Holding on to Hope by Sid Love Read Free Book Online

exposed skin, though, and she shivered every now and then.
    When Ronan saw her approaching, he signaled to the men to stop talking and spoke to her, “Les, I think you should wait inside the car.”
    “Dude, I don’t think that’d be such a good idea,” Ian said, before she could oppose. “She’ll be in more danger out here alone than with us. At least we can protect her.”
    Ronan looked between her and Ian before nodding, “Fair enough. But he can smell the fresh blood once we are in, so we’ll have to be extra cautious.”
    A prickly premonition of fear pervaded her senses. Smelling blood, glamour, feeding off of human life—it was all supposed to be a sheer fantasy. Reading about vampires in books was cool, but being real was too much. Leslie had tried to wrap her mind around the concept of some weird species called the dhampirs. Now she was about to face a real-life vampire. Her emotions were running wild, and she suddenly had second thoughts about her decision to leave Pat back in the nightclub.
    She had initially decided that putting his life in danger too wasn’t the right way to go about it. It had been quite an effort in getting Ronan to agree to let her come with them. When they left, Patrick was still in his dazed state because of the glamour Ronan had put on him. So she made sure the waitress would keep an eye on him, just in case he snapped out of it. Ronan, however, assured her that he wouldn’t.
    Being with a bunch of strange men now, she wished she could have her boyfriend’s hand to hold on to.
    She didn’t believe this was the time for her to be wasting on wistful thoughts, and so she focused on what Ronan was planning to do. He urged every one of them to stay together once again and dictated their positions.
    “Leslie should be protected all the time when we go in. We don’t know his exact position, so an attack could come at any time. Ian and I will be walking in the front, Leslie will be in the middle and Bo, Kol—” He looked at the other two men. “—you two will be walking behind Leslie, do you understand?” Bo and Kol nodded. “Do not, I repeat, do not, at any cost, leave your positions,” Ronan said, looking at each one of them and finally resting his sharp gaze on her. “And that means you too, Leslie.”
    She blinked innocently. “I get it.”
    “All right.” He sighed. His brief pause made Leslie want to know what he was thinking. “Let’s move.”
    Leslie was blinking away sweat from her eyes as soon as they took their first step inside the old, broken apartment building. The wooden floor was creaking, and she sensed danger from every nook and cranny. It was pitch-dark inside. All four men had small torches in their hands, giving some illumination at least, to make them aware of where they were going.
    Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she heard weird voices coming from all around her. The half-open windows kept banging at their sills with the wind blowing outside. She turned her neck swiftly every time she thought she heard a sound, and after a while, Leslie started to experience pain near her nape. The building even stunk of pungent, sour-smelling clothes.
    Ian and Ronan came to an abrupt halt and spun cautiously in their spot. In the dim lights of the torches, she could see the alertness on their faces. For some reason, they were looking up at the ceiling with their mouths hanging open.
    “Did you hear that?” Ian’s whispered, making her realize she had missed something.
    “Yes,” Ronan said. If he had something more to say, he couldn’t because at that juncture, the attack they apparently were expecting came.
    Ian pulled Leslie behind him immediately and stood in a defense position. It was then she saw what was happening. The assault had come on the men walking behind her. Bo and Kol struggled as the creatures on their backs buried their heads on the men’s shoulders. Ian and Ronan had their torches pointed at the two attackers.
    “Son of a