by Kaia Bennett
My tormentor grinned at whatever expression crossed my face. He grinned before he kissed the girl’s temple. He grinned when he palmed her small breasts in his eager hand. By the time he shoved a hand down her sweatpants and fucked her with merciless fingers, I wanted to cut his lips off with the knife buried in my stomach. His victim cried silently, tears streaking between the blindfold and her face. I knew he kept the cloth on so I’d see Evie’s eyes every time the girl cried out for him to stop.
This used to get me so hard. Watching a kill. Making a kill. I lived for moments like the one Cai performed for my torment, in the most literal sense. Yet now, my mind screamed for Evie. A stranger inhabited my skin. All the same buttons could be pressed, all the lights would come on, same as before. But I didn’t live here anymore, not the way I used to. I’d become a visitor in my own bloodlust.
“You tell me where she is, and I promise not to fuck her the way I’m going to fuck this girl. You can even have one last night with her before we pull her spine out.”
The girl screamed, but I barely heard her. He let the girl go and she stumbled away. She ripped off the blindfold and sprinted for the door. Regret dissolved her determination when she spun and took in her surroundings. Her eyes grew wide as saucers and she stared at the healing cadaver-like wounds, the blood covering my limbs from the shoulders down.
“Oh my God! W-what kind of sick fuck a-are you?”
I laughed out loud. The girl clamped a hand over her mouth at the sound emanating from what should’ve been a corpse.
Sick fuck. A witch had huddled against the wall, covered in a sheet and refusing to wear a dead girl’s clothes. She’d called me a sick fuck for suggesting she don them. Hadn’t she been right? Bloodlust meant sickness. It’d taken the sweet poison of my mate’s blood to see the truth in a world full of blind vampires. Just as I’d done when Evie asked the same question, Cai gave the girl a remorseless reply.
“I’m the kind who sucks human blood to stay alive.” He peeled his shirt off and unbuckled his belt. The girl pounded on the door, shrieked for help, wrenched on the handle with all her strength until I thought she’d shake herself unconscious. When that didn’t work, she searched the room with crazed eyes. She ran along the length of the wall adjacent to the door, a wall covered in dark paned glass. Two way mirrors, for when torture had an audience.
“I’ve been at this a long time.” He spoke to me as he slid his slacks off. “The nuances never cease to amaze me, though. Whether it’s one of us, or a human, or a witch, there’s always that moment when the prey gives up. You know what I’m talking about.”
I did. I used to live for the moment when hope wilted in my prey’s eyes.
“You never know when, especially with humans. They’re little bundles of fear with personalities, each one with a different pitch, a different breaking point. You can almost taste the moment you’ve stolen hope from them entirely.”
He ignored the girl scrambling for escape and leaned a hand on the rack.
“I wonder if that isn’t why you kept Evie alive?” He gave me the same pity-filled assessment he’d given Evie the night she died. I almost bought the sympathy on his pretty face. “I wonder if you just didn’t know how to break her and you wanted another crack at it. Or is Altani correct? Maybe you, out of all the vampires in the world, have found true love.” He chuckled.
I swallowed, averting my gaze.
Cai became the serpent in human stories, offering me the apple I’d wanted since I drowned Evelyn Marie Pierce. I wanted to be a predator and nothing more. I wanted everything I’d done to her—from the moment I decided to keep her alive, to the moment I gave her my venom—to be an accident. I wanted to be the fool who’d lost the first battle, but brought her back, and won the war.
The truth stared me in the face, and terror suffused me. A young girl who looked nothing like my mate, and everything like her, made me more determined than ever to keep Evie safe. My wallet still carried Evie’s license, because I wanted something of hers to hold onto. For days after I thought her dead, I kept the clothes covered in her scent. When I found the necklace I’d placed on her throat in Vaughn’s pocket, I’d felt unbridled rage. I’d stroked the golden feather necklace, wishing I could place the chain around her living throat again. The truth had never been far away from my mind.
In the real world, Cai’s surrogate for Evie lunged for the wall of torture implements, a mass of dark curls springing behind her. She grabbed a large knife and spun to face Cai, wielding the blade in front of her with trembling hands.
