IM03 - Pandora's Box by Katie Salidas Read Free Book Online

me like a dirt devil. I felt a strange tugging at the box in my hand. I held it tighter. Air encased me in my own personal tornado.
    My hair whipped wildly around my face, blurring my vision. I tried to back away and escape, but it was no use. The mini-cyclone followed my steps until I butted up against the wall. The swirling wind blocked out all other sounds in the room, surrounding me with a high-pitched whistling that pierced my sensitive ears.
    “Someone, help me!” I shrieked as the wall of air tightened around me. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but at that moment I sure felt it. Everything was closing in on me.
    Invisible hands clenched around my throat. As a vampire, I didn’t need to breathe, it was more reflex than anything else, but without air I couldn’t choke out the word “Help” to alert the others.
    I rasped and coughed as the grip tightened. I felt myself being slowly lifted into the air.
    In a flash, Nicholas and Lysander grabbed my legs and held on tight. Stretched from both ends, it felt like I’d be ripped in two. Nicholas and Lysander tugged, pulling me back toward the ground, while the invisible hands clenched tight around my neck, yanking me toward the ceiling.
    Lysander reached up to grasp my hand. I dropped the box as I grabbed hold of him.
    Suddenly the pressure at my throat left and the three of us crashed to the floor, landing in a heap.
    “What the hell happened?” I moaned.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Fallon called from the doorway. She looked ready to go. A purse was slung over one shoulder and her laptop bag criss-crossed the other. “We need to get as far as we can from this thing.”
    “I’m with you.” I shot up to my feet. “I don’t know what made it stop, but we need to get while the getting is good.”
    Lysander nodded and stood. “Let us not take any more chances.”
    Nicholas bent over the fallen box, lying open on the ground. Anger still burned red in his eyes. He pounded his rock hard fist into the lid of the box, but it didn’t break. It didn’t even crack.
    “Leave the box,” Lysander commanded. “We must go now, before it attacks again.”
    “Don’t you need it?” Nicholas growled the words.
     “I believe the spirit is tied to the box. It might follow if we take it. There has already been enough death for one evening. Let us go now!” Lysander waved his arm toward the door.
    “Hold on.” Fallon dug into her laptop bag. “I’ve got a camera.” She pulled out a silver camera, barely the size of a credit card. “Pictures might help in our research, right?”
    “Fallon, we don’t have time for this shit!” I reached out and grabbed her shirt, pulling her back as she snapped off a few quick shots of the box. “We have to get a move on.”
    Lysander crouched in front of Rozaline. “Nicholas, help me with her body.”
    Nicholas slumped to the ground and pulled a green blanket from underneath the upturned futon. Without a word, he quickly wrapped her head and body.
    He and Lysander hoisted Rozaline onto their shoulders, and we all headed out the front door.
    Crystal and Drew were just walking up the driveway as we folded Rozaline’s body into the back of Lysander’s Jeep. They were arm and arm, chatting and strolling like lovers after an excellent first date.
    I knew the second they caught the smell of blood. Their faces contorted in a mix of confusion and excitement. That smell is so hard to ignore, even for a vampire who is sated from recent hunting. Just like alcohol to an alcoholic or a cigarette to a smoker, it was easy to have “another for the road.”
    Drew, a giant of a man, seemed to shrink as he caught the scent. He crouched down a bit as if ready to pounce. Crystal, who looked as tiny as an elf standing next to her mate, became rigidly still. She stared at the back of the Jeep like a cat watching its prey, waiting for the right moment to make her move.
    “We need to go someplace safe, now,” I told them, letting the urgency in my