but I’m not stupid. I know what he’s doing, and I know we’re outnumbered.
“Very good.” Roel smirks. “And this is Amber. She belongs to us. Don’t you, darling?”
Amber slides lazily off the couch and crawls toward them, her hip bones poking through the fabric of her dress as she slinks forward like a cheetah. Ronan, the one with the scar, wraps his fingers around the chain attached to her collar and jerks it upward, so her head snaps back to greet him.
“Yes, Daddy,” she purrs.
“Good girl,” Roel says, patting her on the head. “Amber here came to us all the way from Salt Lake City, Utah. Such a sheltered little thing when we first met her. She’d never even had coffee, had you, my sweet girl?”
She shakes her head proudly, and Ronan continues. “And you were so set on saving us, weren’t you? You arrived with such noble intentions—a mission to liberate our souls.”
“Little did she know…” Roel says.
“Little did she know…” Ronan repeats.
“We have no souls,” they finish in unison.
I feel like I’m going to throw up, but I swallow the swell of bile-laced dread bubbling in my throat. That poor girl. The presence of the twins has kicked the flood of dead voices swirling around my head into overdrive.