Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (18 page)

The floor felt like concrete. It was some kind of stone, so cold and hard that her skin burned against it painfully. She couldn't help but wonder how long someone would have to lie on cold concrete to make their skin feel like it was on fire, but imagined it would take a few hours, at minimum. And judging by the rumbling of her stomach, it had been at least that long. Stretching out her shivering fingers, which were all but numb from being bound for who knows how long, she brushed their tips against more metal—a cylinder, like a pipe or pole. The cuffs attached her to it. She was tied up, trapped, in a dark place, and had no memory whatsoever of how she'd gotten here. Terror painted her insides, but she forced herself to remain calm. Her hands slid along the pole, feeling, hoping that she'd be able to either yank or lift her way free, but her explorations found nothing but metal . . . that is, until they met with flesh.

Someone else's flesh.

Hands, cool and still, also ringed with handcuffs, also attached to the pipe. Tarrah jolted at the touch. The hands were larger than hers, masculine. Her thoughts skidded to a hall. Now there wasn't just the mystery of how she got here to solve; there was also this.

She wondered briefly if the man she was attached to was dead. He might be, and if he was, who had killed him? Shaking, Tarrah turned her head, scraping her cheek on the concrete as she tried impossibly to get a look at her fellow prisoner in the darkness. She squinted her eyes, wanting to get a good look but hoping to block out any gore—if there was any gore. If he was a corpse, she didn't really want to see. She didn't
want
to see him anyway, she
had
to see him, had to know if she was lying in a cold, strange room handcuffed to a pole with a dead guy.

But she could just barely make out his silhouette in the darkness.

Parting her now trembling lips, amazed by the aching dryness of her mouth, Tarrah whispered into the air, hoping like crazy that
he'd
respond, even with something as insignificant as a grunt. Anything at all that indicated life. "Hey . .

Her voice seemed horribly foreign and somehow wrong
in
the blank emptiness
of
the room, but she had to speak. It was the only way to reach the man she was handcuffed to, the
only
way to check his pulse without touching him again. He was cold. Cold like death. Or was he simply chilled from spending time on the freezing concrete floor? It felt like the air-conditioning was on, but there was no breeze from any vent. It was almost like being inside a cooler.

"Hello?" Her whisper sounded empty, hollow in the night air. Night. Was
it
night? Or were they locked in a cellar,
far
away from the reaches of sunlight? How long had they been here? And who had put them here? Desperation fueled her cries. "Hey! Wake up!"

Silence was the
only
reply. And then Tarrah knew that the man attached to her with handcuffs and a metal pole was dead. Images filled her mind. Dark, disturbing images
of
a bloated stomach and creepy crawly awful things dancing on his tongue. She turned her head away as the tickle of a scream edged up her throat.

"Wh-what's going on? Tarrah?" The man's voice was muffled, as
if
he were just waking from a heavy sleep. From behind Tarrah came scraping noises, as he struggled his way into wakefulness, possibly moving from one nightmare to the next. Corey. It was Corey. Relief filled her immediately. If
she
had to be tied up
in
a strange place, at least it was with her boyfriend. If he still was her boyfriend after the argument they'd shared. She lay quietly, trying to block out the horrible things she'd said to
him
the last time they saw one another, and allowed him his moment of utter terror, giving him time to accept the reality
of
their present predicament. There was something comforting about his fear. Just knowing that he was frightened and confused as well settled her heart into a more normal rhythm.

Once he'd stopped struggling, she said, "Oh thank god, Corey. I
thought you were some dead guy."

He shifted, maybe to get a little more comfortable, and said, "Why am I
naked?"

Tarrah whipped her head around to her boyfriend, who was grinning. He was
also
completely clothed, as she saw
when her
eyes finally adjusted to the darkness.
She shook
her
head.
Why did he always have to act like that in moments of stress? He had a weird way of easing the tension
in
any given situation, but she
didn't
exactly appreciate his brand of humor at the moment. "Don't be a jerk. This is serious. Do you remember how you got here?"

She reached back in her own memories, straining to recall the last thing she'd done before she woke up on this cold floor. After a moment
of
contemplation, she remembered. She'd just gotten out of the shower and put pajamas on, getting ready
for
sleep
in
her usual ritual.
She
was just brushing her teeth
when
everything went completely blank. Her memories went dark, as if there were nothing at all to remember between that moment and now.

Corey's breathing was settling now, the panic slipping from it some. Even in the darkness she could see that his false grin was fading fast. "Last thing I remember is sitting on my couch, messing with my Gibson. This one song, by this band The Mopey Teenage Bears, it's a killer. The bridge has been messin' with me for weeks. I just can't seem to nail it. Oh, and I thought about calling you, but when I looked at the clock I realized it was getting pretty late . . ."

Corey's voice had slipped from alarmed and deeply disturbed to one of casual conversation, as if they weren't both tied up and chained in someone's basement. And as if they hadn't gotten into a big fight the last time they'd talked. It sent Tarrah into flights of panic. Her teeth chattered as she shouted, "Stop it, Corey! Stop talking like we're not going to die!"

