Blood Trial Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers #1) - Kelly St. Clare Page 0,42

in a whoosh of air.

I knew then what my mind hadn’t fathomed on my first day at Live Right. Part of me had understood they weren’t human—that they were other. My brain had rationalised my reaction to their predatory grace and features and anger.

Not anymore.

I was mentally and physically adrift.

Barefoot, I padded into reception. A pool of blood stained the light-grey carpet, illuminated by the office light. I stared, wondering if I had that much blood inside me.

Continuing to the elevator, I calmly waited for the lift to heed my call.

Ding!

I smiled at the sound and entered, pressing G for the ground floor.

The doors began to slide closed.

Across reception, a door slammed off its hinges, soaring through the area to crash into the wall to my right.

Kyros stopped in front of the bloodstain by reception.

And in the light, his teeth lengthened to fangs.

And in the light, his eyes flooded black.

In the light, the monster lifted his gaze to find me lurking in the shadows.

I waved as the doors sealed.

11

I leaned against the railing in the elevator, ears popping on the speedy descent.

Around level twenty, my numbness parted enough for panic to find me at last. It was a quiet panic to start—a seizing, a stalling… a pained clenching of my insides. My lungs emptied like bagpipes.

They wouldn’t fill!

Eyes widening, I gulped. Try as I might, air wouldn’t flow past the top of my esophagus. I splayed my hands over the back wall, seeking purchase.

Ding!

The street. I had to get to the street.

I staggered out of the elevator.

Splintering wood exploded in a deep boom. The door to the garage was pushed off its hinges, crashing against the far wall of the lobby before slapping to the tiles.

Kyros stood in the frame of the destroyed doorway, his snarling breaths heavy. How did he get here so fast?

“Spy,” he growled.

Black dots crept across my vision, yet I still had room to be confused by that single word he uttered.

My knees gave way, my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. I’d been frightened to death? That’s what it felt like.

Impossible.

Yet it wasn’t.

I’m dying.

I was a gazelle caught in a lion’s sight and all I could do was accept my fate. I wavered in kneeling, the monster’s seething silhouette blurring.

His footsteps echoed closer.

This is it.

A hand brushed my hair back and, in a menacing voice that would haunt me to the end of my days, the vampire whispered low, “You’re not going anywhere.”

He sat me up and gripped my chin, shaking my face a few times. I was limp as a doll. My eyes somehow met his.

That was all it took.

I couldn’t look away. His eyes were so very green. Now, they blazed into my very soul and the control I’d always had over my mind and body disappeared.

“Breathe,” he commanded.

My chest lifted, the expansion of my ribs dragging air into my lungs.

After that, my body remembered how the job went, but spent, I sagged forward against Kyros. He stood and let me smack against the cold tiles.

“How long have you been in their pocket?” he snapped over me.

I sucked in breath after painful breath. Not a single crumb of energy remained within me.

On my back, I stared at the man glaring down at me. Not a man. A vampire.

Kyros stopped, tilting his head as he contemplated me.

“You’re not dying before I know what you’ve told them.” The words ripped from his chest like a tiger’s furious warning, and he crouched to pick me up in much the same way the woman had picked up her dead lover.

This time he took the elevator.

I was moving farther from the street. Away from humans. I was going to die—that was clear. But Kyros’s words finally squeezed through my brain.

He thought I was a spy?

For who?

Scrap that thought. Only one thing mattered.

“Not spy,” I rasped, my head lolling.

His jaw was clenched so hard it was a wonder his teeth hadn’t shattered. “You were caught on Level 44 in the middle of the night. Tell me, who did the blood belong to? It wasn’t one of mine.”

The blood puddle by reception.

The woman sprinted up the stairs with her boyfriend, and Kyros came down after. I’d assumed he came because she went to find him.

“I saw you on the cameras standing in reception. Don’t deny it, human.”

He’d seen me staring at the liquid remains of Ryder.

Ding!

The doors opened and Kyros began to run. Or whatever this was. The halls blurred in a mess of grey and