This girl would fight, just like Evie had, but she’d lose.
My stomach churned and the wounds in my gut healed and bled anew. My body struggled to force the foreign object out, and slowly but surely my healing abilities would. But first, I’d have to watch Cai feed with a knife stuck in my gut.
“Come sit on my lap like a good girl,” Cai commanded. He swept a chair away from the wall and slammed the legs down in front of me. He tilted his head and patted his thigh like he’d summon a skittish dog.
“Open the door and let me out of here and I won’t cut off your dick and shove it down your throat.”
Cai gave her a short bark of laughter. “Oh no. That sounds really painful. Do you promise not to hurt me if I let you out? I’m very fond of my dick.” He pretended to muse over the loss of the member he stroked. “You look like you mean business. I should let you go.”
“Yes! You should!” Tears rained down her face. Salt and fear peppered the air. I wanted the flavors on my tongue, along with her blood.
My stomach churned with hunger. Every breath hurt. Cai’s proverbial apple glistened with sweat under the cold lights. The apple angled toward the door, taking tentative steps while keeping the serpent in her sights.
Appetite warred with a conscience I’d never before had. What if that was Evie circling Cai with flagging hope? Would I still be hungry? Would I remember fondly all the times I’d made her face wear the same anguished mask?
Did the idea of her being hurt fill me with rage, or just the idea of Cai touching my possession? My pet.
No. My mate. The vampire I made. The witch I love.
I knew my answer. Cai could manipulate my hunger, but what he offered couldn’t satiate me. I didn’t want to kill this girl. I wouldn’t give Evie up. If Cai ever touched my mate I’d murder him slowly. If she lived, I’d give her the knife and let her hurt him until she’d had a bellyful of his pain.
With speed the girl didn’t understand, our captor charged, then stopped just in front of her. She buried the knife several times in his gut, took out the blade and raised her weapon overhead to drive the point into his neck. Cai grabbed her wrist easily, the edges of his angled eyes crinkling as laughter and blood bubbled from his lips.
“That’s a dangerous weapon you’re carrying. You should let me hold it for you, okay, Evie?”
She shook her head, disbelieving, and whimpered when he took the knife from her fist. She flinched at the thud of the handle, the clink of the blade hitting the smooth white floor. As if in a daze she whispered, “My name’s not Evie. My name’s Janae. I have a family—”
The snap of his hand across her face made my breath hitch. My cock strained at the sight of blood pooling on her lower lip. The girl staggered and clutched Cai’s arms. She tried to blink away her unfocused gaze, her head bobbing, then straightening. Her wide-eyed stare settled on Cai’s golden chest before she burst into tears again.
“Your name is Evie. Say it.”
Her lip wobbled. The vampire ignored her and knelt to drag her sweatpants down her hips. He lifted first one ankle then the other and slid the cloth aside.
“My name’s Janae Beckford, I have a dad and two older sisters!”
She screeched before he slapped her again. This time the girl collapsed onto the floor. She shook her head and exhaled a startled breathe. Crimson splatter from her abused mouth marked the cold white floor.
“Your name is Evie. Say it. Say ‘my name is Evi
e’.”
Cai knelt and swiped a thumb over her lips before sucking the ruby juice into his mouth. He toyed with the flinching girl’s long curls next. “You saw the wall you pulled the knife from, yes? You see that man on the rack. If you want me to be mean, I can be mean, Evie. Right now all I want is a little role playing. A little obedience.” His hand roved smoothly down her side, caressing her skin, squeezing her hip. “What’s your name?”
“E-Evie,” she sniffled.
“Good girl.” Cai palmed the girl’s plump ass and slid his fingers between the cheeks to touch her sex. She coughed through sobs.
“Now say, ‘My name’s Evie, and I belong to Cai’. That’s me by the way, I’m Cai. Nice to meet you, Evie.”
The girl had become a shiver with skin, one endless tremor after another, despite how still she’d gone as Cai stroked her cunt.
“M-my n-name’s Evie. And… a-and… I… I belong to….”
“Good girl, go on and finish.”
“I belong to Cai.”
