Slash is blind.

He whips his head from side to side, widening his eyes as he tries to catch a glimpse of light. Panic dances across his nerves. Darkness, nothing but suffocating darkness all around.

Where am I?

He tries to stand. Moans. Everything hurts except his ass, which is numb from sitting on a hard damp surface that feels like concrete. The smell of stale earth fills his nostrils. Not concrete, but maybe packed dirt, like the kind used for a cellar floor.

His shoulders ache. He can’t move his hands.

Someone has chained his hands behind his back.

Which means he is someone’s prisoner.

He shakes his bonds, fights to get free. Metal clanks against metal, iron rattles against stone. Abruptly he stops struggling; hopes no one has heard the noise. Instinct tells him not to draw unwanted attention.

He needs to think. The last thing he remembers is standing in Nos’s bathroom, discussing their evening plans. They were going to hang out and they’d needed supplies.

Another smell accompanies the dankness—a darker, heavier cloy. His stomach roils in protest.

They’d met Chris, his supplier. Deal went down like it should, he remembers that much, but when he tries to remember more a sharp pain lances his forehead. Like his brain is fighting the recollection. Chill currents of air brush his face. Tendrils of his own hair tickle his cheek.

Hair…something about blonde hair...

A blast of pain and the memory is gone. Slash manages to lean forward to retch. Dry heaves move through him like convulsions.

Could be something died down here: a rat or even a snake, maybe that explains the cloying odor.

God, he hopes so.

Alternative explanations are so much worse.

Slash feels trapped in a damn horror movie, and if things follow the script, he is in deep shit. Any minute now the monster will open the door and the light from above will dazzle him. She will glide down the stairs moving in slow motion, yet with infinite speed. He’ll struggle to break free from his bonds. His chains will cut his wrists. The mineral smell of blood will fill the air. Her nostrils will flare as she catches the scent.

Standing before him, spotlighted by the glare from the open door, she’ll be beautiful, oh so beautiful. And deadly. She’ll move her face close to his; closer, closer until they are almost nose to nose. He’ll breathe in the spicy scent of her. She’ll—