Page 26 of Bad Demon

Lifting my chin, I rushed across the room, through the heavy crowd, and over to the big male guarding the entrance to The Vault.

He took me in from head to toe. “You here as a donor or to feed?”

I shook my head. “I’m here to … to feed.”

“Never seen you here before, honey. You got your membership card?”

With shaky hands, I opened my bag and pulled out two thousand dollars cash—the amount required for a visitor’s admittance and almost all my savings. “I’m here to check the place out for possible membership.”

I didn’t need to turn around to know the hound was close; I felt his eyes burning into me like laser beams. The big male guarding the door took my money, counted it, and then handed me a black card with Guest scrawled on it in gold lettering.

“No need to be nervous, honey,” he said with a smirk. “They’ll be lining up to offer you a vein.” He licked his lips. “I finish here in thirty; if you wanna wait, you can sink those pretty little fangs into me.”

Without my say-so, I was drawn to the fat, pulsing vein in his thick neck, and I swallowed audibly.

A growl rolled over me from behind. My stalker. The fear and nerves, already rioting inside me, shot through the roof. Still, I refused to look back. The guy in front of me darted a glance over my shoulder though, and instantly, he dropped his gaze when he saw who’d made the sound.

My heart sank. Everyone was afraid of the hellhound, which meant there was literally no one who could help me. I was on my own—nothing new, I guessed, but I had no idea what to do. How to make it stop. If the male decided to do more than just follow me around, there wasn’t anything I could do and no one I could turn to. The unsettling thought had my pulse racing wildly, followed quickly by a familiar helplessness. I shoved it down fast. I wasn’t that same terrified little girl—in pain all the time, achingly lonely, and utterly broken—and I would not let him fuck up the life I’d risked everything for.

“Ignore him,” I said to the male in front of me, and I was pleased when the tremor vibrating through me only made my voice shake a little bit. “I’d like to go in now.”

He nodded, his eyes still averted as he opened the door.

Unless the hound had two grand in his back pocket, the asshole was shit out of luck and would be forced to wait out here.

The door closed behind me, and I quickly took the stairs down to the lower level and over to the huge, round steel door at the bottom. This whole building had been a bank in a previous life, and this was the original door to its vault—or so I’d been told. I glanced back up the stairs. No hound. I felt a small amount of relief until I turned back to the door and remembered what I was about to do. Grabbing the steel bars, I turned them and pulled it open.

I was instantly hit with sounds—voices, music, a low and throbbing beat that pulsed through me. The scent of blood and sex hit me at the same time, and my legs started to shake as a buzz of excitement filled me, and my hunger grew.

I didn’t want to stare, but there was a lot going on. A female on a couch, writhing in ecstasy, while a male drank greedily from between her thighs. There were donors straddling blood drinkers, grinding while they were fed from—more than one couple straight-up fucking. I swallowed thickly. I wanted to feed, yes, and, horrifyingly, the idea of it kind of turned me on, but I didn’t want to fuck some random asshole. Right now, I was more nervous than anything else.

The throb between my thighs intensified, and I squeezed them together to stop it. I didn’t want it. This was about the feeding, that’s all.

Or maybe you’re just a twisted whore, like they said you were.

I shoved the voice out of my head.

No, I could do this. I needed to do this.

But what if I hated the taste? What if I hated everything about it? It could happen, right? I wasn’t a full soul collector. I had no idea what to expect.

I turned away from a bloody threesome and realized a lot of eyes were on me. Not the vampires or other blood drinkers. The donors. They saw it; somehow, they saw what I was when it had taken me most of my life to learn the truth, and I still hadn’t figured it out for myself.

A younger male, who looked to be around my age, broke away from a small group and walked toward me. He kept his gaze down—trying to be respectful, I assumed—but I didn’t miss the way he trembled slightly. As he drew closer, my senses narrowed in on the rapid thump of his pulse without even realizing I was doing it—that I could do it.

He dipped his head. “Mistress, I’m at your service. It would be my honor to feed you tonight, if it pleases you?”

My mouth went dry, and my fangs tingled in a way they never had before. It had to be the scent of all the blood in this place; it was seriously getting to me.

I cleared my hot, scratchy throat, swallowing several times so I could speak. “I’m here to feed, not fuck. I don’t want to be touched, and I don’t plan on touching you.”

He nodded, then looked up at me from under his lashes. He was disappointed. “May I touch myself, mistress?”

I glanced around the room again, and, yeah, there was a lot of that going on as well. My stomach felt weird. This felt … wrong. I hated myself for needing this, wanting it, but I was so incredibly hungry, in a way I hadn’t been my entire life. Now that I knew the truth, now that I’d surrendered to the idea, there was no suppressing the hunger, not anymore.

“I, uh … I guess that’s okay.”

I didn’t know the rules or what was expected. I didn’t want to feed out in the open, and I was terrified I’d kill this guy, that I’d go into a feeding frenzy and drink until there was nothing left.

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