• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“He deserved it?” Aubrey finished for me. “Are you a god now, Risika, deciding who is to live and who is to die? The world has teeth and claws, Risika; you are either the predator or the prey No one deserves to die any more than they deserve to live. The weak die, the strong survive. There is nothing else. Your brother was one of the weak. It is his own fault if he is dead.”

I hit him. I had been a young lady, not taught to fight, but in that minute I was simple fury. I hit him hard enough to snap his head to the side and send him stumbling. He righted himself, the last of the humor gone from his face.

“Careful, Risika.” His voice was icy a voice to send shivers through the bravest heart, but I was too angry to notice.

“Do not speak of my brother that way.” My voice shook with rage, and my hands clenched and unclenched. “Ever.”

“Or what?” he asked quietly. His voice had gone darker, colder, and he was standing as still as stone. I could feel his rage cover me like a blanket. I knew in that instant that if anyone had ever threatened Aubrey, they were no longer alive to tell of it.

There was a first time for everything.

“I will put that blade through your heart, and you will never speak again,” I answered.

He threw the knife down so that it landed an inch from my feet, its blade embedded in the ground.

“Try it.”

I knelt slowly and cautiously to get the knife, not moving my eyes from Aubrey, who was watching with an icy stillness. I did not know what he would do, but I knew he would not simply let me kill him. Yet he stood there, silent, still, and faintly mocking in his expression, and did nothing.

“Well, Risika?” he prompted. “You said you would — now do it. You hold the knife. I stand defenseless. Kill me.”

If I had killed him then … If I had been able to murder him then …

“You can’t,” he finally said, when I did not move. “You can’t kill me while I am defenseless because you still think like a human. Well, know this, Risika — that isn’t how the world works.”

He grabbed my wrist with one hand and my throat with the other. The knife was useless.

“Ather talks about you as if you are so strong. You’re just as weak as your brother is.”

I had never learned any fighting skills. I had never practiced violence. But in nature survival is the name of the game, and the body touches its long-dead roots. You adapt, because if you cannot, you’re as good as dead. I adapted.

I wrenched my wrist from Aubrey’s grip while using my free hand to push away the hand that held me. The knife fell, forgotten. My wrist was broken, but there was little pain — the vampire’s tolerance for pain is high, and the injury was healing quickly.

I felt a spinning, burning sensation and failed to see Aubrey’s next attack. He pounced, knocking me back over the tree roots and onto the ground. I kicked his kneecap with all my strength, breaking it. He hissed in pain and anger, falling to the ground. I started to push myself up, but pain lanced through my arms and back.

A fight between two vampires may look physical, but when they are as strong as my line is, most damage is done with the mind. A strong vampire can strike out with its mind and kill a human without even touching it. It is harder to kill another vampire, but the fighters can still distract and disable each other. I was young and did not know how to fight that way I was on the ground and couldn’t push myself up because of the pain.

Aubrey was there in a moment. He placed one hand on my throat, pinning me to the ground on my back. Even wounded he was far stronger than I.

He had retrieved the knife and held it against my throat.

“Remember this, Risika — I have no love for you. I think you are weak, and I don’t care about your morals. If you challenge me again, you will lose.”

I spat in his face. He drew the knife across my left shoulder, from the center of my throat, in the gap between the two collarbones, to the center of my upper left arm. I gasped. It burned like fire and hurt more than anything I had ever felt.

Most human blades will not scar our kind, but Aubrey’s blade