Page 31 of A Drop of Venom

I rapped on the door softly with my knuckles as a timid woman might and stepped back, tipping my head forward so my hood covered most of my face.

Heavy, booted footsteps crossed the floor inside and the door was yanked open.

“There you are,” Lord Vedast snapped. “Finally. Get inside.”

With my head down, I couldn’t see his face, but I’d know that voice anywhere, even after more than two years. And to my keen nose, he smelled of wrongness and evil, just as Terolon had described his scent.

A low hiss drifted into the doorway from the darkness to my right.

Vedast’s head whipped in that direction. I tensed, but a sudden breeze rustled the trees and he seemed to dismiss the sound as nothing but wind.

Keeping my head down, I slipped past him into the cottage. He slammed the door closed behind me and loudly locked the bolt. I jumped and cowered because that was what he expected the women who came here to do.

Vedast walked around me slowly. I watched his feet moving until he disappeared past the edge of my hood. He smelled strongly of brandy, and there were many bottles of it and numerous empty glasses throughout the room.

“You’re new,” he mused from behind me, his trousers rustling. “And fatter than I asked for. But I suppose you’ll do.” He gave me a shove that sent me stumbling. “On your knees.”

I knelt as he circled around to stand in front of me again. The buttons of his trousers were undone but they hadn’t slipped down past his hips, thank the Goddess. At the moment, I was subjected only to the sight of the tented fabric and not what was underneath it.

He chuckled and patted my cheek. My flinch wasn’t entirely feigned. “You’re a quiet one, aren’t you, little mouse?”

My breath caught in my chest. Lord Vedast had called me that in the woods. But surely he hadn’t recognized me after two years and with my face half-covered.

“I like the quiet ones,” he added, seemingly oblivious to my dismay. “It makes it more fun to make them scream.”

My shoulders went down a little at that. He didn’t know me. He simply thought of all women as prey.

This would be the night he learned differently.

A swimming sensation rolled through my belly, but I resisted the urge to put my hand reassuringly on the curve hidden under my cloak.

“What do you think, little mouse?” Vedast prompted, his fingers gripping the top of my head through my hood. “Do you think you’ll scream tonight?”

“Hazel,” I said.

“What was that?” he asked sharply.

“Hazel,” I repeated, louder. “My name is Hazel.”

“All right, Hazel,” he said mockingly as he squeezed my head more tightly. “Do you think you’ll scream tonight?”

My fingers tightened around the handle of the dagger hidden in my right sleeve, adjusting my grip the way Terolon had taught me. “No, but you will.”

I struck fast—faster than he could process my words, far faster than I could have managed before Terolon’s bite and our many matings had given me this new, quicker body—and drove the dagger hilt-deep through the hard bulge beneath his tailored trousers. And then I twisted the blade and shoved harder to drive it into his lower belly too.

Lord Vedast’s scream was high-pitched and agonized.

How very bittersweet to know that even if it drifted as far as a neighboring farm, it would not have been the first such scream that came from this cottage of late.

It would, however, be the last.

Vedast stumbled back, pulling himself free of my blade as he did. Blood sprayed across my cloak and soaked the front of his trousers, turning the rich blue cloth dark under his flailing hands.

“You cunt!” he shrieked and collapsed, writhing, his hands pressed to the injury. Blood spurted between his fingers, splattering the rug.

I was just getting to my feet when the door was ripped off its hinges and tossed aside. Terolon filled the doorway, amber eyes blazing and his massive body trembling in fury.

Eyes wide with panic, Vedast made a croaking sound of horror and scrambled to his hands and knees, lurching in the direction of the far side of the room where a pistol lay on a table.