Page 41 of Wicked Vile King
SAINT
It's quiet, too quiet, for my thoughts before the alarm shatters the silence. I can't believe she did it. I can't believe she outsmarted me. I thought I was breaking her in, but I guess not. She's bleeding, blood pouring thin sanguine lines down her fingertips to the floor. The guard at her side is trying to figure out exactly where the blood's coming from, and it's taking all three of his brain cells to determine it, apparently. He only figures it out when she holds up her hand and shows it to him. I can't tell exactly what it is from here—there's too much blood and the fucker putting the restraints on me isn't gentle—but it looks like a nail or a screw maybe, stabbed directly through her palm and between the bones out the other side, like she tried to replay the crucifixion of Jesus and chickened out after the first nail.
Wee-ooo, wee-ooo.
She's pale, more pale than normal, and by the looks of it, it's a miracle she hasn't hit the floor yet, given the puddle that's spreading at her feet. It's almost worrisome, like maybe she has a clotting disorder or some shit, but one of the fucked-up Tallon twins is sneaking his foot between the busy guards and her. He drags his shoe through the puddle, smearing it everywhere, exemplifying Renfield's Syndrome at its finest. He slinks low in his chair, wets his hand in the spoils, and licks it clean. I guess he thinks if he swallows enough of it this time, he'll turn into the vampire he wants to be.
The guards have gotten the ankle hobbles on me, which is fucking stupid because they should've gone for my hands first, but whatever. I'm not going to tell the fuckers how to do their jobs, but I tip my chin a little higher, my cheek still pressed flat to the cold floor, to watch her. She must sense my stare because she looks down at me, her lips turned up in the approximation of the smile she's trying to hide.
It must hurt like a bitch, but she thinks she's won. If I wasn't being jostled like the pinball in a fucking arcade machine at the moment, I might even do her a solid and give her the win. Instead, I drop the mask and smile back in the way I know will make her teeth chatter. Yet another guard comes up behind me and captures my hands around my back. He cinches them tight in the restraints, pulling my shoulders back as my wrists criss-cross just above my ass.
Wee-ooo. Wee-ooo.
"Stay on the floor, fucker!" the guard orders stupidly before he jerks me to my feet by my elbows a moment later. Then the piece of shit turns me around, out-of-breath and sweating like a stuck pig roasting on the spit, and slams his knuckles into my face. I can't do anything to soften the blow, and my nose gets the brunt of it. Pain shoots across my face, and blood splatterseverywhere. The Tallon twin probably creams his fucking pants before my naughty pet sways on her feet, and the guard beside her sits her down at the nearest free seat. She's looking at me like she's never seen blood before. Despite the blood pouring from my nose and slipping between my lips, I give her a look that tells her that I, along with everyone in this room and the scars on her wrists, know that's a damned lie.
The sharp tang of blood hits my tongue as my nose continues to bleed. It gathers in my mouth, and I turn to spit on the floor. It lands on the polished boots of the guard who hit me, and he curses. Gabe cackles behind me even fucking harder.
I'm not even mad at her—okay, I'm a little mad, but it's not the winning emotion right now, at least. I'm more impressed than anything.
Who knew the girl from South Carolina with an adorable accent and the punch of a spoiled princess had the guts to crucify herself in an attempt to get away from me?
It takes balls to do what she did, bigger ones than most of the men in this room.
I'd thought I was getting close to breaking her, but fuck, if this isn't something else entirely. My pet bit backhard, but at least it's not boring anymore.
Another guard arrives behind me, shoulder-checks me, and mutters something that sounds likelittle shitas another connects my wrist and ankle hobbles together, making it so I can't run or fight. Well, that's what the stupid fuck thinks anyway.
The fucker who shoulder-checked me comes around to my front and I tip back, ready to go. He's fiddling with a face shield when he finally looks at me, the moment before my skull collides with his. It's like a gong goes off in my brain, and it tolls over and over again, but I feel the satisfying give of his nose and the taste of his curse, ugly and strangled. It makes me smile.
I feel it now, and I don't know if it's his blood or mine that drips hot over my mouth and between my lips to stain my teeth and then farther still to dribble down my chin. I don't know, and I don't fucking care either. I spit again in the face of a guard this time, and the bitch screams like I stabbed him before I look at my pet. She's still bleeding and the wannabe-vampire is still licking her blood off the floor as two of the female guards attempt to patch her up. I swear she looks at least two shades lighter than when I last looked at her, and I'm mildly concerned, not so much for her, but for me. I can't lose her, not this early in the game, before we've even fucked.
