After many months of getting beta reads and advice from my group, I think I have achieved a final version of this book. It starts and ends much differently than the first draft I posted on here. It is the second book in a series so you might want to...
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Analise
Analise woke with a pain in her side. She sat up to see a long red line, like that of a cat's claw, running down her ribcage. There were no cats in the castle. At least none that she'd noticed.
Perhaps a bat!
She shot up and searched the darkness with her eyes, but saw no movement, only the shadows of a night that had just begun.
Through the bed curtains she saw candles flickering. Someone had come in to light them. She grasped at the hem of a fleeting image of Giselle standing at her bedside offering her a drink. Dying of thirst, Analise swiftly drank. Then, there was nothing.
The scratch woke her.
Her head felt heavy, and the room seemed to spin. She fell back on the pillows again, and waited for the dizziness to pass. The walls and furnishings of the room gradually fell into place, yet their outlines remained hazy. Rising, she wavered to a chair by the fire that was blazing in the hearth, and found an empty goblet on the side table.
Giselle had been here. The icons had not kept her out. How long before Dracule would be able to withstand them?
Analise hurried to the door and turned the knob. Incredibly, the door fell open, and the black air of the castle breathed in. She jumped back. Why was it open? Did Giselle think the drink was strong enough to keep her under all night? The fool! She'd underestimated Analise.
It was disconcerting to step out into that sepulchral silence, that emptiness. Her room had life in it, spiritual life. The saints and martyrs watched sternly from their gilded frames as if to warn her against leaving their protection. But Analise ignored them, and entered that stale, unearthly corridor where her imagination swarmed with visions of the tomb.
Touching the wall for support, she glanced furtively at the shadowy corners of the passageway, staring into each vast room that she passed. Where was Stefan? It was not like him to leave her in danger. He never would. He had to be coming for her. Maybe he was already in the castle. He just didn't know where she was. That was the problem. He couldn't find her.
Praying to St. George for divine guidance to find her way without alerting the Vampires, Analise continued down the corridor. If Stefan was here, she would find him.
"Oh, please, God, guide him to me!"
Pinching up the long skirts of her nightgown, she stepped down the spiral stairs. Lighted lamps set high in the walls, flickered dimly. It seemed that all light must struggle to shine in this darkness. Except for the Vampires; they carried an internal light, an infernal light to seduce, to blind, to confuse.
She floated around a corner to a cloister walk, the arches open on a courtyard with a Gothic well house in the midst. At the end of the walkway, an open doorway glowed like an ember. Someone was there. Still pacified by the effects of the drink, she went toward it.
