Free The Vampire's Kiss (Other World Series Book 1) by Ramona Gray Page B

on
her arms.  “When I was seven I was put in a foster home with a woman and her
husband.  The husband was, well, he wasn’t normal but he wasn’t crazy.  The
woman was a complete lunatic.  She was religious and made me spend hours on my
knees praying and asking for forgiveness of my sins.”
    “What were your sins?”
    She shrugged.  “Anything and everything. 
Slamming the door was a sin, toothpaste in the sink was a sin, laughing too
loudly was a sin.  The rules changed every day.”
    “She said that God came to her every night
and told her whether I was truly repentant of my sins for that day.  If he told
her I had prayed hard enough and he had forgiven me then I wasn’t beaten. If
not, she would whip me with a leather belt in the morning.  Or sometimes she
used piano wire.”
    She stared moodily at the side of the
stall.  “Just between you and me - if God did come to visit her every night,
that dude is a real dick.  I prayed for hours every night, begging for
forgiveness, and I still got almost daily beatings.”
    “Was there no one to help you?  No one that
you could go to?”
    “Diana said she would kill me if I told
anyone.  She told me God would strike me dead with lightning before I even had
the chance to tell people what she was doing.  I was only a child and scared to
death.  To this day, I hate thunder and lightning storms.”
    He reached out to trace the word carved
into her skin and was not surprised to see his hand shaking with rage.  “And
this?”
    She actually laughed a little.  “Diana
carved that into my skin when I was fourteen and she found a romance novel in
my schoolbag.”
    “A romance novel?”  Val looked at her
doubtfully.
    “It’s a book about – about a man and a
woman falling in love.  Anyway, one of my few friends had tossed it in there as
a joke.  I hadn’t even read the damn book.  She took forever to carve it –
nearly an entire day.  She said she wanted my future husband to be able to read
it clearly and know what he had married.”
    He gave another low snarl of anger and she
jumped a little, turning her head to give him a cautious look.  “Val?  I – are
you okay?”  His eyes were glowing and his normally pale skin had a dark flush.
    He forced himself to calm down and touched
the cross on her back.  “How did she do this?”
    She gave him a startled look.  “Does the –
does the cross repel you?”
    He surprised himself and her by laughing. 
“No, little dove.  Vampire’s being hurt or scared off by a cross is nothing but
an old witch tale.”
    “But silver hurts – it can kill you.”  She
whispered.
    “Yes.  Silver, a stake to the heart,
sunlight and chopping its head off will kill a vampire.”
    He leaned forward and pressed his lips
against the scar.  “Tell me how she did this.”
    “She had a metal cross that hung over the
front door.  There was no real reason for this one - at least not that I could
tell.  I just came home from school one day and she was in the kitchen heating
up the cross in the oven.  She made me strip off my shirt and bend over the
table and then she very calmly took the cross out of the oven and pressed it
against my back.”
    “I would kill her for what she has done.” 
He said furiously.
    “It was a long time ago.”  She replied. 
“For all I know she could already be dead.”
    “How did you escape?”
    “I didn’t.  I lived there until I was
eighteen and then they stopped paying her and she kicked me out.  I could have
run away, I guess.  But I was too weak and afraid.”
    She sighed softly.  “I’m always afraid.”
    “I can’t believe you survived without going
mad.” 
    “I created a safe place.”  She said in a
toneless little whisper.  “When she started to – to hurt me, I went to my safe
place and stayed there until she was done.”
    He frowned.  “Where is your safe place?”
    She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I just close
my eyes and concentrate and then