Chapter 37 A Silent Prayer
A Silent Prayer
Like a silent prayer answered, my eyes locked with Karson’s. He was seated in the corner with a redhead perched on his lap, his hand on her bare, milky-white thigh. A flicker of surprise crossed his face.
Everything hit me at once. Every thought, every movement, happened in a fraction of a second. Karson was too far away to help, even if he wanted to. Two vampires were coming at impossible speeds. Bullets of blue and black, the color of their shirts, raining down like mortar shells.
My breath caught in my throat. I clenched my sweaty palms into fists.
Dahlia raised her knife. She could stab one, but my fists probably wouldn’t do much damage to the second.
Would it hurt when teeth sharp as blades ripped into our necks? Of course it’ll hurt, I decided.
My tombstone wouldn’t read: Killed by creatures thought to be myth. No, it would say: Died in an accident, aged 22 years. Maybe someone might place a few flowers each year on the anniversary of my death, left to wilt and die under the hot sun.
A crippling crater hollowed out my heart. My temperature dropped to below zero. I stood in numb, dazed terror, staring at creatures I knew I couldn’t fight.
Then, abruptly, they were no longer moving toward us; they flew in the other direction. The vampires landed with tremendous cracking thuds against the right wall, splintering the wood behind them.
Dahlia put her knife back in her belt.
The tossed vampires sprang effortlessly to their feet. Their surprised gazes flickering between us and Karson.
“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” Karson roared, tearing my attention back to him. His eyes were not green, but black bottomless pits of doom, and they drilled holes into mine.
The fan hit us again. I just glimpsed a white-shirted vampire out of the corner of my eye as he ran, like a speeding spirit, toward us.
What I saw next was just a blur of white, red, and black, nothing discernible.
But the noise was sickening. I heard a sharp crack, like a tree branch snapping, then a ripping sound, but not dry like fabric tearing.
No, this tearing sound was wet, and thick, and chunky. A thud. Then silence. Deathly silence.
The body of a vampire, minus his head, was sprawled on the floor.
From the base of his neck where his head should have been, bright-red ribbons of raw meat oozed like a waterfall.
A stump of bone poked through, sickeningly pale against all the red.
A torn artery spurted blood with each pump of his heart, which, incredulously, still beat.
It streaked out in a thin line and splashed onto the wooden floor, branching off like rivulets of a hellish stream.
From his windpipe, red liquid gurgled, wheezed, bubbled, and popped.
His detached head lay across the room to the right, his eyes frozen on a point in the distance, forever paralyzed in stunned terror.
Karson stood like a statue of fury behind the fallen body; his black shirt streaked with blood and his left hand splashed with crimson.
“If anyone else dares to even twitch a muscle in their direction, I will paint the walls in your blood.” His growled words trembled my bones.
It wasn’t an empty threat. Clearly.
Fear and shock filled the eyes of the other vampires, and they darted away.
To see him move, to see him kill without any regard for life, played havoc with my humanity.
The jagged claws of reality dug deep, twisting, turning, tearing against my soul.
Trauma disabled my senses; for a moment the world was faded.
There were no voices, no music. All I could hear was the beat of my heart booming in my own head.
All I was aware of was blood and death. My eyes fell back to the decapitated head of the vampire.
He blinked. He blinked.
The room spun, and my stomach lurched. I gagged and choked on bile. I spotted a restroom to the right. My legs shook as I ran, shoving the door open and slamming it against the wall. White tiles swirled before my blurred eyes. I rushed to the toilet, dropped to my knees, and heaved.
Karson just ripped the head off a man with his bare hands.
My mind struggled to process the incomprehensible—what Karson was. What did that mean Ethan was? Even though I’d held suspicions they were something different, I never expected this.
I heaved again, emptying the contents of my stomach until nothing came up but bile.
I wiped the corners of my mouth, lowered myself to the cold, hard floor, drew my knees up to my chest, and hugged them as I tried to regain some kind of sanity, some small grasp on reality.
Head pounding, heart racing, throat burning.
Karson is a vampire.
I closed my eyes against the madness. It has to be some kind of sick trick, I tried to tell myself.
