Page 62 of Bewitched By a Vampire

Taking her down.

Night grinned and plunged the tip of his sword into her left shoulder, pinning her to the wooden floor. She screamed and he rolled to his knees and gripped his remaining sword in both hands. He brought it down hard, aimed at her neck.

Electricity lit him up again, ripping a bellow from him as it coursed through him, zinging up and down his body, growing stronger and stronger. His arms shook as he tried to keep hold of his sword, as he fought to regain control of his body and master the pain so he could finish the witch off. This wouldn’t stop him from claiming her head.

A red veil descended as memories darkened his mind, as his throat blazed and he tasted blood.

Bloodlust seized him in crimson talons and he roared as he inched his blade down, pain searing him as the spell continued to ravage his body. He narrowed his scarlet eyes on the witch below him as she frantically pulled at the sword pinning her. She would die.

Lilian lunged for him.

The fair-haired witch seized her and pulled her back.

The distress that shone in Lilian’s eyes as she desperately fought the witch, the fear he could sense in her, had him forgetting the brunette and surging to his feet despite the spell that still poured electricity through his bones.

On a feral roar, he kicked off, his focus locked on the one hurting his Lilian.

He raised his blade above his shoulder, holding it in both hands and twisting it to aim the point at the witch. He would paint the cream wall of this suite with her blood.

Pain blasted across his left side and the room twirled around him as he was thrown across it, spinning from the force of the blow a witch had delivered. Cold swept down his side, sapping his strength as it spread through him, and he grunted as he hit the wall near the broken window. He landed hard on his knees and blood burst from his lips.

He tried to look at Lilian, battling the cold that was slowly freezing his muscles, desperate to see her. A different sort of cold chilled his heart as his gaze found her and the stricken look on her face hit him hard, together with the deep fear he could see in her eyes as the three defensive witches approached him, murmuring words that charged the air with the vile scent of magic.

It was over.

He had failed to protect her.

No. He pushed his hands against the wooden floor and fought to get up, to stand and fight.

“You just don’t quit, do you?” The fair-haired female holding Lilian back narrowed her sparkling eyes on him.

Night weakly bared his fangs at her and gritted his teeth against the pain that ripped through his chilled muscles as he reached for the wall, intending to use it to pull himself up.

The brunette pressed her heeled black boot into his spine and shoved him back against the floor. “Stay down, vampire.”

“No,” he growled and summoned all of his strength, which wasn’t much. His head fogged as he tried to push onto his hands and knees despite the force the witch stepping on him applied to his back.

He couldn’t give up. He couldn’t stay down. Lilian needed him.

His vision tunnelled, everything going black and white and then shades of crimson. Someone grabbed his wrists and yanked them behind his bare back, locking them together, and he struggled, making a pathetic attempt to break the bonds that now held him.

He managed a growl as they hauled him onto his feet. His knees buckled and he hit the floor hard on them, and Lilian broke free of the fair-haired witch and ran to him, a beautiful look of concern on her face.

One of the other witches caught her and held her arm in a bruising grip as Lilian stared at him, her brow furrowing and an apology shining in her caramel eyes. He wasn’t sure why she was looking at him like that. He was the one who should be apologising. He had been the one to fail her after all.

The witches succeeded in pulling him onto his feet this time. Two of them held him upright and he seethed as he watched a third gathering his things. Leaving him alive had been their greatest mistake. He would break free of his bonds, and then he would kill them.

All witches must die.

His throat burned and he gagged on the memory of blood filling his airways, choking him as his life had poured from him. He fought the encroaching darkness, refusing to succumb to oblivion, but when one of the witches opened a portal before him, charging the air with magic again, it was too much for him.

He slumped in their grip and blacked out.

Night groaned and shuddered, rolling to his left to escape the frigid cold that chilled his right side. It was no better there. The hard bed—ground?—beneath him was icy. A shiver wracked him and he curled up, tucking his knees to his chest, and sleep tried to claim him again. A noise had his ears twitching. Metallic.

His senses fought the haze in his mind and the aching fatigue that inhabited every inch of his body, attempting to sharpen to locate the source of that sound. He managed a deeper breath and caught strange scents, ones that didn’t match his last memories.

He smelled water and rusted iron, and mould. A lot of mould. And excrement.

---