It was like coming face-to-face with a serpent. Charm and hospitality dripped from his voice, but behind it all—a void. His expression exuded warmth… but Ruby knew. She felt. Something dreadfully, terribly wrong flowed from him. From nearly everyone else in this room. She darted a quick glance around. Several others gazed at her. Her breath caught at their silver eyes. How the hell was it possible for them to all have the same freakish eyes?
“Amy,” she whispered, her lips barely moving as her hand inched toward the girl. Her pulse raced at her neck. “Come with me. Now.”
“Why don’t you beat it?” Emily snapped beside a very big leather-clad tattooed man who looked old enough to be her father. “Amy doesn’t need you for a mother. Why don’t you go have a kid of your own and stop trying to mother us?”
Ruby’s gaze crept back to the man, the serpent. Gunter cocked his head, studying her as though she were some rare specimen, a field mouse to devour. But something in his look struck her as familiar. It was a look she had seen before—regardless that it came from a pair of unnatural eyes.
It was the look she received when someone realized she was not what she seemed, not quite right, not normal. He knew it. He saw that. Her father gave her that look. Her grandparents. Her kindergarten teacher. On occasion, even her mother had looked at her that way.
“It’s too late to go now. You will stay,” he purred in his thick accent, staring down at her with glinting eyes. “I shall enjoy you, I think.”
The door closed shut then. The sound of the bolt falling into place on the other side sent a vibration straight to her heart. The servant was gone.
Amy’s breath changed beside her, released in a nervous titter. A shaky smile curved her mouth.
“Open those doors,” Ruby demanded.
“I can’t.” Gunter lifted one shoulder in a mild shrug. “It’s locked from the outside.”
“Chill out, Ruby.” Despite the flip words, Ruby felt the niggle of unease worming through Amy. She needed to build on that, needed to get the girl on board with her so they could get out of this. Whatever this was…
“Freak out enough?” Emily rolled her eyes and turned back to her tattooed friend.
“Sit. Relax. Enjoy.” Gunter waved to the table behind them, very much the host. “Have something to eat. The fun is about to begin.”
Ruby pressed close to Amy. “What kind of fun?”
“Oh… entertainment. If you would excuse me a moment.” With an enigmatic smile, he left them to talk to someone else.
Ruby wrapped a hand around Amy’s arm, vowing to never let go. Whatever happened. And something was about to happen. A thread of expectation laced the air. Readiness. Faint but there.
Emily lounged on a couch on the other side of the room now, smoking a cigarette with a growing collection of admirers.
Ruby swept her gaze over the room. No windows. Just enclosed space and stale air that swirled with tobacco smoke and a heavy shot of black hunger. That hunger deepened. Swallowing the strange void of before.
“Amy, we have to get out of here.” The girl’s skin quivered beneath her grasp. Apprehension. Fear. “Something really bad is going to happen.”
Loneliness. Regret. “I think you’re right,” Amy whispered.
“You’re not alone, Amy,” she assured, flexing her fingers around the girl’s slim arm, as though she could inject comfort with the promise. “I’m here. I’m with you.”
Surprise. Amy’s wide eyes locked with Ruby. Relief. Biting her bottom lip, she nodding. “Yeah.” Her nodding increased as if she grew strength from Ruby’s pledge. “Yeah. Okay. How? How are we going to get out of here?”
Scanning the room, that question echoed with a chill down her spine. Her gaze snagged on a vent set high in the wall. She shook her head. Everyone would notice the two of them clawing the wall to climb through the air duct. Still, it was a way out…
The air in the room changed subtly, shifted. The laughter ceased. Voices turned, lifted, took on an edge. Confusion. Alarm.
She dropped her gaze from the vent, feeling the rising hysteria, marking it in the faces of those that backed away from some of the others, people that seemed to be… sick. Whatever was happening to them, they reveled in it. Exhilaration. Pleasure-pain, sharp as a blade. They writhed, hunkered at the waists, faces contorting as though in great torment. Glass shattered. Someone pounded at the door.
