“What the…?” My question died the second I brought it closer and saw the impossible…
It was me and Lucius.
“It can’t be!” I shouted when I saw that the couple dancing was a tiny version of us, just as we had been that night of the Masked Ball. But then the music stopped and the moment it did, a hissing sound could be heard, and small streams of red smoke started to seep from between the glass globe and its holder. This made me drop it and as it fell to the floor, the sight seemed far too symbolic for me to ignore as if watching us both falling was a glimpse of the future.
But then, even as the small stream of smoke started to rise up under my nose, I couldn’t find it in myself to step away, as the sight of the couple dancing started to turn grey before crumbling away to dust, just like the rogues we had killed did. Then the glass started to crack but not from the fall. The moment it finally shattered was when I came to my senses enough to step back, but it was already too late. I knew that the second I felt the strange smell reach my nostrils… the damage was done. I had already inhaled something that I shouldn’t have.
I knew this when my head started to feel heavy and my vision blurred. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, feeling now how sore they were from having my contacts in for so long. So, I blinked rapidly trying to clear my vision that way, but then the second I opened my eyes, Hell was right there with me in the shop.
“Hello, Princess.” The voice of the witch matched that of her scarred face, now staring back at me and the second she lunged for me, I screamed. Then I turned around and fled out of the shop. How had she found me!? How was she here, had the snow globe been a trap? Had she known that I would come here, or did Nero have something to do with it?
I didn’t know anything other than I just had to run. I had to get as far away from her as possible! I couldn’t let her get to me, not where she was at her strongest and I was alone. Damn it! I should have called for the brothers! But then what if she had hurt them, she was damn powerful after all and they admittedly had been weakened and needed to regenerate their power. Could she have the power to kill them before they had a chance to fight back!?
Gods, I just didn’t know and couldn’t chance going back there for that reason. I just needed to keep going, to keep running. Although this was easier said than done as the blurriness took over again and every time it did, I closed my eyes and opened them again to find myself faced with a different nightmare.
“Watch where you’re going!” One demon said as I must have accidentally bumped into him without seeing him, as all I noticed now was his glowing eyes scowling back at me as I passed him in my haste. Then, as I tried to get away giving him more space, I was suddenly falling, tripping over and landing hard on my knees on the cobbled stones. I rubbed my sore eyes, feeling my contacts sticking and become almost hard around the edges. Gods, I just wanted to take them out! To squeeze my eyeballs just to get the relief of air behind them, so I could blink them away with my tears.
But then my vision cleared and it was long enough to see what new horror I had tripped over this time. A figure of a man covered in soot, caked in the stuff and dragging behind him the charred remains of bodies…bodies who I just knew had been his murder victims. Some still had the remains of their rotting flesh, whilst others were little more than fire damaged skeletons. All were attached to chains, so many chains in fact, that it looked like a cloak behind him. As each thick chain was anchored on to the iron collar around his neck or the shackles around his wrists and manacles around his ankles. The second I accidentally touched one as I tried to get back to my feet, I saw a flash of the past hit me.
A roadside blocked off by yellow tape, a town sheriff’s cruiser parked side on with its lights still flashing. Other cop cars parked along the side of the road, with some directing traffic around the obvious crime scene. Suddenly a man in uniform ran from the tree line and barely made it to the roadside before he threw up, letting me know this wasn’t a good sign. Moments later I discovered why as men in white coveralls came from the same place, only instead of just one body bag, there were several and not ones that looked big enough to be a whole person.
I screamed and the moment I did, I was back in the street looking into the haunting eyes of a dead girl and her severed head, telling me now that the monster in front had been a serial killer and this had been one of his victims. I quickly scrambled to my feet and saw for myself at least twenty bodies in different states of decay, telling me this was obviously what they had looked like by the time they had been found and laid to rest. Then one look up at the tortured punishment of the man responsible and the evidence left behind of his death, told me he had obviously received the death sentence by lethal injection. As the evidence of it was still attached to his arm with the needle sticking out of soot covered flesh.
Naturally, I quickly ran away from him, utterly haunted by his crimes and the face of a decomposing head that would never leave me. Meanwhile, he paid neither me or anyone else around him any notice, as he continued on his way through the street, dragging his cloak of chains and trail of bodies behind him as if it was just another day in Hell.
But then the blurriness in my eyes started to rise once more and soon my mind was telling me that the things around me were real when I knew deep down they weren’t. Like the fog of hands all reaching for me and trying to grab me, making me turn and twist away from creatures that were nowhere near me.
“Fucking human flesh!” One shouted when I felt something hit me in the shoulder and I looked around but could only see the same black arms reaching for me, so I screamed and ran. I didn’t know where I ran to but it was in the only direction the arms weren’t clouding my vision. Which meant it was too late when I realised I was obviously being led somewhere.
The alleyways between the buildings hadn’t looked big enough for a person to fit down, but this one was the exception as it looked like it led to a cellar. However, this had been my last thought when tumbling down the first few steps, saving myself just in time before breaking my neck. Which would no doubt have happened had I made it all the way down the rest of them, and eventually landing at the bottom.
