Of Light and Darkness by Leighton Shayne

Author:Leighton, Shayne [Leighton, Shayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Book 1 The Vampire's Daughter
Publisher: Decadent Publishing Company
Published: 2011-06-25T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Rogues

Charlotte slowly sat up, her head still spinning. She clutched the sides of the coffin so she wouldn’t fall back again. Valek’s hand swiftly moved to the middle of her back to help her keep balance.

His eyebrows pulled together as he appraised her. “Perhaps you should not get up yet,” he warned. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You may need a transfusion.”

Charlotte blinked until the spinning went away. Her head still pounded, but nothing else seemed to hurt. She could see all of her flesh wounds had been healed. She only felt weak. She turned to see several luminescent eyes that matched Valek’s staring at her from one corner of the room. She stared back at them with the same curiosity.

“Who are they?” she asked, fighting to remember what had happened.

Valek rushed to explain. “We escaped from the Regime. We’re at a friend’s house. He’s harboring rogues. Nowhere else is safe.”

Charlotte turned her gaze back on him.

“The Regime? That’s where we were?” She was astonished as more questions invaded her mind. She recalled every detail of the guard’s face, who found her hiding in Valek’s bedroom, as though she had known it forever. She remembered feeling her mouth open to scream, but hearing nothing as they dragged her away, kicking and clawing through the mud and the cool, morning rain as it splashed onto her skin. Everything had gone hazy. Something heavy had come down on her head, making her world go black. The last thing she saw was Valek’s fearful, blazing eyes before she woke up in the dungeon.

“Do you remember?” Valek furrowed his eyebrows.

Charlotte saw him then. Really saw him. She analyzed his torn shirt and disheveled hair about his dirty beautiful face. She grabbed onto him with as much strength as she could muster and pulled him close, wrapping her arms around who she thought she had surely lost.

“You saved me!” she cried. She saw the large doors on fire, though the vision blurred in her mind. She heard the thunderous orders from the guards and felt the wind that pulsed by her when they were running through the night. It was all very distant.

“You saved me,” she whispered again.

Valek smiled.

“Your face….” His skin was cracked, like broken marble. “I tried to stop it.” She reached up to stroke the burn scars, but he met her fingers with his and pulled them gently away.

“I know. I will be all right, Lottie.”

“How do we heal it?”

“I don’t think we can.” He changed the subject. “It is not important at this moment.”

Charlotte gaped wide-eyed around the dark basement. The warm firelight danced off the hauntingly beautiful, macabre faces that gazed back at her, studying her, as she did them. There must have been ten or twelve of them, each having their own pair of crystal-colored eyes. She saw the ominous daggers gleaming in their mouths, tasting the scent she left in the air.

Various parts of her body started to prickle with the memory. She shut her eyes against the vision, feeling as though she were back in the dungeon of the Regime.

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