I thought of the inferno in the forest. I thought of flames licking my bones, devouring the world. Unbearable heat pooled like blood in my gut and I stared at the ceiling with gritted teeth. Barbed wire had been twisted around the bloody mass in my chest, and with every beat the barbs sank deeper, the wire squeezed tighter.
Fuck. Evie, if you can feel anything from me at all, feel this. Run. Get as far away from me and my kind as you can.
“All together now. Say it like you mean it.”
“My name is Evie and I belong to Cai.”
“Mmm.” Cai licked the girl’s involuntary juices off his fingers, then grabbed those long curls and dragged her on her hands and knees toward my chair.
The slap of her hands on the smooth floor were like teasing smacks to my dick. Frictionless pain stoked desire. But, every time the beast inside me licked his lips, the cotton ball of conscience Evie had stuck in me like a parasite reared its fluffy head. Every hunger pang came with a price, with visions of a face I wanted to see again, but could only save if I stayed far away.
There had to be a way to reach my bond witch. My father couldn’t keep me on this rack forever trying to carve information out of me. He had a schedule to keep too.
Think, Jesse. Think!
How could I, when Cai took a seat in the chair he dragged from the corner, placed just so I had a great view when he shoved his cock into the girl’s mouth? He didn’t fuck her viciously. Locking his fingers behind her head, he pumped steadily into her throat. When she choked and slapped at his thighs, his chest, and the bloody stains on his healed stomach, he lunged in deeper. He held her there until she heaved and thick ropes of spit and bubbles coated his shaft and the deep red blush at the head. His breathing barely changed. His unnatural calm in the face of bloodlust terrified me.
“You’ll thank me for lubing this up for you later, Evie.” I doubted she heard him over her gasp of oxygen after release. Of course, she cried and coughed, and of course, he toyed with her all the more. Cai dropped his voice to the soothing velvet of concern, and wiped the girl’s face clean of spittle and snot with a gentle palm.
Then, he lifted her and turned her so she sat on his lap, facing me. She tried to look away from the carnage and the hideous strangeness of my still-healing form. I should be dead with a knife stuck in my guts if I were human. I knew the expression on my face didn’t say, ‘I’m dying,’ but rather, ‘I’m furious and starving.’ Her hair blocked her face. I thought of my mate turning her face from me in disgust and horror as I descended on her. I thought of all the ways I’d hurt her and tried to think. Tried to breathe.
“Say it again, so Jesse can hear you.”
The girl wailed. Cai spread her legs open on his lap, forcing her to straddle his thighs. His cock bobbed against the parted lips of her cunt like an accusatory finger pointing at me, telling me this is what I wanted, that I was no different than him. She covered her cunt with both hands, and our captor let her, for a moment. He used her reprieve to sweep her hair from her face, holding the lengthy mass in a make-shift ponytail.
“We’re still playing the game. Tell Jesse who you are and who you belong to.”
He jerked her head for emphasis. No hiding from me now, unless she closed her eyes, which she did.
“My name is Evie and I belong to Cai.”
“That’s right. Every part of you.” A large hand, swept down her neck, over her small, high breasts, catching on her fear-hardened nipples. The girl sniffled, and her thighs flexed with the impulse to shut them, while Cai’s steady hand traveled lower. He spread his feet wider and stretched the tendons in her thighs. “Move your hands so Jesse can see all the things that belong to me.”
“Please, don’t do this. Please. I can u-use m-my mouth again, please!”
“Is this how she cried when you fucked her, Jesse? Or did she moan and beg like she did at the lake house? Did you do her nice and slow, or fuck her bloody over and over?”
Cai shooed the girl’s hands away and I watch her sex clench at the exposure. I watched the once buffed and perfectly manicured fingers of our captor swirl with measured brushes against her clit. His fingers were reddish-brown with my dried blood.
“You’ve been uncooperative so far, Jesse, but that’s okay. I think I’ll ask Evie some of these questions when I find her. Unless you have something you want to tell me?”
I pressed my lips together and did my best impression of an unbothered vampire with all the time in the world.