Amy stepped toward one man, her hand outstretched to lend help. “Are you—”
Brutal, clawing need spilled from the stranger.
“Amy, no!” Ruby tugged the girl back.
Amy pulled free and bent over the man, laying one small hand over his back. “He needs help!”
Fear. Ruby tasted it. Bitter and acrid in her mouth.
Desperate, she latched onto the teenager’s hand again. “The only one right now who needs help is us!” Even not understanding what was happening, she understood enough to run. In the cramping, twisting pit of her belly, she knew they were in danger.
Her gaze swept the walls again, over the bolted door, searching frantically, as though a window would appear that had not been there before.
She ran her tongue over the edge of her teeth, the fear a coppery tang there.
Then pain slammed into her, bowing her over with a scream.
Something warm tickled the top of her lip. Her fingers flew there, brushing wetness. Pulling her hand back, blood covered her fingertips. Her stomach cramped harder. She only suffered nosebleeds around another’s pain. Acute physical pain.
Her gaze again landed on the screened air duct at the same moment screams ripped over the thrum of voices. More pain rose up then, acrid as burnt feathers, and she moved.
“Amy! Amy! C’mon!” She shoved the table laden with drink and food against the wall, but it was too late. A glance over her shoulder revealed Amy—what remained of her—engulfed in a man’s arms. Covered in blood.
Only he was no longer a man at all.
None of them were.
4
Where men once stood, grotesque creatures crashed throughout the room, snarling, hissing, destroying furniture… destroying life.
Large and beast-like. Brown, black, tawny-red. Their faces twisted with engorged bones, fierce and hideous. Monstrosities.
Clawed fists ripped into guests who laughed and drank only moments ago.
Pain. Pain. Pain.
Their agony drowned her. Her knees buckled and she grabbed the edge of the table to stop from falling. Blood coursed from her nose, running over her lips, dripping down her chin.
Swiping at her mouth so she didn’t swallow, she pressed herself into the hard edge of the table and clung, shaking from the pain, from the brutal sledgehammer of death after death.
Dark spots danced before her eyes. Blackness threatened, trying to pull her in—an escape from the overwhelming agony.
One of the beasts caught her in his sights. She felt his awareness of her, his excitement, his rush of conquest. Gunter. He no longer looked like a man, but she knew.
Her mouth dried, a scream trapped in her lungs as the monster charged her, launching over his fellow brethren busy mauling the victims caught in their clutches. That black hunger reached her, stronger, darker, crazed in its absolute power.
Another guest, arms flailing with panic as she tried to escape, staggered between Ruby and the oncoming creature. Ruby ducked and slid beneath the table, cringing as the woman’s scream added to the screeching din of misery… a scream that could have been hers. Might as well have been her own for the pain that twisted inside her. White-hot torment surrounded her and urged her to curl into as tight a ball as possible and vanish. Disappear.
Only she couldn’t.
Sucking in a deep breath, she crawled atop the table, her movements rushed, clumsy. Standing, her hands brushed the screen. So close. On her tiptoes, she wedged her fingers beneath the screen and wall and yanked the thin metal sheet free, sending the tiny screws flying.
Adrenaline f
ed her with a strength she did not know she possessed as she pulled herself up. Arms quivering, she hefted herself inside the narrow air duct.
Air sawed from her lips in deep pain-filled drags as she crawled. She didn’t dare stop to rest. To think. To regain her breath. Her elbows slammed against metal as she worked.
Heart hammering, pulse racing, she swiped again at her bleeding nose. Pain still chased her. If she didn’t escape, she’d probably bleed to death. If the monsters didn’t get to her first.
Hot tears streamed her face as she crawled. Every fiber of her being ached, screaming as she moved at feverish speed.
She dragged herself along, not knowing where she headed, only caring that she moved away from the slaughter, the pain and fiendish creatures that she could not yet wrap her thoughts around.
