The Lost Centurion by Monica La Porta

Author:Monica La Porta [Porta, Monica La]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Diana was in pain. Her body was bruised and blistered, but she didn’t care. If those men didn’t kill her, she would heal. Marcus’s frozen form lying on the beach covered in sand and pebbles, bleeding from his nose and mouth was the image that kept playing in a loop in her mind. She didn’t know what had happened to him after the vampires had taken her to the cave at the end of the secluded cove.

She remembered they had left him on the shore and was terrified he wouldn’t be able to move when the tide came in. Deep inside, she was certain he was alive. He couldn’t be dead; she would have known. A strong emotion connected her to him, and she knew he was drifting in and out of consciousness. As relieving the notion was, it still frightened her that he was there alone. She screamed and cried. She begged the vampires to tell her what they had injected him with. They laughed and beat her. Eventually, when she didn’t stop bothering them with her nonsense—as they called her pleas—they gagged and bound her, and left her facing a dark corner of the cave.

She couldn’t see anything beyond the rocky ground, but she could hear them. The vampires were furious.

“I can’t believe we’ll have to wait until tomorrow night for the next ride.”

“What were you doing with that piece of shit, you little whore?”

She knew a kick or a punch would follow those words, but they had trussed her up so tight she couldn’t hunch to lessen the blow. The punch was executed with so much anger her teeth rattled in her mouth when the vampire’s fist connected with her back just between her shoulder blades.

“Would it have killed you to hurry up and come back when it was more convenient for us?” A second and a third punch hit her in the same exact spot.

The beating continued, but her hunger wouldn’t let her pass out. It kept her awake and lucid. The ache in her stomach was a gnawing fire that spread through her limbs and almost took over all her senses. She experienced pain inside and outside of her body, and yet her only thoughts were for Marcus.

“Look how she shakes. She can’t even control her urges.”

Mercifully, a kick only brushed her lower back. “You’re a disgrace to our race.”

“What would you expect anyway? A vampling raised by an immortal.” A slap to her head followed, but it lacked strength.

The vampires were getting tired and soon their voices quieted. Diana wished she would faint and stop seeing Marcus beaten and defenseless, but the hunger and the pain from her wounds wouldn’t let her. She tried to pull at the rope cutting through her wrists, but the more she tugged the tighter it closed around her raw skin. The position they had forced her into, half-crouched because of the low, uneven ceiling, was soon difficult to maintain. Her leg muscles couldn’t hold her up any longer, and she knelt on the abrasive, rocky floor resembling a coral reef cushion.

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