Not anymore.
I was mentally and physically adrift.
Barefoot, I padded into reception. A pool of blood stained the light-grey carpet, illuminated by the office light. I stared, wondering if I had that much blood inside me.
Continuing to the elevator, I calmly waited for the lift to heed my call.
Ding!
I smiled at the sound and entered, pressing G for the ground floor.
The doors began to slide closed.
Across reception, a door slammed off its hinges, soaring through the area to crash into the wall to my right.
Kyros stopped in front of the bloodstain by reception.
And in the light, his teeth lengthened to fangs.
And in the light, his eyes flooded black.
In the light, the monster lifted his gaze to find me lurking in the shadows.
I waved as the doors sealed.
11
I leaned against the railing in the elevator, ears popping on the speedy descent.
Around level twenty, my numbness parted enough for panic to find me at last. It was a quiet panic to start—a seizing, a stalling… a pained clenching of my insides. My lungs emptied like bagpipes.
They wouldn’t fill!
Eyes widening, I gulped. Try as I might, air wouldn’t flow past the top of my esophagus. I splayed my hands over the back wall, seeking purchase.
Ding!
The street. I had to get to the street.
I staggered out of the elevator.
Splintering wood exploded in a deep boom. The door to the garage was pushed off its hinges, crashing against the far wall of the lobby before slapping to the tiles.
Kyros stood in the frame of the destroyed doorway, his snarling breaths heavy. How did he get here so fast?
“Spy,” he growled.
Black dots crept across my vision, yet I still had room to be confused by that single word he uttered.
My knees gave way, my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. I’d been frightened to death? That’s what it felt like.
Impossible.
Yet it wasn’t.
I’m dying.
I was a gazelle caught in a lion’s sight and all I could do was accept my fate. I wavered in kneeling, the monster’s seething silhouette blurring.
His footsteps echoed closer.
This is it.
A hand brushed my hair back and, in a menacing voice that would haunt me to the end of my days, the vampire whispered low, “You’re not going anywhere.”
He sat me up and gripped my chin, shaking my face a few times. I was limp as a doll. My eyes somehow met his.
That was all it took.
I couldn’t look away. His eyes were so very green. Now, they blazed into my very soul and the control I’d always had over my mind and body disappeared.
“Breathe,” he commanded.
My chest lifted, the expansion of my ribs dragging air into my lungs.
After that, my body remembered how the job went, but spent, I sagged forward against Kyros. He stood and let me smack against the cold tiles.
“How long have you been in their pocket?” he snapped over me.
I sucked in breath after painful breath. Not a single crumb of energy remained within me.
On my back, I stared at the man glaring down at me. Not a man. A vampire.
Kyros stopped, tilting his head as he contemplated me.
“You’re not dying before I know what you’ve told them.” The words ripped from his chest like a tiger’s furious warning, and he crouched to pick me up in much the same way the woman had picked up her dead lover.
This time he took the elevator.
I was moving farther from the street. Away from humans. I was going to die—that was clear. But Kyros’s words finally squeezed through my brain.
He thought I was a spy?
For who?
Scrap that thought. Only one thing mattered.
“Not spy,” I rasped, my head lolling.
His jaw was clenched so hard it was a wonder his teeth hadn’t shattered. “You were caught on Level 44 in the middle of the night. Tell me, who did the blood belong to? It wasn’t one of mine.”
The blood puddle by reception.
The woman sprinted up the stairs with her boyfriend, and Kyros came down after. I’d assumed he came because she went to find him.
“I saw you on the cameras standing in reception. Don’t deny it, human.”
He’d seen me staring at the liquid remains of Ryder.
Ding!
The doors opened and Kyros began to run. Or whatever this was. The halls blurred in a mess of grey and bright lights. I moaned, clutching at the front of his crisp white shirt.
He came to a brutal stop, and I clamped a hand against my mouth. Theme parks were my jam, but nearly dying had pushed my body to its limits.
Shoving nausea back, I was flopped onto a metal chair. Kyros strapped my arms and legs into restraints on the framing. The thought of me escaping was laughable. I couldn’t have moved at all—except to fall on my face.
But if he’d strapped me here to make me panic, then mission accomplished.
“Kyros,” I pleaded, trying not to jerk on the restraints. “This is a misunderstanding.” The words slurred together.
He strode to a cabinet and removed a vial.
What the fuck was that?
I tugged at my restraints with the strength of a newborn kitten. “No.”
Blurring back, he plunged the needle into my thigh.
I screamed as life exploded within me. Energy, too much energy, seared through my veins. It couldn’t get out. An itch under my skin. I thrashed to be free. The desperation to move hit my mind in a clamouring chorus of bells. A thousand voices chattered in my ears.
Adrenaline injection.
“Kyros, let me go,” I shrieked. “Get me out.”
He gripped my hair, wrenching my head so I arched back over the chair. “What did you tell Clan Fyrlia?”
Tears of pain stung my eyes, but my muscles coiled at snapping point. “Tell who?”
“Who do you answer to?”
