Page 41 of The Sanguine Selection
A scream erupts from me and I swear the monster smiles. He fucking smiles and it’s the most savage, most harrowing thing I’ve ever seen.
Jasper bends down, his face next to the creature and gestures to me. “Your Blood Slave, my lord.”
Blood Slave…
My lord…
This…this is one of the kings from the tomb. My nightmare was real. Part of me still had hope, that the bruises on my legs were from the sheets bound around me. That the creature before me only lived in the darkest corners of my mind.
It whispers to Jasper, “You said she was resting.” His voice is a hiss, as if a snake were trying human language on its serpentine tongue.
Jasper chuckles, happily. “I wanted to surprise you, my king, with the main course of your dinner.” I tremble uncontrollably as the creature grins wider. Jasper moves to help the decayed king from his chair and to my surprise, he lies under me, his rotten face resting where the crystal bowl should be.
“Oh my god,” I whimper, appalled and sickened, as the king raises one bony finger up, up, up.He’s going to touch me! He’s going to touch me just like that wolf man did!I try and fail to make myself as small as possible, to close my legs to his perusing. But he simply reaches for the loop on the golden finger still within me, and pulls.
A flood of blood releases from my opening, a torrent, and he gapes his mouth wide, groaning as he collects it all. He doesn’t even swallow, just siphons it all down, like a well with no ending. My body clenches, pressure releasing as another flow washes over him. And he relishes in it, rubbing my blood all over himself as if it were soap, as if it cleansed him of evil and would reincarnate him, giving him a new life.
I shudder, his jaws gnashing under me, too close to my private area. Try as I might, I can’t peel my eyes away, stuck on my body and the creature below it. The bleeding stops for a moment and he runs a sickly tongue over his teeth, capturing every last drop. Then something happens that I don't expect.
The destroyed king stills, glowing eyes closing, and to my utter shock, right before my eyes, his body… it heals. Not completely. Segments of hair shed and regrow into lush black strands. His gray skin flakes and new, ivory skin replaces it. His body knits back together as if a hundred little people crawled along his skin sewing all the places it was broken.
Even his nose starts to grow back.
“My king?” Jasper tries to rouse the king but can’t wake him up. He doesn’t try long, lifting the thin king back into the wheeled-chair. He heads out of the room but as if he forgot something, pauses and comes back to me. “You were excellent for King Mikhail. I expect the same for King Marek when he wakes. Now, where did he toss that finger?”
I can’t move. Can’t breathe as Jasper finds the discarded golden finger and sinks it back inside me, filling me again. “No. Jasper. You can’t do this.” My voice wobbles with each word.
He looks up at me and stands, a momentary sadness in his gaze quickly replaced with his usual stoicism. “Oh, child. It is already done.”
And then he strolls away, as if heading to the market. As if I weren’t still here, trapped, exposed, used…
I’m so tired. So exhausted. Flanked by a dozen other women, each one as enslaved as I am. Bound I might be, but they can’t keep me locked down here forever. And when they let up, even for a moment, I’ll take my chance. I won’t be their food, like cattle herded for their milk. I won’t be chained down and bared for anyone to see.
But what choice do I have?
Time slips by, and with each passing second, I lose a part of myself that I can never get back.
I can only hope that if I can make my way out of this, there will be enough pieces of me left to put back together again. Or am I as doomed as they are, fated to shatter, the broken fragments of me scattered over the world.
Destiny be damned.
Or is it me who was damned all along…
20
Marek
I’m trapped againin the endless abyss of memories, a relentless current that sweeps me back to that fateful night when we, my brother Mikhail and I, unwittingly killed the woman we both loved. Her haunting gaze, filled with pain, bore into my soul as I relive every agonizing detail. It is a nightmare that refuses to release its grip on me, chaining my consciousness to the depths of despair.
Larissa.
A name that used to fill my heart with warmth and longing now eviscerates me. That night lives in my memories with such clarity that I swear I’m forever stuck in that moment when Mikhail and I drained her. In the throes of our insatiable lust, I became the very monster that I swore to protect the one woman I loved from.
The memory is a storm of emotions—helplessness, regret, and a seething rage at our own weakness. I am lost within it, drowning in the regret of what I've done. It's all my fault. Mikhail never would’ve opened his heart, bared his soul, had I not pushed for it, had I not fallen first. In my ignorance, I thought we were too strong to be felled by such feelings.
I was a fool.
Suddenly, a voice pierces through the darkness of my mind. “My king, it’s time.”