When she feels me watching her and meets my gaze, I blow her a kiss. She flinches, and I grin, feeling as it stretches slowly across my blood-stained teeth. My ego won't accept anything less than her fear, not anymore, not now. I'd wanted her disobedience, craved it even. Fuck, I guess I still do, but even more than that, now I want her afraid. I want her skin to reek of it and her eyes to show it every time she looks at me.
She's fighting back, I'll give her that. She went near goddamn catatonic after theAre you afraid of the dark incident?yesterday. There's something there—the way she reacted confirmed it—but it's not in her files and I couldn't find fuck-all about it online. Just like there's something to her deceased mother, and I can't explain how I know, but I just do. I know she's dead, of course. I confirmed it when I finally found her obituary yesterday when the internet decided to work again in this hellhole. It's not like the obits spell out how someone ended up on the wrong side of living, though. All I know is that my pet's mother wasa loving wife, adevoted mother, and abeauty queenduring her existence, but that's all I could tell you about the lady. I did manage to find her private Instagram account, but that was even more useless, if that's possible. She liked to host tea parties for her friends and sip mimosas on Sunday afternoons, just like every other rich wife on the fucking East Coast.
My pet looks away, swallowing hard, as they continue to wrap her hand in gauze. They'll probably bring a doc in for her. Or not. It's hit-or-miss whether they give a shit enough that day, but less than a week on campus and she's reenacting the Passion of the Christ? Well, it's not a good look. They'll probably try to diffuse it before daddy dearest decides they aren't up to the task and gets involved.
The guard whose face I fucked up steps closer, positions the face mask, tightens the straps at the back like he holds a grudge, and snarls, "You fucking prick."
I laugh at that, truly laugh, because it's almost like he doesn't remember, like he has selective memory loss, and he can't recall the last time he took me to the hole. He said those same words to me and then stupidly let his guard down. I kneed him so hard he fell down a flight of stairs and almost broke his neck. Fuck, maybe he does remember, and that's why he hates me so much. Well, thatandthe broken nose I just gifted him.
My pet winces when a guard continues to wrap her hand, drawing Xs around the nail-slash-screw thing, until just the head sticks out, surrounded by cotton cloth. One of the freshmen faints nearby, but there's always like a 50-50 chance of her doing that when she sees blood.
I think it's damn ironic for someone who likes cutting so much.
They finally turn off the alarm and Kill cocks his head at me as I'm steered between the tables. Gabe waves bye-bye, tears of laughter spilling down his cheeks, and they both know where I'm headed. But at least I got a good hit on the guard before they put this face mask on me. They stop for a moment and one of them attaches the chain at my back, winding it through the built-in loops in the leather and down to my wrist hobbles and even farther, down to the ones at my ankles. They are making sure I can't move ten inches in any direction without falling the fuck over.
"Goddammit," the guard whose face I made pretty curses again, and he looks to some poor sap next to him as he tips his back at the ceiling, trying to stop the bleeding. He'll need tampons stuffed up his nostrils for the next eight hours to plug that nosebleed, though. As if he can hear my thoughts, he says tersely, "Take him to the doc."
His buddy nods in understanding, and three more show up, two on either side and one each at my elbows, holding onto me as we walk out of the dining hall and down the empty hallways in silence.
If they cared enough, they would think about what they saw for a moment and realize that I didn't move an inch when she was stabbed, but I'll save my breath. They won't care regardless.
I let them steer me down the halls, one long catacomb blurring into another and then another, as we head to the northern wing and up the stairs of the tall tower. The climb is damn near impossible in the restraints, and the fuckers could let me use the service elevator, but I don't bother to ask. If I did, they'd make me walk all the way down to the basement just to climb back up again. The spiral never seems to end until finally, we are at the top floor, in the forbidden tower where they keep the boys and girls who misbehave.
The short one swipes his badge at the thick metal door, and it unlocks with a buzz and a click. They are the only kind of doors around here, heavy steel with tiny, shatterproof windows reinforced with metal mesh in the middle of them and barely wide enough to see outside. Everything seems old and grimy here, like the place could use an industrial power washer and someone who actually gave a shit over the last fifty or so years.
We pass one cell after another, and someone howls from behind a door, probably Jenks if I had to guess, until we arrive at the nurse's station, and the lady in white scrubs—the cleanest thing in this place—demands my name.
