Page 26 of How to Entice a Fiend

I drop down onto the bed and decide that one night won’t change anything. Hopefully…

Closing my eyes, I drift off into the darkness.

Sleep grabs me with a vengeance. It tears me down and threatens to not let me go. I’m suffocating, drowning in the stifling depths of it. Nothing but death awaits me. I try to pull back, desperate to get away, but it surrounds me. It’s all that’s left and my only option is to destroy them all. To tear them all apart to?—

“ENDER!”

I jerk awake and grab the person hovering over me.

“En, it’s me,” Rylee says as she gives me a shake. “Wake up.”

“I’m awake,” I mutter as my hold on her loosens.

“You said you were better.”

“Iambetter.”

She doesn’t look convinced.

“Go back to sleep,” I urge her.

Rylee hesitates, then runs back to her room before returning with the cat. She pulls my sheet back and tucks him in next to my chest, as though I want to cuddle him. “He’ll keep the nightmares away,” she decides. “Good night.”

“Take the cat, I don’t need him.”

And she’s gone.

The cat rolls onto his back and looks up at me with adoration in his eyes. I stare at him, not quite sure what to do with the thing. He seems to realize that he’s not getting the same attention here as he was in Rylee’s room because he gets up. I assume he’s planning on leaving, but instead, he sidesteps closer and basically throws himself against my face so he’s tucked as close to me as he can be.

“I don’t like you,” I mutter as his purrs fill the room and his hair fills my nostrils. He’sthrilledwith this arrangement. Does he not know that people were the reason why he was left out in the cold, half starved? That someone failed him? Threw him out and left him to nearly die? Yet he forgives them so easily. Oh, to be a cat and be able to just leave that resentment and hatred behind…

I know that I don’t want to face sleep again, so after a while, I get up. I debate leaving the cat where he is, but I pick him up and carry him into Rylee’s room. I set him next to her as she sleeps away. She doesn’t stir as he settles in and I head out the door, needing some answers so I can give her the life she deserves. The sooner this ends, the sooner I can change everything. And the sooner I can give her that life.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MADS

A noise wakes me. Swiftly, I sit up in bed, but I’m well aware that if I’m already hearing them, it’s too late. I’m not like Marcus or Ender; my ability is fighting with my brain, not my hands.

I rush from my bed, deciding I’ll go through the window if I have to, but the vampire is on me in an instant. They try to grab me, but I manage to elude them, which seems to put me right in the path of another. Their face is hidden beneath a mask, their clothing dark. They drive their sharp nails into my side, tearing it open before I can get away. I throw them back and push out into the hallway before deciding that maybe…just maybeI should have kept my mouth shut at the council meeting.

Six additional masked vampires stand in the hallway waiting for me, three on each side as I realize that this hotel really needs more fucking windows.

“Come on now. I’m pretty sure we can talk through some things, yeah? That sounds like fun,” I say as I hold my hands up.

Evidently, no one else thinks it sounds fun or even remotely believes me because one of the ones from the bedroom rushesat me. I manage to slip past them, back into the bedroom with the belief that dealing with one instead of the seven now in the hallway would be in my best interest. But that doesn’t matter when they’re as fast as they are. They grab my arm and jerk it down, snapping it. The sound of it breaking fills the room as pain tears down my arm and up into my body. I know it’ll heal, but it’s the hesitation they need for someone to grab me from behind and draw a blade over my throat.

It’s not deep enough to kill me—I honestly can’t tell if that’s the plan or not—but it sure is enough to stop me.

Instinctively, I try to reach up to clamp my hand over it, hoping to slow the blood as I heal, but three more are on me. One slams something into my leg, and I’m driven to the ground. Desperately, I struggle to get up as pain rips through me. I lunge forward, tearing open the abdomen of the one closest to me, but I know it’s not enough. I know I’m outnumbered. I know they’ll heal up with no issues as they fall back and another takes their place.

Are they trying to kill me? Or bleed me out?

My throat is finally healing, but the loss of blood is slowing the rest of my healing as I start crawling toward the window, positive I’m not getting out of it, but I’m sure as fuck going to give it a valiant effort. If only I could use that… but I can’t. Something slams into the back of my head, sending me to the ground as I see blood pool out around me.

I need to get up.

I need to fight.

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