Page 77 of Starved Until Sunset

“The fuck?” he said, his voice thick and heavy, the words feeling like they scratched his throat as they came out.

“Cody?”

A woman’s voice from his left, familiar, but quiet and concerned. He blinked his eyes open and turned his head with a wince.

Zenona sat in a hardback chair beside him. Her face was drawn and pale, her eyes wide, almost comically so. Her hands had been secured behind her back and her ankles tied to the chair legs. No, now that he looked again, he could see they’d used duct tape on her ankles. Most likely her wrists, too.

A couple of seconds of recognition flared in his brain, and he frowned as he looked at the chair she had been tied to. It looked so familiar, but why? He cocked his head to look at it from a different angle, but a flare of pain in his neck stopped him.

“Ow,” he said.

“Oh, good, the monster hunter’s awake.”

Cody slowly turned his head and squinted in the glare of a bare hanging bulb as he looked to his other side. Lucia sat in a chair similar to the one occupied by Zenona. Her hair had come out of its usual precise ponytail and lay wild and full around her face. One eye had been blackened, and her uniform shirt was torn at the neck, the collar stained with dried blood. Her arms were also secured behind her back, and duct tape had been wrapped around her ankles to bind them to the legs of the chair.

“Where the fuck are we?” Cody looked around, squinting and moaning at every new ache and pain revealed by his movements. “What the fuck happened?”

“That thing brought you both here a little while ago,” Zenona said. “Xavier.” She shuddered, body twisting in the chair. “It’s so terrible.”

“Hey, you’re alive,” Cody said, looking at Zenona. He smiled, genuinely relieved to see her. “We were all so worried.”

“You should still be worried,” Lucia said. “I think they have plans for us.”

Cody looked between them, then started trying to pull himself free. “Why the hell are we tied up? And why does my neck hurt like a son of a bitch?”

“You were bitten,” Zenona said. “Both of you.”

Icy cold dread went through Cody, stilling his movements. He looked at Lucia—why did that chair look so fucking familiar?—and saw she had paled and her eyes had widened.

“What?” Lucia said.

“Xavier brought you down here one at a time and...” Zenona swallowed hard and Cody could see tears in her eyes. “He bit each of you once on the neck. It was terrible.”

“We’ve been bitten by a fucking vampire?” Cody said, his voice rising. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Quiet!” Zenona said in a frantic whisper, looking toward a metal stairway off in a gloomy corner that rose to a heavy metal door. “They’ll be back soon enough as it is. Don’t attract attention.”

“Shouldn’t we be shouting our heads off to get someone’s attention?” Lucia asked.

“I’ve tried that,” Zenona said. “It hasn’t worked so far.”

“Where the fuck are we?” Cody looked around the damp, gloomy space. As he inspected their surroundings, he steadily moved his hands, feeling the pull and tack of the duct tape against his skin.

“Some kind of basement,” Zenona said. “They come down here and sleep during the day.” She jerked her chin in one direction.

Cody peered into the corner she indicated. It was darker than the rest of the space, and looking more closely in that area gave Cody a chill. The glass block windows spaced equally apart and high up the cinderblock walls had all been either painted over or covered with a dark material. The hanging bare bulb threw a wide circle of light, but didn’t reach very far into that corner. From the bit of illumination that did extend there, Cody could see furniture and storage bins stacked in the shadows. Farther back in darkest part of the space, he could just make out the edges of several long boxes. He squinted, and chills spread across his scalp as he realized they were caskets.

“Fucking vampires.”

“Stop whining and try to get free,” Lucia said. Her head was down and her eyes closed, sweat beading on her forehead as she methodically worked her hands and wrists.

“I’m doing that,” Cody shot back, still moving his own hands. “But I’m also freaking the fuck out right now.”

“Good thing they brought you and not your husband,” Lucia said. “We might have a shot at being rescued by him.”

“Thanks for that.”

Cody had to give Lucia points for that one. If anyone could save them, it would be Demmy. Even though Cody had just that morning made Demmy feel guilty as shit about his savior complex and interest in these cases, Demmy would put all that aside and do everything he could to find and rescue them. Because that was who Demmy was right to his very core. He always felt like he owed a huge debt to everyone around him. Hell, to the whole world. As if he constantly needed to prove he had a right to exist. Cody hoped one day Demmy would be able to see himself for the fucking amazing gift that he was, and not just someone taking up space in a small town in western Pennsylvania.