Dark Desire
Christine Feehan
Dark Series – book 2
Dark Desire
Christine Feehan
Dark Series – book 2
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
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Chapter One
Contents – Next
There was blood, a river of it running. There was pain, a sea he was floating in. Would it never end? A thousand cuts, burns, the taunting laughter telling him it would go on for all eternity. He could not believe he was so helpless, could not believe his incredible power and strength had been drained from him, leaving him reduced to such a pitiful state. He sent mental call after call out into the night; none of his kind came to help him. The agony continued, went on relentlessly. Where were they? His kin? His friends? Why wouldn’t they come to him and end this? Had it been a conspiracy? Had they deliberately left him to these butchers who wielded their knives and torches with such delight? It had been someone he knew who had betrayed him, but the memory was curiously fading, obscured by endless pain.
His tormentors had somehow managed to capture him, paralyze him so that he could feel yet not move, not even his vocal cords. He was totally helpless, vulnerable to the puny humans tearing his body apart. He heard their taunts, the endless questions, felt the rage in them when he refused to acknowledge their presence or the pain they inflicted on him. He wanted death, welcomed it, and his eyes, cold as ice, never left their faces, never blinked, the eyes of a predator waiting, watching, promising retaliation. It maddened them, but they refused to administer the finishing blow.
Time no longer meant anything to him, his world had become so narrow, but at some point he felt another’s presence in his mind. The touch was far off, female, young. He had no idea how he had inadvertently connected with her, his mind melded to hers so that she was sharing his torment, every scorching burn, every cut of the knife, draining his blood, his life force from him. He tried to remember who she might be. She had to be close to him if she shared his mind. She was as helpless as he was, enduring the pain with him, sharing his agony. He tried to close himself off from her, the need to protect her paramount in him, yet he was far too weak to block his mental thoughts. His pain poured out of him, a raging torrent, flowing straight to the female sharing his mind.
Her anguish hit him like a powerful blow. He was, after all, a Carpathian male. His first duty was to protect a woman above his own life at all times. That he should falter so added to his despair and sense of failure. He caught brief images of her in his mind, a small, fragile figure huddled in a ball of pain, trying desperately to hang on to her sanity. She seemed a stranger to him, yet he saw her in color, something he had not seen in centuries. He couldn’t send either of them to sleep to save both of them from this agony. He could only catch fragments of her thoughts as she desperately tried to call out for help, tried to decipher what was happening to her.
Droplets of blood began to seep from his pores. Red blood. He clearly saw that his blood was red. It meant something important, yet he was confused, unable to discern why it was significant and what it meant. His mind was becoming hazy, as if a great veil were being drawn over his brain. He couldn’t remember how they had managed to capture him. He struggled to “see” the image of the one of his own kind who had betrayed him, but the picture would not return to his mind. There was only pain. Terrible, endless pain. He could not make a sound, even when his mind shattered into a million fragments and he could no longer remember what, or whom, he was struggling to protect.