Page 6 of Savage Torment

“You’re not going to learn anything in there anyway,” he states as my fingers wrap around my coin, grounding me in a moment when fear threatens to render me useless. I squeeze it so tight I’m certain the entire thing is imprinted on my hand, but it also helps keep my heart rate steady and my breathing calm.

“You don’t know that,” I finally mutter, and his eyes drop to my throat as he ignores my weak protest.

My chest tightens with hope, expecting him to back off, but instead, his hand lifts to where his eyes are focused, and a moment later, his fingers flex around my neck.

“I could snap your neck effortlessly, you know,” he murmurs, flexing his fingers just like he did at my wrist, and I feel the weight of his words along with the action as it takes all of my strength not to crumble with terror.

He can’t see that, though. He doesn’t get to see my vulnerability. Not when he already assumes it. The racing of my pulse will fail me, but I hold strong regardless.

“Put me out of my misery then,” I rasp, my pulse deafening in my ears as his hold grows tighter.

Damn.

I shouldn’t have said that. I get the feeling that if anyone were going to do it to prove a point, it would be him.

“I’ve heard you’re looking for a human.”

I still, his words replaying in my mind before I finally realize he’s not threatening me, and I gasp as I nod eagerly. “B, have you seen him?”

His lips purse as he assesses me a final time before he takes a step back, releasing his hold on my neck. “Follow me.”

He heads down the empty hallway without a backward glance. I should go, run in the opposite direction and avoid him for all of eternity, but… B.

Dammit.

I take off after him as he nears the doors leading outside, catching up to him as he cuts across the manicured lawn. We fall into step together, neither saying a word as he heads toward the quadrant dorms. He bypasses the witches and humans and turns down the pathway that leads to the vampire dorms. My steps start to slow.

Maybe he’s lying. Perhaps he’s luring me to my death. Do I dare find out?

B, or Benjamin, has never been more than Sian’s boyfriend. Why should I care about where he is now? Sian and Terence have swiftly ditched me, maybe I should solidify it and ditch all of them too, B included. Nothing says a fresh start like moving on and closing a chapter of my life, but my gut twists at the idea. I may not be close to him, but there’s a sense of familiarity, and it’s all I have left to cling to when it comes to Florentine’s. Not that I particularly want to remember it fondly, but damn, it’s all I’ve known.

“If I were going to harm you, I would have done it back there,” he offers over his shoulder as he takes the narrow path littered with layers upon layers of red leaves, each one darker than the last.

I sigh, sealing my fate as I follow after him.

Things don’t seem to get any better for me as he goes around the side instead of using the front entrance. When he halts atthe top of the stone steps leading down into a basement of some sort, my heart lodges in my throat.

He must sense my panic because he pauses, looking back over his shoulder. “Curiosity did kill the cat. Are you ready to lose one of your nine lives?”

I gulp. Who the hell says shit like that?

Him, apparently. It shouldn’t be a surprise, not after everything else he’s had to say to me.

He’s not nice, not at all. But damn if I’m going to let him see me as weak.

With my palms sweating, my limbs trembling, and my breaths little more than short, sharp pants, I follow him down into the darkness.

The sun is little more than a pinprick in the sky when he reaches for my arm, encircling my wrist as he tugs me into his side before unlocking the door that seals us off from whatever awaits. I hold my breath as we enter the bleakness.

I can feel his eyes on me with every step we take, like he doesn’t need to see in order to know where he’s going, as if he’s made this walk a thousand times. At the end of the pitch-black hallway, I hear the click of another lock and a glint of light appears before us. Another door opened, another layer deeper into his web.

But when my eyes adjust to the new light, I don’t like what I see.

Beds by the dozen line each wall to the left and right, and not one of them is empty. Each one is filled with a person, with a set of handcuffs chaining them to the frame. Nausea churns in my stomach as I watch the people hovering around the third bed along the left side, and it rises up my throat in the form of acidic bile when I realize what’s happening.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I rasp, tugging my wrist to head back into the darkness. It’s safer than in here.

“Eyes on the floor,” he grunts, pulling me in the opposite direction. I dig my heels in, but it’s futile against his strength. Shielding my eyes, it does nothing to eradicate the sounds, and I find my gaze drifting back to the mess at bed three, where two vampires feast on the body lying on the bed.

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