Page 37 of Marked for Desecration

I couldn’t be seeing what I was seeing.

I watched in awe, a little bit horrified and a little turned on as Landon shoved raw meat into his mouth. I shouldn’t feel this way. I should question a million things, but right now all I could do was watch with rapt interest as the vampire before me fed on Jordan’s corpse.

His body had to start rotting by now. What drove Landon to such lengths when we now had a human blood farm right above ground?

The crunch startled me for a moment, and I refocused on his back. I had never run into a deformed vampire before. I couldn’t understand why…

Suddenly, Landon disappears and the limb he was chewing on fell to the ground with a wet thud.

Large, calloused hands circled my neck and lift me up. I gasped for air, kicking my feet but his strength was so much greater than my own.

“I held off for so long… You made me do this. You made me!”

I felt the blood vessels in my eye pop right before the darkness of the void consumed me.

The deep-seated chill crawled into my marrow and woke me with a start. Was I dead? I didn’t know how long I was out for. The pain around my neck told me otherwise. Pulling in air through my mouth, I covered it as I hacked and spit out a wad of blood into my palm. I wiped my hands on the surface beside me.

Quietly listening, I slowed my breathing to a minimum and let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I quickly realized the body next to mine is the half-eaten Jordan. The flesh of his forearm has been desecrated and torn to shreds. The tendons poke out every which way next to his oxidized muscles.

The meat was starting to smell, and it made me want to gag, but I held it down. I needed to know what the fuck was going on and who Landon really was.

Rolling away, I got off the table and walked around. I couldn’t tell if he was watching me, but I also couldn’t do anything about it if he was.

Turning around, I found the way I came and dashed for it. A large body dropped right in front of me, stopping my momentum and almost throwing me back. His arms grabbed mine and I shook him off, leaping backward with caution.

I partially slipped on Jordan’s intestines as I stared at the man before me—if he could be called a man at all. He finally had his mask off, and my breath caught in my throat.

His face was disfigured and contorted. His skull was deformed and resembled nothing remotely human or vampire. His entire torso was covered in old blood, his lips drooling from a left-sided facial droop. His torso was elongated and too broad. It was out of proportion to the rest of him somehow.

“You’re just like the rest of them.”

My eyes snapped to his. What the hell was he talking about?

He stepped forward and I took a step back.

“The virus mutated all of us, they just don't know it yet.”

“What?”

He kept making his way forward and I slipped, hitting my back on the table that held Jordan’s remnants. Some of his innards fell over my shoulder and I scowled.

“What’s going on Landon? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re obviously Letos. What mutation?”

It slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself. If this fucker got offended, I was in big trouble. He was huge and could easily take me down.

This wasn’t the kind of eating I was expecting.

He snarled and grabbed the side of his head, screaming and mumbling about temptation. The more his body moved, the more he reminded me of a creature of nightmares that had nothing to do with vampires. Old world books spoke of different humanoid monsters. Was he one of them?

His bout of insanity continued as he cackled and threw his head back, letting out a bellowing laugh.

He wrapped his arms around himself, hunched over, and turned his head slowly toward me.

“Letos, Corrus, all the clans are a joke meant to throw us off from our real potential.”

This piqued my interest. I pushed Jordan’s innards from my shoulder with disgust and straightened up.

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