Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Explore 1.5M+ audiobooks & ebooks free for 30 days

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Hunger Beneath: The Vampire Rabbit Chronicles: The Tangled Dark
    Hunger Beneath: The Vampire Rabbit Chronicles: The Tangled Dark
    Hunger Beneath: The Vampire Rabbit Chronicles: The Tangled Dark
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Hunger Beneath: The Vampire Rabbit Chronicles: The Tangled Dark

    By Bella Vex

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Something ancient stirs beneath Meadowvale. Something hungry.

    Wildlife biologist Stella Hartley returns to her hometown after a career-ending scandal, seeking the quiet life she once knew. What she finds instead are dead rabbits drained of blood.

    Then, the first human victim appears, and Stella discovers a horrifying truth: beneath her quiet hometown, an ancient hunger has awakened. Every hundred years, it transforms ordinary rabbits into blood-drinking killers that hunt with terrifying intelligence.

    As the creatures swarm the town and her childhood friend Vincent is bitten, Stella finds herself at the center of a disturbing legacy.

    What waits beneath Meadowvale wants more than she expects, and the price of saving everyone she loves may be higher than she's willing to pay.

    The hunger remembers. The town forgets. 

    And time is running out.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRachelle Ayala
    Release dateMar 25, 2025
    ISBN9798227574862
    Hunger Beneath: The Vampire Rabbit Chronicles: The Tangled Dark
    Read preview

    Read more from Bella Vex

    Related to Hunger Beneath

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related categories

    Reviews for Hunger Beneath

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Hunger Beneath - Bella Vex

      CHAPTER ONE

      BLOOD IN THE MEADOW

      The rabbit was dead, but it wasn’t right.

      My gloved fingers trembled as I turned the small corpse over. Something about its stillness made my stomach clench. I’d handled countless dead animals in my career as a wildlife biologist, but this… this was different.

      Where exactly did you find it? I asked, not looking up at Sheriff Malcolm Flude, who hovered at the edge of my makeshift lab in the back of Meadowvale’s Municipal Building.

      Thompson’s field. Near the old well. Malcolm shifted his weight, making his utility belt creak in the silence. There were four others just like it. This was the least… disturbed.

      The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sickly pallor over everything—the metal examination table, my collection of scientific instruments, Malcolm’s weathered face, and the small, broken body between us.

      I leaned closer, the antiseptic smell of the lab failing to mask the coppery tang of blood. These wounds don’t make sense.

      That’s why I brought it to you instead of Animal Control.

      My fingertips traced the air above two puncture marks on the rabbit’s neck, perfectly spaced, too precise for any wild predator I knew. The fur around them was matted with dark, tacky blood—not unusual for predator kills—but the wounds themselves were… wrong.

      Something drank from it, I said, the words escaping before I could filter them through proper scientific terminology.

      Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. That’s one way of putting it.

      The rabbit’s been exsanguinated. My professional voice returned as I gently probed the wounds. Almost completely drained of blood. But nothing around here hunts like this.

      You sure about that, Stella?

      I hesitated. Because no, I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t been sure of anything in a long time—not since Boston carved the certainty out of me and left a hollow where conviction used to live.

      I finally looked up, meeting his gaze. Malcolm had been sheriff of Meadowvale for twenty-three years. He’d delivered the news of my parents’ accident when I was in college; he’d watched me flee to Boston for my career; and six months ago, when everything in the city imploded, he’d helped me move back into my childhood home. His eyes carried the weight of all he’d seen in this supposedly sleepy town.

      You’re thinking of the stories. I kept my voice flat. Granny Villin’s tales about the town’s ‘hungry seasons.’ That’s folklore, not biology.

      Tell that to Jim Thorpe’s cattle. Three dead since Sunday. Same marks.

      My chest tightened. Why am I just hearing about this now?

      Because Jim thought it was coyotes until this morning when he found a rabbit burrow under his barn that wasn’t there yesterday. Big enough that his border collie crawled in and hasn’t come out.

      Something cold slithered down my spine. I turned back to the specimen, prying myself on scientific detachment that suddenly felt paper-thin.

