Read The Immortal Rules for Free Online Page A

their eyes gleaming with anticipation and something darker.
    I ducked behind the corner again, heart pounding. You’ve got to be kidding, I mused, sinking farther into the concealing shadows, hoping they didn’t hear me. This just isn’t my night. Deer, rabids, and now freaking mole men in the tunnels. No one is going to believe this. I shook my head and huddled lower, clutching the handle of my knife. Now all I need is a vampire to come sauntering through and it’ll be perfect.
    The mole men chuckled, and I heard them ease forward, probably surrounding the poor bastard who’d walked into their ambush. Run, you idiot, I thought, wondering what he thought he was doing, why I didn’t hear footsteps pounding frantically away. Don’t you know what they’ll do to you? If you don’t want to be on a stick over the fire, you’d better run.
    “I want no trouble,” said a low voice, calm and collected. And even though I couldn’t see him, didn’t dare peek around the corner again, it sent shivers up my spine. “Let me pass, and I’ll be on my way. You don’t want to do this.”
    “Oh,” one mole man purred, and I imagined him sidling forward, grinning, “I think we d—”
    His voice abruptly changed to a startled gurgle, followed by a wet splat, and the faint, coppery stench of blood filled the air. Enraged cries rang out, the sound of a scuffle, blades cutting through flesh, agonized screams. I crouched in my shadowy corner and held my breath, until the final shriek died away, until the last body fell and silence crept into the tunnels once more.
    I counted thirty seconds of quiet. Sixty seconds. A minute and a half. Two. The tunnel remained silent. No footsteps, no shifting movements, no breathing. It was as still as the dead.
    Warily, I peered around the corner and bit my lip.
    The four mole men lay in heaps, weapons scattered about, the flashlight shining weakly against a wall. Its beam pointed to a vivid splash of red, trickling down the cement to a motionless body. I scanned the tunnel again, looking for a fifth heap, but there were only the mole men, lying dead in the pale flashlight beam. The dark stranger had disappeared.
    I sidled closer. I didn’t want to touch the bodies, but the flashlight was a valuable find. One that would keep me fed for several days if I could find the right trader. Edging around a pale, dirty arm, I snatched my trophy and rose—
    —shining the light right into the face of the stranger. Who didn’t wince. Didn’t even blink. I scrambled back, nearly tripping over the arm I’d stepped around, bringing my knife up before me. The stranger remained where he was, though his eyes, blacker than pitch, followed me as I retreated. I kept both the blade and the flashlight pointed in his direction until I reached the edge and tensed to bolt into the shadows.
    “If you run, you’ll be dead before you take three steps.”
    I stopped, heart pounding. I believed him. Gripping my knife, I turned around, staring at him over the bodies of the dead, waiting for his next move.
    There was no doubt in my mind. I knew what I faced, what stared at me across the tunnel, so still he might’ve been a statue. I was down here, alone, with a vampire. And there was no one who could help me.
    “What do you want?” My voice came out shakier than I’d wanted, but I planted my feet and glared defiantly. Show no fear. Vampires could sense fear, at least that’s what everybody said. If you ever ran into a hungry bloodsucker alone at night, not looking like prey might give you an edge in surviving the encounter.
    I didn’t believe that, of course. A vampire would bite you whether you were scared of him or not. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, either.
    The vamp tilted his head, a tiny movement that would’ve gone unnoticed, save the rest of him was so very, very still. “I am trying to decide,” he said in that same low, cool voice, “if you are a simple scavenger, eavesdropping on the