Page 79 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
His gaze shoots up to mine as my heart thunders hard in my chest. I’ve never picked at myself in my sleep before. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the dream, the serpent’s tail near my eye.
Again, I think of the name of this store. The symbol of Writhe. It all feels too coincidental to be that at all. It’s obvious, in our faces, and maybe that’s why Sullen thought there was no connection. That, and his online girlfriend from years back drawing him in.
But I feel as if any moment we might be found. He will be dragged away from me.
He doesn’t seem to be thinking the same thing as he runs his thumb along the underside of my nails. Despite my fears about being trapped inside a store of traitors, I want to examine his hands, trace all the scars, suck on his bare fingertips, particularly those without nails of his own, but he swallows hard, the sound audible between us, and my eyes lift to his as if I couldn’t help it even if I tried.
He is focused on me. Intent as he traces his thumb along my fingertips, back and forth.
“If you ever hurt yourself intentionally with these,” he whispers, squeezing my fingers tight in his grip, “I will bite them off.”
I narrow my gaze even as my heart races, but before I can say anything back, there is a knock at our bedroom door.
Chapter31
Sullen
“Like Maude said, you definitely don’t want to leave tonight, man. Not if you’ve got anything to hide.” The blond boy looks like a yellow lab in a brown polo shirt and khaki pants. But his eyes are red, his shaggy mane of blond hair flopped over one. He speaks slowly, giving me the impression he is in an altered state of mind. “Cops are crawling all over the place. I only live five blocks from here and I got stopped three times.” His mouth falls open in what I think might be horror but instead an outlandish laugh leaves his lips and I smell it, then. Marijuana.
Stein and his guests used to get high sometimes in the parlor of our home. I was only drawn out to prove I was alive, every now and then. I often got the distinct feeling even Stein’s kept company wished I wasn’t.
“Besides, if you’re here at the Emporium, well, we all got shit to hide, don’t we, bro?” The blond boy leans forward, and I stiffen as he nudges his shoulder to mine. He is skinny and shorter than I am, perhaps my age, and I think briefly about breaking his scapula but instead I take a small step back on the first floor of the store.
There’s a creak at the stairway leading up to the Attic and both the boy—I think he said his name was Fleet, but I don’t know nor do I care—and myself look up.
Karia is clutching the handles of an old, velvet green bag for travel in her hand, and it seems fully packed, nearly bursting at the seams. She’s dressed in black, high-waisted jeans and a cropped pink T-shirt that sayshorrorin an oozing, bloody font of white across the front.
I know she had to have found it in the drawers and I am suspiciously amazed over how this building had something that suits her so perfectly.
Her blonde hair is up in a messy bun, tendrils framing her face, her cerulean eyes locked on mine as she descends the stairs in her white Vans. But beside me,Fleetor whatever method of transportation his name is, has his eyes on her.
Briefly, I think of when I lapped up her blood with my tongue. The taste of iron and metal made me strangely want her more; perhaps after years of being forced to eat the worst sort of creatures, she is divinity in comparison.
Regardless, I don’t want Fleet gawking at her. I don’t want her around anyone else at all. If it were up to me, she would stay locked upstairs.
Maude was at the door earlier, interrupting my hand around Karia’s throat after the last two days of watching her sleep off the bottle of wine and the two sedative doses she should not have had. If they had been any closer together, or if Stein had used more, he could have put her permanently to sleep. But when I realized she was constantly still breathing, I couldn’t keep my hands off her, touching her over her clothes in ways I have seen Cosmo de Actis do before.
It never got very far; guilt is foreign to me and yet feeling her nudge her body into mine when I would run my hand down her breasts made me nearly choke with lust and self-loathing both. For the fact I was taking advantage of her,andthat I couldn’t bring myself to do so much worse.
I knew it was time for us to leave tonight, though, and I thought of where we could go next as she slept. I also thought of simply leaving her; she will be okay if Writhe catches her, I tried to convince myself. But she hit Stein Rule over the head with a flashlight.
Ifhehad any say in her punishment… I can’t leave her. Not yet.
I assumed Maude was going to tell us it was time to “check out,” but instead, she told us we should reconsider leaving tonight, because of the police activity in Alexandria.
She has no idea it must be all for us.
The Emporium is hosting a dinner, she said, and she invited us to it, mentioning a couch in a lounge room we could sleep on if necessary.
We arenotstaying here tonight but waiting a few more hours until Writhe gives up for sleep seems like a sensible idea. Then again, Stein keeps odd hours. Either way, I don’t feel comfortable being in this place much longer.
Karia packed our things, took a few from the Attic at Maude’s offer—Karia didn’t speak to her at all—and I came down to ensure no one from Writhe came to the door.
It’s where I ran into Fleet, who won’t stop languidly speaking to me despite the fact I do not talk back. He’s to show us the way to the basement dinner when Karia has joined us.
And a few more stairs and steps later, she has.
The cut beneath her eye from her fingernails is still there, but I see she must have found makeup in some of the Attic’s drawers because it is barely visible now and she has eyeliner along her top lash line, flicking out into a sharp point at the corner of her eyes.
