Bewitched: Born of Darkness (Book 4) by R. B. Fields

Author:R. B. Fields [Fields, R. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pygmalion Publishing
Published: 2021-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

12

Draynor

The room comes to me in pieces, amorphous shapes that refuse to form a cohesive whole. What happened? I remember feeling something … wrong, a hot and biting presence in the center of my chest. I remember leaving my room. And then …

The screaming of brakes. The jolt of a sudden stop. And then nothing. Only black.

And I can feel nothing, I realize. This is not the way it is when Dawn is blocking me, but a hollow emptiness deeper than any I’ve known since well before I turned. I can’t even feel my own emotions. I can’t feel the pain of the restraints either, and there’s no way that’s normal. Wait … restraints? Yes, restraints.

I blink, trying once more to focus, but even my vampire eyes don’t seem to be working right. I do see a flickering around the perimeter of the room — torches. No windows here, maybe a basement … or some kind of dungeon. But I can’t see into the shadows. I can’t see anywhere the lights don’t reach.

Have I been rendered … human? Less than mortal? Even a human with less attuned senses would feel the cuffs against their flesh.

I hear someone at my side, off to the left, a rasping scrape like a rake against stone. My skull is heavy on my neck, too big, as if it might wobble forward and fall off if I move too quickly. But I manage to turn my head.

Silas blinks from his seat beside me, his eyes a lackluster periwinkle, his hands behind his back, metal glinting against his wrists. Cuffs … or wire? It’s some kind of restraint, but I feel profoundly weak, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it could be dental floss, and I’d still be stuck here — Silas’s feet are planted on the floor, but I see no evidence of wire around his ankles. No rope. No cuffs.

We’re not really being held with the restraints — we’re being held down by magic.

Beyond Silas, Kain is slumped forward, his hands tied behind the chair in the same manner, his chin on his chest. I turn my head to the right. Era stares at me with sorrowful eyes. Does he know something I don’t?

But the others in the room definitely know more than I do — the ones not tethered to chairs.

Dhampirs. At least fifteen of them, hulking around the four of us like junkyard dogs waiting for one wrong move. And at a table at the side wall … books bound in leather. The ones Kain brought on the trip. Did they bring all our things here? Are they researching us? For some reason, the fact that they bothered to bring the books at all seems promising, especially coupled with the fact that they kept us alive … until now. Except …

Dawn isn’t here. And … “Where’s Markula?”

The two dhampirs directly in front of me exchange a remarkably human glance. One redhead, one brunette, both of them young, fine-boned, and strong-looking but in the way of swimmers as opposed to bodybuilders — no wonder they need magic to fight our lot.

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