She looked to the massive burrowing hole in the floor, the one that led to Mr. Třínožka’s home in the ground, only to find that the opening had been barred by a makeshift barricade. Various chunks of metal that looked to have been dismantled from parts of the house were mangled and bolted there by inhuman hands. Charlotte collapsed on the floor, gripping the twisted metal, and tried with all of her might to make it budge. “Mr. Třínožka!” she cried. She was in so much trouble. “Mr. Třínožka! Edwin! Can you hear me?”
A familiar face emerged from the dankness of the burrow. The battered appearance of her Spider friend was enough to suck all the air from her lungs. His aviator goggles had been smashed and dented in several places. She could see one massive black eye behind them. One of his arms was in a makeshift quilt sling and his skin carried a sickly sort of blue color.
“Run, Charlotte,” he managed to choke out. His voice was garbled, as if his throat had been ravaged. “You are in severe danger….”
Charlotte flew backward from the hole and raced back the way she’d come through the house, tearing open the front door and bolting off the porch and down the walkway to the outside until a very large hand grasped her at the back of her dress.
“Let me go!” she screamed and thrashed.
“There is no use trying to find him, Charlotte.” Lusian sighed, as though he had already become bored with the conversation. “Besides, I’m going to need you here with me.”
“You’ve done something! I know you have! He would never just leave me here!” Charlotte screamed and lunged for him, pounding on his chest. “You’ve done something to him!”
All of a sudden, the ground disappeared from beneath her feet, and she found herself kicking around in mid-air. Lusian was holding her up from the back of her collar as she swung at him, though he easily dodged every punch.
“You’re a monster! You’ve done something! Why would they just leave?”
“
I’ve done nothing!
” he yelled into her face.
Her arms went limp, and she was quiet. Silent tears streamed down her face and dripped off the angles of her jaw. She just glared up at him as he continued to hold her there as though she were some stray animal.
“Lusian, drop her!” Dusana ordered from the threshold of the front door.
Lusian snorted, one corner of his mouth twisting up in the most crooked of smiles. “Sure.”
Charlotte could see the cogs turning in his head as he studied her for a minute.
Before Charlotte could blink, Lusian had swept her body up so that he was holding her in both of his arms. “There now,” he crooned at her. “You’re
my
little doll now.”
“
Lusian!
” Dusana hollered again, but he was already racing up the stairway, though it was nothing but a dizzying brown blur to Charlotte.
In an inhuman second, Lusian made it through Valek’s bedroom door. He tossed Charlotte from his arms, though she landed perfectly on the bed, bouncing against the mattress. She looked in the direction of the guttural, gnashing sound of two Vampires fighting. Her pulse pounded as Lusian struggled to lock Valek’s doors. Dusana fought him tooth and nail.
“I won’t let you do this to her! We made a promise to Valek!” Her claws dug into the wood as her fangs chomped only inches away from his face, animalistic growls emanating from both of them.
Of course
, Charlotte thought,
Abelim
. Valek and Sarah had gone to the Dark City to save her. Lusian grabbed at Dusana’s chopped, black hair. Charlotte couldn’t see Lusian’s face, but Dusana’s eyes were fierce and black. With a swipe of her claws, she managed to slash a giant wound across Lucian’s perfect cheek. Three distinct lines dripped with fresh blood.
Finally, Lusian shoved his foot so hard into Dusana’s center, and her body flew backward down the hallway before slamming with a sickening crunch into the wall near the stairs. Bits of ceiling and wood splinters sprayed down around her, and he succeeded in shutting the doors, locking them.
“Women,” he grumbled sarcastically.
A bitter mix of bile and fear rose up in the back Charlotte’s throat. Valek really was gone. He would never have left her alone and in this sort of danger. Her heart hammered in her ears, and she couldn’t control her crying, though she tried her damnedest to fight the tears back, not wanting her vulnerability to show through. Her fists balled up in the material of her dress as she scowled at him as he neared her on the bed. The look in Lusian’s thirsty eyes suggested that he was about to do something horrific to her—more horrific than just feeding. She had to fight—to get away so she could run. She had to find Valek, wherever he was.
