Page 144 of Red Masquerade

Maybe if I hadn’t insisted on being useful, on being bait, Marcel would be dead by now.

I glared at him, vowing if I didn’t end up dead at the end of this, Marcel would.

He raised a brow and motioned toward the door. “Now.”

But once I was on the threshold, I saw it wasn’t a tomb—it was a staircase leading down. There were no lights here, just a pit of darkness, the first step or two illuminated by the soft light of the night.

Everything within me told me to turn and bolt, to try my best to get away.

Marcel’s hungry stare burned into my back, his body just behind mine.

“What is this?” A musty smell wafted up. Images of half-decayed bodies hanging out of their coffins shot through my mind. Vampire-creatures so craved for blood, they no longer looked human. Vines growing from the earth to wrap around me and drag me down.

“You’ll see soon enough.” Marcel moved closer. “Go.”

My throat ached with all the emotions bottled up inside me.

A cobweb was strewn across the step. The whole interior was dusty, dead mice in a corner. The walls on either side appeared to hold shelves, but no caskets, no name plates. Like this tomb was abandoned. It’d been created as a facade for whatever lay beneath.

I took a tentative first step and heard Marcel sigh behind me.

I should’ve told Flora how much she meant to me, how I always felt we were like sisters. And I should’ve told my mother exactly what I thought of her, should’ve told her everything I’d been doing these past few years, just to see her expression.

But most of all, I should’ve said the words to Vince more often:I love you.

Marcel crowded me in, his body a moving wall behind me, as he forced me down the stairs.

The air was damp, warm. I coughed, the humidity thickening the air until it became hard to breathe.

We were walking into straight darkness and I couldn’t see anything. I felt for the walls on either side.

A voice echoed up from the darkness. Indeterminable.

Someone waiting below.

But it was nothing like the moan I’d heard when I was in the garden last.

This time—

I gasped. Stopped in my tracks.

Icy fear rushed down my spine.

“No.”

Turning, I tried to find Marcel in the darkness, reaching for him. My eyes widened against the perpetual blackness in front of me.

“No,please.”

“Please, what?” He grabbed my arms, turning me back around.

“I can’t—You can’t make me go down there.Please,” I begged.

He purred in the inky darkness. “I do like hearing that word come out of your mouth.”

More tears built up in my lashes, but this time I let them fall. “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” His fingers brushed my chin, a phantom’s touch. The ghost of his thumb along my cheek.