Page 15 of House of Crimson Kisses
My throat goes suddenly dry. The hunger in my belly is twisting and furling until I want to be sick. I buckle, bending over and gagging. Octavia reaches down to help me up. I shuck her off.
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
Chapter7
OCTAVIA
Red smacks my arm away but stumbles forward, coughing and spluttering. She’s withdrawing hard and needs to take my blood or we’re going to have a problem.
The air shifts, something prickly sifts through the atmosphere, making my forearms rise with goosebumps.
“What?” Red says and then gags, bending over her knees again.
“Quiet,” I say. And take a step to the side. I scan the tunnel left and right. Something is wrong. Someone is here.
“Get up. Move,” I say, gripping her arm and dragging her forward as fast as she can stagger.
“Get your hands off me.”
“Red—” I start, but a rushing wind steals my words away like secrets and shrouds, and then I’m knocked halfway up the tunnel by an immense blow to the ribs.
One moment I’m holding onto Red and the next I’m soaring through the tunnel, her body getting smaller and smaller in the distance.
I clatter to the floor, smashing my head against the concrete and bricks. My skull is cracked. I know by the immediate grey and black spots that smatter my vision and the sickness coiling in my gut. I lean over and puke.
I touch my hand to the back of my skull. It’s definitely fractured. My fingers come away wet. I glance at them and groan. But the bone is already knitting back together. Someone is going to pay for that. I squint down the tunnel. Two men have Red, one on either side of her. She’s hanging limply between them.
I’m up and using vampire speed to race down the tunnel towards her. No one gets to touch her or take her from me. I don’t give a shit how pissed off she is with me. She’s mine.
The vampires haul her up so her feet are no longer touching the ground. Shit, they’re going to run her out of here.
No, you fucking don’t.
I lean down, using my arms to pump my legs harder, faster. I have to reach her. My head throbs like a hammer striking an anvil. It makes my vision blurry as I finally get within touching distance. I don’t slow down; I just barrel straight into the first vampire the way he did to me. I knock him flying as penance for what he did to me.
He clatters against the side of the tunnel in an almighty boom sounds as his head bounces off the tunnel wall.
“Put her down, and you get to live. Try to fight me, and I’ll make it extremely painful for you.” I say the words with a tangle of snarls and growls.
A mask covers his face. His entire body is hidden, so that the only pieces of him I can see are his eyes and his teeth.
One of his hands moves fast, whipping out a stake.
“A vampire with a stake? How original. How foolish,” I say.
“Listen, love. You let me kill the little human hunter and we can all go home and be done for the day. Alright?”
“You touch a single hair on her head, and I will rip your balls from your crotch and feed them to you.”
He laughs like I’m joking, but he has no idea.
Red murmurs, her head lifting. He must have knocked her out. I’m surprised he landed a punch. She doesn’t normally drop her guard like that. Her need for blood must be greater than I thought. I will have to make her drink when this is over.
“Oct… Octavia,” she breathes.
“It’s okay, Red. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Fine?” she snaps and hauls herself upright, to the vampire’s surprise. He steps back, his eyes wide.