“Please,” I sobbed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His top lip curled, revealing dreadful fangs. A whimper left me.
“Then again, they would have ensured you couldn’t reveal anything. No matter, I can work around that.”
My legs attempted to bounce up and down. My hands formed tight fists. Loose, tight, loose, tight, loose, tight.
I shook my head to clear my tripping vision.
He dipped his head to catch my gaze.
I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried.
“What were you doing on Level 44 tonight?” he demanded. His deep voice ricocheted through me.
My mouth moved, words flowing freely. “I got kicked out of my apartment for not paying rent. I went to the library. It was dark when I left. The buses had stopped running. I was scared of walking in the dark. Angelica gave me a key last Friday. I decided to sleep under my desk.”
He hissed a string of words over his shoulder, and someone answered.
There were others in the room.
I was frozen to his will but could still think despite being unable to do anything about it. Maybe these people could help. I’d yell for help when I could.
“Continue,” he said, face showing his disgust.
“A woman came to reception with a man. I wanted to check where they were so they didn’t find me. I thought they were just having sex, then she bit him.” My body shook anew. My feeble human mind was trying to put the world back together again, but like Humpty Dumpty’s shell, there was not a chance in hell of it happening.
“She bit him and didn’t stop. He died. She picked him up, saying you could help.” I continued against my will.
His grip tightened. “No one came to me.”
“His name was Ryder,” I gasped.
Footsteps. “Sir?”
The monster’s meadow-green eyes didn’t budge from mine. “Did you give her keys?”
“I did, sir. She was to open on Monday because of the meetings you scheduled for me.”
It was Angelica.
Was she a vampire too?
I choked on a whimper.
Kyros’s lips pressed together. “She was kicked out of her apartment today. What do you know of that?”
“She asked for payment on Friday evening for the hours worked. I said no, as per our policy. She mentioned that would render her unable to make rent.”
Every word from her lips seemed to make him angrier. I wouldn’t have any hair left by the end of this.
Though I’d be dead, so that didn’t matter.
“Deana?” he asked.
My body didn’t react, held immobile in his power. Or maybe his eyes. The eye contact appeared crucial to rob me of control. I didn’t know how the vampire was doing it, just that I couldn’t escape the snare of his gaze.
“In her room, sir.”
I couldn’t see the man who spoke, but he continued. “With a dead human. A man called Ryder who she’d been seeing for some time.”
More footsteps. Another voice. I could only see the person’s business shoes.
“There was a bag under her desk, Kyros. It contained clothing and toiletries,” Business Shoes said.
“Fuck,” Kyros muttered.
He shifted his gaze and removed the hand from my hair. It was almost more painful to be free.
My head slumped forward, my entire body trembling. The first burst of the adrenaline injection had dissipated, but the uncomfortable wired feeling under my skin was still present.
“I think she’s telling the truth,” the same man said.
Kyros stood before me, his stance wide. “We can’t know that. She could be under their blood compulsion. Unless we break through it, we won’t know for sure.”
Angelica hovered just behind him. “Sir, if Miss Tetley is telling the truth, and she has only just discovered we exist, she’ll need to be compelled by blood regardless. Or be dealt with.”
There it was. The declaration of my doom from the same fucking woman who’d hired me.
My ragged inhales and exhales disturbed the pregnant silence.
You will always succeed.
I had to try.
For my grandmother’s sake. For Tommy. They’d never know what happened to me.
“I won’t say anything,” I managed, the lingering adrenaline shaking my voice.
Everyone but Angelica laughed quietly.
“Why do they always say that?” Business Shoes asked.
My head snapped up. I glowered at the sandy blond. “Because I want to live, you fucking dumbass.”
The room hushed.
Angelica hummed. “They don’t usually say that.”
The man scowled at her, and she smirked.
Kyros stepped closer, and I slammed back against the chair, fully craning my neck as he approached. He was a demon. A beast. A soulless evil. He—
“There has been a mistake, Miss Tetley,” he said, crouching to undo my shackles. He took my shaking hands in his after. “If not for your own mistakes, and for a disobedient young member of my clan, you would not be in this position. Yet here you are, and now we must proceed. You have said that you wish to survive. Noting that, there’s one path forward. Blood compulsion is a permanent insurance that you won’t bring harm to my people. If you go through with the compulsion, it will guarantee you don’t share the secret of our kind. You’ll live, with restrictions.”
“Which are?” I found myself asking the monster.
Business Shoes snickered. “Is she negotiating?”
Angelica’s brows were climbing too.
“You will work for me until I determine whether you’re trustworthy or not. If not, you will undergo a further compulsion to mute you regarding anything to do with Kyros Sky and Live Right—not only your knowledge about our race. Let me tell you from experience, Miss Tetley, secrets can destroy relationships unlike anything else and so destroy you in the doing.”
Angelica and Business Shoes exchanged a glance.
Kyros’s eyes remained locked with mine, but he didn’t seize control of me as before. “You will stay in this tower for the duration of your trial. Those are the restrictions.”
The choice wasn’t hard. I was strapped to a chair and the alternative was death. “What is the duration of the trial?”