Lusian swiftly leaned one knee up on the bed and grabbed a fistful of Charlotte’s hair, yanking her downward to the mattress. A sharp cry tore from her as she shut her eyes. The low growl rumbled in the back of his throat.
“What’s the matter,
Lottie
, love?” She could hear the grin behind his words, double-toned with thirst and savage instinct. “Finally afraid, are you? Finally afraid of the monsters? It took you long enough.”
Lusian began to fasten her wrists tightly in the manacles and then her ankles, locking her flat to the bed. There was no escaping. He tucked the small ring of keys into his jeans pocket and chortled again.
Charlotte could only continue to glare at him, hoping her look alone would cause the monster before her to
finally
drop dead. She choked on the pain of both her scar and the shame she was experiencing, though she refused to cry any more. She would not show him her weakness. She would overcome this. Whatever his plans were for her, she would grow beyond them.
“What?” He cocked his head to the side, feigning concern. “Do you honestly think I would
ever
hurt you, my Lottie?”
Charlotte closed her eyes, not wanting the disgusting vision of him reflected in them. “Do not call me that.” She wondered if the others, aside from Dusana, were in on Lusian’s hostile little takeover. Now that Sarah and Francis and Valek were all gone, no one was left to save her but herself. She would suffer, but she would get out of this alive. After everything she had already gone through, dealing with this was going to be a piece of cake, she told herself. There was no other choice. She had to remain strong.
These thoughts of self-preservation must have distracted her, because suddenly she felt the Vampire’s cool claws slide down the side of her leg, felt the skirt of her dress pulled up around her hips. Don’t cry, she reminded herself, you cannot cry. Knowing he was privy to these thoughts in her mind, she struggled to quiet them as she glared at him again.
He hushed her quietly as he ran his other set of claws through her hair. Lusian bent so his face hovered directly over her ear.
“Little Lottie was afraid of the dark…” he murmured in a singing tone that sent a shiver up her spine. Wrapping his claws around both of her wrists, he pinned them to the headboard at either side of her head. The manacles nipped her. He ran his tongue from the base of her neck to the flesh just behind her earlobe and she felt the skin of her arms prick with sickening goose bumps.
Charlotte stiffened as one of his hands released hers in order to cradle her face. He opened his mouth and very carefully—almost lovingly—sank his fangs into the flesh of her throat. At first, the intense pain shot from the top of her head to her toes. She didn’t cry out. Instead she clenched her jaw, refusing to give him the satisfaction. Her fingers wound into tight fists until the feeling turned into a sort of need and passion—a feeling that was mutual between herself and her parasite. Her scar sang for it. At first, the hard, pinching pressure, and then the feeling of freezing cold underneath the bed of her skin. The chill traveled up the side of her neck and completely numbed the side of her face and down to her shoulder, like pins and needles. A lack of blood. It was almost refreshing now. The rest of her face began to numb as the blood rushed out of it and into Lusian’s mouth. He locked to her, his body twitching with the pleasure she now knew they felt from feeding. Her lungs heaved in involuntary, short, silent gasps. As it always did, her pulse swelled in deafening tones in her inner ear—that and his deep, controlled breathing was all she could hear until he finished and pulled away from her.
She kept her hands in tight knots, her mouth closed, as she panted. She glared with all of her rage and fury up at the ceiling.
“There, there, little doll.” The Vampire ran a cool finger across her cheek. She jolted away from his touch, the sharp movement of her head making the fresh wound at the side of her neck flare up. She did everything she could not to look at him. Her heartbeat reverberated in her lower stomach. He hadn’t taken a lot from her, just enough to make her weak and hazy, though she was at least comforted because her addiction had again been fixed, at least for that moment. He was clever. He knew exactly what he was doing—knew exactly how to control her.
“I saw what Valek did to that poor girl.” Lusian soothingly stroked her hair. “The experiment was…inspiring, to say the least.”
He forced one of Sarah’s chocolate beads into her mouth, gripping her jaw open and pushing it between her lips, holding her like that until she swallowed. So this was how he would torture her, she thought. Take a little. Heal her. Take a little more. He would kill her slowly. If she did not escape, he would make her his own personal pet—keep her alive just for the sake of feeding.
