Ruby lunged at Jay in an attempt to stop him from getting himself and everybody else killed, but she wasn’t fast enough. Conrad moved across the table in a dark blur. It felt like an anvil hit her in the chest, and Ruby went flying back, crashing to the floor and rolling over backward. Her stake fell out of her waistband as she rolled, and it landed right in front of her face. She didn’t feel any pain as she grabbed the weapon and pushed herself to her knees; adrenaline held it at bay.

  When she looked up, she saw that Ethan had been thrown in the opposite direction. Tyler had fled to the far corner, where he was curled up defensively, his knees up to his chest and his head buried beneath his arms. Jay was held against the wall, his feet dangling half a meter off the floor, and Conrad’s hand gripping his throat tightly enough to make him croak. Jay’s eyes bulged from his crimson face as he struggled to breathe, beating his fists uselessly against Conrad’s arm.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Ruby screamed. She knew her plea was as futile as their shoddy plan had been.

  Conrad turned his head just in time to see Scott charging toward him. Letting Jay fall to the floor, Conrad spun, his arm soared in an upward arc, his palm flat like a blade. The blur that was Scott turned into an explosion of blood that sprayed across the room, reaching the far wall. Drops of blood pattered down on the table like crimson raindrops. Scott’s headless body thudded to the floor, his weapon landing with an impotent clatter by its side. His head soared like a soccer ball. Ruby tracked its path with wide eyes. The head hit the wall with so much force that it violently rebounded and landed on the dining table. It bounced across the wooden surface twice before it fell still, wide, lifeless eyes staring at the door.

  Conrad’s voice, now a growl, broke the ensuing silence. “Drop the weapons.”

  Ruby and Ethan threw down their stakes, the sound of the wood hitting the floor was like a feeble drum announcing the end of a even feebler battle. The closing bell of a too-short boxing match.

  Conrad snatched the cleanest napkin from the table and wiped Scott’s blood from his hand. “I’m curious, what did you think would happen if you killed me? Did you think the Nytarch would leave you alone? Did you believe they would not send another to finish my task? Poor, stupid little humans. I had hoped you would comply of your own free will. However, it seems that the threat of death was not a strong enough motivator,” Conrad said. He drew his lips back to reveal long, vicious fangs.

  “Please,” Ruby begged, fearful tears prickling her eyes.

  Conrad bit down on his own hand, the same hand that had just decapitated Scott and ended his existence. Hauling Jay up by his hair, he thrust his palm over Jay’s mouth, forcing him to drink his blood. Ruby watched on with horror, unable to move a muscle. Her hands were pressed into her thighs, knuckles white as she dug her fingers into the tough denim of her jeans. Conrad pulled his hand back. Ruby had just enough time to see bright red blood smeared around Jay’s mouth before Conrad flung him aside. Jay landed sprawled, face-down on the floor, all fight in him extinguished.

  “Jay,” Ruby said, her voice choked as she crawled toward him. She never made it to her boyfriend. In two steps, Conrad reached her. Ruby felt the stinging pain of her hair being yanked viciously as Conrad pulled her to her feet. Her vision blurred as she struggled.

  “Move, and I’ll kill her,” he warned Ethan, who was halfway to his feet. Ethan froze. He’d never looked so helpless.

  Ruby gripped Conrad’s hand and tried desperately to prise his fingers from her hair. It was hopeless, she might as well have been trying to pull open a locked blast door. Conrad pressed his bloody hand to her mouth, and it was Ruby’s turn to drink his poison. She tried to move her head, but he held her still, his strength beyond anything she had ever felt in her life. His blood poured over her tongue, hot and coppery. A bitter tang filled her mouth as it trickled down her throat. Tears streamed down her face as more and more of the vampire’s blood poured into her. She didn’t want to swallow, but it was that or choke on it. Only when Conrad was satisfied that she had drunk enough did he release her. He didn’t throw her like he had Jay, he simply retracted his hands and allowed her to flop down to her knees, sobbing and retching. She coughed violently, trying to throw the blood back up, but it was too late, it was already deep inside her, making its way into her system and violating her veins. A few drops of blood splattered the floor, but that was all.

  Ruby couldn’t watch as Ethan was force-fed the vampire’s blood. She couldn’t bear to see another person go through it. She was still shaking from the assault. She heard Ethan fall to the ground when Conrad was done with him.

  “Did you really believe that would work? Did you truly envision four humans besting an ancient vampire?” Conrad said. He tutted loudly as he shook his head, like a disappointed teacher. “You will all obey my commands, and if you are lucky, I will allow you to keep your lives when you have served my purposes. Scott Jackson’s death was the penalty for this insurrection. Next time, it will be Tyler. None of you are to leave this room.”

  With a final disgruntled look around at them, Conrad swept across the dining room and left. Simon scurried around the room like a rodent, gathering the fallen weapons from the floor before hurrying after his master. The door swung shut, and the four friends were left alone.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Is everyone okay?” Ethan asked. His question was addressed to the room, but his gaze was on Ruby. His kind eyes were filled with sympathy as though she were the only one who had just been force-fed a vampire’s blood. She nodded, smiling at him despite the misery that held her in its hawkish grip. Her lips were sticky, and her throat stung.

  Jay pushed himself off the floor. “I’m fine,” he mumbled. His face was red, and not just because he had blood all around his mouth. Ruby recognized that combination of anger and shame. He’d been tossed around in front of everybody, and he didn’t know how to deal with his damaged pride.

