Duet in Blood Read Free Page A

on, before running my fingers through my short black hair.
    The door opened as I peered at myself in the mirror that hung by the bath.
    “Yes, you are beautiful,” a voice behind me said. “But then, I do not think you need my assurance of that.” I swung around and stared at the tall figure in the doorway. Like the others, he was dressed from head to toe in a long black cloak. But no hood covered his head, and green eyes gazed at me from a face I instantly recognised.
    “Marcus…” I gaped at him as a slow smile spread across his strikingly comely face. I ran to him, throwing my arms about him, and he held me, his mouth taking mine in a hungry kiss.
    “Marcus,” I whispered into this mouth.
    “So, young Joseph…that is his name…”
    I jerked my head back and stared at him. His green eyes had lost the lustre I
    remembered. Something was not right.
    There was something sinister about this man.
    My voice trembled. “Marcus?” His laughter chilled my blood. I struggled to free myself, but his arms were like iron bonds. “Who are you?” I gasped.
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    “I am what you wished me to be,” the man said, a wicked chuckle escaping his lips, his breath rancid on my cheek.
    “You are nothing I wished for,” I said, still struggling in his embrace.
    “Better you hold on to that wish, for the reality will freeze your blood.”
    He ripped the tunic from my body, gripping my naked flesh with hands that I
    remembered as sensuously tender but now brought pain. Anger grew within me. I lashed out at him, striking him on the face. I cried out in horror as, like a waxen mask, his features dissolved into a grotesque parody of a human face.
    “Dear God…” I backed away from the monster who stood before me.
    “Hold him!” His command brought two more men into the room. They seized my arms
    in a brutal grip, forcing me to kneel in front of the man who, only a few seconds ago I had been ecstatic to see again. Now, the sight of him froze my blood, just as he had predicted. He opened his robe, and I screamed as I realised what he intended.
    “No, no—”
    My cries of despair were cut off as he plunged his disgusting flesh into my mouth.
    In the days that followed, I thought that the depths of my degradation could sink no lower—but in that, I was wrong. It is too painful for me to relate all that was perpetrated upon me in the ensuing years—years that were long and insufferable. Suffice to say, I wished for, no longed for, death to take me away from this vile existence to which I was subjected.
    But the monsters were not quite finished with me. On the eve of the twenty-fifth year of my life, they gathered about me, these fiends in black, shuffling, shifting, whispering around me as I lay bound and stretched naked upon my bed.
    “Beauty still exists,” one said, running a finger over my torso. “See, how tight and firm is his flesh and how smooth his skin.”
    “But…” The Master, the one I hated beyond all the others regarded me with his pale eyes. “…Now is the time for his beauty to be preserved. Another year and it will begin to fade. Bring in the creature.”
    The door opened, and a young man bound in silver chains was pushed into the room.
    He was tall and comely, with dark auburn hair and dazzling blue eyes. He surveyed us with a defiant air, although his expression was curious as he stared at me, obviously wondering DUET IN BLOOD
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    why I was bound to the bed. He hissed his hatred at my captors, and my eyes widened with fear, as I saw his incisors lengthen into fangs.
    A vampire…
    The Master chuckled. “So, Vampire, have we kept you long enough from your supper?
    Have the days of your confinement whetted your appetite? Do you hunger? See? We have prepared for you a sumptuous feast.”
    The vampire’s eyes of cobalt blue bored into mine, and in them, I saw his hunger for my blood. The wizards released him from his chains, and I struggled against my own