Page 47 of Mortal Shift
“Guess we don’t have to be enemies,” he grudgingly admitted. I blinked in surprise, and he added, “We’ve both got enough of those.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong there.
“Er… great. But I really have to go. I wasn’t joking about the food.”
“You don’t want to go that way.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the two guys and the girl there, and then back to me. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but in the spirit of friendship, right? They closed it early. A couple of guys tore it up having a scrap.”
A groan slipped out of my lips. “Great.”
Now that death by Kallan had been ruled out, I was apparently going to die of starvation instead.
“They opened up a second hall, though.”
I perked up, and then frowned.
“They did? I don’t recall seeing anywhere else in the academy big enough to use as a dining hall.”
“It’s near the vampire quarters. Guess you don’t head out that way often.”
I thought of Thaden and his sister, and shuddered. That was a part of the academy I avoided whenever possible. Bad enough that he kept cornering me and drinking his fill, I didn’t need him thinking I was seeking him out. Still, I really was hungry, and backing down now meant admitting how much those guys freaked me out in front of four of the shifters from our year. And wolves hated few things more than weakness.
I forced a nonchalant shrug. “Guess not. How will I know it?”
“It’s the first set of double doors you come across out that way. It’s marked with the vampire sector logo. Go through and you’ll know you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
“Thanks.” I obviously didn’t do as good a job of keeping my confusion from my voice as I’d hoped, because he gave me a small smile.
“My enemy’s enemy and all that, right?”
“Sure.” Whatever. I wasn’t about to look a gift horse—or gift set of directions—in the mouth. “See you around.”
“Maybe.”
Without wasting time dwelling onthat, I turned on my heel and headed the opposite way. The vampire quarters were smaller than the shifter ones, since there were far more shifters here than anything else, but they were still pretty sizable. Probably on account of the academy being run by a vampire. In fact, it probably accounted for a lot of things—like the bloodthirsty way the academy was run. Everyone here was dangerous, I’d learned that quickly enough, but there was something about the vamps that chilled me to my core. Thaden and his sister weren’t doing much to alleviate that. I just hoped I wasn’t going to run into either of them. Or any of the other vamps, come to that. These corridors were just expansive enough that it was in theory possible to move through them without meeting anyone else, on a good day, if you were lucky.
Of course, I didn’t have many good days, and I was pretty sure my luck had run out the day I set foot in Darkveil.
Stares and whispers followed me, and it was like being right back on that first day. The oddity. The one no-one expected to be here. What was it Kallan had said? I’d know where was I was supposed to be? That was a joke. I felt about as far as possible from where I was supposed to be right now—wherever the hell that was.
But I’d spend enough time around the shifters to know that showing weakness was not a good plan. Vamps were as much predators as wolves, and at least one guy in this place was out for my blood, literally.
I lifted my chin and pushed on, ignoring the vamps I passed. The prickling at the back of my neck gave me the sinking suspicion one of them was following me, but since I absolutely refused to turn around and act like I gave a damn, I couldn’t be sure. So I tried to shut out the anxiety gnawing at me, and instead kept my pace measured and my eyes forward. They might be predators, but I wasnotprey, and I sure as hell had no intention of acting like it.
Of course, intentions only counted for so much, and this place had the serious creep factor.
It was almost a relief when I finally laid eyes on the double doors Kallan had described. Except not quite, because they loomed over me in an ominous way and my step faltered for the first time. Seriously, how was a damneddooreerie? More importantly, how the hell wasIgetting freaked out by it? I’d seen every creepy, damned, and predatory monster inside these walls. A door wasn’t going to be the one that bested me.
I quashed the shiver before it could work its way up my spine, hitched my shoulders back, and pushed through the doors.
Chapter Seventeen
The room was dimly lit, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to what I was seeing, and when I did, nausea crept up my throat.
The room was scattered with dozens of couches and chaises, and lounging across them were thirty or forty vampires…and another twenty or thirty humans, dressed in dark clothing that in some cases revealed more than it hid. The humans watched the vampires with glazed, endorphin-drunk expressions, and I knew there was only one thing that could cause that look. One vampire lifted his mouth from a woman’s neck, a trickle of blood escaping from the corner of his mouth, confirming my suspicion.
I’d stumbled into some kind of vampire feeding den. These humans, all of them, they were here to be fed from. Willing thralls or helpless victims, I had no way of knowing, but from the utter adoration on their dazed faces, the former seemed sickeningly likely.
The vampire leered at me, his eyes roving up and down my body in a way that sent chills through it—and not the good kind.
