chapter one
My scream choked off as if frozen in the air along with the white puffs of my breath. Terror forced my ice skates out across the frozen pond, blood pounding in my ears with each thrust of my legs. When I chanced a glance back, he was impossibly gone from the wide-open ice. The Washington Monument, sleek and barren of emotion, loomed ominously above the trees in the distant grey dusk. Despair engulfed me as I jerked my eyes ahead, flooding my mind with prayers that went immediately unanswered: his horrid, insipid gaze was just inches from my face.
He glided backwards on the ice as fast as I skated forward, though he wore no skates and his body showed no motion. His voice entered my mind: I’m going to taste you, Zondra. I tried desperately to stop, but slid into his outstretched arms and legs that wrapped about me like a lover, drawing me to him. I arched away, pushing against his chest as he bent toward my neck, mouth opening horridly wide as slender fangs seemed to materialize with a sound as soft as a breath.
His pallid face passed my vision when his cold hand angled my head to the side—and that’s when I saw him, just a blur of color, nothing really to focus on. In an instant, he was across the pond and upon us. The one who held me yelped, almost bird-like, when something snapped by my ear. Hot liquid blasted the side of my face, my eyes—then the ice broke.
As I slid into the black water, I saw two others, lips curled back, talon-like teeth bared, collide with the one who had come to aid me. For that frozen moment his face turned toward me and I knew what should be unknowable: that I was, and always had been, his.
***
By clicking on the flip book to the right, you may read the first twenty pages, flipping each page just like a real book. It’s really cool. Try it.
