Rachel Caine - 13 Bitter Blood by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MYRNIN

It was so dark. Dark dark dark dark dark dark. Darkdarkdarkdarkdarkdarkdarkdarkcan'tbreathedarrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkk...

I gained control of my clattering, chattering mind with an effort that left me trembling. Had I been still human, still breathing as I was sometimes in dreams I thought I would have been drenched in the sweat of fear and gasping. I dreamed that sometimes, too, the sticky moisture on my skin, dripping and burning in my eyes, but in the dreams it wasn't dark; it was bright, so bright, and I was running for my life, running from the monster behind....

So many years running blackness turning red nothing nothing safe no havens no friends lost all lost until Amelie until this place until home but home was gone gone dead and gone...I gagged on the taste in the back of my mouth, the excruciating spike of hunger, and sagged against the wet, slick wall. Don't remember, I told myself. Don't think.

But I couldn't stop thinking. Ever. My mother had beaten me for fancies when I watched the stars and drew their patterns and forgot the sheep while wolves ate the lambs and my sisters with their cruel and petty wounds when no one saw and my father penned up like an animal as he howled all the thinking never stopped never never never a howling storm in my head until the heat burst through my skin and devoured me.

Stop. I shouted it inside my head until I could feel the force of it hammering against bone, and for a blessed moment, I gained the space of silence against all the pressing weight of memory and terror that never, never went away for long.

There was time enough to think where I was and to remember my present situation...not my past.

The prison was familiar to me, familiar not from Morganville but from ancient and heavily unpleasant years past.... My enemy was still a great fan of the classics, because he had dropped me into an oubliette a round, narrow hole in stone that was deep enough, and smooth enough, to thwart a vampire's attempts to jump or climb. In less civilized times, one would be dropped in to be forgotten entirely. Humans lasted only days, generally, before the confinement, darkness, hunger or thirst or simple horror took them. Vampires...well. We were hardy.

It's a sad thing for a vampire to confess, but I have always hated the bitter, choking dark. It's useful to us to hide and stalk, but only when there is a hint of light a glimmer, something that will define the shadows and give them shape. A blood-hot body glows, and that, too, is a comfort and a convenience.

But here, there was no glimmer, no prey, nothing to relieve the inky and utter black. It reminded me of terrible, terrible things like the grave I had dug my way out of more than once, the taste of dirt and screams in my mouth, vivid and sour, and that taste never went away, leaving me gagging on it,

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