Page 155 of Feed Your Fiends

A memory of him giving me an antihistamine shoots to the forefront of my brain.

“Why?” she asks, but I hang up and book it down the hall past a bewildered Stassi who only shakes her head to confirm Hale’s still M.I.A.

I don’t have time to update her as I slip into the kitchen and past three waitresses carrying silver trays. I wait until they’re gone, and it’s just a hunched Zedd and me. He’s so engrossed with his latest creation that he doesn’t notice me slip behind him and into the medicine cabinet. Fiddling through the drawer blindly, I keep my eyes trained on his back until I feel the cards I’m looking for. I grab them all and a tiny vial in the process, but my nerves are too shot to drop it back into the drawer and risk a tinkling noise. Then, I grab another tray of tall champagne flutes to hide my face behind as I slip back into the hallway. By the time I’ve made it to the locked door, my trays empty save for one flute I down myself to calm my frazzled nerves.

I push key after key into the slot until I hear the metallic clack of the lock sliding open.

“Hale?” I whisper in the darkness. A shiver wracks my spine as I ease the door shut behind me and settle my tray, the key cards and the stray vial on the dresser. It’s so dark I can’t even make out if there’s a shadow on the bed. I feel around the wall for a switch, and when I finally find it, I jump in tune to the lights flickering on because my legs bump into something cold.

A cage.

Something’s stooped and tucked inside is a dark shaking lump.

A man.

“Hale?” my whisper is raw, panicked. “Hale?”

But when the body rolls over it’s—

“Silas,” I breathe as the air rushes back into my lungs.

Silas.

“Help me,” he mouths.

Or gums.

His teeth…all of them are missing. The bloody sight makes me crumble against the opposite wall, my fingers flying to my mouth as if to safeguard my pearly whites.

Bart…no Bart and Gant. This is what they’re capable of. It’s one thing to hear it. Another to see it.

He’s shimmering in glass…and blood. Just like Marisol after the accident. Had they…. Had they recreated the scene?

My stomach churns. There really are demons.

Elle

“Help me,” Silas wheezes, his white knuckles curling around the bars. “They’re going to kill me. Slowly.”

I can barely understand him. His words are muffled and raw, yet wet like his throat is chaffed, but his bleeding gums are keeping his mouth moist.

My stomach clenches, and I can hardly bear to look at him.

“How long have you been here?”

“I can’t tell in the dark, but they took me on Thursday.”

“That was three days ago. How did they take you?”

“From the estate. They came in the night, and when we left, the sun was just rising…”

“Did they use the Packard?”

He nods like it hurts to even do so. “Help me.”

“You need to help me first.”

“How?”

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