How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(48)

I’m helpless.

Dammit! I don’t yell out to my sister any more for fear of distracting her and having her be ensnared. I can’t do anything to help, and Meghan can’t get to me to free me.

I try calling up some supernatural spells to fight back, only they leak like water through a sieve in my brain. Nothing is sticking, nothing retains. If I can’t visualize the spell in my mind because I’m too freaked out, I’m useless.

My meager powers don’t offer any sort of help in this situation.

Fingers grip my throat, forcing my head backwards and tearing my eyes away from the carnage in front of me. I grunt in pain while I try to fight it off.

“Shhhh, little Harker.”

A face floats into view, someone I don’t recognize. I thought I knew most of the vampires in Austin by now, but apparently not.

Built like a tank, my assailant is white and pale, a common trait for vampires due to their aversion to the sun. His face is, for lack of a better word, melted with keloided scars that make him look like candle wax. The skin around his eyes are drooped, giving him a hooded look. Deep within the melted folds of skin, clear blue eyes rake over me and through me, like they’re inspecting my soul.

He grins at me.

I shudder as his hot breath trickles over the skin of my neck, right where my jugular is. I’ve been bitten before without being glamored - it hurts like a son of a bitch. I try to prepare myself for it, yet I can’t help but tremble in fear.

“Hey Harker,” Melted Vampire yells out to my sister, using her official title. “Drop your weapon, or I slit the little Harker’s throat.” I feel sharp claws on my throat, pointed enough to draw blood.

I hear the clatter of the stake on the ground as she drops it in the eerie stillness that follows his threat. I manage to crane my head to look at her. She’s held by four vampires, who hold her hands at her side. Meaning that she can still—

Our ambushers must know exactly who they’re dealing with, because one puts her left hand over her heart. It’s the hand that she uses to summon her magic sword from. Our last chance for escape would kill her if she tries calling it forth.

“No,” escapes my throat, “Meghan, don’t-”

The melted face in my view gives an imperceptible nod, a signal for the other vampires. I hear their growl, knowing that they’re descending upon her right now. All because I’m too weak to help her out. Every fiber of my body screams against Fate. She’s going to die because of me.

I try averting my eyes. The hand against my throat tilts my head back into position, just in time to watch the vampires attack her. Her hazel eyes meet mine, pleading with me just before a female vampire slashes her claws against her throat.

I scream.

Blood spurts from Meghan’s throat, now cut all the way to her spinal column. Meghan’s struggles for air as she stumbles to her knees, and she collapses like a rag doll on her side.

I’m still screaming when the vampires lose themselves in the lust over her lifeblood. They relish it like a bunch of sparrows in a birth bath. Only, it’s a shower in my sister’s last moments of life.

My only sister is gone.

My scream is cut short at the excruciating pain in my left wrist. There’s a point with pain where you can no longer scream, only witness the agony. I was just flung over that point.

I turn to see Melted Vampire’s face shredding the flesh of my left forearm. Then his lips fasten to the wound and I feel him drawing out the blood from my veins, intending to drain me dry.

My basest survival instinct kicks into gear, and I thrash wildly about. I want to break away from him. I want to kill him for what he did to Meghan.

Only, I’m too weak and helpless, and it’s getting worse by the second. He’s unrelenting in his feeding.

Those blue eyes snap to mine, holding me in place. He doesn’t glamor me, but he watches me as he feeds.

Blackness swims into my vision, a darkness that threatens to overtake me. I can’t lose consciousness. Not now. I know that I won’t ever wake up again if that happens.

Still, he keeps feeding when I start gasping. Sounds fade, blackness tunnels everything in my view. I can no longer hear the vampires celebrating over Meghan’s dead body. The pain dulls, signaling that I’m just on Death’s doorstep.

Meghan, I pray silently. Mom. Dad. I’ll be seeing you soon.

The end never comes.

Dimly, I feel the weight of another wrist, slick from blood touch mine. Astonished, I look at Melted. He’s grinning in satisfaction at my shocked bewilderment. My eyes, through the dark lens of near-unconsciousness drift down to my forearm where his own open wrist is grasping mine, wound-to-wound.

No. My mouth moves as I try to speak. No. You can’t do that.

This is how humans are turned into vampires. And I know that this is how I will die a slow, painful death, as vampire blood will not play nice with my not-quite-human blood.

Melted leans into me as I near ever so close to the precipice of darkness, his bloodied lips inches from my ear.

“Be seeing you real soon, little Harker,” he whispers.

“Anthony,” a voice tells Melted, using what I think is his name. “Anthony, we have to go. Now.”

Then I fall into oblivion.

If I wake up, I’m going to find my world turned upside down.



To be continued in Damned if I Do, releasing everywhere on September 14.