Business Shoes cracked another smirk.
“However long I decide.” Kyros reached over and undid my restraints.
I rubbed my raw wrists. “I accept.”
“Very wise,” he said drily.
Angelica cleared her throat. “Twenty minutes until the dice roll, sir.”
What that meant, I had no clue. Maybe all vampires gathered for Yahtzee on a Sunday night. High-pitched laughter caught in my throat. I doubled over, snorting and choking.
Vampires playing Yahtzee. It was in my head now. Shit.
Ringing hoots erupted from my lips, and I cradled my stomach, slithering down on the chair until my head rested on the back.
“Is she okay in the head, Kyros?”
“No.”
It wasn’t enough to hunt me and torture me. No. He had to insult me too. Loathing ripped through my weary body as the laughter siphoned away.
“Fifteen minutes,” Angelica announced.
“Let’s get this over with.” Kyros bent down.
I slapped at his hands as he made to pick me up. Unsurprisingly, that stopped him not one single bit. His arm circled my back, the other beneath my knees.
“Sir,” Angelica said slowly. “Surely you don’t mean to complete the blood compulsion yourself.”
“She’s right, Kyros. That’s a job for someone else. You need your head in the game tonight.”
“I can try to smooth the incident over in her mind,” Angelica said, darting a look at me.
The vampire holding me considered her words. “There is none more skilled to do the job, but the incident is traumatic. Her mind won’t let go of what happened.”
“Let one of your seconds do it.” The sandy blond cut in.
“If someone from Fyrlia has compelled her to be here, then my blood will break through all holds but one.”
Both vampires bowed.
I kind of felt like a fox pelt or something. Kyros wasn’t affected by my weight in the slightest.
My head lolled and laughter gurgled in my throat.
“She needs rest,” Angelica said. “Her heartbeat is all over the place.”
“I assure you, Angelica, I’m perfectly capable of discerning the same,” Kyros said, his eyes flashing.
She cast her eyes downward immediately.
His hold on me tightened. “Conrad, alert the other seconds that my veto is nullified for the duration of the seventy-two-hour thrall. Their majority vote will override mine during that time. Call Gerome and Lionel to the tower as an extra precaution.”
“Consider it done.”
“Angie. Check Miss Tetley’s phone and text those she’s in contact with. A story to cover the next three days.”
She bowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Everyone. Out.”
I watched a row of people file out of the room. We’d had quite the audience.
When they were gone, Kyros sat on the same seat he’d just tortured me in, cradling me in his arms.
There was a block in my brain. I must have short-circuited in the last few minutes. My mind felt like a scratched, warped music record.
Because I should be struggling to get away. Spitting fiery words at him at least.
I was just so deathly tired.
But I was certain that, if I lived through this, the hate would return. In full force. And never ever fade.
For now, we stared at each other in a strange acceptance of what just happened.
“I’m going to drink from you,” Kyros stated, breaking the calm.
I didn
’t say anything.
“Then you will drink from me.”
I wrinkled my nose.
His eyes narrowed. “I have not elected to compel someone in a long time, Miss Tetley.”
Was he offended?
“You expect me to thank you?” I rasped.
After a beat, he conceded that with a tiny dip of the head.
I rested my cheek against his shoulder, eyelids heavy. “Will it hurt?”
Will I die?
“I will minimise the pain as much as I am able. There will be a pressure in your head. That is the compulsion where I must set the restrictions we spoke of.”
“’Kay,” I mumbled. What other answer was there?
Later, if I lived, I’d deal with the mental fallout of this night from hell.
He sat me up and forced my legs apart so I straddled his thighs. I dragged open an eyelid to glare at him.
“It’s easier this way,” he murmured, vision tunnelled on my neck.
Sure it is. “No sex, Kyros. I mean it. If I want sex during the compulsion, I won’t be in my right mind.”
He cast me a strange look. “You won’t want sex during the exchange.”
If I had energy, I might have been embarrassed. Maybe paranormal novels weren’t an accurate Vampire 101.
“That comes after,” he hissed.
I opened my mouth, but Kyros shoved my head to the side, inhaling the base of my neck. He groaned deep in the back of his throat, chest rumbling under my fingertips.
I squeaked at the sharp pinch as his fangs sliced into my neck.
My thighs clamped around his legs.
I screwed my eyes shut, panting as a whispering pressure built in my head, mounting. A deep voice bounced between my ears, and it echoed back and forced in the confines, doubling back on itself, crisscrossing until I thought I’d pass out.
A plug was pulled and the pressure faded in a flooding rush.
With one last, lengthy draught, Kyros’s fangs retracted. I jolted. The pain was worse coming out than going in.
“Conrad,” Kyros called. “Be ready to intervene if necessary. I don’t want to bed this human.”
Didn’t everyone leave the room?
Blood rolled over my collarbone, and the huge vampire dipped his head, licking upward over the bite he’d created.
He kept licking, a rumble vibrating in his chest almost like a purr.
Blood Trial: Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers Book 1) Page 12