Free Dark Awakening by Kendra Leigh Castle

want to believe it. Would it help if I spoke in a bad Romanian accent? Not that knowing will matter while I’m drinking you dry, but I try to be obliging where I can.”
    He stood then, in one swift and graceful motion that caught Lily off guard. She took a step back. Horror rose in her throat. This was really happening. She was about to be attacked by a…
vampire
. And Tynan, if he’d ever really intended to help her, was nowhere to be seen.
    “I don’t want to die. Please. I’ll… I’ll give you whatever you want. There has to be something I can do!” she cried, hearing the desperation in her own voice. When it came down to it, she would beg for her life. Oh yes, she would beg. She would scream.
    And that was exactly what this creature wanted.
    He chuckled again, a sound that grated on Lily’s ears.
    “Dying is easy,” he said, striding toward her. “Nothing to it. But if you want to run, by all means, do. It’s so boring when your partner just lies there, don’t you think?”
    Lily felt the reality of the moment crash through her system at once. Staying still meant death. Running probably meant the same, but she had to try. She burst into motion, whirling back into the hallway, her feet barely touching the floor as she willed herself toward the front door.
    She moved faster than she ever had in her life. Time seemed to crawl sluggishly, every second drawing out into an eternity. His laughter echoing in her ears.
    He was toying with her. She was only human, no matchfor the strength and speed he would surely possess. Still, Lily reached the door, all of her will focused on the dead bolt that she needed to flip, the knob she needed to turn. Her vision narrowed until they were all she could see, all that existed. A strange sensation shimmered through her that had nothing to do with fear. It felt electric, like the charge gathering in the air before a storm.
    She remembered this, what to do with it. Shreds of those memories were still within her, locked away in the dark. If she could just tap into that current, make the door open…
    At the instant before Lily gave all of her amassed energy the final push she both feared and needed, several things happened simultaneously that sent the world from grayed-out slow motion into Technicolor hyperspeed. The front door slammed open so hard it nearly came off its hinges. Something big, black, and yowling like a banshee came flying in from the night. Behind her, a hand slid into her hair and yanked her back so hard her teeth clicked painfully together. There was a rending sound as her shirt was torn down the front, baring not only her neck and chest, now scored by her assailant’s eager claws, but also something else… something she had been taught at an early age to cover at all cost, now burning fire bright along her slender collarbone.
    She saw her attacker’s eyes go wide as they lit on her strange tattoo, a mark she had carried before she had any memories, before her parents were ripped from her and she was thrown upon the mercy of strangers. She saw the instant of horrified recognition, heard the hiss as his lips peeled back to reveal dagger-sharp incisors.
    As though in a dream, she heard Tynan’s voice.
    “Damien! Lily, no—”
    But she couldn’t stop. All of Lily’s focus, all of the power she’d drawn into herself, hit critical mass at that moment. With the door already open, its purpose lost, it had nowhere to go.
    Nowhere but
out
.
    She shrieked as power burst from her in a wave, tearing through the house with the force of a sonic boom. Lily felt her body bow sharply as the surge left her, her vision lost to a blinding flash of white. Pictures fell from the walls, glass shattered. The floor beneath her shuddered as though the Earth had moved. She was held rigid in the air for a single second, then dropped to the floor in a crumpled heap. The hands that had gripped her had vanished as soon as the power had let go.
    Unfortunately, so had all of Lily’s