House of Kings(39)

Down he moves. He must see the loyalty in Anna’s eyes, and Lillian’s. He moves past them. He stares down Danny. And he grabs two young recruits and places him with the other three.

“Here are your new members, House of Allaway,” Cyrus says, holding his hands in their direction. “Take them and get the hell out.”

No one says anything for a moment, too stunned at everything that has happened to move.

“I said get out!” he bellows, spit flying through the air.

And suddenly, everyone springs to life. They disappear out the door. The five chosen to leave shuffle toward Chelsea and Charles, as though unsure if they are actually supposed to depart.

One by one, the extra bodies leave. They take their human snacks with them.

The House feels less crowded.

But all the more dangerous.

“It’s been one hell of a party,” Cyrus says. And he’s got anger in his eyes, his shoulders are tense. His body seems ready to snap at any moment. He crosses to me, and I have to make a very physical effort not to flinch away when he takes my hand. “I hope you all get some rest. Goodnight.”

Without another word, Cyrus leads us through the remaining bodies. And suddenly I am terrified at this game I’ve started. Because I cannot end it without evoking his wrath. And I do not know if I will survive it.





“ALIVA?”

It’s Anna’s voice that cuts through the door the following night. I climb out of the bed where I’m pretty sure Cyrus is pretending to sleep. My feet carefully pad over the floor, and I open the door soundlessly.

“Yes?” I say quietly. Though it’s completely pointless.

“You should get dressed,” she says. There’s urgency in her voice. “There’s something you need to see.”

I don’t ask for explanation. I only cross back into the room, dress myself in two seconds, and walk back out, side by side with my General.

She leads me through the hall and down the stairs. The dim evening glow is barely holding on to the day as we open the front doors. For a moment, my eyes sear in pain. I throw my hand in front of my eyes, blocking out the dim light.

And the moment my eyes adjust, they take in the blood at my feet. A thick, obvious trail of it leads away from my front door, down the drive.

“How far does it go?” I ask as I step out into the snow.

“You just need to see it,” Anna says with horror in her voice.

Together, we walk down the drive. Over the landscape. To the front gates, following the trail of blood. When we turn onto the road that leads to Main Street, we’re greeted with greater, larger splashes of blood. When we reach the T, I spot the first limb.

An arm pokes out of the snow, the hand down and buried, the severed stump poking out in the air for all to see. Blood saturates the snow around it. The bloody stump has been frozen over completely, the skin crystallizing and turning black.

The chill sinks into my bones as we continue walking. There’s a foot on the side of the road. A trunk without a single limb lies in the middle of the snow packed street.

A head lies just beyond that. I slowly approach, feeling all the blood in my body drain to my feet and disappear somewhere entirely.

A mass of red hair spills out to the side of the head. Using the toe of my boot, I push it to the side, turning it so the face comes into view.

Except the face has been smashed in, beaten, so badly battered it is unrecognizable. But the hair marks her clearly: Chelsea.

I swallow hard, backing away slowly.

My eyes turn to the road that leads out of town.

All along the way there are severed limbs. More heads. Blood. So, so much blood.

My enhanced brain and senses start matching up the bodies, the severed limbs. The heads. There are at least ten dismembered vampires lying around the streets of Silent Bend.

“Who would do this?” I ask in horror. I back further up, wanting to wash the horrific scene from my memory forever. To pour acid in my ear and burn the images away.

“Look at this,” Anna says. She crosses over to a snow drift with a head lying in a halo of red. To my disgust, she picks it up by the hair. And I see it.

The brand of the snake eating its own tail. The flesh around the wound, though frozen, is red and pealing. It’s fresh. It’s burned into the poor woman’s forehead.

“They’re back,” I breathe. I cross to the next nearest head I can find. I roll it over. Sure enough, there’s a snake brand there, too.

“I don’t think they ever left,” Anna says as she tosses the head back into the snow. “I think they’ve been watching us the whole time. They waited until the House of Allaway was leaving, unsuspecting.”

I shake my head, my stomach rolling. “They only came with fifteen members. That means only five of them survived the attack.”