Free Eternity The Beginning by Felicity Heaton Page A

was a primal need, something impossible to ignore. It was ravenous. It was
    intoxicating. It was demanding a kill and he was
    sickeningly happy to cooperate.

    He wanted it.

    He wanted to taste the blood again, wanted the feeling of it spreading through him and breathing life into his tired body.

    He wanted the pleasure it brought, feelings he’d only ever felt during sex, and had never thought possible from anything else.

    Placing some distance between himself and his sister, he struggled for control and won.

    “It was not a plague that killed our mother,” he said and heard Ineru gasp. He resisted his desire to face her, knowing that the demon he had become was still visible.
    He could feel his teeth scraping against his tongue as he spoke. He remembered how sharp the man’s had felt, how painful they’d been in his neck. But the pain had quickly disappeared, chased away by the shadow of
    death that had filled him and the cold dread of what was coming. He hadn’t hesitated in that moment. He’d taken everything the man had offered with him, not even
    stopping to ask what the consequences were.

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    “But it must be…such devastation.”

    “It is death that comes for them. Not the merciful kind that takes us in our sleep, but the violent kind. It is a creature of the underworld that feeds on the blood of the living to sustain it in eternity.”

    He looked down at his hand and saw his fingernails had returned to normal. Raising his hand, he felt his teeth and found they were blunt again.

    He turned to face Ineru, unable to miss the fear in her eyes when he did so.

    “How is it you know all of this?” She frowned at him, her beautiful countenance marred by it, and suddenly he realised that eternity without her was a life of torture and pain.

    How could he go on without her?

    He couldn’t leave her alone in the world. She wouldn’t make it without him. She needed him now more than
    she had ever done.

    She would understand if he told her.

    She was the reason he’d wanted to live after all. She was the reason he had chosen to receive the dark gift he had been offered.

    “I have become like them,” he said and moved to block her path when she went to run. She stopped dead, her eyes showing too much white for his liking and the erratic pattern of her heart speaking words to his hunger. She was scared of him. She was scared and it only made the hunger inside of him intensify. “Please, 4
    Eternity: The Beginning – F E Heaton
    my sister, do not fear me. It was either death or an immortal but cursed life, and I could not leave you.”

    “For me?” She sounded as though she’d tried but failed to say the first part of her sentence. He knew what she was asking.

    “I would do anything for you, sweet Ineru.” He held his arms out to her, hoping she would come to him and not reject him. He didn’t want her to fear him, not only because she was his only kin but because it made him have to fight against his new instincts even more. “I would never hurt you, my only love.”

    He closed his eyes when she stepped into his embrace, her forehead resting against his neck and her hands against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her and breathing her in.

    “We must leave this place. It is no longer safe for us.”
    He stroked her hair and waited to see what her response would be.

    She pulled back and looked at him with wide eyes.

    “You will leave me,” she said and he shook his head, able to sense the fear that went with those words. “Not now, but in many years to come I will be old and die, but you will still be immortal.”

    He sighed and wiped the tear from her cheek. “Then I will end my life when yours ends.”

    She smiled and then it faded from her face and her look became serious.

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    “Take me with you,” she said, her fingers grasping almost painfully at his chest, making his instinct rush