      I’ll need to run some tests. Could be a parasite affecting local predator behavior. My words sounded hollow even to myself. Maybe rabies with unusual presentation.

      Sure. Malcolm didn’t sound convinced. Just like that thing with the birds back in ’97 was just ‘unusual behavior.’

      The reference to Meadowvale’s last inexplicable wildlife incident hung in the air. Three people dead. A mass migration of crows that had blotted out the sun for two days. I’d been too young to remember it clearly, but the hushed conversations stopped whenever children entered rooms had left their mark.

      This isn’t that, I said firmly. This is something I can analyze, quantify, explain.

      I needed it to be something I could explain. If I couldn’t explain it—this, or anything—then what was I, if not just a fraud in a white coat?

      Hope you’re right. Malcolm’s hand rested briefly on his holstered gun—an unconscious gesture I pretended not to notice. Call me when you find something.

      After he left, I stood alone with the dead rabbit, the silence pressing against my eardrums. I’d come back to Meadowvale because after everything that had happened—my research discredited, my fiancé gone, my reputation smeared across academic journals as the biologist who falsified data to support extreme climate theories—the quietness, the predictability of my hometown felt safe.

      Meadowvale was supposed to be boring. Healing. Simple.

      The rabbit’s glazed eyes stared accusingly up at me, as if it knew I’d been foolish to expect sanctuary here.

      I picked up a scalpel, the overhead lights glinting off its edge. Alright, little guy, I murmured. Let’s find out what happened to you.

      The first incision revealed another impossibility. The rabbit’s internal organs had begun to shrivel, as if something had triggered rapid dehydration from the inside out. And the blood that remained was… different. Darker. Thicker than it should be, with a viscosity that made it cling to my scalpel in a way that turned my stomach.

      My hands moved mechanically, taking samples, making notes, focusing on procedure rather than the growing sense that I was looking at something my scientific training hadn’t prepared me for.

      The lab door banged open. I jumped, nearly dropping a vial of the strange blood.

      Sorry. Dr. Vincent Carroll didn’t look particularly apologetic as he strode in, all six-foot-four of him radiating the peculiar energy that made him Meadowvale’s most beloved and most eccentric veterinarian. Door sticks.

      You could knock, I said, heart still hammering.

      Vincent’s eyes fixed on the rabbit, widening slightly behind wire-rimmed glasses. That’s… not good.

      Helpful diagnosis, Doctor.

      No need for formality, Stella. We dissected frogs together in tenth grade. I’ve seen you cry over a dead squirrel.

      I flushed. Vincent and I had history—the complicated kind that comes from growing up together in a town too small for secrets, then choosing similar career paths only to end up back where we started. He’d returned to Meadowvale three years before me, taking over his father’s veterinary practice after a stint at a prestigious animal hospital in New York. The town gossips had spent weeks speculating about what drove him back.

      Whatever it was, it had left him with a shadow behind his eyes that matched my own.

      I didn’t know you were consulting on this, I said, gesturing to the rabbit.

      I’m not. Flude mentioned it when he stopped for coffee. Vincent moved beside me, his sleeve brushing mine as he leaned over the specimen. He smelled of antiseptic and that particular forest-pine scent I’d always associated with him. Those puncture wounds⁠—

      I know.

      The spacing is too precise for⁠—

      I know, Vincent.

      He straightened, studying my face. You’re scared.

      The observation, delivered so matter-of-factly, made me want to deny it. But the truth vibrated between us—I was terrified, and not just of the dead rabbit.

      Something’s happening, I admitted. Malcolm mentioned cattle with the same wounds. A rabbit burrow that shouldn’t exist. I’m trying to approach this scientifically, but…

      But your gut’s telling you we’re in trouble. Vincent nodded. Mine too. And it started three nights ago, during the new moon.

      I frowned. What does the moon have to do with anything?

      Probably nothing. He smiled without humor. Unless you believe Granny Villin.

      My phone buzzed before I could respond. A text from Malcolm: Another one. Human this time. Mountford farm. Come now.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE CELLAR DOOR

      Another one. Human this time. Mountford farm. Come now.

      The words blurred as I reread

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 7