Blood Betrayal

Twenty-Three

Once downstairs Liam yelled over the couch at Zion. "You done with that lady vamp? Its bad movie time bad movie time bad movie time." He sang in an annoying instant way that deserved a smack upside his head.

Zion was already regretting his decision to leave Ghanny. "Just start it asshole."

"So you've been upstairs screwing around with a snoozing vampire and couldn't even text your own family." Liam's face twisted into mock sadness while his eyes glinted with mirth.

"Start the damn movie."

Movies would shut everyone up about his personal business.

"Oh, he hasn't been screwing around with anyone," Tommy inserted, "boy is in a dry streak. Couldn't even get some off a sleeping vamp."

"Shut up about that already," Zion snapped. How the hell had he ever created fond memories of watching shitty old movies with his asshole brothers? A grinning Liam began doling out shots of rum. Oh yeah, sweet-sweet mind-numbing alcohol, that was how.

"Okay... Bride Of Chucky it is."

Zion sighed and tilted a shot of rum down his throat letting the burn settle in his stomach. It filled him with familiar relaxing warmth. Joy.

Left alone in the still unfamiliar room Ghanny drifted into an uneasy sleep. Her mind drifted into the unpleasant memories Zion's questions had stirred.

It was so very dark and cold. She shivered uncontrollably. Every shiver sent stabbing pains jolting through her body. The complete darkness frightened her. There was a distant echoing dripping sound that told her she was in a cave.

She tried to move, to get relief from the bone-chilling cold. Tried to roll to her side in an attempt to stand or at least hug her knees to her chest. Her body wouldn't obey the simplest command.

Rough dry slithers at her feet made her desperate to move yet still she could not.

"You are dying," a voice came untried and broken through the dripping dark.

Her mouth would only open and close. No sound came. She had no doubt that she was dying. The pain was enough to convince her. Then there were also the sparks of light behind her eyes that shouldn't be there in the utter darkness of a cave.

She didn't want to die. Not in a cave with no one she loved, not where no one would ever find her, not paralysed and blind with the unknown. She thought helplessly of Daxus. He would never know what happened to her.

"I could save your life," that hideous scab of a voice croaked.

The shivering was slowing. It lessened the pain but wasn't a good sign. Nor was the numbness travelling up her spine.

"Do you want to live?" it rasped, closer than before.

Yes, she thought, I want to live. I want to see my people again. She mouthed the word that might save her.

"Yes."

A weight came to her hips. The thing in the darkness was on top of her. She should be frightened but the world was slipping away. There was no longer enough of herself left to be afraid. She could tell that limbs were holding her, too many limbs for one man. They groped at her back pulling her up in a nauseating wave of bone grinding pain.

Something hot touched her lips. A fiery liquid filled her mouth. It was vaguely sweet, the consistency of warm sap. Viscus heat dripped down her throat. In the back of her mind, she had a thought that her body may choke on it but she didn't seem to be breathing enough to choke. Narcotic drowsiness fell over her making her senses drift into darkness.

I'm about to die, she thought. The nothingness of unconsciousness took her. That realisation was more comforting than worrying.

With a gasp, air filled her lungs. A sweet heady taste permeated her mouth. A spiced earthy musk tickled her nose. Exhaling brought the sent on stronger. Her head spun and pain throbbed in her back.

Again sweet thick liquid was pushed into her mouth.

She sputtered, moved her hands to grasp at the invasion. Her hands moved. Painfully, but they moved. She grabbed at it trying to push it away. It was sickeningly soft yet unyielding, the feel of it under her hands made her want to let go. It was pushing into her mouth. She had to stop it.

Her hands scrambled along its span as she tried to find a purchase. It felt like an arm but the proportions were wrong. There was a wrist and elbow of sorts. The understanding that this thing had arms and was, therefore, a person was lost in a pain at her shoulder so horrible she felt faint.

Vaguely through the shroud of pain, she could feel a new sensation. A muted, pushing, stretching, searching between her legs. Heat emanated from all that liquid running down her throat. Flames pushed through her body using arteries and capillaries to travel and settle throughout her bones. It was a growing living thing seeking shelter in her marrow. It burned skin, scorched flesh and yet she did not melt.

Her body stayed whole while the fire ate her alive. Screams sounded in her chest but were gagged by the obstruction at her lips.

Time was lost.

She became aware of herself again with that thick earthy taste and smell filling her. There was no more pain over her body. Her eyes fluttered open. Above her, the cave roof slowly came into focus. It was visible suggesting there was light somewhere only there were no shadows showing that the light had an origin. It seemed the light came from inside her eyes.

She felt wetness between her legs and on her cheeks. She had been unknowingly crying and her eyes still dripped tears. She wiped at them and found her hands were coloured with blackness. Not true tears, a black liquid fell from her eyes. That same blackness was smudged over her thighs.

"You are awake. I have remade you as mine."

That scraping voice brought a shiver to her skin. The memory of an offer to save her life came flooding back along with the memory of pain. Slowly she turned toward it. A bulging mass lolled before her.

It was a great shining wart of pale flesh with altogether too many limbs and not enough neck. It had some familiar features but they were in all the wrong places and grew out in the wrong directions.

Arms there and there... and there. Legs short deformed muscular things dotted along its elongated body. Some of which bent the wrong way.

It smiled. A sharp-toothed grimacing jaw opening too wide, flashing red, showing too many teeth. Eyes so black they disappeared into the darkness like maggot holes eaten away in its round poorly placed head. A forked wisp of a tongue snaked from a gaping lipless mouth. This thing before her was not a true person at all. It was the horrifying caricature of a man.

She screamed into the uncaring darkness.