Broken by Shiloh Walker Read Free Book Online Page B

Queenshill darlings had recruited on the streets—girls who would not be missed in society and had found a genuine home down here. Della, Polly, and Noreen were the only ones from whom he had not enjoyed the gush of virgin blood.
    Through a set of alarming circumstances, they had been brought to the main Underground early. A motley group had wandered onto the Queenshill campus several nights ago, a vampire having been among their number. “Frank” was seeking some of his own kind as company and had found the schoolgirls. Yet, Della had been suspicious of the group’s story, and the meeting had got out of order, ending in a melee. When a far more dangerous and mean vampire had shown up to help the intruders—and when one of the intruders had proven to possess strong mental powers that had almost captivated Della—the schoolgirls had fled back to their dorm house. As a precaution, they had been taken off campus, then transferred early to the main Underground.
    Even now, Della didn’t know how their absence from their “normal lives” at school was being explained. Mrs. Jones, who had masqueraded as a school employee, had been working on explanations that were surely holding. It might be days before the administration thought something amiss and contacted their parents. Not that their mums and dads had ever cared about much when it came to girls like Della, Noreen, and Polly, who had been all but dumped at school and forgotten.
    Memory tweaked at Della—the pull of life as it had been before those intruders had shown themselves on campus. School days spent walking under the sun, as their line of vampires could do in modest doses. The mentorship of Mademoiselle, the French teacher. The pull of Melinda, a classmate whom Della had admired beyond any other.
    Then Della remembered how, one night, Violet, their former group leader, had coerced Della into feeding from Melinda. Della’s stomach tied into knots of guilt.
    Just as she crossed her arms over her stomach to press against the tight feeling, to obliterate the remorse and the confusing stimulation, she recalled, also, what she had eventually done to Violet, the bully.
    A black cloud formed over Della’s vision. Ravens, summoned and spurred on by Della’s rage.
    Polly and Noreen seemed to sense Della’s disquiet, and they glanced at her, their gazes cautious, as if seeing firsthand the carnage Della had wrought on Violet.
    Wolfie called to them. “So far away in that corner. You’ve saved yourselves long enough. Come here, my dears.”
    Noreen’s and Polly’s gazes changed from wariness of Della to something else altogether. Though Wolfie had often stopped in Mrs. Jones’s sub-Underground to visit and play innocently with them, Mrs. Jones had made certain they had remained untouched—all the tastier for her blood rituals, Della imagined.
    Wolfie had propped himself up on his elbows, the other girls continuing to lavish him with their experienced hands.
    Noreen accessed Polly and Della with the classmate mind- link. He wants something new . She had been his most recent favorite before all the trouble had come upon the Underground, and she knew he would probably rip into her first.
    They had all looked forward to the night when it would happen, but now that it was here . . .
    Della pushed aside the sheer curtain. Every time Wolfie was near, she knew how much he wanted to have at them. There had been a power in withholding, too. She had intuitively realized this last night, when the older girls had taken the lead.
    Polly inched closer to Della. What now?
    Della stepped away from the fringes, smiling at Wolfie, though she wasn’t feeling the same on the inside. You two know that we are the ultimate distraction for him, she mind-said to her classmates. The longer he doesn’t know about what really happened with Mrs. Jones, the better .
    But . . . Noreen started.
    Hush, Noreen, Polly thought. Back in the sub-Underground, she had acted so knowledgeable, yet her