Page 25 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

I had to return to the city. They should’ve realized I was gone by now. I’d just gotten the job I’d worked all this time for and completed the first three stages of my plan. I couldn’t let this…unfortunate predicament stop me.

Shimmers snaked their way into my peripherals. A crystal decanter and a drinking glass set on the light gray dresser sparkled in the sun filtering through the windows.

It couldn’t be.

I lifted the decanter to examine it better in the daylight. There it was, a tiny chip on the rim, right above the top of one of the squiggly patterned lines I ran my thumb down.

He’d had the balls to steal my decanter. The sole possession I valued.

He was going to receive a thousand and seven cuts then. Six extra ones for each pattern line and a bonus one for the chip.

Footsteps sounded behind the door, and I grew motionless, my ears straining. Someone was coming down the hallway.

Would they come in or walk past? Was it the woman who’d noticed me awake? Had she told anyone I had woken up?

Muffled voices paused right behind the door. Were they arguing?

I scrambled to find anything resembling a weapon, but the room hosted nothing of use. And it wasn’t like I could defend myself with pillows.

Familiar shimmers lured me back to my glass decanter. A sufficient enough option. Raising it above my head, I put all my might into throwing it to the floor.

The sudden and sharp thud broke off the bickering outside the door. The following silence carried more notes of menace than whatever things they’d been arguing about doing to me.

Careful about my bare feet slipping in the puddle of water full of tiny pieces of crystal glass, I dove in for the largest shard.

As I straightened, a key clicked in the lock, and the door burst open.

The man ahead of the others washim. A few inches taller than me, with the sharp jaw I wanted to mark, accentuated by thicker lips curled up in surprise. Black waves swirled atop his forehead, as though the wind from the raging hail inside me had reached him.

“You,” I hissed at him, and leaped away from the pool of water, landing on the dry hardwood floor.

“Me?” He leaned on his shoulder on the door frame, and an image flashed of him doing exactly that in my apartment.

“Who are you?” I raised my voice. “What do you want?”

Because I knew whatIwanted very well. But my curiosity had often gotten me into trouble, and this was a case of it. I was bent on finding out whathewanted.

He prowled toward me, hands in his pockets, head cocked to the side. Gods, how I wanted to wipe off his smirk.

“You,” he stated, a repeat of my earlier words.

My heart beat faster, hitting my ribs with its thundering force, and my palms dampened. “Do not come near me. I’m leaving,” I spat out.

“Zion.” He nodded over his shoulder.

A second man moved from the door and plopped down on the bed, his white wrinkled t-shirt as messy as the sheets covering the mattress.

Zion. Tall, golden-brown hair, not a care about my captivity.

The man from the street. The one who’d shooed away that abhorrent abomination who had harassed me in the middle of my walk home.

“You have no idea what blood does to me,” Zion drawled.

I trailed his gaze to the shard I was clutching so hard my knuckles had turned white, a stark contrast to the crimson trickling onto the floor and my bare foot. Fire and heat had consumed my nerves, not a wisp of pain registering from my self-injury.

“Drop it.” My kidnapper moved closer to me.Oneof my kidnappers. I’d bet my life Zion was involved too. “You are only hurting yourself.”

I batted my eyelashes. “For now.” If he had decided to throw me a challenge, I could throw my own right back. “Who says I’ll still be the only one in a minute?”