buildings that stretched up toward the sky. Wait…I know this place…it was….Vegas?
“What the…?” I squinted my eyes toward the outside window, not believing what I was seeing. Vegas? How could I be in Vegas? I’d been in Colorado when I’d…well, I wasn’t sure what had happened to me yet. Maybe I was dreaming or something. Perhaps my mind was creating this room as a sort of comfort from being trapped in the dark.
I did my classic pinch-myself-to-see-if-I’m-awake thing and, yep, it hurt.
So I was awake.
The buzzing in my head dropped down a notch, now only as loud as a faint whisper. Hmmm…so what was I supposed to do? There was a door on the wall right in front of the bed. Should I get up and go see what was out there? If there was one thing I’d learned, it was that there was no such thing as being too careful. For all I knew I’d opened the door and a thousand Death Walkers’ would come swarming in, their yellow eyes glowing with the hunger to kill me. Or even worse than Death Walkers, what if Stephan came in?
On my “Things That Terrify Me List,” Stephan now held top rank—one step above the Death Walkers.
Shows you how scary he is.
I decided the best way to approach the situation was to get up and go over to the door. Perhaps when I got close enough, I’d be able to hear something that would give me a clue as to what was out there. And if I did hear anything that sounded threatening or dangerous, like say a deep voice belonging to a man with a very distinctive scar grazing down his left cheek, then I’d move on to my next plan. And that was to escape out the window. It was going to be a little tricky, though, since it looked like I was up on the second floor of the building. But I could always try the whole tying-the-sheets-together-and-making-a-rope trick.
Sucking in a deep breath, I tossed the blanket off of me and slid my legs off the edge of the bed. I was no longer dressed in the clothes I’d been wearing back in Colorado. I had on a pair of plaid pajama shorts and a tank top. Both had pink on them so there was no way they belonged to me. Across the top of my leg—right in the spot where Stephan had stabbed—a bandaged was wrapped. Someone had fixed me up.
Who, though?
Good question.
My leg throbbed as I stood up, the grey carpet feeling warm against my bare feet. I limped over to the door. So far, I hadn’t heard a single noise. Wherever I was, was quiet.
Dead quiet.
I stood hesitantly in front of the closed door. Did I dare open it?
My heart knocked in my chest, and with a trembling hand, I reached for the doorknob. But before I could get my hand around it, it started to turn on its own, and at the very same time electricity whipped through me.
I jumped back, but instantly regretted it because my legs gave out on me and I toppled to the floor.
I grabbed hold of my injured leg. “Dam—”
The door swung open.
Ignoring the scorching pain in my leg, I scrambled to my feet and searched frantically for another way out of the room, other than trying to jump out the window.
“Gemma,” Alex said, in a guarded tone, as he walked through the doorway. He inched himself toward me, taking each step carefully, as though he thought walking too fast would spook me. But him just being here was spooking me.
He was wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and his hair was scattered messily in its intentionally-done-perfect-yet-messy kind of way. He looked like a normal guy—completely harmless. Yet, I knew he wasn’t.
“Stay-y away f-from me?” I stammered, my heart pounding insanely in my chest as I backed away from him. “Don’t come any closer.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice was as soft as a feather. He continued to step toward me, his bright green eyes locked on me, just like when he watched Stephan try to take my emotions away. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“You promise!” I cried, anger raging through me like a boiling kettle of water. “Your promises are worth nothing.” I mean, he’d promised me how many times that he wouldn’t let anything happened to me and yet, in the end, he’d let his father attempt to erase my mind and