Embers on the Wind by Dylan Doose

Author:Dylan Doose [Doose, Dylan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775235064
Publisher: Dylan Doose

Earlier that day…

Gaige had shackled the bandits next to the corpse. She was naked, beaten, and, he suspected, raped. Infected cuts marked her skin. Based on the state of decomposition—or lack thereof—the girl hadn’t been dead a day.

Gaige blamed himself. He had watched the bandits and waited too long to attack.

But he had not known she was there.

I did not hear her. Why did I not hear her?

He had not heard a sound to alert him to her presence. He had not seen a single sign. When they had stepped from the shack to fish in the pond, the two men had not spoken of the girl they’d left inside. When they’d come outdoors to smoke, they said not a word about her.

I could have saved her. Had I not hesitated so long in killing these two men, I would have known she was inside, and I would have saved her.

And then done what with her, you idiot? Made her into a creature like Butcher. She was already beyond destroyed when you arrived. You can see the wounds are days old.

“She had a right to a chance!” Gaige yelled at the voice in his head. Then he stood from the corner and approached the two men who did not deserve to be called men. They were abominations, a sickness, vile and filthy fiends. They scuttled further back against the wall as if they hoped they could turn their bodies into the form of their cockroach hearts and wriggle through a crack to escape the crimson raven that was Gaige.

The walls were marked with words and symbols. Large, small, the marks covered every available space. The symbols bled onto the dead girl’s limbs.

“She had a right to a chance!” Gaige yelled again.

The bigger of the two stared at Gaige’s eyes and flinched away. “V-v-vampire,” he said. “Are you a greater Upir?”

“I am a man,” Gaige said, his tone flat. “A mortal man.” A lie. He was both more and less than that. He leaned close, and the man began shake. “Do you know sanguinum? I have ingested much of it in my life. It turns the irises crimson.”

Gaige licked his lips. He was hungry. So hungry.

I truly am going to eat them, aren’t I?

He realized he had said that aloud when both men began to jerk frantically at their bonds, blood welling at their bound wrists.

“I suppose I may as well be an Upir, after all,” Gaige said. “For I am the living dead. My eyes were like this before, though. I looked just the same before. I felt just the same before, except now I am more awake and my leg does not ache.” He smiled, which only served to make the two men struggle all the more.

Still, he hesitated.

You’ve done it before, a treacherous voice much like his own whispered inside his mind. What do you care? You fed in Azria. You fed more than once there in that village by the river, with those mad tribespeople who were far less mad than any of you civilized dregs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.