It seemed like hours. Cold air washed over her flesh. The narrow tunnel shook, vibrating with the cries and screams of those left behind. Pain trailed her, dug deep into her bones.
She reached another vent. Peering though the screen, she eyed below, recognizing the area from earlier—mosaic tiles, the great front room she had passed through after entering the building. Empty. Palms out, she shoved the screen free. It clattered to the ground below, and she waited, holding her ragged breath in the silence, half expecting, half fearing those same creatures would charge into the room like hounds alerted.
Hearing nothing, she slowly stuck out her head. The duct was too small for her to turn her body around, so she had to grit her teeth and plunge out into the room, praying she did not break her neck.
She fell shoulder first onto the cushioned seat of an armchair, breaking it into several pieces. Amid the broken furniture, she clambered to her feet and rushed to the front door, ready to burst free into the night, away from the madness, the nightmare from which she would wake at any moment.
She felt him before he grabbed her.
Elation. Thrill.
A hard hand spun her around and she faced the same man who had led her into that cesspit of carnage and then bolted the door. “How did you escape?”
He began pulling her deeper into the building. She resisted, envisioning him tossing her back in that room. Despite his slim frame, he was stronger. Her heels slid over the slick floor.
“This is a first. No one has escaped before. Very clever of you. They’re going to be furious, though.” He scowled. “Now what am I going to do with you?”
“No!” she screamed as she fought, crazed. He would have to kill her before forcing her back in with those… things. With so much torture and agony. And death.
She could almost hear Adele’s voice. This is why you should have stayed put in Beau Rivage. You have no business moving about in the world.
Just as her grandmother claimed all those years ago following her mother’s funeral service, only not as harsh as her: You should be locked up.
In a final surge of strength, she stomped on his foot and bolted.
She didn’t get far. He tackled her from behind, the force sending her tumbling with a hard smack onto the floor. Flipping her over, he glared down at her.
“I won’t go back in that room.” She would not experience those deaths again. Not the pain. Not if she could help it. “I won’t go back in there. I won’t!” Her voice rang shrill.
Tsking his tongue, he explained, “I can’t open those doors until sunrise. I wouldn’t be fool enough to risk my own life.”
It all happened slowly then. She watched his fingers curl into a fist.
“But I can’t let you go. For now, this should be sufficient. They will be pleased with me in this at least.”
Pain exploded in her face, then… nothing.
“I can’t imagine how she escaped, Master. No one has ever done so before.”
Ruby did not stir even as the voice with the plaintive edge penetrated the heavy fog in her head. She froze every muscle, held her breath and waited, thinking, trying to assess her situation with her eyes closed. Her face ached, especially the area below her right eye.
“That doesn’t mean no one could. Some ingenious soul committed enough to survival would eventually have done so.” Footsteps drew closer. “She knew something was amiss the moment she arrived in the room. You should never have let her pass through the door, Conrad. We’ve survived all these years by avoiding surprises… and sticking to protocol.”
A soft mattress cushioned her. Apparently the loyal retainer had been kind enough to place her on a bed after he knocked her out.
She listened, opening herself up to the emotions swirling around her, gauging the danger. Beneath the servant’s ingratiating need to please, a wiretight unease hummed from him, as if he knew he dealt with a wild animal that at any moment might turn deadly.
His master spoke again, voice sharp with reprimand. “You should never have brought her in after the door was bolted.”
“But, Master, she came looking for two of the girls. I thought it best to let her in. What if—”
“I don’t keep you on to think, Conrad.” Annoyance. “Follow my bidding and do not act of your own accord again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master.” A sigh followed the subdued comment. Resignation. Relief. “I checked her identification. She’s American.”
She stifled the urge to reach for her money belt and check if it still remained on her body. The impulse quickly fled at the sudden hand on her leg.
Avarice. Lust. “Let me have her. She smells fresh. I bet she’s a virgin.”
A female snorted and Ruby felt her disdain as sharp as a knife to her neck. “A virgin? What’s wrong with her?”
