Page 3 of Of Spindles and Nightfall
There was a fine line between monster and survival, and Aryana walked it with the skill of a tightrope walker.
She knelt and breathed in his cloying scent of fear, letting the predator in her awaken. With a snarl, she sank her teeth into his skin, draining his crimson fluid in a slow, satisfying draw. “Mmm,” she murmured. “Beasts like you have the sweetest tasting blood.”
And then she let everything go as she got lost in the taste of him, as she feasted, gulping every precious drop until there was nothing left, leaving Jonas Harns a dried-out husk.
She sat back, the desperate gnawing hunger sated. Before she rose, the slight edge of a scrap of paper jutting out of his breast pocket caught her attention. Carefully, she lifted it out and examined it.
It was a hand-drawn image of a man, a woman and two small children. A boy and a girl. Aryana stared at it. A dull thudding in her chest reminded her that she lived while the man in front of her was no more. That his life force coursed through her veins. The lines of the picture were curved and squiggly, their forms slightly out of proportion. Clearly, a child had created the drawing. She flipped it over.
I love you, papa.
Her heart plummeted, the paper fluttering in her shaking hand. Even this rotten, no good man had someone who loved him. And from the fact that he carried the sketch next to his heart, he probably adored his family very much.
It was more than Aryana had ever experienced. As a vampire, it was more than shecouldexperience. This beast of a human who turned on his own kind was less of a monster than herself.
And now she’d deprived two young children of a father without a second thought.
Swallowing hard, she returned the picture to the body’s breast pocket. She grasped her cloak’s black folds and rose, raising the cloth to her lips and cleaning off the last vestiges of Jonas’s blood. It wasn’t enough, like attempting to wash away a sin that burned too deeply into her soul.
She’d barely taken a step when an arm came around her from behind. Aryana stiffened as she was pulled against a firm chest, alarm sparking through her. Had she forgotten one of the men? But this arm was much stronger than that. Most human bones she could snap without a thought.
And his scent. The shiver that had lingered on her spine all night froze into icy dread.
Demon.
“Good evening, Princess. Sorry to interrupt your activities, but I have need of you,” a deep, silken voice murmured in her ear before a cloth was shoved against her face. Belladonna filled her nose, and immediately, the world around Aryana faded into blackness, snuffing out any attempt to struggle.
Chapter 2
Aryana
Aryana awoke to being jostled about. Her head felt as if fog was moving through it. Belladonna, when ground into a powder, might be poisonous to humans, but it made vampires and most demons lose consciousness. The steady heaviness of her cloak was gone. Someone had taken it, leaving her in the unadorned, lightweight dress she’d worn on her excursion to eliminate Jonas Harns. The wounds of the prior evening were long healed from the rejuvenating effects of drinking his blood.
But the damn belladonna was only just clearing out of her system. She attempted to move her sluggish limbs, and with effort, liftedherself into a sitting position, willing her swimming vision to calm enough to assess her situation.
Iron bars surrounded her, and the smell of human urine, blood, and sweat accosted her nostrils. She was in one of the cages she had liberated the women and children from the previous evening. Someone had placed large ebony shrouds over the wagon’s cage. For a moment she thought that Jonas Harns’s men had rallied and captured her. She breathed deeper, and aside from the human scents, she caught the distinct slightly burnt whiff of demon. Her stomach bottomed out.
She reached out to split the black cloth and emitted a hiss of pain as sunlight seared her fingers. Jerking to the side, she examined the light burn on her skin with minimal concern. The injury would heal within the next hour.
So, her captors were moving her during the day. While vampires and some demons could only venture out at night, other demons had no issue traveling in the sun’s rays.
She jerked to attention when her cage jolted to a stop. Hours had passed, it must be at least midday which meant she had been in her wagon prison all of the night and most of the day. She now made out the clank of armor. The demon scent had increased. Where the hell was she?
The covering parted, and Aryana shoved herself into the corner in order to avoid the beams of light that streamed in. Chains with shackles attached flew through the bars, striking the stained wooden floor before the shroud closed again.
“My instructions are to tell you that you must put on the chains, or we will tear away the cloth protecting your enclosure and force them on you,” a gruff voice said.
She stared at the restraints, her indignation rising. “Such care and deference.”
“I must follow orders, Princess.”
Aryana lifted her intended bonds, all the shackles connected together. Her stomach curbed, anger seething in her breast. Slowly, she forced the manacles on, each one clicking into place—two on her ankles, two on her wrists, and a single around her neck. The chains were short enough that they didn’t allow her to stand straight.
“Now what?” she demanded.
Someone moved the opening in the black cloth again, and she finally glimpsed her guard. He had a sizable flat head with huge tusks poking out of his bottom lip, and thick, long arms that hung nearly to the ground. There were hundreds of species of demons, but they were arranged into five unique nations ruled by the arch king. There used to be six nations. Aryana’s kind once upon a time belonged to Kingdom Nocturne, the Night Folk. But the vampires had driven out other kinds of night demons and broken off from the demon alliance centuries ago to form their own independent kingdom.
This demon was a troll from the Terra Monstrum nation, the land walkers. Enough of them had passed through the vampire court over the years—although most unwillingly—that she knew the heavy, murky scent filling her nostrils. His large eyes took her in. “Now we come and get you.”
