Read Online Of Masques and Martyrs by Christopher Golden - Free Book Online Page B

to you.”
    Her eyes went wide, then squeezed shut, tears springing forth as she bit her lip to keep from screaming again. They rolled down her face and mingled with the blood where her skin had split.
    “Please . . .” she rasped, hoarse from where he’d choked her, just to watch her face turn blue. “Please don’t—”
    “Oh, not to worry,” Hannibal interrupted. “You won’t feel it. I won’t find you at all attractive, not sexy in the least, until you’re very, very dead.”
    She screamed again, and Hannibal threw his head back and laughed loud and long. He was having himself a wonderful time. He glanced over at the corner of the cold, damp cement room, and saw that his other captive was struggling against his bonds, despite the fact that the wire had already cut his wrists to the bone. This one had a gag, only because Hannibal didn’t want to hear his whining pleas. Only the agony interested him.
    “Oh,” he said. “I’d almost forgotten you were there.”
    He didn’t know the man’s name, either. But he did know what was important. Hannibal’s eyes flashed as he smiled at the man.
    “Your sister does seem to be enjoying herself, doesn’t she?” he asked.
    The man nearly cut off a foot trying to get at him after that. He flopped on the cold floor in his own blood.
    “Well done,” Hannibal said. “Good show, young man.”
    A short time later, when the woman was dead but still warm, and her brother had passed out from loss of blood, Hannibal grew bored. A knock at the door made him look up from the woman’s corpse.
    “Come,” he ordered.
    Two of his lieutenants entered the room. Behind them, a third vampire dragged a prisoner behind him.
    “Ah, the girl,” Hannibal said appreciatively. “I’d almost forgotten we were to speak this afternoon. Erika, isn’t it?”
    Erika was thrown to the floor, hands tied behind her back, and her face slapped concrete. When she looked up at him, sneering, her lip was bleeding.
    “Fuck you,” she said grimly.
    “I think not,” Hannibal replied. “On the other hand . . .”
    He launched a swift kick at her gut, catching her just below the left breast, and she tumbled backward to the floor once more. Erika heaved and coughed, and a moment later, after sitting up again, spit blood out on the concrete.
    Hannibal crouched down in front of her and grabbed the front of her shirt. Hauled her forward so that their eyes met, only inches apart.
    “You’d better learn some fucking respect,” he snarled. “Or you’ll be just as dead as my old friend Rolf.”
    She winced at that, and Hannibal smiled.
    “Oh, yes, he’s quite dead,” Hannibal said, and enjoyed the sound of his voice in the echoing chamber. “Dead as the silly human bitch on my bed.”
    Erika glanced over at his bed, and her eyes widened at the sight of all the blood. Her heart began to beat a bit faster. Hannibal realized that, though she’d done her best to hide it, the smell of the blood alone must have had her salivating. The sight of it would only add to her hunger.
    “How long has it been since you ate?” he asked her. “Two days? Three?”
    “Five,” she replied and looked at him evenly. “Five days. And she volunteered.”
    “Got to love the volunteers,” Hannibal said happily. “But you don’t have to leave them alive. It just doesn’t taste the same if you’re not killing them.”
    He strolled over to where the dead woman’s brother lay slumped on the floor, grabbed the man by his hair, and dragged him back to drop him just in front of Erika.
    “Free her hands,” he ordered. Instantly, one of his lieutenants stepped forward to cut her bonds.
    Erika flexed her hands, stared down at them. After a moment, she looked up at Hannibal, brow furrowed with suspicion and doubt. Hannibal reveled in her emotions, her fear and her pain. The girl had been the protégée and more than likely the lover, of the deluded Rolf Sechs. Rolf, who might have been Hannibal’s right hand but