The truth hit a nerve. Her curse prevented her from becoming close with any man. Intimate. She had tried. Her record was four dates. Then she either ran, spooked by emotions she picked up over dessert: boredom, or worse—lust. The guys who spent the entire date in a state of arousal sent her running for the hills. The bored ones, the safe ones, she stuck with, hoping she could evoke their interest. Eventually. She inevitably ran them off, her gift manifesting and scaring them away.
Like the time she stopped her date from biting into his burger. He’d been rude to the waiter, and from the hovering server’s anxious glee, she had sensed he’d done something to the burger. When she had knocked the burger from Derek’s hand, he looked at her as though she were a freak and never called again.
“Can she not attract a man?” the female sneered.
“She has no failings there.” The touch on her leg lifted, moving to her breast, sending her flying up on the bed. Nothing could make her to suffer that.
She scrambled close to the headboard, eyeing the room’s four occupants.
The bastard—Conrad—who had cold-cocked her blinked in surprise. The other three, two men and a woman, seemed more intrigued than surprised. Heads angled, they observed her as if she were some sort of carnival exhibit, their gazes an eerie silver that glowed in the sunlit room. They filled her with coldness, as if ice hardened their veins. She recognized Gunter instantly.
“You,” she breathed, throat tightening as the memory of him shifting into a beast froze her heart cold.
He nodded, a scary smile fixed to his face. “Sleep well? Sorry you had to rush out last night. You missed a lovely party.”
A curse rose on her tongue, ready to fly, but it never fell. Tears burned her eyes as the memory of last night—Amy—slammed into her, locking her in fresh horror.
Her gaze slid over each of them. She spied an open door just beyond Conrad’s left. She vaulted toward it.
Hard arms locked around her waist. Her legs flailed, kicking wildly in the air. Her captor laughed. The hollow sound scraped her nerves, echoing the humming silence she felt from him. Nothingness. Bleak desolation.
“Put her down, Yusuf.” The silver-eyed devil released her, his hands sliding off her body with agonizing slowness.
She dropped on the edge of the bed.
Yusuf smoothed back his long hair and repeated the familiar request. “Give her
to me. I like her fight.”
“Enough with your selfish desires.” Gunter sliced a hand through the air. “You should be well sated after last night. I have another plan for her.”
The ominous words shivered down her spine. Ruby dug her fingers into the mattress, a fingernail cracking from the pressure, not liking the sudden intent look coming over Gunter’s face.
“W-what?” she managed to get out, feeling every bit of his satisfaction. His self-congratulatory attitude swept through her, raising the tiny hairs at her neck.
“Have no fear,” he assured her in mocking tones, moving toward her, one hand outstretched. She cringed at the sight of his long nails, buffed to a pink sheen. “You may have missed last night’s fun. But I have something even better planned for you. I’ve been looking for a special female, and I’m convinced you’re just the one.”
5
Sebastian raised his head at the sound of the door unlocking. Gunter entered the cell’s dank confines, impeccably dressed, hair neat and crisp from a recent shower. And yet he brought with him the odor of death. Last night’s kills clung to him, imbedded in his pores as he moved into the room.
With the glow of dusk fading from the small window set high in the wall, Sebastian knew the second night of moonrise neared. He marked it in the pull of his bones, in their overwhelming urge to bend and stretch. Especially with the aroma of freshly spilled blood sinking down to his cell. Wicked and enticing to the hunger clenching his stomach. He had heard the cries last night. Smelled the blood of the fallen. It had only intensified his misery.
And it was misery. Like nothing he’d known before. The beast had never felt so alive, so ready to break free. He never turned unless he willed it. Unless he wanted it to happen.
Annika sank down beside him and lowered those beautiful, cruel hands to his bare flesh. “I’ve missed you, pet.”
“I bet,” he bit out.
Then he noticed the girl. Smelled her.
One of Gunter’s soldiers dragged her forward by a single wrist. The human struggled, dark hair tossing wildly as she kicked, feet scrabbling, grappling for ground.
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