“Don’t you fucking dare,” he sneers at me. “I got that lamp from Queen Victoria.” He then goes for the rope. “You going to make this easy for me, or hard?”
I shake my head.
No.
I am not being tied up again.
“Seems your bloodlust is coming through,” he says, wrapping the rope around both his hands. “You’ll be hungry pretty soon. But I have things to do, a party to prepare for, and I can’t have you fucking things up. You had your chance today, you should have taken it.”
Then he’s at me, working fast, until I’m tied spread eagle again, this time on my stomach.
“Sweet dreams, Lenore,” he says. I can sense him moving over to the window, pulling the curtain back down. He turns off the lamp, blows out the candles, and leaves me in the dark.
Chapter Nine
Thirsty.
So fucking thirsty.
I’m dreaming about rivers of blood, about oceans, about all the things I cannot have. This thirst is deep inside me, turning my insides into a desert, a painful ache and longing for something I’m not sure how to get.
I am lost to my cravings.
Reduced to nothing more than a junkie looking for their next fix.
I hate what I’ve become.
No control.
No life.
No love.
If I wasn’t feeling so hollowed out from my thirst and hunger, I’d be in tears over all that I’ve lost. My parents, my friends, my school, a future that once seemed so boring and predictable but sunny and promising at the same time.
I can’t be what I am.
This…thing.
This creature.
But I am, because in the depths of me I feel an urge that will run me into the ground, an urge that will end up destroying me.
My truest nature.
And yet there’s another part of me too.
One that’s also deep and dark, sitting inside me as it always has.
The well.
And if I look inward, I can see it there, crescent moon gleaming on the water.
Inviting me to drink from that place.
A place of power and energy that was cut off from me my whole life, through runes and hexes and spells, or whatever the hell my parents did to me without me knowing.
It’s all accessible again.