Darkest Before Dawk **3**

I glanced up at the two intruders in my home, and faltered at the sight of them. Sinister burgundy eyes, deathly white skin…They weren’t human. They were…

“You’re immortal,” I breathed.

There was no mistaking the flash of surprise that crossed both their faces this time.

“Well, Jared,” the woman—Alexandra—said, turning to the male, “It appears she has a… talent.”

“My name is Troo,” I murmured, and even as I did so, I wondered why, considering how these people were going to kill me soon.

“It would be a shame to waste such a talent,” Alexandra mused, and then she turned the full force of those red eyes on me. “And… that pink-ish hair… it reminds me of…”

Her voice lowered, and she and Jared turned to each other, appearing to confer. I thought I saw their lips moving, but I couldn’t hear a sound.

And then, suddenly, they were standing straight, facing me again. “Troo,” Alexandra said, and her voice was suddenly kind (it hadn’t been not kind before, just… not exactly kind…), “You’re going to come with us.”

I laughed, weakly. “You aren’t going to kill me, then? Not right here?”

Alexandra frowned slightly. “Not exactly,” she hedged, and my sixth sense did a crazy little dance. She was telling the truth… but to what extent? It didn’t make any sense. “I’m better with human blood than Jared is… we’re going to do it right here, and then we’ll be taking you away.”

I ignored the shock of fear that raced through my body at the words human blood. There were more pressing issues at hand. “But…! My family…!”

“I’m very sorry, Troo,” Alexandra said, walking towards me, and even then I could see the slightly predatory crouch in her undulating movements, and I shrank away in fright, “But you won’t be seeing your family again.”

I opened my mouth—to scream, perhaps? I should have done that a long time ago—but suddenly, a hard, icy hand was covering my mouth, preventing me from making any noises. I gasped at the sudden coldness, and then Alexandra leaned over, picked up my hand from the bed, and bit it.

Her teeth sunk into my flesh with a sharp jolt of pain, and I yelped against her fingers. “Ow!” I cried, my words muffled by her hand. “What are you doing…?!”

My words were cut off by the sudden, sharper jolt of pain that raced through my body. It was like the pain of when she bit me… but multiplied by a lot, and it wasn’t just in my hand.

“Ow,” I protested, weakly, as my body involuntarily jerked again. “That hurt—”

The next jolt of pain was much, much worse. You could combine all the pain I’d felt in the past few days, ever since I’d fallen sick, and then the two pains I’d just recently felt, and then multiply all that pain a million times, and then a million times more, and it wouldn’t even come close to what I felt now.

I jerked again, gasping harshly, and then again, and again, and then I was spasming as what felt like shocks of lightning shot through my body, over and over.

 “What… did… you… do?!” I gasped out, staring, horrified, at Alexandra. Was this some kind of slow, horrific torture? What had I ever done to deserve this?

“I’m sorry, but you’ll be fine in a few days,” Alexandra said, looking slightly remorseful. Behind her, Jared stood, face as hard and cold as ever.

Fine? In a few days? I was never going to be fine again. I was going to die before, and now, I was being subjected to some horrible torture before my death… if said torture didn’t kill me first. What was this, some kind of poison or something?

I wondered what my poor Mama would think, when she got home from the soup kitchen and found her eldest daughter missing. It would be one thing for me to die; quite another for me to disappear. She—not to mention Nathan, Clara, and Fiona—would worry sick, wondering if I was still alive or not, and who had taken me. And poor, poor Clara; I’d promised her I wouldn’t die before she got home from the soup kitchen, and now, I couldn’t even be sure anymore—

And then the last coherent thoughts I had faded away as the fires of hell consumed me.

You guys didn't kill me! Yay! You all get a cookie! Yummy!