But there was no magician’s trick effective enough to explain away what I’d seen and heard. Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes.
“Are you okay, honey?”
I pulled my eyes open to see a slim, attractive brunette peering down with two fang marks on her neck. Blood dribbled from them like melted ice cream down a cone.
Suddenly angry, I hauled myself off the floor. “No. No, I’m not fucking okay, and you have bite marks on your fucking neck.”
“Oh, these?” she said, her fingers brushing through the blood, then she popped them in her mouth and sucked the blood off.
“They’ll be gone by the time I leave. It’s your first time, isn’t it?
I was the same. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it—I love it now.
” She smiled, turning back to the mirror and reapplying her lipstick.
“Love it? Love having your blood sucked?”
“Oh yes, it makes me feel so good—unless they take a little too much, then I get a bit tired for a few days. Plus, the sex is amazing, there’s nothing better than fucking a man with decades of practice!” She giggled. “I’ll catch you out there.”
I watched her walk out in a surreal haze, wondering if I’d just entered the twilight zone.
Karson is a vampire who just killed another vampire.
I leaned over the sink, turning the cold tap on. My hands shook as I splashed my face with water. My head throbbed, but my stomach had settled at least. I lifted my head and stared at myself in the mirror. My eyes were wide to the point of frantic, and bloodshot from vomiting.
I took a sip of water, swirled it in my mouth, and spat into the sink.
Then I wiped all remaining traces of the red lipstick off my lips—I could not tolerate the sight of the color.
Nor could I stand in here all night, and there was no window I could escape from.
I was seized by horror but driven to maintain composure; I refused to show any of them fear.
If you showed bullies fear, they preyed on it.
I’d learned that from all the different schools I’d been shunted between.
I straightened my shoulders and stepped back into the room. The body of the vampire was gone, the blood had already been cleaned up, and everyone was back in their seats or dancing as if nothing had happened. Dahlia and Karson stood by the bar.
Karson’s eyes were dark and furious. I curled my hands into fists to stop them from shaking.
Dahlia, too, looked furious. Was she a vampire? If she was, why did she need the knife? And where did she stash it?
The fans had been switched off, and every fiber of my being screamed at me to get out of there, but instead I walked past them. I desperately needed the numbness of alcohol. The bottle might also make an effective weapon.
The redhead sat on the seat where Karson had been, casting undisguised contempt in my direction as I stepped behind the bar. It seemed ludicrous given the situation.
“You can’t be behind here,” the barmaid said with a scowl.
“Watch me,” I challenged her.
She hesitated, glancing at Karson as if seeking permission, and I guessed she got it. She shrugged and left me alone, and I promptly snatched a full bottle of scotch off the shelf.
Karson was watching my every move, as if waiting for me to crack apart or blow up. Right now, it was a toss-up between the two.
I twisted the top off the bottle and took a couple mouthfuls. The alcohol scorched like embers, but it washed away the vile taste of acid that clung against the walls of my throat. I took a couple more swigs.
Karson grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the corner of the room. I clutched the bottle tightly, as if it contained the last dregs of my sanity.
“Leave,” he commanded the redhead.
She stood up, and I took in her outfit. She was dressed like a low-grade hooker; her boobs breached her top and looked like they were trying to make their great escape, and her vagina snacked on the seams of her leather shorts.
She pouted. “But, Karson, the night has only just begun.”
“Trust me when I tell you, sweetheart, it is in your best interest to move away,” he answered. The threat was so smooth it almost bypassed her.
Sweetheart—the same thing he’d called me. I fought the urge to bash him over the head with the bottle. It would hurt, maybe not do any real damage, but hitting him would be immensely satisfying.
She glanced between us as if debating whether his threat held weight. As if him tearing the head off a vampire wasn’t enough to convince her.
He snarled in the back of his throat. “Leave us, Felicity. Now.”
Felicity recoiled back, startled by his rage. She stabbed me with her eyes, and with a toss of her hair, she strode away.
Karson turned to me. “Sit down.”
Hollow of mind, wrapped in a haze of disbelief, I sat on the burgundy velvet seat like it was made of pins. My weapon, the bottle, rested between my legs.