The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [14]
“No,” I said again, though this time it meant nothing in my ears and nothing in my mind. Thinking was impossible. I only knew I did not want to kill, but all I could think about was blood … red blood on black petals, and thorns and fangs like a viper’s….
The pain was intense, pushing my reason away from me, and my thoughts were no longer coherent. Ather sounded so sure, so calm.
“Come, child,” she said soothingly “You can feed on one of the witches waiting for death, if that would appease your conscience. They are already doomed to death and worse.”
A shiver wracked my body, and the pain in my eyes and head grew. My hands were numb.
I am not sure whether I nodded. I believe I may have.
The next instant I found myself in a cold, dark cell with two of the accused witches. I did not consciously know how I arrived there, but part of me knew that Ather had used her mind to move us both. She appeared beside me a moment later.
I heard a beating that filled the room, and it took me a moment to realize that it was the heartbeats of the two women who were in the cell with us. One of them had screamed when she saw us, and the other had crossed herself. The smell of fear was sharp, and though I had never smelled it before, I recognized the scent the way a wolf does.
The accused witches tried to move away from us, one reciting the Lord’s Prayer, the other still screaming. But the cell was too small for them to go far. I hardly heard the prayer.
I was aware only of their heartbeats and the pulses in their wrists and throats. I heard nothing else, saw nothing else. My vision was red-hazed, and my head was spinning.
Feed freely. I recognized Ather’s voice in my mind. She smiled at me, and I caught a flash of fang. Absently I brushed my tongue over my own canines and realized that they were the same — too sharp, too long, they did not belong in a human mouth. I could feel the tips, vicious as a snake’s, pressing into my lower lip.
I saw Ather walk toward the still screaming woman, who quieted and went limp, as if she had fallen asleep. Ather pulled back the woman’s head, exposing the pulse in her neck. Ather’s razor-sharp fangs neatly broke the woman’s skin, and the scent of blood entered the room.
I lost all ideas of sin and murder then.
I lost all that had once made me Rachel.
I turned to the other woman, whose prayer had become a babble.
I fed.
I tasted her life as it flowed into me. Ather’s blood had been cool and filled with the essence of immortality. This human’s blood was thick and hot, boiling with pure life and energy. It wet my parched mouth and brought down my fever, and I drank it like a healing ambrosia.
Flashes of thought came to me, too fast for me to realize at first that they were not my own. After a moment I gained more control and discovered they were from my victim. I saw a laughing human child. It called to its mother to show her a flower. I saw a dinner cooking in a hearth. I saw a wedding. I saw morning services. My mind focused on this last image.
I could see this woman’s mind clearly, and she was innocent of any form of witchcraft. This thought, more than any other, caused a complete change in me. This woman had been sent here to die as a witch, and she was innocent of the crime. Why had her own people accused her? How many more of the accused were innocent?
I tried to draw away quickly, but I moved as if under water. It was so tempting to drink for just a moment more, and a moment more than that, and just a moment more …
And lead us not into temptation.” I had spoken those words without faith so many times. If true belief had backed my prayer, would the words have been rewarded? Or would I still have been in that cell, feasting on the blood of an innocent woman?
All I knew at that time was that I did not want to kill, and yet I could not draw away. Even as I heard her heart stop and felt the flow of blood slowing, even as she