Page 27 of Red Masquerade

Had I not been invited?

I straightened, took a breath.

Have you ever wanted to be free, Helena?

It made me wonder, did I feel alive? Had I felt alive, ever, these last few years?

Well and truly free?

When I turned the corner, the figure was gone, but a set of large wooden doors confronted me. No one lingered in the hall.

I swore I heard a whisper. A suggestion of a voice, right at my ear.

The feeling of a skeletal finger down my spine.

I was not sure what about the doors made me pause, but I had the fleeting thought they were like the doors to Hell: as I neared, I saw the human figures—and the angels, the demons, that called to the ones upon the foyer’s ceiling—twisting and writhing, carved into the wood. The doors were a work of art, a sculpture in its own right.

The demons devoured, the angels wept, the humans smiled.

I ran my hand along the wood, feeling the bite of the demons’ teeth.

A soft sigh reached my ears, but I knew I didn’t imagine it. A moan. A panting sound, a chittering laugh. All behind the door.

Another moan, one made only in private moments,behind closed doors, sounded even closer, as though whomever felt such ecstasy was just on the other side of the wood. My heartbeat raced, sending a thrill through me that turned my fingertips like static. Like I was doing something wrong, hearing something I wasn’t privy to.

Another masculine grunt. A sharp inhale of breath and a low, drawn-out groan.

I pushed my weight against the heavy doors. Barely, just barely. Just enough to peek inside.

There was a mass of writhing bodies, all naked and starkly painted with blood. Men, clearly aroused, with sharp glinting teeth. Women with the same teeth, fingers caressing themselves and others. Red streaking down their breasts, their limbs. The ruby robes were discarded, and every figure within bore themselves, unashamed.

There was a couple on the floor closer to the door, facing away from me—but it was clear, the way she straddled his lap, legs on either sides of his, her back to his front, his strong fist curled into her hair, gripping and pulling, the flex of his muscles, her dainty hand reaching up to his skull, his face buried in her throat. I saw blood, staining like ink, travel down her shoulder.

I couldn’t stop the gasp that came from me. They were beingmurdered. No one could lose so much blood and survive.

The young woman of the couple in front of me sharply cried out and became languid in the man’s arms.

I felt it, the mix of pain and pleasure, the blurring of those lines, like I was there with her. LikeIwasher.

But I didn’t understand what I saw—what extreme pleasures I had just witnessed—and it frightened me. It warmed me, igniting a curiosity that went straight through me. But just as I turned to run, to shut the door and pretend I had not seen anything, my breathing stopped, because my eyes met a familiar pair.

Alexander Sinclair, set upon a couch with another man on one side and a woman on the other, his mouth stained with blood,trailing down his chin and his chest, holding a woman to his neck, his other hand pushing down the head of the man whose face was in his lap. His dilated pupils zeroed in on me, and I swore I saw the corner of his mouth quirk upward.

Heart pounding, I fled down the hall.

What the hell was going on in there?

And why had he told me to find that room?

I understood then what the look he gave me was. His peculiarity when I’d met him.

It was entirely predatory.He was a predator. Like a beast, staring down its prey, an innate sense of fear rippling through me.

I turned the corner and leant against the wall, my hand at my throat. I thought I could feel the piercing teeth already. The pinprick of pain, the rush of adrenaline.

And a tiny part of me, the curious part, wondered if it would hurt? Or would I cry out like that woman in ecstasy?

I had to leave.