  Ruby had seen Jay in this state a few times before; usually she would have trodden carefully, knowing how close to the edge he was. But this time her own anger was too close to the surface to contain, and it came flying out at him like a river breaking a dam.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” she demanded, jumping to her feet and stomping toward him.

  Jay’s anger was shoved aside by his surprise as he turned to Ruby in bewilderment. She shoved him in the chest, and he staggered back several steps, narrowly keeping his balance. “You could have gotten us killed! You got—” Instead of finishing her sentence, she pointed furiously at Scott’s headless corpse.

  Jay looked down at the vampire’s remains and his face wrinkled in confusion before he shrugged his shoulders half-heartedly. “So? He’s a vampir—I didn’t even know him.”

  Ruby gaped in disbelief. “He was on our side.”

  “Oh, please. He was on his own side. He attacked Ethan!”

  “Don’t use me to justify your actions,” Ethan said, equally annoyed with Jay.

  “We were all willing to go along with what Conrad wanted and get this mess over and done with, but you didn’t want to risk losing your precious followers!” Ruby shouted at him, growing angrier with every word. “How can you be so stupid?”

  “Our followers. We’ve all worked hard on the channel, and it will all vanish in a heartbeat if we do what he wants.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the fucking channel!” Ruby screamed loud enough to wake the neighbors on both sides.

  “It’s not just about the channel, Rubes! He threatened to kill us all. He threatened to kill my mom and dad. What’s to say he wouldn’t kill us even after we did everything he wanted? And why did nobody have my back, huh? I said the attack word, and you all did nothing!”

  “Let’s take a minute to calm down,” said Ethan. He stepped forward, positioning himself between Ruby and Jay. “Jay, what you did was dumb as fuck, but turning on each other won’t help us.”

  Ruby’s hands were clenched into fists as she glared at her boyfriend, her chest rising and falling heavily with each angry breath. Her view of her selfish boyfriend was blocked when Ethan stepped between them. A small smile played on his lips, not one that contained any happiness but one that said that he was on her side. She released her frustration with a leadened sigh, and her shoulders sagged.

  “She started it,” Jay said petulantly, and Ruby felt her spine turn to iron once again.

  Before the argument could resume, a meek voice from the corner intercepted them. “Stop fighting.” Tyler was still huddled on the floor with his knees up to his chest and as they turned to him he brought his gaze off the floor and looked at them. “Please, don’t fight.”

  Jay’s anger melted away as he turned to his friend and Ruby felt a pang of resentment that Tyler possessed a sway over Jay that she did not.

  “I’m sorry,” Jay said to his best friend, his tone now delicate. “Are you okay? Did they do anything to you?”

  Tyler shook his head, his features shadowed. “I’m fine. That vampire came to my house.” Tyler rubbed his forearm as he spoke, like he was trying to satiate an undying itch. “He told me if I didn’t go with him, he’d burn my house down and kill my mom. Then he’d kill all of you, too. As soon as he got me outside, he forced me to drink his blood. Then he brought me here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jay said to the group. He turned their way but was unable to lift his gaze. “I fucked up.”

  “Big time,” said Ruby. There was no way she was going to let him off with an apology. It could have been one of them lying on the ground without a head.

  “Can we do something about that?” Tyler asked, pointing at the headless corpse on the floor. The blood that had pooled out around it had turned a dark, almost black color, like tar. Ruby noticed that her feet were dangerously close to the puddle, and she shifted away from it. She’d never seen a dead body before, and the sight of Scott’s decapitated corpse was weirdly enthralling, like being unable to look away from a car crash even though you knew you should.

  “There might be something in here,” Ethan said, pulling open the cabinet at the edge of the room. He pulled out an emerald green tablecloth and approached the body. His nose wrinkled at the sight, and he averted his gaze.

  “Here,” Ruby said, taking one end of the cloth and helping him position it over Scott’s remains. It was large enough to cover the entire body and most of the bloody puddle, but some blood still oozed out as a sick reminder of what lay beneath. And, of course, there was the matter of the decapitated head that was sitting grotesquely on the polished but blood-splattered dining table.

  Ruby grabbed another cloth from the cabinet and carried it over to the table. Scott’s head was on its side, bloody and torn sinews dangling from his neck. His pale skin had taken on a sickly grey hue; decay had set in fast. His eyes, once dark, now held no color at all; the milky white orbs stared lifelessly at the door. Ruby’s stomach twisted in nauseous knots. She flung the cloth over the head and blocked out the sight, turning away quickly as though afraid it might roll out again.

  “Now what?” Ruby asked. She had no idea if Conrad’s deal was still on the table. It was likely that once they’d done what Conrad wanted, he would kill them.

  “Now we wait. It’s not like we can go anywhere,” said Jay. He dragged his feet across the room and sat down on the windowsill dejectedly.

  “We could. Realistically,” she said. “We have Tyler now. We could just make a run for it.” Simon still had their phones but it was a small price to pay for escape.

  “No, we can’t. We have to stay here in this room,” Ethan said firmly. Jay and Tyler agreed with him, a little too enthusiastically. It sounded almost like they wanted to stay there. “Even if we could leave, he’d just come after us. He wants you and Jay to record that video. I say do what he wants and hope he still lets us live afterward.”

  “And if he doesn’t let us go?” asked Ruby. She chewed on her lips nervously.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Ethan. Ruby understood his unsaid meaning. They still had the silver knives and Conrad didn’t know they had them. That was their last element of surprise. Their measure of last resort. Although, now that Ruby had seen Conrad in action she had no faith that the knives would do them any good.