Page 23 of Blood So Brutal

It exited to the street.

How stupid were they? They kept me in a room this close to the street, unguarded, with not so much as a lock on my door?

I pulled the hood up on my cloak and double checked that I was totally alone before I stepped into the night.

With the towering buildings, there was no light to help me navigate. Still, I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I wasn’t sure how many more chances I would have to escape. Wolf was always around, lingering, and if it wasn’t him, it was that brute of an angel—Luseyar—watching guard.

This could be my only damn shot.

I didn’t have a plan. Actually, my plan was to get as far away from that place as fucking possible. Voiler seemed to have good friends. Maybe if I stayed hidden enough, I could find her. She would help me. She might even know a way out of this wretched place.

I couldn’t go back to Midgrave; that was out of the question, but I could at least let Lord and Rummy know I was okay.

And then, I could sneak off, living my life in the forest. I always liked the forest anyway. It would be peaceful there. Quiet.

The streets were a maze, but I didn’t slow down, didn’t falter. I moved forward, one foot after the other. The air was eerily silent. Not a single animal called to the moon. I heard no voices. No laughter. No music.

Just…silence, the kind that made you look over your shoulder every three feet.

I reached to my hip where my dagger was typically strapped, only to find it vacant. It was an old habit, but it forced me to realize how vulnerable I was out here without my weapon.

But I couldn’t let fear stop me. Not anymore.

The castle disappeared in the streets behind me. I tried to remember each path I turned down, each odd building or unique marking in the stone I came across in the dark night. Soon enough, the buildings became shorter, the narrow streets opened up, and more empty space littered the area around us.

I was getting somewhere.Keep going.

I turned one more corner when I slammed into a large body.

“What the fu?—”

I shut my mouth when I realized it wasn’t a man’s body, but a vampyre’s. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was a hungry one, and he had just run into a warm, blood-filled body.

Shit.

I scrambled backward, once again reaching for my weapon that wasn’t there.

I could run, sure. Maybe he wasn’t as fast as the others. I could try to fight—I had decent skill in hand-to-hand combat—but this vampyre was large, larger than most.

I backed up around the corner, retreating the same way I came. “It’s okay,” I said to the monster. “Just turn around. Plenty of fresh bodies the other way.” What was I trying to do? They couldn’t understand me. They couldn’t understand anything, actually, except their constant craving for blood.

A gruntled growl escaped his mouth. I could smell the rot and decay coming from the creature before his eyes locked onto me and narrowed.

Fuck.

I turned and ran as fast I could, not giving a fuck if I was heading back into the city, not caring where I was going, as long as I got away from this beast.

He was fast, but nowhere near as discreet as I was. I heard his every footstep pounding after me desperately as I maneuvered the empty streets.

Where the fuck was everyone?

“Need some help?” a male voice asked as I rounded another corner, panting.

Wait, I knew that voice.

I screeched to a halt, hiding behind a half-crumbling wall just around the corner.

“Unless you want me to be vampyre dinner, then yeah, some help would be nice!” I shouted.

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