CHAPTER THREE
1047 Words
Grace
I decided, standing by the doorway with goosebumps crawling up my arms and a man with amber eyes watching me from across the room, that I had made a terrible decision coming go to this town. Whatever was chasing me felt safer than this man right now.
I tried to calm myself, I needed to be smart about my escape, any sudden movements and he could rip me apart.
"I should go," I said, slowly fiddling with the door to get it open and hoping he wouldn't see or hear what I was doing.
"You said that already." He looked amused.
"I mean it this time."
I was out of the room before he could respond. I looked back and he wasn't chasing and walked as fast as I could, trying not to make any noise.
The hallway was dim and smelled like wood smoke and whiskey, and I could hear voices somewhere below, the low rumble of the bar still running beneath us. I kept my hand on the wall to steady myself, the pain was becoming unbearable, but I gritted my teeth and kept walking. I had to get out of here, alive.
I didn't look back, I kept my eyes locked on the hallway, on alert for any movement. I would walk down those stairs, find a way out of this town, and figure the rest out from there. So, I walked.
The hallway was longer than I expected and seemed to get darker. The stairs were at the far end and I was almost there when a door on the left swung open and a man came out of it. Big. Red-faced, which meant he'd been drinking for a while and found the whole world very amusing. He looked at me and smiled in a way that made my skin crawl.
"Well," he said. "Hello there."
"Excuse me." I moved to go around him.
His hand closed around my arm and I swallowed a scream as I instantly saw white from the pain. "No need to rush, sweetheart."
I opened my mouth to say something and stopped because Kent was there before I could blink.
I hadn't heard him follow me. I hadn't heard him at all, and he was large enough that he should have made noise on those floorboards, but suddenly he was simply present at my shoulder, and his hand closed around the man's wrist with a grip that made him let go of my arm instantly.
Then I heard the c***k, it was very quiet that I almost thought I stepped on something.
The man made a sound and folded sideways into the wall, and Kent held him there for exactly one second before releasing him and stepping back. He didn't look at the man again. He looked at me, checking me over in one quick, thorough sweep, and whatever he found seemed to satisfy him. His eyes were no longer glowing.
"Downstairs," he said. Not to the man on the floor. To me.
I went downstairs. There didn't seem to be another option. I had been caught, and I didn't have any strength left in my body to fight him. I just wanted to lie down.
I didn't look at the people in the bar as I followed him into what seemed like a small office. I could still hear the sounds outside the door, unlike upstairs where it'd been quiet. My head was throbbing with each beat of the music.
“Who are you?” He went straight to the point immediately he took a seat. I sat down too, I didn't trust my legs to hold me any longer.
"My name is Sarah," I said. "I'm a teacher. From Ophadilia. I was just passing through."
"No you weren't."
I gave him a look. He was still sitting in the chair, completely relaxed, watching me with an expression that gave nothing away. "Excuse me?"
"You're not a teacher from Ophadilia," he said. "Try again."
I kept my face neutral. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"I want you to tell me your name. Your real one."
"I already did, twice."
"You didn't." He tilted his head slightly. "I could see you fiddling with your fingers when you said it. People who are telling the truth don't manage their hands. So try again, who are you?"
I looked at my hands and took a deep breath. "Fine. My name is Violet. Violet Andrews. I'm a nurse from Inhapolis."
He was quiet for a moment. "What do you do for work, Violet?"
"I told you. I'm a nurse."
"Then what's in the vial?"
The question hit me like cold water. I kept my expression completely flat, which was the hardest thing I'd done all night, and I'd had a genuinely terrible night. "What vial?"
I had completely forgotten about all I was carrying while I was set on escaping this place. I haven't felt the gun in my waistband since or the vial in my breast pocket. He'd taken them away. Oh no.
He looked at me for a long moment and said nothing, and the silence was somehow worse than anything he could have said, because it meant he was patient. It meant he was the kind of person who could wait.
"You went through my stuff," I said, deflecting with faux anger.
"You were unconscious in my building with a wound that needed stitching and something in your jacket that I needed to rule out as a weapon." He paused. "The gun is hidden, by the way. You'll get it back when I decide you're not going to do something stupid with it."
"That is my property."
"And this is my town." His voice didn't change when he said, "You're going to want to remember that."
Then he opened the drawer on his desk, and set the vial on the desk between us, and he slid it slowly across the wood until it sat directly in front of me.
It pulsed. Soft and gold in the dim light, like something breathing.
I stared at it, giving no reaction when all I wanted to do was grab it and run.
"You dropped this," Kent said. "Want to tell me why your blood is glowing?"
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