Page 5 of Ashvale: The Vampire's Thrall

“Quickly now, I’d hate to have to kill our friend here twice.”

He was mad, I realised. Utterly mad. I didn’t know how he’d managed that insane jump, but if he thought I could replicate it he was going to be sorely disappointed. Plus, what was this talk of killing the guard twice?

“Leonora,” he demanded and I stiffened.

“That is not my name.”

“I beg to differ,” he sneered and my hands balled into fists. There was a smirk in his voice when he called down to me, like he’d somehow seen my reaction and wanted to push me further. “Poor little Leonora, murdered twice and doesn’t even know her own name. I suppose the only upside to memory loss is that you no longer remember how pathetic I assume your life was. Of course, if you remember differently, Leonora,” he said tauntingly, “feel free to correct me. At least this way—“ My knuckles grazed his cheek and he grinned ferally as he tilted his face just out of the way of my strike. “Good, let’s get on with it then. Down we go.”

I panted heavily and then blinked when I realised where I stood, swaying when I looked down and out over the wall and at the quiet forest. Nothing moved except the pine leaves in the wind… and the ring finger of the downed guard. How the hell had I gotten up here? And now he wanted me to jumpdownthe other side? I didn’t have a death wish, but apparentlyhedid.

“Time’s up, love.”

A firm hand gripped me around my waist and the other clamped over my mouth again as the blond stranger ran and dove over the other side of the castle wall.

My shrieks were muffled and the stranger’s hand clamped tighter as if in warning. Too tight, I realised, when his palm sliced open on one of my strangely sharp teeth and something hot and sweet dripped onto my tongue.

The step into mid-air seemed to last forever but also no time at all. We hit the ground with a thud and my legs instinctively bent, and the hand that had been tight around my mouth now tried to pull away but found itself caught in my vise-like grip.

“Now love, I don’t think you’re ready for—” his words cut off with a groan as I bit more firmly into his palm, only half-aware of what I was doing, just knowing I needed more.

“Leo–nora,” he choked and the name managed to penetrate through the warm haze of pleasure briefly, something he seemed to realise. “It’s too much. You’re not ready.”

I tightened my grip and he moaned, it was deep and rumbled pleasantly through me as I pressed closer to his arm. His head tilted back when my teeth plunged deeper, exposing the long, pale column of his throat and I paused again, distracted by something more than mere words.

Something fluttered there in his neck, like a butterfly teasing me, taunting me to try for a bite. My fangs slid smoothly out from his arm and his eyes fluttered open, glazed and heavy as they watched me. The drugged look on his face faded the longer my teeth stayed out of his body but I felt like I was vibrating, my eyes locked on that single pulse point as it beckoned me with a dull throb that blocked out all other sounds.

Clo-ser. Clo-ser.I licked my lips and let out a breathy sigh as the remaining blood was licked off. It was like the richest, smoothest chocolate I’d ever tasted. And I knew intrinsically, that if I bit right…there, it would taste even better.

Frantic hands grasped my jaw as the stranger tried to stop my bite and I snarled, a long, inhuman sound that startled me. Had that been… me? What the fuck was I doing?

He seemed to see the reason bleeding back into my eyes, because he let out a shaky breath that sounded a lot like relief. “Progress,” he muttered. “I didn’t have to snap your neck that time.” I continued to blink at him in shocked silence as he carefully sat up and frowned at his hand where two perfectly even bite marks were slowly healing. “Don’t do that again. It’s rude to bite someone without their permission.”

Rude? He thought I was rude? I mean, yes, I had just tried to go for his jugular, but he was the one who’d done this… thing to me in the first place! He’d killed the guard, he’d dragged me all the way here after the girl in the lake—

My thoughts stuttered to a stop and my hand flew up to cover my mouth as a ragged sob tried to escape. The girl in the lake. Had I killed her? The stranger was right, I really had lost myself. I had killed her. I had almost killed him. But the worst part was…I’d liked it.

“No time for hysterics,” he said firmly, standing and looking even paler against the dark than he had earlier, like a ghost haunting the grounds of an old castle. “We’ve already wasted enough time.”

Numb, I let him grab my arm and pull us through the grounds. He clearly knew where he was going, and I knew the smart thing to do would be to pay attention, to try and remember the direction we were walking and which door we were headed towards, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Even if I did escape, even if I made it to the police, who’s to say the one they should be locking up wasn’t me?

Around the side of the castle sat a small black door, so tiny I was a good head and shoulders taller and the stranger would have to practically crouch to walk inside.

The door was silent as it opened and that alarmed me more than a horror-movie creak. It meant someone was here, someone was maintaining this door. How often did they do this to people like me?

The darkness loomed ahead and the stranger stepped back and nodded for me to go first. I stood at the boundary and hesitated, glancing back to look at the stranger one more time and finding that he now only looked tired. Losing half a pint of blood would probably do that to a person.

A torch’s flame popped to my right and I jumped slightly, peering into the darkness before I lifted a foot and walked inside. The night air was calm and the stranger’s eyes were bright as the door swung shut behind us, and I couldn’t help the thought that nothing was going to be the same again.

ChapterThree

I’d expectedthe castle corridors to be colder. Old stone bricks swept into high arches above our heads as the hallway wove onward and the stranger’s steps were soft against the floor. I tried my best to minimise my own noise—which was hard in combat boots—as I took in the quiet darkness around us.

The hair on my arms stayed down and my breath never fogged, and just as I was starting to believe that maybe I would get out of this alive, we rounded our first corner. A solid wood door thunked harshly under the stranger’s hand and footsteps disrupted the perfect spill of golden light as the door swung inward.

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but a young, albeit slightly sickly looking, woman with dark hair and eyes wasn’t it. She looked like she’d once had a full figure that had withered, her cheeks just slightly too hollow and her smile a touch too big for her face. And boy was she smiling, big and toothy, the way I imagined the wolf might have smiled at little Red when it posed as her grandmother. I did a double take at the delicately curving fangs that took the place of her canines. Any hope I might have been holding onto guttered out at that moment. This woman was with him. The stranger. Whatever they’d done to themselves, they’d somehow done it to me too.

I tensed and the blond arsehole grabbed my arm, as if sensing I had been about to bolt.

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