Her gaze remained on the blank space in front of her—the dark room, the dust particles on the silver shafts of light. She could feel his frosted eyes fixed on her face, but she didn’t glance once in his direction.
Angered, he gripped her chin and yanked her head front, forcing her to look at him again—to acknowledge him. His mouth was only centimeters away from hers.
“You taste so good, Charlotte,” he whispered. “
Pure
, somehow. It makes me wonder….”
The fear came back and the shame spread in warm pools against her cheeks.
“If you’ve ever been touched in a different way.”
His breath was like snow flurries on her skin. He released her chin and began to drag his claw through the material at the top of her dress, tearing it slowly.
“Please don’t,” she whispered as tears finally broke from her, though her words came out hard and stoic. She imagined herself cast in granite. Hard. Secure. It was her own way of self-preservation. To suddenly disappear far enough inside of herself until she felt nothing. She anticipated doing just that.
“What’s the matter, darling?” His voice was rough and ragged in her ear. “Aren’t you strong? Can’t you fight your own fight? You’re not a girl anymore, Lottie, are you?” His laughter sounded piercingly metallic as he pressed his lips against her ear, continuing until the thin material was split all the way down the front her dress. Her fingers wound in tight knots above her head as her heart hammered deafeningly. She clenched her jaw, wincing, as he pressed his lips firmly against hers. Disappear, she told herself, just disappear.
His cold fingers trailed along her skin, causing goose bumps down the length of her body. She started to shiver, unable to control it. She had the urge again to spit in his face, but he would surely kill her.
He relinquished her lips, only to continue his selfish and deadly kisses down along her neck.
“Please, stop,” she murmured again, the tears rolling down her face. “Please.”
He didn’t listen. It seemed as though her words hadn’t even been audible to him at all as he kept advancing. Charlotte, with her eyes shut tight, did exactly as she told herself. She disappeared—not even remaining in the same room with the monster. Instead, her thoughts took her to a distant summer day. She was alone at her waterfall. It was warm. She could feel the heat of the sunlight on her face. Her fingertips skimmed the top of the water’s surface.
She wrinkled her nose against the sting of her tears. No, she repeated, disappear. She could hear the birdsong in the trees. It was so peaceful. She was not afraid. She was not hurt or unhappy, alone in her clearing once more. There, no one could touch her.
Abruptly, she felt Lusian move off her, though she refused to open her eyes. She kept her breathing steady and even, swallowing down a new pouring of tears. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She was a stone. She was invisible.
“Do not worry, little doll. Valek will return soon. I’m sure you have figured out that he only wishes to help you.” He continued to toy with her. Lusian was a snake. She mentally willed him to continue speaking, however, for there might be a clue in what he was about to say. “He can no longer bear to see you suffer, which is why he left so abruptly.” The edges of his claws stroked across her cheek, but she moved her face away.
Charlotte opened her eyes as she stared blankly forward at the space before her. “I know that. Did he tell you where he went?” Charlotte’s voice wavered sweetly. If she was nice to him, she might get more information out of him.
She remembered what Valek had done the night before in the garden. She just couldn’t remember all that he had told her. Until she could figure out a way to escape, she would have to force herself to hang on to that thought. That Valek
was
coming back.
“To the Dark City. He wants to find Francis and the elders. They are perhaps the only ones who will ever know how to fix you,” Lusian explained as though he were speaking to a five-year-old child. He ran the back of his claw up the side of her rib cage, which made her shudder. “Just know, Charlotte, that if I were Valek…I would have never left you alone with the likes of
me
. Never.”
Lusian feigned a yawn and got up from the bed, an apathetic look suddenly spread across his face. Before he left, he wrapped the chains twice around the bedposts, making it impossible for her to move even an inch. He drew the curtains closed, and turned around with another smirk to her, as if he liked the looks of her bound there. Her pulse sped up in her chest again. Perhaps he wasn’t finished with her.
“Don’t worry. I’m leaving you…for now.” He chuckled darkly. “Don’t miss me too much.”