Yes, keep striking me, bring me closer to ending this. Bring me to my death.
“He’s enjoying this,” comes a shrill voice.
“He’s losing his mind. The vampire curse is taking hold in him. I give him hours left if he doesn’t take the cure,” the witch says.
My sense of time is gone, but hours seems too long. Hours feel like days.
I want this over.
Something heavy hits me, knocking me onto my back. My back screams in pain as the body hits me.
A person.
A woman.
My brain can process that much.
I grin when I listen to her heartbeat.
Alive.
They gave me a live one.
Kill, kill, kill…
I tangle my hand in her long silvery white hair, bending her head to the side to expose her neck to me. My teeth brush against her silky skin, ready to devour her, when a soft, cool snowy scent hits my nostrils. Like the fresh fall of snow.
It shocks my system.
She’s not warmth like all the other bodies.
She’s is cold.
She is winter.
She is snow.
And she calls to me in a way no one else does.
I hesitate.
Screaming echoes around me. Ordering me to do something. But I can’t hear the words.
Or maybe they are screaming at her. She’s somebody, not just a warm body. She means something to someone, maybe even to me.
Kill her,the words flash in my head again. The scent of her blood taunting me with every beat of her heart.
Her blue eyes hold no fear. Her mouth doesn’t beg for me to spare her. She remains on top of me, unmoving.
She’s as prepared to die as I am. And yet, she doesn’t fear me. Doesn’t believe I’ll kill her.
“Run, fight, if you stay here, I’ll kill you,” I whisper.
“You won’t, Nyx.”
She’s wrong. Stupidly wrong.
I snarl at her with all the viciousness I can summon, baring my large, blood-soaked fangs—fangs that have already torn through and drained no fewer than a dozen humans today.