What other reason would some psycho have to chain them up in this way? If their lives weren't in danger, then just what the hell was going on?

Corey grew quiet then. After a moment, perhaps in an effort to calm her down, he said, "Who says we're going to die?"

Low, metallic laughter pierced the darkness. The kind of laughter that sends chills up your arms and makes the tiny hairs on the back of your neck stand at full attention. Tarrah ignored the voice in her head—the one that screamed for her not to look, not to turn her head toward the frightening, horrible laughter, to squeeze her eyes shut and will it all away—and looked toward the spot she was sure the laughter had come from. All she saw was darkness, but the moment her eyes connected with the spot she knew the voice had generated from, it spoke. "There's no avoiding death. Eventually, it comes to us all."

Tarrah's jaw was shaking from the cold. She peered into the darkness, but still couldn't see anything. If she could just see the creep, she'd feel better in some small way. Hell, if she could see anything, she'd feel at least some small comfort.

"But before you die, you will suffer, I'm afraid, for my needs." The voice was sarcastic and cruel in Tarrah's ears. Then there was a sound. The sound of something being dropped. Light pierced the darkness. The beam of a small flashlight slashed through the black with brilliant white, then tumbled forward, toward Tarrah and Corey, as it rolled away from the faceless speaker across the room. Tarrah's eyes followed the beam, trying desperately to steal glimpses of where they were, so that maybe they could find a way out
...
if they ever got out of the handcuffs, that is.

As the light moved, it bounced this way and that, showing cinderblock walls, not a single window, and the concrete floor that they were already well acquainted with. Then the light's movement slowed, and the beam fell on Tarrah. The faceless voice clucked its tongue, and Tarrah wished very much that she could somehow curl up inside her head, where the voice could not reach. Its tone was oddly complimentary. "My, you are a pretty thing. A shame. Death comes too quick for some. But it always comes, children. No matter how loudly we beg for it not to. And we all do. Money says you will, too."

Behind her, Corey's silence spoke volumes. She hoped that he was horrified for her. For them. Because she was pretty damn horrified herself.

The sadistic chuckle found its way again from the darkness, giving itself form as it bent over to retrieve the fallen flashlight. The man squatted there in front of her, and at first, Tarrah was certain he was ogling her in some perverted way. But then she realized where he was looking. He was focused only on her neck, and nothing below.

Tarrah became fixated on the man's face. His features were shadowed, but she could tell that his jaw was sharp and angular, almost feminine. In any other situation, Tarrah might have given him a second glance. He was handsome, almost pretty. His nose was smooth and straight. And his eyes. . .

Tarrah gasped aloud and drew back—as far back as she could—away from the man, the . . . creature that was now crouching just inches in front of her, leaning in closer with a bemused smirk on its lips.

His—its—eyes were piercing. A shining glint of darkness, even in the pitch-black room. This creature ... it wasn't right. It wasn't normal, not at all like she and Corey. It was something else entirely.

As if in response to her unspoken thought, the creature leaned in closer and spread its lips into a grin, revealing porcelain teeth that glistened in the low light. Tarrah sat, fascinated and frightened, staring at those teeth, not knowing what to make of them. Just as her mind had settled on a word to describe the beast, the word flitted away again, and she was left only with her racing thoughts sprinting to catch up with her racing heart.

Corey's voice broke the moment. It was eerily calm and collected, as if he were strangely accustomed to defusing situations like this. She had no way of knowing whether he had spied the creature's eyes or teeth before he spoke. "I don't know who you are or what you want, buddy, but if you don't let us go, you're going to regret it. I can promise you that."

Wordlessly, their captor collected the flashlight and stood, and then moved around Tarrah to Corey. Tarrah wrenched around to watch as it withdrew an ear thermometer from its pocket and put the medical tool to Corey's ear—Corey, who had normal teeth and crystalline blue eyes; Corey, who defiantly did not shrink away at the man's touch. After the thermometer beeped, the man—the creature—sighed and said, "That settles it then. You're first."

Tarrah watched the thing closely as it reached for Corey's cuffs. It pressed a finger to the center of Corey's handcuffs and the lock released with a small click, as if the cuffs had been programmed to release only at the monster's touch. Then it pulled Corey roughly up by his arm. Corey didn't fight back. In fact, he looked too exhausted and too damn cold to fight off the creature.

A horrible feeling curled up in the pit of Tarrah's stomach—one that told her something bad was coming, and that this might be the last time she ever saw Corey alive. "What are you doing? Where are you taking him?"

Her last word was cut off by the slamming of the door. She hadn't even realized a door was being opened—there was no light behind it, nothing at all to indicate that a portal to somewhere other than this room had been opened. But when it closed, when that metallic
thunk
had sealed her once more inside, Tarrah felt
her
insides go soft, as
if
they'd given up before her fight had even begun.