Which meant that I ended up with my back to the steps with my arms behind me gripping on and now looking down into the glowing eyes of a child who strangely enough, was sat under a large red umbrella. I looked up to see there was no rain so I hadn’t missed the part where it had soaked my skin, in all my panic. I knew the kid was a demon of some kind and it was not a good idea to get involved in whatever was going on with her. But then, after I was once again steady on my feet, the second I turned and started back up the steps, a small voice said,
“I’m all alone…Won’t you help me?” I stopped dead and this time my own malicious grin spread before I slowly looked back at her and said,
“That didn’t work the first time, bitch, it certainly won’t work down in Hell.” By the time I turned fully, I saw the whites of her teeth in the dark as she smiled.
“No, I guess not, but then again you never were as gullible as your mother,” the witch replied, using what looked like the body of a small horned demon child to communicate with me. Of course, she was referring back to the time in my father’s prison, when she fooled my mother into trying to help her.
“Gullible or not, she could still kick your ass.”
“She could try but I think not, not now I am getting more powerful by the day, and speaking of days, that poor Vampire King of yours, he is awfully lonely up here without you.” Hearing this I tried not to react, knowing that was exactly what she wanted. But then she carried on and I could feel myself losing my shit pretty quickly.
“I would even say he’s crazed and very close to losing himself to his demon in his need to have you back. Although don’t worry, I have had him locked in chains so he doesn’t hurt himself and I have had Layla keeping him company for you until your return. One I suggest happens quickly if you want to see him live long enough for you to say your goodbyes.” Okay, so thi
s was where I hit my limit and the second I did, something strange happened as I could feel my blood pounding beneath my skin. It was like when you felt your own pulse point in a random place on your body, only this was all over. It was as if in my utter rage, something that had been lying dormant inside me was waking up and this bitch was the key to provoking it.
It started at my heart and travelled all the way down to the ends of my limbs until my toes and fingertips seemed to vibrate, shaking with the humming of power. I then looked down to see the tips of my fingers glowing and burning almost red hot and the witch’s eyes widened with surprise. But that wasn’t the only thing to happen as she looked down beneath her, now seeing for herself the pool of liquid that had gathered around her form. She dipped a small child’s finger into it and brought it up to her face, now testing it and rubbing it in between her fingertip and thumb.
“How is this possible?” she asked herself but when the liquid started to rise up even further, you could see her panicking. So, I too looked down to see that the liquid rising up through the cracks beneath the cobbles was blood.
A river of blood.
I was summoning it once again and I had no idea how. But the witch wasn’t going to take any chances by waiting around to figure out how either. Instead, she decided it was time to use her own defences against me,
“Don’t wait too long before coming home, Princess, or your King might find himself on the end of a noose for the second time!” she shouted and just as I let my anger flow further, so did the blood rapidly start to rise. But before it could consume her whole, she looked up at her umbrella, the one that made little sense until her eyes started to roll back inside her head. This seemed to summon something from above, and I watched as shadowy black tentacles came from underneath the stretch of material. Then they became more whole and wrapped around the body of the small demon child she was using. Then with one last warning she said,
“Soon he will burn, just as he deserves!” Then she was quickly dragged up into the hidden world inside the umbrella. The second after this happened it dropped, now with no one around to hold it. Meaning that it fell with the handle in the air, floating on the now flooded stairwell. Although I didn’t yet know how to stop the blood as it rose higher and higher until I had no choice but to back up until I was back on the street. I shook my fingers, trying to get them to stop glowing but as the blood rose higher, it also brought with it the witch’s umbrella. The shadows of darkness were still swirling around inside the material and once at the top, they started to grow bigger, until I was finally smart enough to turn around and run.
Unfortunately, I was too late and the second I felt something circle my ankle, I screamed. Then it tugged hard and pulled my leg from underneath me, throwing me off balance so I had nowhere to go but down. I barely just saved my face from slapping into the blood-soaked alleyway, with my hands hitting the ground first. The liquid splashed up around me making me turn my face away, only this became the last of my concerns. This was because the tentacles of darkness that had taken the witch were now trying to take me!
“NO! GET OFF ME!” I screamed twisting and turning, splashing in the pool of blood trying to get it off me. But this was all in vain as more of the creature emerged and soon the entire lower half of my body was encased in the writhing limbs of whatever beast this was that the witch had summoned to get me. It then started dragging me closer and closer to the umbrella, ready to drag me to wherever the witch intended to imprison me.
But I didn’t give up.
It wasn’t in my nature to. So, instead I fought, trying to push myself out of its hold in order to gain some more movement. An effort I doubled the second I saw the tips of my feet now reach the edge of the stretched material. I thrashed and thrashed, trying to kick out hoping that the splashing of blood it floated on would create enough movement for a small wave that would send it further away. But the tentacles just yanked me hard and the first part of my legs were dragged inside, giving me a weird feeling of being suspended above somewhere in a void.
I couldn’t let her take me! Because if she did and if what she’d said was true about her having somehow managed to capture Lucius, then he needed my help to break him out! I would be no good to him if I too was caught and for whatever reason, it was obvious she needed me, and I had a feeling she was using Lucius as bait!
