"Banks, L A - Vampire Huntress - Between The books 1-14" - читать интересную книгу автора (Banks L. A)

Honor all my marks. Protect Damali at all costs. Her family is my family.

УOh, shitЕФ Yonnie brought his hands away from the wall for a second. УWhat just went down?Ф

Silence.

Three sets of panic-stricken eyes greeted him as he stared at the bed. HeТd fed hard, but none of them should have come away that pale. Their tawny range of brown complexions had practically gone ashen.

УNatasha?Ф Yonnie said slowly as he watched the second-gen heТd fed from. Either his eyes were playing tricks on him or her face was gradually beginning to age. Her heavy breasts that once had large, pert, coffee colored nipples began to sag. Her narrow waist that gave rise to ample hips became wider and flabby. Her luscious, thick thighs that touched in the center when she walked had become loose and wrinkly. Scars and battle wounds began to pit and create keloid tissue over her once flawless dark ebony skin. This beauty of a female was literally disintegrating right before him in his bed!

УBaby, you all right?Ф Yonnie measured the panic in his tone, trying to ask the question as calmly as possible.
The two sisters that had just fed her shrieked and scampered up the wall shielding their faces as she began to smolder. Plumes of sulfuric smoke filled the room. One almond hued beauty dropped to the floor next to the black marble bed and combusted on impact, the other willowy mahogany siren simply torched where she sat, screaming while Natasha burst into flames in the center of his bed.

Yonnie was on the ceiling in seconds, reflexes instantaneous as he battle bulked and peered at the carnage in horror. A black hole opened in the center of his lair and sucked the ashen females and the bed right down with it, then sealed shut.

He glanced around, terror keening his senses. How could a feed bite do something like that? But oddly he felt stronger. How could that be? Why? Nightfall here was in the offing; daylight soon approaching where Carlos was. Then he felt it.

Bright light scored the inside of his retinas. Pain so visceral that it made him lose his grip on the ceiling, felled him. Daylight? His main man had bought daylight? No! CouldnТt beЧthere had to be some other explanation! Until her knew for sure, heТd never accept that as an answer!

Lying on the floor, panting, sweating, Yonnie attempted an SOS beacon to his boy, Stack, to no avail. He wiped his brow to get the insistent perspiration out of his eyes and realized he was sweating pure blood.

He tried to push up on his hands and knees, but his arms trembled at the attempt. He couldnТt sense Carlos anywhere, not even as ash. He allowed his mind to sweep the territory for CarlosТs marks. Nothing. No human vibration detected in CarlosТs zones. He honed in on Damali. Nothing? Oh, shitЕ no wonder his boy was freaking out. Raise an armyЧshoТ you right! Another Master jacked the Neteru? From Rivera? No wonder Harpies were in the mix.

If he knew his Councilman, Rivera was about to turn Hell out. Had the brother lost his mind, thoughЧtorching everything in his own territory from paranoia? This was beyond dangerousЕ what did three innocent lair kittens have to do with the bull? To his mind, there was only one explanation; Rivera was so pissed off that heТd smoked any distraction within his lieutenantsТ lairs. That had to be it. Okay, awТight. Made sense. Yonnie stared at the place on the floor that had taken his bed and women with it. DayumЕ the brother was not hardly playing when it came to Damali. As soon as the sun set, heТd gather a war party and start the elevation turns.

Gulping huge inhales, Yonnie allowed his voice to rent the air in a loud bellow. УWe gotchure back! Carlos, manЧwhat just happened?Ф

Between Books: Volume Five
After The Bitten, Before The Forbidden
May 2005

Down on the third and third levels of Hell ...

Her soul had bottomed out in the viscous realm of envy. She could feel the Amanthras ripping at her raw flesh, her eyes near blind from the pain and fetid acid. Another part of her was disconnected, moving in a frenzied, haphazard ghostly wail as something large and manifold chased her soul through a barren terrain. Ghost gangs.

Nuit had promised her this end, should she ever betray him. HeТd obviously been a vampire of his word. Soul-torn, sheТd been split amongst two levels of torture, aware of both interleaving realitiesЧhunted one second, fed upon the next, in horrifying, unrelenting waves of sensation. Forever. This would be her eternity.

She wept but there were no tears left to be shed from her depleted tear ducts. She was now only bloodied, regurgitated human body slime one moment, and mere vapor in the following instant. Madness was her only option.

Slithering laughter deafened her ears to the sound of hunks of meat being consumed from her bones. Echoing moans of others being tortured filled in the blank spaces within her mind, while phantom whispers promised terrifying events yet to come. Every fear she ever owned manifested in the dry place, while the wet swamplands of the serpents made each shriek that rent the air hers.

УMommaЕФ she wailed. Screams for mercy were useless. If only, if only, if onlyЕ her mother could come. УMarlene!Ф she screeched, the old bat pitch from her once-vampire existence hitting decibels of sonar that made the angry serpents snap and hiss at her more. The LightЕ where was The Light!

Boulders pummeled her from the mere thought and she lie for seconds suffocating, being crushed by shapeless, quickly moving entities, then the serpents found her again and dragged her through the maggoty black waters to begin feeding once more.

The choice was clearЧget away from the Amanthras. The ghost gangs were harsh, but less torturous. Their pain was more muted. The stings and rips into her flesh delivered by the pit snakes dulled. A hot blast of dry air lifted her to the barren terrain and scorching heat filled her lungs, singeing her weary organs from within. Then for a moment, everything became still. Her aggressors had moved away. Something had temporarily diverted their attention.

Raven tried to get her vaporous limbs to respond. Untold time spent in agony; visceral pain summarily abated. She became a quickly floating mist, obliquely moving upward toward the outer edges of the second level. If she could just get to level one, there, at least, the torture would only be insanity, and maybe not as bad as where sheТd been. Time had passed, but she had no frame of reference. She could only follow the lessening density as potential escape gave her limited hope.

She felt for the barrier, nearly blind, using her phantom-like hands and the fragmented senses she still owned. When she passed through it, tears in earnest cascaded down her face. The portalsЕ something was wrong with the portals! The gates were opened. She had to keep moving, had to flee before the guards found out and sealed them again.