Hollow Immortal

Cracked

Anthony rushed down the corridor towards the bedroom he'd been given. He'd just heard that Morwenna had been brought to the castle. Dmitri had given him a run down of what had happened to her and explained that she'd been taken up to his room.

He shoved the door open and found a prone figure covered by a blanket on his bed with another one sitting beside it. He instantly recognised the sitting figure as Donovan. Anthony could tell he was exhausted from the way he was sitting; elbows propped on knees with his thumbs pressed to his eyes. The rolled up sleeves of his ripped up hoodie revealed the raw flesh around his wrists - silver shackles, Anthony assumed.

His head snapped round when he became aware of Anthony's presence. There was a wild snarl etched into his gaunt features and his eyes burned with hunger. He hadn't fed in several weeks, which made him dangerous. Anthony readied himself to defend an attack but the glow in Donvan's eyes faded and his snarl relaxed into slack exhaustion when he saw Anthony.

"Oh, it's you," he observed.

The first time Anthony had encountered Donovan, he'd been cocky and more than a little disrespectful but there was none of that. His clothes were torn and blood soaked, a clear indication that he'd recently experienced something very unpleasant, and, whatever it was, had drained him enough to have instilled some humility.

Anthony nodded, "How is she?"

Donovan rubbed his face, "Come see for yourself. I'm gonna go see if I can find some grub."

He stood up and quietly left the room. Dmitri had told him that Donovan had been quite adverse to leaving Morwenna's side when they'd arrived. He'd even carried her up to the room and had let no one, other than Dmitri, in until Anthony's arrival.

Anthony went to seat himself beside Morwenna and he winced when he saw her. Like Donovan, her face was drawn and her eyes were sunken. She also looked as if she hadn't slept or eaten in weeks and her lips were cracked and pale as death. Sweat made her dark hair cling to her burning brow and restless eyes rolled from left to right under her closed eyelids.

Anthony wiped the hair away from her face and neck and that was when he noticed two large, circular holes in Morwenna's throat. The wounds themselves were red but the skin around them was white, whiter than the rest of her. He grimaced and seized her arms to see more of the same and worse. Aside from the puncture marks, her usually smooth wrists were marred with dozens of thin scars. Some of the cuts hadn't even completely healed into scars yet.

He swore under his breath as he felt anger burning inside him. He loved Morwenna, more than anything, and he knew that it would never have happened if they hadn't decided to help Caine. And where was Caine? From what he'd been able to gather from the small pieces of hushed conversation he'd been able to overhear, Caine was off plotting something and, in short, not giving a damn about the people he'd sworn to protect.

However, that was not all that angered him. Even though Caine had put Morwenna into that awful position in the first place, he wasn't the one who'd done this to her. No, that was another bastard entirely. One that Anthony had easy access to. One that Anthony intended to kill the first chance he got or, at least, the next time he lost his temper, which he figured wouldn't take too long with the way things were going.

Morwenna stirred. Her body jerked and a small whimper pushed past her lips. Her eyes fluttered open briefly  before she closed them again and squirmed a little.

"Mowenna?" he gulped, "Babes, it's me. Morwenna?"

Her eyes shot open, dull and listless, and she screamed before she threw herself off the bed and scrambled to a corner. Tears spilled over her jutting cheekbones and her bottom lip trembled.

"Please..." she whispered, "please no more."