Born in Twilight: Twilight Vows Read Free Page A

knew I had seen before. In the shelter. In the soup kitchens where I’d worked. I’d given him blankets, and that very sweater he wore. I’d prayed with him.
    I raced forward, but too late. The beast had plunged his wretched teeth into the neck of the innocent old man. I battered his head, clawed at his face, but he only released his victim when he’d taken his fill. He lifted his head, and he smiled at me. And his lips gleamed scarlet in the firelight. I backed away, shaking my head, working my mouth but unable to speak.
    The man whose name I could not recall slumped to the ground, eyes wide, but already glazing over. His face was the face of death, bathed in the dancing glow of the fire in the barrel beside him.
    The monster licked his lips, and then with the speed of a striking cobra, snatched a handful of my hair and pulled, making me cry out in pain. “You shall never fight me again, Angelica. You’re mine now. Mine, do you understand? All your life I’ve watched you, waited for you. You’ll go where I go. Do as I say. Feed when I feed.” He glanced past me, into the shadows, and that evil smile returned. “Even now your first victim waits. There, quivering in the night, thinking we cannot see him in the darkness.” He stared down into my face. “I’ll bring him to you, and you will take him, Angelica. You will drain him dry, or suffer my wrath.” And then he released me and started forward. I turned and saw the boy, a mere youth, dressed in tattered rags, crouching in the darkness, shivering and wide-eyed with fear. And I could not let that creature take his life. I could not.
    My hand closed around a piece of wood that protruded from the fire barrel. The end I grasped was not burning, but as I pulled it out, I saw that the other end was aflame. With a low growl, one I could not believe came from me, I lunged forward, swinging my torchlike weapon with all of my newfound strength.
    But it wasn’t the force of my blow that did the deed. The flaming end of the club crashed against the vampire’s head, knocking him to his knees. But I’m sure the damage I did was minimal. It was the flame. The blaze seemed to leap at him, fire licking at his hair, and then at his clothes. He surged to his feet, his lips parting in a snarl as he came at me. But the fire…I crossed myself as I watched it engulf him. It seemed as if he’d been doused in gasoline, the way the flames spread. I backed away when he reached for me. And that was all. He fell to the ground, and there was a surge of white-hot flames. And then nothing. The flames died away as if they’d never been. The tiny sparks and embers sailed into the night and blinked out, one by one. And not even ashes remained to soil the perfect white snow at my feet.
    The boy in the shadows was gone, and I could hear his fleeing footsteps still reaching my ears as he ran. I staggered away, shocked, terrified, appalled. I had killed. I had been transformed. I was a creature like the one I had murdered. I was damned. Damned.
    Â * * *
    His hearing was excellent. Not preternaturally so, since he was still a mere mortal, but good enough to know what was going on. The bastards were going to kill him.
    For three days, he’d been strapped to this table, inside this tiny cell. Poked and prodded by DPI scientists in white lab coats until there wasn’t an inch of his skin they hadn’t violated. Nothing. There wasn’t a bodily fluid they hadn’t taken samples of. Not one. But it wasn’t humiliation he felt. It was rage. And this time, the bastards would pay. Jameson Bryant might not be a vampire, but he wasn’t a child any longer, either. He was a grown man, and as of tonight, he was a man bent on revenge. He’d tear this building down brick by brick when he got free. He’d destroy the Division of Paranormal Investigations and everyone connected with it.
    Jameson understood DPI’s