Every time the girl’s thighs flexed, Cai opened her more and increased his speed a little. The girl’s pleas for him to stop became frantic. Her tears fell faster. She would come soon. I scented her creaming on his fingers. The juicy sweep of fingertips connecting with manipulated flesh became music to my ears.
Another trick of the trade. I doubt there was a vampire alive who couldn’t push a human’s buttons. Either with drugs or relentless caresses, we knew how to tear apart our prey.
“Say it again,” Cai murmured in her ear, sensing her involuntary orgasm. “Now!”
His first barked order shook her orgasm free as she blurted, “My name is Evie and I belong to Cai!” She came, wailing her tormentor’s name.
He lifted her just enough to touch the head of his cock to her wet entrance and with a ruthless thrust, buried himself, balls deep. The girl squealed in pain but he held her still by her waist. Only then did my father’s errand boy give in to bloodlust. His eyes bloomed black, his fangs emerged, and he fucked his Evie stand-in with slow ferocity. He never took his eyes off my face.
When I couldn’t stop myself from looking, he’d say, “Say it,” and the girl would scream with increasing madness that she was my mate and belonged to the man who would tear the real Evie to pieces if he ever found her.
His fangs sank into her neck with the same violence as his cock plundered her soft cunt. The sounds of feeding undid me, the wet swipe of his fingers over her clit as he rotated his hips in the chair made me roar with hunger. The knife that had steadily eased out of my guts succumbed to gravity and clanked to the floor.
He drained the girl nearly to death, and just when I thought he might put her out of her misery, he pulled his fangs free and gasped in a long and satisfied breath.
He bucked his hips, smacking his rigid flesh against her limp body. The girl swayed with blood loss, moaned and wept and whispered, “My name… I … name… belongs to Cai….”
Cai came deep inside the girl, silent except for a muted grunt.
Drops of pre-come slickened the head of my rock-hard shaft. Every reflexive bob of my cock stretched the thin skin under the half-dried blood. I thought of Evie sitting in a pool of Vaughn’s gore, and sighed at the itchy torment, thinking of the blood that would soon fill the vat under my feet. Cold, congealing, thick globs. The vibrant red would turn nearly black. I knew what Cai would do with all that blood, all that dead liquid. Just the thought made me dry heave even as the dying girl made my ravenous stomach twist.
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My tormenter’s cock slid free, and so did the mess he’d left inside his prey. Viscous drippings stained the edge of the chair and poised there, until I screamed inside my mind for the gooey mass to fall. Slowly, the last strings of protein let go, letting the gore plop onto the tile with a soft thud. I heard every tap.
“Are you hungry, Jesse? I think there’s still a drop or two left in this one.” He shook her by her hair, like a human might rattle a cup when they reached the end of a milkshake, checking for remnants at the bottom. She sagged forward, limp and unresponsive to Cai’s jostling.
“No thanks.” I forced a smile with tight lips. I licked the dryness away and turned my attention to the wall of tools. “What’s next?”
Cai grinned and stood, the girl draped over his arm like an upscale waiter’s towel. He hit the intercom.
“Retrieval. I want her freshened up, fed, and readied in two hours.” He set the girl by the door—gently for a vampire—and moments later, her nearly lifeless body was carried away by a thickset guard.
I closed my eyes. Knowing there would be another bout of Evie-inspired torture enveloped me in weariness. In the meantime, there’d be no breaks. Just torture and hunger. Some vampire on the outside would feed and heal the girl, hose her down and send her to Cai, and I’d grow more ravenous. If Cai let me loose, I’d maim her. Maybe, if he made me delirious enough with hunger, I’d truly believe she’d become Evie. Maybe my desperation would make me slip.
Cai, slick with blood and come, lifted the knife he’d tortured me with off the floor and made a self-satisfied stroll to the wall. He discarded the blade down a mail-like slot, for cleaning.
“The warm-up is out of the way. Let’s have some real fun.”
I swallowed in spite of myself, licking my fangs from behind dry lips as he pulled a pair of pliers off the wall.
“You’re not hungry,” he teased. “So, you won’t need those fangs.” He waved the pliers in the general direction of my mouth as he approached.
My heart stopped. I blinked once. Twice, but Cai sauntered my way, eyes on the dull metal pliers in his hand.