Page 36 of Cinderella and Her Vampires (Dirty Paranormal Fairytale Haremlan 5)

Silas was going to kill me for sure if I didn’t find Collin soon. I had taken a risk with changing the human to begin with. But how else was I going to prove to Silas that I was more than capable of standing on my own two feet? I wasn’t some petty, weak, human.

Thanks to Xavier and Cindy, I would never know the answer.

I ran out of the room, following the trail that belonged to Collin, hoping beyond all hope and reason that I would be able to catch up to him before his rapidly fading scent disappeared completely… along with the woman’s as well.

17

CINDY

My heart pounded in my ears as I raked my gaze through every inch of dark-covered wall and floor. The sheer emptiness of the room stared me in the face as I realize I had made the most terrible mistake of my life.

In trying to do the right thing by that man, I was blind to what was actually going on. Though it was impossible for me to have the first clue to begin with. I wasn’t prone to hanging with vampires and I knew very little about them. Only that they were beyond gorgeous and relied on blood as a source of food.

Oh… and at least one of them was exceptional in bed.

But none of that mattered. Because the sheer emptiness of the room settled on me, and my lungs didn’t seem to want to work well.

“What have I done?” I managed to ask the air in the room. Though my words barely came out in a whisper.

My heart started to beat a little softer as I continued to search every nook and cranny filled with shadow for a hint on what to do. I should have checked him for a pulse. Did vampires have a pulse? Was that how things really worked when it came to them? The stories had to be based on some level of truth, right?

The fact of the matter was, I didn’t check for his pulse. Because he was breathing and coughing. How was I supposed to know he could do those things without a heartbeat? That was if vampires didn’t have a heartbeat.

And then I realized another horrific fact.

I had just watched the man I was trying to rescue, a man freshly turned into a vampire, rush out of the basement. He was chained to the wall, and it occurred to me that he had to have been locked up for a reason.

Were new vampires dangerous? Unhinged? Do they typically suffer from some sort of bloodlust in the beginning? Did I just kill some innocent bystander by letting the guy go?

Things had gone from bad to much, much worse.

The air around me had suddenly turned to ice and I was unable to move from the spot I sat in.

If I had thought of checking for a pulse, I might have known what was going on before I had reacted so hastily and found a way to unchain the poor man… rather, creature. Now, not only was I responsible for him falling to his horrible fate, but I was also responsible for letting him loose on an entire city of humans.

And I was responsible. Because if I hadn’t have told him about this place, trying to be vindictive and get payback for his rudeness during our first encounter, he wouldn’t have been chained up in the basement in the first place. At least that was how I was rationalizing everything.

And now, more lives were at risk.

I had to get out of the basement before someone found me snooping around. I also needed to figure out a way to find that man and stop him from doing any damage and attracting too much attention to himself. Especially considering I was pretty sure vampire existence was masked in legend and fairytale for a reason, and it wasn’t so they could be exposed.

Once I stood up and dusted myself off, I ran out of the cell and through the basement and up the winding stairs. My lungs burned for air and my muscles ached from overexertion as I flew up the flight of steps. Tears stabbed at my eyes as my throat filled with fire.

I was in for the fight of my life, for the fight of other people’s lives, and I was already woefully behind.

As I reached the top of the stairs, I turned into the hall, slamming into a solid wall. I fell backward, landing on the floor and banging my head against the stone. A throbbing sensation pulsed through my skull as starbursts exploded in my vision and I tried to make sense of what just happened.

“What the hell are you doing here?” a man’s voice said.

It took me several seconds before I could see straight to realize it wasn’t a wall I had run into but Xavier. One of the vampire assholes. A hot, sexy vampire.

I glared at him and then sighed. I was caught. Though I had nothing to base this on, I had to own up to what I did because I was pretty sure they could tell when someone was lying.

“Well?” he asked, growing impatient.

I groaned. “Stop yelling at me.”

“I’m hardly yelling,” he said.

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