“No problem, darlin’,” Mop drawled. He leaned his tools up against the wall and reached into his pocket for the key. “Come on, vamper. Don’t let the pretty girl wet herself—at some point you’ll get hungry enough, and you’re not gonna like her soaked in her own urine, are ya?”
Warin’s face remained stoic as he slid his wrists through the bars. I looked on, puzzled, until Sack pulled a long metal chain from the wall and sauntered over to Warin with a mocking smirk.
“There’s a good bloodsucker,” he jeered while he wrapped the thin chain around Warin’s outstretched wrists. “Not so fucking cocky now, are ya? Dumb fuck.”
“Cocky” wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe my vampire companion. He’d remained remarkably placid since waking up with a stranger trying to perform CPR on him mid-nap—even the goon’s insults didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest. I eyeballed the thin chain around his wrists and wondered why they’d think it offered them any safety if he decided enough was enough. It was wrapped around his wrists multiple times, but so thin I was pretty sure even I’d be able to snap it if I was motivated enough.
“Come on then, girl,” Mop said, jingling the keys in the lock before the door slid open. “Let’s leave those two to it.”
I stepped out of the cage, but hesitated when I saw Sack grab a wooden stake from the wall before he turned back to Warin with a sadistic smile on his bloated face.
“What are you doing? Don’t hurt him!”
Both goons turned toward me, incredulous.
“Don’t hurt him?” Sack repeated in an imitation of my worried tone. “Don’t hurt him? Would you listen to the deadwhore!”
“You got any idea how many of our kind he’s hurt, you stupid cunt?” Mop growled. “How many humans he’s sucked dry? You’re a fuckin’ race traitor. Just wait until he gets hungry enough—we’ll see how much sympathy you have left while he’s tearing you apart.”
“He’s just a kid, you sick fucks!” I snarled, giving Mop a shove so I could push past him and wedge myself in front of the tied-up vampire and Sack. “Don’t. Hurt. Him!” I didn’t exactly have a plan for how I was going to keep the two men from hurting him—or me, for that matter—but I hoped my bravado would at least make them reconsider.
“Liv. It’s okay. Go.”
It was the first Warin had spoken since the men entered the basement, and he sounded so… calm. I glanced at him over my shoulder, unable to comprehend how he could possibly still be so damn Zen. He was the one tied up and about to experience torture-by-stake, for fuck’s sake!
Piercing blue eyes met mine, and the commandment in them nearly made me lose my balance. Something in that gaze pulled on me, like a vortex. “Go with him.”
I blinked, too stunned by the weird sensation of floating as much as his seemingly insistence that I leave him to his fate. “I… are you sure?”
“I am. Go.”
I shook my head to clear it and turned back to the two goons. Sacks’ stake was aimed at my chest now, and I suppressed a shudder. I might not be allergic to wood, as the urban legend suggested vampires were, but I had no doubt I’d take getting stabbed in the heart with a stake about as well as your average movie vampire. Shoulders slumping in defeat, I stepped around Sack’s pointed weapon and back to Mop.
He greeted me with a rough shove in my back, making me stumble across the basement toward the door.
“Ungrateful whore,” he sneered as he followed me out the basement and up the stairs. “We should’a let you piss yourself.”
He led me all the way up to the first floor, which seemed as neglected as the living room, and pushed me into a small bathroom.
“You’ve got two minutes” he said, shutting the door behind me. Apparently he had enough manners to let me pee without an audience.
A quick look around the moldy bathroom explained why—there was no lock on the door and the small window had been boarded up, allowing only a few cracks of light to enter. There was nowhere for me to escape, and nothing I could use as a weapon.
I did my business as quickly as possible, attempting not to touch any surfaces in the process, and drank from the tap until I was no longer thirsty.
“If you’re not out in three seconds, I’m coming in,” Mop shouted from the other side of the door.
“Chill, dude. Some of us can’t just shake dry,” I snarked before I opened the door and stepped out into the dingy hallway. “Why—“ I didn’t get to finish my sentence, because just as I exited the bathroom, Mop grabbed a hold of my long ponytail and ripped me off balance.
I squealed and flailed, but before I could right myself, Mop threw me against the wall, smashing my face against the hard surface. When he pressed his heavy body up against mine, pinning me there, sick dread settled in the pit of my stomach.
“There’s a good slut,” he hissed, and I felt the tip of a knife against my neck.
“You sick son of a bitch! If you try to rape me, I’ll rip your fucking balls off!” I tried to stomp at his feet, but he pressed the full length of the blade against my throat before I could get him, and I froze with a curse.
“I wouldn’t stick my dick in you if you were the last hole on Earth, race traitor,” he rasped. The sickening hardness pressing against the small of my back suggested otherwise, but I wasn’t about to goad him.
“Your vampire friend, however… Did you know they like to fuck after they feed? And trust me, we’ll get him to feed. We just need to make you a bit more irresistible, don’t we?” The blade sliced through the skin over my collarbone, sending searing pain through my chest and arm.
I cried out and tried to elbow him in the gut, but he had me completely immobilized against the wall. He cut me again, a long, languid movement across my shoulder, making me scream again.
Mop grunted, his excitement at my torture evident against my backside. He reached down between my legs to lift my dress up, and I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything else. How I was going to plunge that blasted knife deep into his gut the second I got the chance played before my mind’s eye. I clung to it with all my might.
But instead of ripping my panties off, Mop ran the blade over first my left and then my right inner thigh.
“There we go,” he rasped before licking the shell of my ear. I cringed away, and he laughed and finally shifted his weight off me. “All ready for your big date.”
I wanted to punch him so bad my fist ached, but all I could do was lean against the wall and draw in shuddering gasps of air to try and control the pain radiating through every cut he’d given me. He’d sliced through both my dress and bra straps, and blood dripped sluggishly from my wounds.
“You sick fuck,” I said. It sounded like more of a whimper than the curse I’d wanted it to. “You call the vampire a monster when you’re the one abducting and abusing me? You’re pathetic.”
“Oh, don’t you worry—once he gets a look at you, tits out and blood dripping, he’s most definitely going to abuse you,” Mop snarled. He fisted a hand in my hair again and yanked me along, pulling me back toward the stairs.