My blood boiled at his sarcasm, making me spew out the first thing that came to mind. “Well, since we’re giving away applause and all, I want to thank you for inviting me to this cute little party of yours. The cemetery really adds to the Halloween flair.”
His eyes slit into a sharp glare. “You’re quite the little spitfire, aren’t you? You should have listened to your friend here and left like a good little girl. There’s no heroes tonight.”
He was probably right, I should have tried leaving the second Xander said to get out of here, but something about deserting my best friend, who had been hung mercilessly to a tree, just seemed a little immoral and unethical; and if it would have been that easy to leave, then this man would have never led me here in the first place. So, I refused to believe I would have been in any better of a situation.
“I think that would have been a lost cause to even try because you brought me here for a reason, didn’t you?”
“Maybe you are a little smarter than I give you credit for. Do you even know who I am, Adelay?”
I shook my head, unsure of how I should answer him because we had only been going off of suspicion, hoping Davin would find some answers before this day came. This man was obviously the culprit behind Xander’s disappearance, current torture, and present confinement to a big fucking tree; I knew that much.
“I think you know more about me then you’re letting on, but tonight I’m whoever you want me to be.”
His face slowly morphed from the skinny, baby-faced punk with spiky black hair that I had danced with in the club, to the man I had seen on more than one occasion with long black hair dusted with streaks of shiny silver in it and wide, yellow, scarlet rimmed eyes deeply set in his gaunt face, then to the sleek silver wolf on all fours; and finally back to the semi-attractive Sid Vicious lookalike.
Except his eyes remained unnaturally yellow this time. Definitely taking away the innocence he portrayed in the club to a much more frightful site.
I turned to Xander when a low moan escaped his throat, quickly backing myself further away from him as his body began to convulse, sending his eyes rolling into the back of his head. His head thrashed back and forth and every vein in his body looked like it was about to explode from underneath his skin.
“Stop it you asshole! Leave him alone!” I screamed to the man that was inflicting all this pain on Xander. He was nothing more than an innocent victim and didn’t deserve to be brought into this war.
“Stop what? This?” He looked at Xander’s shaking body. He was foaming at the mouth as his eyes rolled around inside their sockets, and his veins continued to pulse throughout his body in rhythm with his heartbeat that had sped up rapidly. Any normal human would have already gone into cardiac arrest.
“This only stops when I receive what I want, and what I have been brought to this godforsaken town for. Give me what I want, and I’ll go away. Give me what I want, and no more innocent people will be hurt. His time is limited; you really shouldn’t procrastinate.”
I watched Xander twist in pain. “What is it that you want?”
I knew exactly what he wanted, but I wasn’t about to let on that I had any kind of information about who we thought he was, his past (if it turned out that we were correct that he was Dalton Edwards) and what he wanted from all of us -- my cursed blood specifically.
“You have been playing this cat and mouse game for months. You stalk me, Davin goes after you, you disappear, he kills your friend, and it just goes on and on. Why don’t you spit out already why you’re here and save all of us the trouble of a day in, day out pursuit?” I was talking to him like he was a regular person that I would address on any other given day. I needed to remember this thing wasn’t even really a man; he was a monster and had every intention of killing me and draining me dry.
I had hit a sensitive spot though because within seconds his hands were around my throat, pinning me against a gravestone that dug uncomfortably into the middle of my back. “You should learn to hold your tongue, child. You think you have been spared your life because of your vampire?” He let out an evil snarl. “You have lived because I let you live. I could have ripped your heart out of your chest any time I chose, but I prefer to play with my victims. It makes the kill more thrilling.”
“Lucky me,” I gasped.
He flashed a sinister grin that showed a set of razor-sharp teeth jutting from his mouth where his human teeth had been moments before. “I hunt them down to the very places they thought to be their sanctuaries, taking over their minds, causing them to battle with themselves over what is real and what is not, bringing them chills they never thought possible; so that they can’t even sleep in their own bedroom at night anymore without dreams of me, slowly pushing them to the brink of madness.”
That part I knew was true. I had been having dreams of him before I even moved to Hanover. Each time was more vivid than the last, somehow making me feel violated; like I had to scrub away the dirty fear that oozed off of me when I awoke.
“Eventually, every corner they turn and every shadow that passes by they expect to see my
