Page 55 of Club Blood

“Tell me again.”

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Warren demonstrated what he was trying to explain, teaching me about his own signals.

Bending his knees ever so slightly, he took off, appearing beside me in an instant before disappearing a few yards away. “Listen carefully!” he yelled before taking off again.

I closed my eyes and tried to shut my brain off, listening to the sound around me. The trees swayed with the slight breeze, making the leaves rustle together. A bird chirped from a branch somewhere, though the sound was faint.

I wondered why Warren was asking me to listen so carefully, when I heard what sounded like awhooshin my ears, faint but still detectable. The noise didn’t get louder, but I felt my body become more alert to something as milliseconds ticked past. Only when the hairs on my arms started to stand did I open my eyes, coming face to face with Warren as he stopped before me.

Letting out a huge holler, Warren gripped my shoulder and grinned, his eyes twinkling. “Fuck yeah!”

“What was that?”

“That, darling, was your body’s way of telling you a predator is close. It’s instinctual to try and protect yourself, but life is so loud and constant to humans that they don’t ever really pay attention to the warning signs. Now, let’s try it again.”

Warren was off before I could even object, forcing us to repeat the activity over and over until he deemed my reaction time acceptable. Which took a while, because I was a human. I was convinced Warren forgot that sometimes with the way he rolled his eyes whenever I didn’t sense him coming.

After an hour, Warren finally grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me into a hug. “Well done, Cece. You’re a badass.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Hey,” he said, pulling away so he could look me in the eyes, “I mean it. That was really,reallygood. Your human senses must have started to acclimate to your surroundings because I highly doubt anyone else would be able to do that.”

I blushed at his sincerity, dipping my head slightly. “Thanks.”

“Now for the fun stuff.”

The audible groan rumbled from inside my stomach, perfectly punctuating just how much I didn’t want any more of Warren’s type of fun.

“Or you could fuck off and let me rest.”

Apparently, my request fell on deaf ears, Warren choosing to grab my arm and pull me towards the house instead. He dragged me into one of the rooms at the end of the hallway where my bedroom was located, unlocking the door with a key he had on a chain around his neck. I looked at him in confusion, until we walked inside and it dawned on me the reason for Mercy’s extra level of security – even if a vampire would be able to kick the door through without much effort. Perhaps she just liked knowing that if anyone did try to get in, it would be pretty obvious.

I gasped as I stepped into the room lined with shelves, red LED lights casting a hazy glow across each of the items on display. Each of the weapons, rather. One wall housed a collection of knives, lengths and styles varying from scalpels to cleavers, while the one next to it had about fifty different stakes. I knew I was gaping as I spun around, taking in the military-level weaponry.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

“Are you kidding me? This looks like a weird ass torture chamber.” My eyes drifted shut when I shook my head in disbelief. The lights were giving me a headache.

Warren chuckled, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I mean, technically, it’s the room stocking the supplies for the torture chamber, but that’s just semantics.”

The color drained from my cheeks as I stared at him, hoping for the punchline to the end of the joke. Ithadto be a joke.

“You’re joking, right?”

He shifted nervously on his feet, shrugging slightly. “Sort of? It’s not necessarily a torture chamber. Besides,thisis where you draw the line? You literally watched Mercy rip the heart out of her boss, and kill someone else right in front of you, but torture chamber is unbelievable?”

Well, when he said it like that…

I looked around me again, wondering what half of the equipment was. My life before my birthday was mundane, and normal, and I hadn’t handled anything dangerous unless you considered a paintball gun to be in that category. This was just crazy.

“What’s with the stakes?” I asked, pointing towards the shelf housing a collection of wooden spikes.

Warren walked over to the display and picked one up. It was about six inches of oak, a hilt wrapped in leather at the top. Even from across the room I could see how sharp the point was, and a part of me betrayed myself by wondering if Warren had used something similar to end Jonah’s life. Did it count as wishing murder on someone if it was an act of self preservation? He was going to kill me, he had made that perfectly clear.

“They work wonderfully at killing my kind. A lethal hit to the heart would be sure to kill any creature, just like humans, but the sharp point of a stake is great for catching the thing that lives inside us.”

I could feel my lips curling at the thought. “Like, a literal parasite?”

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