Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
I can’t make out any words, just a never-ending whisper, as if the person speaking doesn’t take a breath. It raises my hackles, my entire body going tighter than a piano wire. It’s unnatural, the tone of it something between a moan and a cry.
I shouldn’t be here. I know that now. This was a mistake. I have to get out.
When I step back, my hip brushes what must be the door handle. It creaks, the tiny sound loud in the black hallway.
The whispering stops.
I freeze, staring in utter terror at the door I can barely see. Please don’t open. Please, please, please. I’m leaving. I’ll go. I’m not here.
I’d take the whispering over the suffocating silence, over the awareness that flows through the air like an electric current.
The handle squeaks as if someone is slowly turning it.
My eyes widen until they hurt. Backing away, I hear the whisper again, but this time it’s behind me. The way I came. The way out. The scent of rot wafts to me, the scent of the morgue in medical school, the back chiller where they kept the highly decomposed bodies. The sticky ones left out in the Texas heat or bloated on swamp water. Death.
There isn’t a decision. There’s only fear that spurs me to run. I take off toward the pale light, no longer caring where I step. I have to get away from that whisper, from the never-ending hiss of god-knows-what.
By the time I make it to the barely-there sconce, I realize it’s at the very end of the corridor, which stops in a stone wall face. No elevator shaft. Not even a door. Plastering my back to the rock, I stare into the dark.
The whisper has stopped.
With a shaking hand, I wrest the knife from the inside of my waistband and hold it out in front of me. I never should’ve come down here. My breath fogs in the cold, stale air, and I can’t stop my entire body from trembling.
“Looks like you’re trapped.” Gorsky’s voice creeps out of the blackness.
Was it him? The whispers? “Stay away!” I yell.
“Stay away,” he mimics.
I strain to see him in the dark, but I can’t. The light is too close to me, too far from him—which means he can see me just fine.
“You really shouldn’t be on this level. It’s not safe.” His taunting voice comes from all around me. “Do you even know where you are?”
“In a dark hall with a fucking nutcase, apparently.” I keep my knife in front of me, ready to swing at him if he appears. “Didn’t Valen tell you to leave me alone?”
“Master said for me to stay out of your room,” he corrects. “Which I’ve done. I don’t disobey.”
“You’re splitting hairs. He wouldn’t want you to hurt me.”
“Don’t think you ever know the mind of our master.” His tone is infused with vitriol. “You have no clue, no fucking speck of thought that could approach what he’s doing or thinking. You don’t deserve to be in the same room with him, much less in his service!”
“Did he feed you his blood or just the Kool-Aid?” My heart rattles against my sternum, beating wildly as Gorsky’s voice gets closer, louder. It’s awful, but at least I know he’s flesh and blood, not a whisper in the dark.
“This floor is quite special.” His tone is back to normal. Only mildly acidic. “Do you know why?”
“I—”
“Rhetorical question,” he snaps. “It’s special,” he says, continuing, “because it’s where the Dragonis lords would keep their pets, the ones they brought over from Europe when they first arrived here.”
I grip the blade so tightly my knuckles ache.
“By pets I mean their blood consorts, of course. Master prefers we stay up top, but before he ruled the castle, all sorts of humans were kept in these rooms. Gregor preferred pretty young females. Sometimes he got carried away and turned them. Do you know what happens to a vampire who’s turned and not allowed to feed?”
Fingernails—or claws—scratch along the rock walls somewhere ahead of me. Somewhere in the dark.
“Rhetorical again,” he singsongs. “They become husks. Not alive. Not dead. Their flesh rots, their eyes sunken and black. Any light hurts them, even artificial. They must remain in the dark, down here in the depths of the castle. Forgotten, I’m certain. Master would have destroyed them if he realized they were still here. But I suppose he’s been too busy wiping the disease of humanity from the face of the earth.”
“Gorsky—”
“I don’t want to hear your fucking voice,” he hisses.
The whispers begin again, more this time, and I swear it sounds as if they’re coming through the stone wall at my back.
“Husks are ravenous. They don’t simply crave blood. They devour. Flesh. Bones. Everything.” His voice fades, getting farther away as the whispers grow. “Enjoy your stay.”