Page 48 of Cruelly Bitten

But predators could be silent. And they didn’t require light to see.

I waited.So quiet. Too quiet. And dark…

My lungs burned with the need for air, forcing me to inhale sharply. Goose bumps trickled down my spine, the feeling of being stalked a visceral fear that held me captive on the bed.

“Cam?” I whispered, wondering if he’d returned during the blackout.

No reply.

Just an eerie silence that left me uneasy, making my neck prick with awareness.

The laptop screen fell asleep, casting me in a sea of perpetual darkness where I continued to sit still. Some morbid part of me thought perhaps that would mark me as less interesting prey.

Which was just ridiculous.

I was a human. My blood was ideal for every monster lurking in the darkness beneath the Vatican.

Stop sitting here and do something,I told myself, irritated by my innate reaction to my stark surroundings. I had a perfectly good light on my lap that could confirm whether or not someone stood nearby; I simply had to use it.

Rather than overthink it, I hit a key and angled the computer toward the open door.

Vacant.

A quick flicker around the room showed there was no one standing near the bed either.

Of course, they could be hiding somewhere, given that it’d taken me so long to intelligently respond to the situation, but a measly laptop wouldn’t prove to be much of a defense against someone wanting to spook me anyway.

Rather than dwell on it, I slid off the mattress while holding the laptop against my chest with the screen facing outward like a bulky flashlight.

I crept toward the door, my ears listening for any possible movement around me, and paused just at the threshold.

Is this some sort of test?

I frowned at the thought. A test wouldn’t explain what I’d seen on the monitor with the Blessed Ones in the catacombs.

Unless that had all been some sort of bizarre setup. But for what purpose? Why let me see something so grotesque?

No, this couldn’t be a test at all. Something was happening here. Something I wasn’t supposed to know about. Something that required Cam to think he was the Liege.

Something involving waking ancient beings.

I stepped into the hallway and hit a key to keep the screen awake. It wasn’t exactly bright, but it was enough to cast a glow in front of me.

Unfortunately, that glow made the rock walls appear rather daunting in nature.Like living in a cave. Although, the texture appeared smooth, which reminded me more of concrete than a standard boulder.

So more like a prison, then,I decided as I turned right and meandered forward.

There were no other doors along the corridor this way, just a lot of vacant wall space until it ended. I turned and wandered in the opposite direction, passing the entrance to Cam’s quartersand ending in a spacious area with a set of elevators and a single open entryway.

I used the laptop to peer through the latter and found that it led to a set of stairs. My eyebrow arched upward.Definitely feels like a test now.

But I didn’t understand the purpose.

And even if I took the stairs, where would I go?

I’d been in the catacombs once—when Cane had opted for eternal rest—and I hadn’t exactly taken myself on a tour. Besides, that was several hundred years ago. Would I even know my way around down there?

Or is it up there?I wondered, noting that the stairs went both up and down.