Page 85 of Nocte

“It’s good,” she whispers, as if she’s never understood the concept before. Good food. Better than just palatable food. Like a rich, delicious bloodstream spilling from a gaping neck. A willing neck. Willing blood tastes the sweetest, and she has promised me hers.

That is why I feed her every last bite. I want that heart pumping freely. I want her blood to taste oh, so sweet. Sated and full, she’ll taste better than she would starving and frail.

I need to feed her more. She is different than I. Not a flawless, peerless vamryre, but a weak, nearly-mortal fae. Her body will disintegrate into dust and bones if I’m not careful. I’ve let her be broken beyond repair once already.

I take her hand and pull her into me—protection from the shadows. She is a creature desiring protection. The world looks at her and looms. It doesn’t shy away like the pathetic fae and the others in our old realm.

The mortals look at her here, and they don’t see an ugly thing. Their eyes linger on her—more than they even linger on me. They watch her swallow. Watched her smile in that gallery. Watched her laugh and spin so freely the first moment she set foot here.

She is pretty to them—no, beyond pretty. She is an otherworldly being, shiny and new in their eyes. She is valuable in their eyes. I will have to protect her here. Guard her here.

She is shiny and valuable, and I can see that so very many want to steal her.

But she is mine.

“Is this the place?” she wonders, her lips soft and shiny with grease, her eyes wide and questioning. She sees a building straight ahead. A building we’ve been standing in front of for maybe a minute or more. A building I don’t want to enter.

I can smell that something is off with it. It reeks of deadly, corrupted magic.

The fat mortal can deliver her parcel herself. I won’t.

My little fae catches my attention. I see her, black eyes innocently staring. Heart so innocently pumping. Skin so innocently glistening.

She’s drawn several eyes our way without even trying. Without even realizing it. She’s used to hateful, furtive glances, but these are lingering and wistful. Men here long for her. They rake their gazes over her body with hungry, groping eyes.

And women want her too. They want to coddle her, hold her, and protect her from the dark, wicked things. Too many people are watching her. Staring.

“Come.” I snatch for her wrist and tug her along, closer to that infernal, unwelcoming building. The address on the parcel is the same as the numbers gleaming above a set of main doors in a rusting metal script.

It feels familiar. At the same time, it doesn’t. What is this place, and what use could a mortal mundane have for sending me here?

A distraction,a part of me warns.You know that all of this is a distraction. A lie.

Because Cassius is coming—and you want to see him, you sick fuck. You’ll lead your little fae into a trap just to see him. Smell him. Kill him.

Enough. I banish the thoughts and step inside the building, with the fae at my heels. She watches and stares as we traverse a narrow hallway, black with soot and age and the stink from decades of mortals who have lived here throughout the ages.

But mortals no longer live here now. They have been banished by another type of creature. One more sneaking and insidious. It set up shop in this mortal realm, but it doesn’t belong.

Like me and the fae, the inhabitants of this dwelling do not belong.

Our quarry lives behind a battered black door. I knock. Slam. Rattle the damn thing in its hinges.

“Coming,” a voice replies, sickly sweet and chillingly familiar.

“We’re going,” I tell the fae, but she blinks at me, confused. She doesn’t understand what kind of place this is. Doesn’t recognize the light tones coming from the other end of that door.

The creatures living here are not mundane, or corrupted, strange mortals like the blond Colleen.

They are vamryre. All, full-blooded vamryre, hiding in the mortal realm like wayward children. Fugitives. Outlaws.

“I said I’m coming!” The dwelling creature snaps.

It’s because I knocked again. Slammed on the door, threatening to break it with every pounding, thudding smash. I should run and get the fae away, but I can’t.

I need to see. Need to smell.

I need to look into the eyes of these creatures and see who they belong to. How they escaped. How. How? How!