Page 8 of Killer of the Bells
“I don’t have his number…” said a hopelessly confused Wraith with a barely-there expression.
Why does everyone I know have to be like this?
When I’m the normal one in a group, you know it’s bad.
“Where’s your car?” I asked, continuing to drag Echo’s resisting form through the woods, far away from Wraith.
“Ow! I-ouch! It’s-that hurts!”
I stopped and turned to see what the problem was. There were scratches on Echo’s face, and he hung limply in my grasp. I knew he’d been trying to pry my hand from his arm, but I’d ignored him and continued to drag him. Now that I was finally paying attention, I could see I’d had him in a bone-crushing grip.
I relaxed my hold immediately upon realizing my mistake. Echo was roughly Baz-sized, if a bit bigger, and Baz was a sturdy, annoying little fuck, so I’d automatically treated Echo like I would Baz. Which meant that instead of pulling Echo down a path at a reasonable speed, I’d dragged the man through the undergrowth at a quick pace.
Now he was scratched, bruised, and scared. It was good that he was scared, because it showed he wasn’t hopelessly stupid, but I hadn’t meant to injure him.
I touched the blood on his cheek and tasted it without thinking.
Shit.
I’d been planning to present Echo to Gareth for questioning, but after a mistake like that, my monster would drain him dry in seconds regardless of what I wanted.
Echo’s eyes tracked my motions as I tasted his blood. His eyes became heavy-lidded, and his breathing sped up. It wasn’t from fear. There was a spark of excitement in his eyes and something akin to hope.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as the frenzy swept over me. I pulled him to me with a hand on the back of his neck and braced his body against mine with a hand on his low back.
My monster buried our fangs into Echo’s neck, and I resigned myself to losing myself and coming to, covered in the remains of a poor, stupid college kid who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
At least I’d have a chance at getting the info dump from my monster once I’d come to my senses.
Oddly, I stayed present as my monster fed. I enjoyed the delicate flavor of Echo’s blood, and I was completely submerged in a sea of memories from Echo’s life when they flooded in.
I saw a small boy on Christmas Day, surrounded by family. His mother cheered him on as his chubby baby hands fought to tear a massive bow off an even more massive gift. When he was defeated, his father swung him onto his lap and helped him finish unwrapping the gift to reveal a teddy bear the size of Echo’s small body.
The scene shifted through several other nauseatingly cheerful moments, usually centering around holidays. I despised holidays, Christmas especially, so I was intensely uncomfortable witnessing his memories.
I distanced myself from them as much as possible out of self-preservation until I came across a blood-soaked moment filled with fire and screaming. It was a scene I was far more comfortable with, so I gave it my full attention.
Metal and glass were strewn across a freeway, and police and ambulance sirens filled the air. I saw an inconsolable Echo curling his young body around the form of an unresponsive woman before the mental exchange was shattered, and it brought me to my senses.
I expected to be holding a corpse in my arms when I came to, but impossibly, the body in my arms was still warm andbreathing. Not only was Echo still alive, but my monster was sated and slowly curling up to sleep in the pit of my soul where it resided.
I pulled back from Echo’s bloody throat and licked it clean before I thought better of it.
The sound Echo made in return was pure sex. My tongue flicked out once more to touch the wound I’d made, and Echo pressed his hips against me, moaning softly.
I tilted his chin up to look at him. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were fever-bright.
Why was he still alive? Why hadn’t I killed him? Blood was a huge trigger for me, and my monster was awake and starving when it was activated by Echo. Echo should have been a rapidly cooling memory instead of a sexy little bundle in my arms.
I touched Echo’s plump lower lip and gazed into his heavy-lidded eyes as he began to grind against my dick. Lust hit me hard and fast, just as devastating and undeniable as the call of blood, and equally as shocking as the departure of my monster mid-kill.
Who was this sexy, psychotic little bombshell? And why couldn’t I stop touching him?
Before I knew it, I had him pinned to a tree and was tearing his pants open while he worked frantically to free my dick. I spat on my hand and started stroking us in tandem while Echo gave sexy little encouraging moans. He had to stand on tiptoe, and I had to crouch to make it happen, but neither of us cared.
The only thing that mattered was getting as close as possible. I couldn’t get enough of him. The taste of his blood was still in my mouth when I kissed him as violently as I’d stolen his blood moments earlier.
Heaven. I was in heaven.
