Page 3 of The Vipers and Their Vendetta

My panic escalates.

If he’s taking me to the bed, it means my worst fears might be about to come true.

Adrenaline spikes, pouring through my veins like lava. It heats me from within and provides an energy where before there was only a slow, fog-like exhaustion. My head is still pounding, and I feel weak, but my body reacts on instinct. I kick out at him, and punch against the chest of the man holding me.

“Shush,” he whispers, “you’ll hurt yourself.”

Is he insane? Mere moments ago, he was holding me up against the wall by my goddamn throat. He picked me up when I was seriously injured, and while he clearly hasn’t done any long-term damage, that’s beside the point. He could have done. You never move a person who’s been involved in that kind of accident; that’s basic first aid. He simply decided to take me, despite it possibly being detrimental to my health, or even my life. It’s that which worries me the most. He doesn’t care about me in the slightest. He might be about to murder me and rape my dead body.

It makes the Vipers seem almost kind in their approach.

He places me on the bed and stares down at me. I try to sit up, planning to bolt from the bed, but his hand against my sternum pushes me back down.

His eyes glitter from within the shadows of the mask. He reaches up and sweeps the hood back from his face. The gray material falls onto his shoulders and reveals mid-length, dirty blond hair. All I can see of his face is his pretty green eyes, and then the scary mask.

“You are hurt.” His voice is deep and rumbling, as if it’s gurgling its way up from the earth itself.

“You moved me,” I say. “You shouldn’t have done that. What if I had hurt my neck or my back? You could have crippled me for life.”

“You had already moved before I picked you up,” he says.

I had? I don’t recall that at all. Then again, I did black out there for a moment or two. I move a little, and my head feels as if someone’s sliced an axe into it. I wince and put my hand over my skull as if I can stop the pain.

“As I said, you are hurt,” he says. “Let me help.”

The way he speaks strikes me as odd. Formal, almost. He doesn’t have an accent, so I doubt that English is his second language, but he also doesn’t speak the same way as most people of our age. He almost sounds like some monk who transported to the future from mediaeval times.

He leans in and reaches toward me. I flinch back automatically. What is he going to do to me?

“I need to help you heal,” he says. “I have things here that can help.” He gestures into the space around him, as if conjuring those verythingsout of the air itself.

This guy is seriously weird, and he’s giving creepy masked killer vibes. Add that to the gothic interior of this place, and what the Vipers said about it and its occupants, and I know I need to get out of here immediately.

“Let me go,” I beg. “I promise I won’t tell anyone that you brought me here. I need to get back.”

“Back where?” he asks.

I open my mouth and then close it again. After another beat, I blurt, “My father runs a biker gang.”

Sometimes that’s enough to scare people into not messing with me. This guy doesn’t reply, but his mouth twitches into a slight smile behind the hole in the mask. He chuckles as if he finds my words funny and amusing rather than intimidating.

I take in more of the room than I did the previous time I was here. Small jars with strange looking ingredients line a shelf along the back wall of this bedroom area. Pestle and mortar setsare dotted around the place, as if they might need to make pesto at any moment.

Additional jars of what look like dried herbs and spices are joined by more candles, and strange things I don’t even want to think about—dried chicken feet, what looks like a rabbit’s foot, which makes me shudder, and tiny collections of twigs in all manners of shapes. Are these guys into dark magic or something?

Oh, God, my fear notches up a whole other level. What if I’ve stumbled upon a cult?

“Listen,” I say, deciding to try again to reason with him, “I really do need to get back to my room. If I’m not there, then I’ll be in trouble and so will you.”

“Why would I be in trouble?” He cocks one brow and puts his hands on his lean hips as he stares down at me. “I’m helping you.”

I decide that even though I hate them, right now my only chance of getting out of this is my relationship with the Vipers.

“I belong to the Vipers.”

From what I’ve seen, those guys, particularly Zane, frighten the life out of most of the people at this college.

“I know.” He shrugs as if that means nothing to him. “I still need to make sure you’re okay, and I need a small favor. Then you can go back to those miscreants if you wish. You’re bleeding, though. Look at your arm.”

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