Page 16 of Feeding Frenzy (Crimson Coven #3)

SIXTEEN

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All of it was connected. Whoever attacked did it knowing we had come to Saphire Lounge. I had no doubt Imogen had a part, but who informed her we would be here? There were too many options: Calliope, Alistair, anyone under Calliope—too many enemies crowded closer and closer. And the percentage only grew.

“I don’t know anything,” the snarled words dragged me back to the male bound by shackles before me, he kept eyeing the brass knuckles I’d slipped on over a protective glove. I’d had them specially made—with more steel than brass in the mix.

I stared back. I had no desire for levity.

He wore the same garb as the rest of the attackers. I’d found him huddled in one of Saphire Lounge’s storage closet.

Blood dripped off him at a steady pace. His face was a broken mess from the damage my brass knuckles inflicted, but he’d given me nothing. No information, no details. I flexed my hand into a fist. I could tell he hurt, because he took gasping breaths every other second. But as much as he tried to act nonchalant, the fucker was tense and hurting.

“Where is Imogen hiding?” I repeated.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he croaked. He spat blood on the floor.

I grinned, flashing my fangs.

I swung again and again and again. A layer of his cheek skin hung off his face. His eyes flickered side to side. He was clearly in agony.

With each of my attacks, he became limper, until the chains wrapped around his torso were all that held him up. He coughed and a gurgle of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

They would suffer. Each and every one that had even the slightest part in hurting my female. I sneered at the pathetic creature struggling to keep his eyes open.

Cat was much too soft for this world. Everything vampires were not, and now she lay on a bed?—

I wrenched my thoughts away from my weak human. As it had every time, a suffocating pressure compounded on my chest.

The door creaked open. Only one person had entered since I’d arrived at Calliope’s, dragging this piece of shit behind me.

“You’ve been at this all night. You need to hunker in for daylight,” Calliope said hesitantly.

I whipped my head around to face her. She stepped back, her eyes wide as they scanned me. She feared me.

As she should.

“I set up the bedroom closest to this room?—”

“I’ll sleep here,” I responded. I would be unaware to the world regardless. A cement floor would do nothing to me. Once I woke up, I would resume my investigation.

I would rip him apart with my hands. Little by little. Until something useful came from him. And if not, I would use the violence to distract myself from the suffocation eating me alive.

I swiped my bloodied hand on my similarly bloodied jeans, then turned Asher’s doorknob. I would have nudged it with my foot, but blood stained them too.

Slowly entering, I found everyone in the same position they had been in before I left last night. No one had moved. My steps echoed across the room, until I stopped a few feet from her . I kept my attention fixed on Asher.

“What have you been doing?” he sniped, derisively dragging his eyes down my body. His arm hovered above her stomach as if to protect her from me.

“Trying to find answers,” I spat back at him. Unlike all of them.

“We all have different ways of coping, Asher,” Tobias intoned. His eyes were closed, head resting on the headboard, and hands laced over his stomach.

Was that what we were doing? Coping . My lips twisted bitterly.

“Still hasn’t moved?” I grunted, jerking my chin toward Jaxon. “You could be helping me hunt.” I kicked his chair, and it screeched on the ground, but he did not react.

Asher was the only one that kept talking. Jaxon and he should switch spots. I raked my fingernails against my scalp.

The squeeze in my chest wrapped around my neck like a noose. What was this feeling ?

“You’re worried,” Tobias answered, eyes still closed.

“Stay out of my head.”

Tobias said nothing in response. I’d take it as an assent.

“Her bruises are disappearing!” Asher exclaimed.

I wrenched to look at her. That pressure in my chest pulsed, forcing me to take a breath.

I scanned her limp body. My hand lifted, as if with a mind of its own.

“Do not touch her with all that blood on you.”

I clenched them into fists and studied her tan, silky skin. Even stretched out, her leg held an unevenness. I’d broken enough humans to understand Imogen shattered her bones internally. I scratched at my chest and breathed in hard. The purple staining her face turned yellow, then disappeared. The slice across her eyebrow became smaller. It was so slow that it took a while, but I stayed fixated on staring. We all did.

Asher yanked up her sleep gown, exposing matching underwear and her belly.

Whore was scribbled across her skin. The edges of the injury split wide. Imogen had gone deep into her skin until the edges curled.

I breathed in again, and this time my shoulders shuddered. I hadn’t looked at her since I’d first seen her bloodied, broken body. I hadn’t seen this .

A snarl left my lips, instinctively, violently. I would make Imogen suffer at my hands. How vile?—

They were disappearing.

She wasn’t decomposing. At this point she would have had to be decomposing, but she wasn’t. There was no putrid, dead body smell.

My legs gave and I dropped to my knees. Another breath exploded from my mouth. The compounding force on my chest pulsed like a living thing. My fangs exploded out from my gums.

She was not gone. I had a chance to find a cure to blood-madness and bring her back to me.