Page 235 of Bitten & Burned
“Father?” I murmured.
“Rowena?” Horrified, I looked towards the voice.
Thalia.
“Thalia…”I whispered, noting with a shudder that her throat had been slashed, and her blood fell in never-ending rivulets and pooled beneath her before dripping onto the floor.
“This is what you want,” my father rasped. “What you’re giving them.”
“I’m not,” I whispered. “Gods, I’m not, you have to believe me.”
“Rowena, you know they would eat us in a heartbeat,” rasped Thalia.
“And you still want to be with them. They’re monsters. And they made you one as well,” hissed another, a deeper voice. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I saw him: Bram, his body covered in bite marks, tears, his skin barely holding on in places.
“No, no, no…”I whispered. “No…”
“Rowena, love…” Vael’s hand was insistent in mine. “It’s not real. Another visual manipulation. Witchling….”
It wasn’t Vael, but Anton who broke me from my stupor.
He was snarling, growling, clawing at Dmitri’s arms as the much bigger man held him tightly, kept him from barreling forward into the table.
“Let me go,” Anton growled.
“No, Anton, don’t… they’re not real. And they’re Rowena’s people. Rowena’s people,” Dmitri growled in response.
I looked back at the table, and the corpses on it looked at me. Dead eyes. No recognition.
Vael was right.Visual manipulations. Nothing more.
I shook my head. “Anton, love? Look at me,” I whispered, reaching for him.
He jolted at the brush of my fingers, but he was still; he looked at me, dark eyes wild.
“They’re not real, Anton. Stop. It’s a trap.”
“A trap,” he murmured, his muscles relaxing, the tight cords at his neck relaxed and released, and he fell back with a sigh against Dmitri.
“Gods, I’m sorry,” He murmured. “I was going to do it, I was going to eat them… and they’re your?—”
“They aren’t,” I corrected him. “They’re manipulations. I know you would never do it.”
“I was about to,” he countered.
“They weren’t real. Corpses don’t talk, Anton. Do you really think you would have tried to eat corpses? And even if they hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have been called to eat them like this, not without Silas’ hand being involved. They’re illusions. Bewitched illusions.”
He shook his head, tears still gathering in his eyes as Dmitri loosened his hold. I gathered him into my arms and pressed kisses to his face, to his lips, his fangs. “Darling, it’s alright.”
He swallowed and nodded, straightening and squeezing me into a hug before fully returning to himself. “I really,reallywant to get this man.”
As we stepped through the next door, I groaned because it was yet another long-ass corridor.
Of course, as I turned, I saw that no one else was with me. It made no sense because they’d come in with me. I spun around, looking for them.
It was then that I heard the most awful sound I’d ever heard in my life.
Screaming.In pain.
