Page 12 of Taken By the Ripper
He grunted, but his impossibly strong grip only tightened further on her arms. No matter how hard she struggled against him, breaking free proved next to impossible. The vampire wasstrong. But it was an abnormal strength as if he were made of stone rather than flesh.
Rather than heeding her plea, the man tugged off her cap and threw it to the ground. Her hair escaped its confinement and rushed down her back. “What have we here?”
The vampire with the hat laughed and moved forward with alarming speed and grace. In only a single blink, he once more stood before her and showed off his fangs beneath a predatory grin. “I told youhewas actually ashe.” In a sing-song voice, he said, “Feed on the men, infect the women.”
He pulled out a clear vial filled with a liquid that appeared suspiciously like blood. Except it was black rather than red as a human’s might be.
“We’ll let you go,” he cooed. “Just as soon as you drink this.”
The man behind her pinned her arms to her sides. She kicked and struggled, but as if held by a giant snake, the more she struggled, the more she fell victim to his impossible strength.
In a terrifyingly alluring tone, the man with the hat leaned closer and whispered near her ear, “Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, darlin’. You won’t remember any of this.”
Clara lifted both her legs and kicked him in the stomach, surprised when she landed the hit hard enough for him to stumble backward. But just as quickly, he rushed back to her side in a blink of movement, took a hold of her chin, and gripped hard enough to keep her from moving her head.
“What do you want?” she tried to bargain, but her words were muffled when only part of her mouth moved enough to speak. “I don’t have much, but I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.”
She once more stared at the fangs bared, menacing and destructive and predatory.
However, her captors only laughed. The man in the hat moved closer.
And then she screamed as loud as her lungs allowed, desperately hoping someone nearby might hear and come running to the rescue. She screamed until her voice became hoarse, until her lungs ran out of air. Until her pleas became waning embers in a blazing fire of desperation. No one was coming.
Alarm replaced her sliver of hope when the vampires only grinned at each other as if they found the sound of her screams amusing rather than threatening.
“Ah, my favorite part of this game,” the man holding her said before he inhaled a deep breath of her hair and released it. “Such tasty fear.”
“Focus!” the man with the vial hissed, glancing over his shoulder. “We’re not the only ones out tonight.”
In a quick movement, the vampire unstopped the vial and wrenched open her mouth. No amount of attempting to keep it closed did any good when he proved much stronger than she.
“Ngh!” she shouted, her words unintelligible as she tried to kick and struggle again, but the man pinning her limbs down was relentless. “Ngh lihn gneah!”
“Bottoms up,” the vampire murmured and placed the vial to her lips.
But before the liquid within touched her tongue, something dark and large flew over her head in a single bound and tackled the vampire to the ground. The vial shattered against the cobblestone, spilling the dark liquid across the alleyway. Growls and hisses lifted into the air, and the vampire holding her steady swore before tossing her to the side.
She crashed into a brick wall, her cheek scraping against the rough surface.
Heavy breaths heaved in and out of her lungs as she spun around in a desperate search for an exit, for a way to escape. But then her gaze settled on the large beast attacking the firstvampire with sharp black claws extending from his dark gray fingers. His form appeared mostly human but with black ridges protruding from his back and elbows. The last thing she noticed was the tail whipping out from behind him and stabbing the second vampire with its sharp end.
Deciding not to linger a second longer, she scrambled away from the fight, but her movements were slow and sloppy when terror weighed heavily on her limbs. She only managed to sprint several paces before something tackled her from behind. She wasn’t sure which monster to pray that it was—the vampires or the spined creature—as both options seemed quite deadly.
She twisted sharply around and dragged her nails across the face of the long-haired vampire. He hissed in pain and flinched back, but not enough for her to free herself from beneath him.
His fangs seemed to grow longer in his mouth. His eyes flashed red. And when he moved as if to strike, she squeezed her eyes shut to brace herself for the agony that was sure to be his bite.
But at the last moment, the man’s weight lifted off her as the creature tackled him to the ground and tore into him with its claws. The vampire screamed. The fog began to dissipate.
Once again, she struggled to her feet and sprinted forward but cursed when she came face to face with the dead end of the wrong side of the alleyway. She was all turned around and no longer knew which way led to the exit.
A hand clamped around her wrist. She screamed. And then the face of the vampire with the hat snarled down at her, his bleeding cheek knitting back together with each passing moment.
“This wasn’t personal before,” the man hissed, his eyes flashing red. “But now it is. You’re coming to our den. And you’re never coming back out.”
A cloudy gray mist encircled them, and for the briefest moment, her entire body seemed to float as if becoming a cloud drifting along the breeze.
Her body smacked to the earth with a jarring thud. A gasping breath escaped her. She pushed herself to her hands and knees and turned her head to find the creature’s long, sharp claws buried in the vampire’s chest. The vampire screamed and slashed at the creature with his own sharp fingernails, but his arms weren’t long enough to reach.
