Black Sunshine (Dark Eyes 1)

Then I feel the throbbing sting in my arm, tied behind the chair, and I know that the blood belongs to me. He must have cut me up while I was unconscious.

“You are a threat to the Makt. To the Dark Order, as many of you call it,” he says, glowering. “You have to know that Absolon took you because he saw you had the potential to undo us. Now we have a choice of what to do with you. Either I decide your witchcraft isn’t anything special and I kill you right here. Or I discover that it is something worth using and I bring you to Skarde.” He pauses. “He so wishes he could be here himself to see, but the old Lord hates to fly.”

“What does he want with me?” I ask, trying to buy myself some time and keep him talking, hoping he’s like the villains I’ve seen in the movies, the ones that won’t shut up. I wriggle my wrists against the rope, but to no avail. I then look down at my chest and realize my necklace is gone.

“Ah, you noticed,” he says. “I saw your necklace and threw it away. A waste of millions I am sure, but I can’t be too careful with someone like Stavig. He is very possessive, even for a vampire. But I don’t have to tell you that.”

“What does Skarde want with me?” I repeat. “If he thinks I’m a threat, then just kill me here.”

“Careful, girl,” Yanik snaps. “You might want to rescind that thought.” He bares his teeth at me, breathing deeply through his nose. “Your adrenaline is just kicking in. This is good. I was starting to think you couldn’t do anything unless you were in a heightened state of shock. Thankfully, I know how to shock you.”

He crosses over the line of blood and I guess I was expecting something weird to happen, but nothing does. The hooded creatures all remain where they are, poised in prayer pose, and Yanik stops right in front of me, smiling down like the Devil himself. I remember what Solon told me about him, that he was a made vampire just like him, and I have to wonder how often he gives into his madness.

I might just find out.

“Good,” he says, closing his eyes and breathing in deeper as the fear spikes through me, making my pulse race wildly. “Good, you’re there. You’re in your fear.”

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a knife, what looks to be the blade of mordernes, except it isn’t glowing blue.

“You know what this is, don’t you Lenore?” he says, holding it out. “A witch’s blade. A slayer’s blade. I figured that since you have witch in you, a supposedly powerful one, that maybe your energy would activate the blade.”

He brings it right up to my face, waving it left and right, back and forth. My eyes are glued to its every move.

“Nothing yet?” he asks after a moment. “Well, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to need you to ignite this blade.”

“No,” I say through grinding teeth.

“You can’t? Or you won’t?”

“If I activate the blade, then you’re just going to stab me in the chest and kill me.”

He gives me an acidic smile. “Ah, but if you activate the blade, that means you have power, power that Skarde wants from you. So really, it’s in your best interest to light it up. Otherwise….”

I swallow the fear rising in my throat, tasting like bile. “Otherwise what?”

“Well,” he says, sliding the blade between his fingers, “even though this blade might not be able to kill you as it is, I can find other ways to get your adrenaline rolling.”

In a flash, he brings the knife across my neck, causing my blood to spray in an arc toward, him, covering him in red, pain ripped from my throat.

“See,” he says wickedly, and I’m screaming, gasping for breath. “There it goes.” He leans in, his face close to mine, as if he’s confiding in me. “Everyone always talks about how to kill us vampires, but did you know that there are worse things than death?”

He brings the blade up to my ear and I try to jerk my head away, the blood continuing to pour down my neck and chest. “Take your earlobe for example.” I feel the sharp cold of the blade flick my ear. “Soft little thing. I could cut it off and it would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill you. But what if I took off your fingers instead?”

He walks around the back of the chair and I’m trying to breathe through the pain, willing the wound on my throat to close up and heal. Terror is everywhere inside me, a living, growing thing.

I feel the poke of the blade on my fingertips behind my back, then the sharp edge trail over my open palm. Yanik breathes in deeply.

“I could take off your fingers first, then your hands,” he rasps. “Then your toes, your feet. Start chopping you up into tiny little pieces. Just hack away at your skin and bones. And you’d still be alive. You’d be in a pain like no other, begging for death, but I wouldn’t give it to you.”

He comes around in front of me again, his wing-tipped shoes sticking to my blood on the floor, and he presses the blade at my crotch. “I could cut you from here,” he digs it in, almost breaking the skin, then drags it up over my belly, my stomach, up between my breasts, cutting into my shirt, “to here. Take a look at your insides. And still you’d be alive, wishing I’d cut off your head and be done with it. Yes, that seems like something I just might do, since you’re so useless after all.”

He grins at me, pure evil, pure madness.

For a moment I have to wonder how mad the rest of the Dark Order are, or the Makt, as he called them. They seem almost trained, ready to do his bidding, and if that’s the case, then Solon has a lot more to worry about when it comes to his father.

And then, as Yanik starts to press the blade into my chest, drawing blood, Solon feels like more than a thought.

He feels like he’s here.