“YOU CAN’T HAVE ME!” I screamed, finally managing to twist onto my belly, my hands dipping through the blood and finding pieces of stone I could dig my fingertips around so I now had something to hold on to. But then, as I looked over my shoulder, I saw the tentacles giving space to something at the centre and I didn’t have long to question what. As suddenly a demonic hand burst from the darkness and reached for me.
“AAAAHHHH!” I screamed in utter agony as she caught me and started clawing at my back, making me cry out even more as the witch’s long razor talons scratched away at my skin. This made me realise she was trying to dig her hold into my flesh and use that to pull me under.
And pulling me under was exactly what she was doing as I soon realised the fight in me was no longer enough.
As I might have already been in Hell, but where she wanted me to go was far worse.
Back to the…
Death she had planned for me.
Chapter 20
Dangerous Frozen Kisses
I screamed in pain and reached out my free hand, seeing the drops of blood I had created dripping down and off my fingers in a sort of slow motion. As if time was on my side and trying to drag out the moment for as long as possible before the witch dragged me into her nightmare. But as I reached out with my hands, all I saw was a crowd of demons coming closer. Snarling beasts on chains and about to be set free by a horned master. One who looked as if he had just found a free meal for his pets and it was time they took a break and chowed down on human meat.
So, this was it.
This was my choice.
To either let this bitch take me or fight for a freedom that meant getting torn apart by wild beasts. I took a deep breath, trying to concentrate past the pain and as my eyes lowered, my cramping fingers were about to accept my fate and let go of the hold I had. But that was when suddenly a bright blue glow caught my eyes and they snapped open just in time to see what it was.
A demonic roar of pain echoed in the night as the blue light turned brighter as it started to tear through the chest of the horned owner, before the tip of a blue blade could be seen as it speared through his body from behind. After it disappeared the demon dropped to his knees and let go of the chains causing the snarling beasts to come running at me.
I could barely see as the cloaked figure from behind him moved so fast, the growling beasts didn’t have a chance as he sliced through them one after the other. I could just make out the sight of frozen pieces that had once made a whole beast fall to the floor with a thud.
“AHHH!” I then screamed as the hand dug in deeper and I swear the witch’s hand was trying to grip onto either side of my spine! The hooded figure’s head snapped up just as my hand lost its grip and I started to get pulled backwards.
“Hold on now!” A male voice shouted and he grabbed my hand, forcing me to grip tight to the one cobbled rock on the floor that was raised up enough for me to do so. Then I looked over my shoulder to see him slice across the witch’s hand with his sword, turning the flesh a frosted ice and making her scream before letting me go.
After this I watched as he spun on a heel before hammering down his sword into the middle of the umbrella, making the tentacles freeze and crack before crumbling back down into the darkness like frost being blown off a stone surface.
I felt myself finally free and started trying to get to my feet when a familiar hand helped me,
“Trice?” I looked up into the hard yet handsome face of my saviour and whispered the obvious,
“You saved me.” as I stumbled and his hands framed my waist as I fell into him, so now he was holding me upright. My hands went to his che
st and my head fell forward, placing my forehead against him, as it felt too heavy to hold up anymore.
Gods, I felt so weak and the blood I could feel pouring down my back wasn’t helping matters. I felt one hand leave my waist and instead raise my face up to his with a gentle grasp on my chin. Then he pulled down the flap of leather that hid the lower part of his face. I couldn’t help but look at his lips and realised too late that this seemed to be an invitation to something more, as before I knew what was happening, he was lowering his head to mine. I froze and it had nothing to do with the power contained within his shifter but everything to do with the fact that he was about to kiss me!
Oh Gods, but this was why he had been odd with me…
Trice liked me!
I opened my mouth ready to tell him that I was sorry, that we couldn’t do this but then he whispered softly,
“I will always save you.”
After this his lips were just about to touch my own at the same time my fingertips pressed into his chest, just about to apply enough pressure to stop him, when suddenly I was ripped from his grasp, falling backwards.
“NOOO!” I screamed again as I was yanked back inside the umbrella, where a single tentacle had sneaked back through and had wrapped itself around my waist. But as another scream tore from me, I was falling backwards and at the very last second, my wrist was caught from above. I looked up to find myself hanging down from a cloud of darkness that had filled the umbrella with a hand I now knew holding on to me and unwilling to let me go.
I looked below to see what had hold of me and sucked in a startled gasp before letting it out again as a terrified scream! The monster below me was like something you would have found trying to drown a ship!
Only the edges of it could be seen, as if it was only half summoned from whichever part of Hell she had been able to drag it from. It had legs like a scorpion and a hard outer shell, whilst its tentacles were too many to count and they flailed around above it. But there at its centre was the witch sat cross legged, surrounded by the shadowed essence of the creature. Her scarred face looked up at me, but her eyes were still rolled to the back of her head, so that the whites of her eyes were all that could be seen. She moved her arms around and I noticed that it was done so she could command its movements.
Kingdoms Of Hell: Vampire Paranormal Romance (Transfusion Book 7) Page 17
