Page 48 of Bloody Kingdom

Could it be another vampire?

The phone rings again across the room where I left it. I’m across the room and picking it up before the second ring. This time Duke doesn’t wait for me to talk first. “She ran into a group of people on St. Louis street, one of the street artists cleaning up her booth saw the whole thing. Quincey screamed for help before she took off again. Silas, I think she’s hurt. The artist said she took a pretty nasty fall.”

As the timer on my desk clicks down to zero, a wicked smirk grows on my lips. “If she is bleeding, I will have no trouble tracking her.”

Her blood calls to mine, like they are fated to find each other.

Hold on, love. I’m coming for you.

Ican’t stay here all night.

If Duke is out there looking for me like I hope he is, the last place he’s going to look is the inside of a tomb in the graveyard blocks away from where I originally called him. The idea of spending the night with a bunch of ancient dead people is also incredibly unappealing. The lingering fear in my bones is making my imagination run wild and I’m starting to hear things I know aren’t truly there.

Or shit,this place could be infested with ghosts for all I know. If vampires are real, that opens up the possibility that all kinds of other scary creatures exist. So, the faint knocking sounds and the random whispering very well might be coming from the dead laid to rest here.

Either way, my body is screaming for me to leave.

Deciding I don’t want lugging it around to slow me down if I need to make another escape, I push the metal case into the back of the tomb. I’ll make it to St. Sin and use Lucy’s phone to call Duke. Or maybe I shouldn’t call him at all. This is the perfect time to get away from them. I wanted to run away from all of this just two days ago when I found the cellar, nothing has changed since then, so why isn’t the need to run as strong as it was before?

Mind made up that I’m going to get to Lucy, I slowly ease out of the tomb. As quiet as I can manage, I jump down to the cracked stone pathway below. Even though I move softly through the walkways, each footstep I make seems as loud as a siren. This may be due to the sudden onset of extreme paranoia.

The exit to the cemetery is just yards in front of me, the safety of the bustling crowds just one street over from me. The warm lights from the storefront call to me. I just need to make it over there and I can blend into the mobs of people.

The sigh of relief that comes from my lips is premature.

Just as my fingers brush against the rough material of the wrought-iron gate, a hand threads through the long strands of my hair and I’m pulled back so harshly I can’t help but cry out in pain.

“I told you she was hiding in here.” Hot breath snakes across my cheek as I’m pulled back into his chest. “We just had to wait her out, and she’d come creeping out of wherever she was hiding.”

The bald man who first started chasing me steps out from the shadows in front of me, a cruel gleam in his eyes as he looks me over. “You’re quite the little troublemaker,” he coos at me.

“So I’ve been told,” I spit at him, trying my best to keep up my brave face.

His thick finger runs down the side of my face. When I attempt to turn my head away, the man holding me in place by my hair tightens his grip, making my scalp burn in pain. “I like trouble. You gonna put up a fight for us?”

Their vile conversation from before comes back to me. So, he’s the one who wants his turn while I’m still kicking. The nausea that had somewhat subsided returns at full force.

Breathing slowly through my nose, I try to keep the bile down. “You think I won’t fight you? That I’ll just lie back and let it happen?”

The man behind me chuckles in my ear. “Oh, on the contrary. We’re counting on it, little one.”

I jerk against his hold, throwing my elbows back into his chest and abdomen. My feet kick and thrash around, but all this does is make them laugh at me.

A flash of silver has my eyes widening and freezing in place.

The bald man holds a knife in his hand. The silver reflects in the soft moonlight as he moves closer to me with it.

I hold back a whimper as he drags it down my chest softly, not yet cutting my skin. “This shirt is so unflattering, let’s see what you’re hiding underneath it.”

His beefy hand grips the fabric roughly, pulling it away from my body as he drags the sharp blade through it. Within seconds, the entire front of my shirt is ripped down the middle and just barely hanging off my shoulders.

He stares at my exposed torso like a man gone mad with hunger. The evil gleam in his eyes—eyes that tell me that he fully intends to follow through with this—makes my skin crawl.

“You missed the bra, we wouldn’t want you hiding those from us too,” the sick fuck holding me in place chimes in. Even though I can’t see his cocky smirk, I can hear it in the way he speaks.

“Patience, brother,” the man with the knife chastises mockingly as he brings the knife back to my chest. This time when he slices the material of my plain white cotton bra, the blade knicks my skin. The sting of pain and mortification of what’s happening makes a single tear fall from my eye.

Out of desperation, my shaking fingers scramble to cover my breasts with the shredded fabric of my shirt. The mantsksand shakes his head at me slowly before the knife is pressed against my neck. “Now, that’s just not going to work.”

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