Chapter 220 BLOOD BANK
AURORA’S POINT OF VIEW.
I gulped, the action tough, and straining on my throat muscles as she pranced about. She took off the white coat, revealing bony, thin arms with long, red gashes around them. Gashes, she keeps scratching angrily. “I was so close….so close. I would have had it all. I would have saved Tony….my little Tony. If not for you!” She glared at me again.
“W-what did you really give me, Marloise?” I asked, fear, mixed with dread, crawling up my spine in low trickles. A sheen of sweat covered my skin, and the once cool room suddenly became raging hot.
Marloise stopped her frantic pacing, her head cocked at an unnatural angle. The Misha mask was entirely gone, replaced by the twitching, skeletal remains of a woman driven mad by her own pseudo-science.
“What did I give you?” she whispered, a crazed, haunted giggle escaping her throat. She clapped like a child, jumping up and down and about, the shreds of hair still and stiff like they had no life. She leaned down, and the smell of copper and rot intensified from her breath, as her shark-like fangs hovered inches from my cheek.
I feared she would bite me. However, she took her tongue out and gave a long lick to my cheek before adding her words, sending a bone chill that threatened to make me spill my pants.
“I gave you a Death-Sentence Cocktail, Aurora. A mix of the sedative that kept Kai docile in Spain and a little something I cooked up in the basement. It’s a neurodegenerative paralytic. In ten minutes, your heart will forget how to beat. In fifteen, your brain will be a puddle of useless grey matter.”
She reached out, her long, yellowed fingernails digging into the gashes on her own arms until they bled.
“Armando reached out to me, you know? He thinks his first daughter deserves a lesson. After all, he could not help me get Kai even after I helped get those stupid shares…the least he could do is offer you to me, right, daughter-in-law…I wonder….is your heart so powerful, my son craves you like you’re a drug.
I need a fresh host. Tony died because his blood was too weak... but yours? You’re young. You’re vibrant. You’re the one Kai loves. I figured, if he won’t give me his life, I’ll take it from the one person he’d die to protect.”
She grabbed a heavy glass jar from the tray, the labels written in a crazy, illegible scrawl.
“You’re not just a girl anymore, Aurora. You’re a Blood Bank. And I’m about to make a withdrawal.”
"Armando..." I wheezed, the air in my lungs thin….I couldn’t breathe… ahhh, the betrayal of my father finally felt like a punch to my gut. I knew he was evil, but I hoped he loved me enough to never put my life in such danger…and that of a woman as crazy and volatile as Marloise, who danced around without any music. He hadn't just neglected me again. He gifted them to a mad woman, all for his sick revenge against my mom, Silas, and Kai.
Ohh,…ahhhhh…. Is this the last time I’ll ever see him?
So many words unsaid. I wanted to tell him I loved him, that he wasn’t darkness…that he was my light as much as I was his as well. But I might die here….all alone….without saying goodbye.
"Oh, don't look so surprised, Little Bird," Marloise cooed, her tongue darting out to taste the sweat on my temple again. It was a lizard-like, predatory gesture. "He was always a businessman first. He knew I was alive. He knew I was waiting in the shadows of Westridge. We made a pact: I get my revenge, and he gets to watch the Mercer empire crumble from the inside out because Kai will be too busy mourning you to fight him."
She held up a thick, wide-bore needle. The sun catching the bevel made it look like a silver fang, adding to my already spiked terror. I prayed, Kai, or my mother standing just outside would sense something and call for help.
"Time for the first deposit," she whispered.