Page 110 of Nocte

I should leave the shop and return to Caspian, but I can’t. Only Altaris can give the order, and he isn’t around. Only he can free me from this monotony, but he isn’t around.

So, I sweep. I tidy the already neat piles of knick-knacks and books. I sweep the spotless floor. I wipe the windows with a dry rag, and I wait and wait.

No one comes. It’s too late for any shopping now. So very late. I should find Altaris and ask for this shift to end. I start to. I’ve barely reached the small hall when the bells above the door chime.

Ding. Dong.

Someone comes in. A customer.

Not a customer. There are three of them, and they do not seem to desire whatever could be in one of Altaris’ paper bags. Their eyes fixate on me. Greedy, dangerous eyes.

“Hello, beautiful,” one of them says. “You’re a ways from your home, ain’t you?”

Ain’t I? No. Because I have no home. Nowhere without Caspian. Except without Caspian. Unless he wakes up and changes. Unless he decides he no longer wants me.

I swallow hard. Try to remain polite. “Can I help you?”

“We came to buy something,” a second man grumbles, his voice devious and rasping. It crawls over my skin like dry, scraping fingertips.

“Yeah,” the third man laughs, looming tall above the other two. “Buy something.”

Run! The voice comes from nowhere, whispered at the back of my mind. As if I were part of a vamryre collective, it comes. Commands.

Niamh, run!

I reach for the door.

The three men laugh in unison. They stalk toward me. Reach toward me.

I tug on the doorknob, but it doesn’t turn. The door won’t open. I bang on it, but it refuses to open.

“Altaris?” My voice rings out. Silence answers. “Altaris!”

I bang on the door.

The men descend.

One of them snatches my wrist and drags me back, lays me flat on top of the counter beneath three sets of peering eyes.

“A beauty, ain’t she?” One of them hisses. “Bet she’ll fetch a nice right price.”

“She better,” the first man replies, rummaging through his black coat. “But the bastard wanted us to check her first. Catalog her and what not. Stupid vampire prick. Thinks he has us on a leash or something.” He finds what he’s looking for and raises it. A knife, gleaming and wicked.

He raises it. Another man extends my wrists and raises it.

The knife descends and bites and tears.

“Jesus, Ace! Don’t cut er’ fucking hand off. We need her intact. At least somewhat. We need her holes intact, at least.”

The man with the knife lowers it. Hisses in annoyance. “Didn’t work. The sample must not be large enough or sumthin.”

“What do you mean, it didn’t work?” The second man snatches the blade. Lowers it.

Straight down into my chest.

I breathe blood. Bleed it out in torrents and drops—but beneath my skin. The knife in my chest keeps it all in.

Until the man rips the blade out and lowers it again. A noise sounds. Above my screaming, a noise sounds. Ding. Ding.