Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 160: Kill herself

Belle let out a scream and fell to the ground as the gunshot banged and echoed along with her scream.

For a moment, she thought she was shot and waited to feel the pain, her eyes shut tight, but then there was no pain at all, only the ringing in her ears that came from the loud sound of the gun.

She opened her eyes to see Cordelia right in front of her. The vampiress’s amused expression was gone, replaced with a deep scowl and angry lines at the sides of her red lips.

"Bitch!" Cordelia gritted out, then grabbed Belle’s ponytail and yanked her head back. "You’ve got the nerve to shoot that arrow when you’re at our mercy," she said, and then slammed the edge of her gun against Belle’s face.

Her head jerked to the side, and pain shot through every nerve in her face and neck from the hit. For a moment, she saw black in her vision.

Belle tightened her fingers against her crossbow again, her cheekbone throbbing with agonizing ache. Before she could recover from that pain, she was hit again—this time it was her head. She lost the grip on the bow from the second hit, and everything seemed to fade and flash back to her eyes.

The pain was so intense she thought she would pass out, but she didn’t. She could hear the excited voices of the others around her, but she couldn’t see them through the blur in her eyes when her head was yanked up by her hair again. She was forced to look into the dark red eyes of Cordelia.

"I should kill you and cut off your head, but I am too generous for that. I won’t kill you, human," Cordelia snarled as she leaned down and, with brutal force, sank her fangs into Belle’s upper arm, sucking at her blood with a strength that made Belle groan in pain and protest.

The bite was nothing like Rohan’s when he took her blood. In fact, it wasn’t even like the cut of a knife—it was like a nail dragging into her skin and drilling holes into her flesh. Belle refused to cry and tried to push the vampiress away, but to no avail.

The vampiress was using her vampire strength to hold her in place and to suck at her blood like she intended to draw out every little drop.

When Cordelia finally had her fill, she jerked her fangs out of the human’s skin in a way that dragged at her flesh and injured her further.

"For a human my cousin keeps, I thought your blood would be special, but it tastes like any other blood I have had. One would think you are special, that’s why he keeps you alive after the damn marriage."

"I will make you pay for this," Belle said through gritted teeth, agonizing tears in her eyes, but she never let them fall past her lashes. She did not want to die easily in the hands of this person, but her strength was no match. She was just a human, even though she was different from normal humans, she had no powers to fight.

"How will you make me pay?" she laughed, Belle’s blood smeared on her lips. "By telling my cousin that I bit and hit you, huh? Go ahead and tell him. He is probably dead by now somewhere around this forest or he would have come running when you screamed earlier. You can be surprised how far his ears could pick up things, and since he is not here, you have no one here. Absolutely no one." She touched her hand to Belle’s hair, and Belle jerked away from her touch.

Belle felt her heart squeeze painfully within her chest at the thought that something terrible might have happened to Rohan. She did not want to believe the vampiress’s words, but a cold knot of dread twisted inside her.

Something must have gone wrong, or else he would have come when she screamed. Still, Belle clung to a fragile hope, telling herself he probably hadn’t heard her scream because of the cotton in his ears.

She gripped her crossbow again, this time intending to whack it against the vampiress’s face. But as she lifted it to do that, her eyes locked with the vampiress who ordered, "Drop it."

Belle knew immediately that she was being compelled, and she froze at the attempt to whack her. The compulsion had no effect on her, of course, but she heard the double voice in her head and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up. It was similar to the feeling she had when Rohan had once tried to compel her.

As much as she wanted to hit the other woman, she could not give away that the spell did not work on her or she’d end up digging her grave further.

"I should kill you like I had planned, but I have a better way of making you die. You will fall right into your death—a more painful death than I could have given you. Stand up." She ordered with that same voice, and Belle obeyed even though she did not want to.

"Kill the bitch, Cordie!" gritted Stephanie, who still had an arrow lunged in her wrist and was in pain.

"Let her kill herself, it’s much more fun. She will die anyways."

"What do you plan to do?" Princess Zora, who had been watching and taking amusement in everything, asked from the side where she had sat down on a tree trunk.

This particular human, who they had brought to Nightbrook for her mad cousin to kill so they could put him back in the asylum, shouldn’t have lived until now. The human was only a bait, but she hadn’t done anything to make the king achieve that plan—because obviously, the mad duke seemed to fancy her instead.

Princess Zora would be more than glad if they just killed her now. The human had no use for her family anymore in this land, and the king would probably look for an excuse to give the humans once they asked about their person.

"I plan to send her into the danger zone under my compelling. The Rogues must be starving for human flesh—sending her as an offering will be a blessing to them. They will eat her until there is not a single remain of her left to even bury," Cordelia remarked as she walked closer to the human who was now under her spell and had turned completely unaware of her surroundings or what was going on around her.

Unknown to Cordelia, Belle was every bit aware but had just learned to control her reaction and heartbeat.

Cordelia then said as she looked into her eyes, "I want you to walk straight to the South of Grimvale. You are not to make a stop or listen to anyone. Keep walking until you come to the tree with a red mark on it, and once you get there, scream and call out the rouges, attract them to you, and when they come at you, smile as they eat you alive. Go ahead, walk to your death, human."

Belle could not believe how heartless the vampiress was to send her to such a place, but she made no indication to give away that she wasn’t under the spell. She began to walk away, fighting the urge to look in the direction where Evenly had been laying unmoving, to see if she was still alive.

’Oh, Evenly. I am sorry...’ she muttered internally, hating that she was leaving the woman.

She walked away, hearing them laugh from behind and saying how clever of Cordelia to think of such a plan to get rid of the human.

Belle walked until their voices faded away and she was far away from them. They did not follow her—a mistake she would make sure they all regretted once she found her husband.

She stopped walking when she was certain she had gone far, far enough that they would not see her.

She reached out for her map in her pocket and paused, belatedly realizing she had tucked it inside her coat pocket—and she had taken off the coat when she was washing under the tree with Evenly.

Belle closed her eyes and swallowed the frustration that bubbled up her throat and tightened it, and the emotions that came with the fact that she had left Evenly behind with those monsters. She did not want to think about what they would do to her there.

She had left her coat and her map behind, and she dared not go back to get it or risk falling into their hands again. She needed to find Rohan and make certain whatever Cordelia had said was a bluff and that nothing had happened to him.

The sooner she found her husband, the faster she would be able to return to check on Evenly and save her.

She looked down at the crossbow in her hand. That was all she had with her and nothing else, not even the arrows. This forest was so vast she had no idea where to find him, but if she could walk to the spot they had spent the night, perhaps she might be closer to finding him—only that without the map, she had no idea which way to go or take that would lead her there.

She was in pain all over her body, and her upper arm, where the vampiress had torn with her fangs, was still bleeding, a sharp reminder that she couldn’t afford to stand around, or risk attracting the vampires to her.

Belle flinched when she felt the first fat drop of rain touch her aching cheek, and she looked up to see the thick clouds hovering on the horizon and flashes of lightning that were followed by a deep rumbling of thunder.

Before she knew, it began to rain in earnest, but she made no attempt to find shelter. The rain was not going to stop her—not when she had this sickening feeling of unease gripping her chest, not when she was having a bad feeling about Rohan.

She wasn’t as much worried about the pains on her body like she was for him.

She stood there, contemplating the paths to take for a moment, before she decided to take the one more similar to the one she had taken yesterday evening when she was going to him.

She had narrowly escaped death, and she would evade it completely once she found her husband in this vast place.

"I hope nothing has happened to you, my love. Please don’t let anything happen, please..." Belle muttered in prayer as she walked in that direction, hoping it was the right one and that it would lead her to him.