Free Welcome to the Darkness (Darkness Trilogy) by L. M. Justus

about forty years ago. Before that, I resided in New York, and before that, France.”
    She stared at him with keen interest. “You don’t have an accent. Do you speak French?”
    “Bien sûr,” he replied.
    She broke into a grin that lit up her whole face. N athaniel tried to remember the last time he had caused someone to smile like that. A warm sensation grew inside him, thawing some of the ice.
    “Can I ask you something on a completely different subject?” she said. “Are these cells strong enough to hold you? I mean, Reed forced my balcony door open like it was made of cardboard, which makes me think you guys could break out of here if you wanted to. Or am I wrong?”
    “The bars are coated with silver, which our skin cannot come into contact with for even a moment.”
    “Oh,” she replied, her brow furrowing as though she were confused. “Is that only true if you’re awake? If I took Reed’s hand and touched it to one of the bars right now, for example, would that still be bad?”
    “Indeed, it would be very bad. Please, do not attempt such a thing.”
    She leaned back and remained silent for several more minutes. Nathaniel did not interrupt her.
    Eventually, Reed woke up, and they continued to wait. The occasional question or two peppered the silence between them and as time dragged on, Sarah began to yawn. She lay down at last, her head resting in Reed’s lap. Nathaniel noted with some amusement that Reed seemed mildly flustered about being in such close proximity to this woman. The scent of Reed’s attraction to her was obvious to Nathaniel’s vampire senses, but he could hardly blame Reed for that.
    Despite the discomfort of their current accommod ations, Sarah appeared to have slept the full night, waking sometime in the early morning. Even underground, Nathaniel could sense when the sun had risen for the day. The expectation that at any moment they would be released from their cells had made the night seem even longer than it would have otherwise.
    Nathaniel continued to listen to the conversation that Reed and Sarah had started after she’d woken up.
    “Today was my eleventh day on a new job,” Sarah said. “I was hoping to get this deal with the vampires sorted out more quickly. I can’t afford to miss more work.”
    Suddenly, a deafening boom ripped through the air, and the room shook violently. Nathaniel fell to floor and Sarah shouted, “Holy crap!” at the same time that Reed shouted, “Earthquake!”
    Cracks appeared in the ceiling and the walls around them and the room continued to shake. A large chunk of concrete broke loose and tumbled to the floor in a cloud of dust, followed by a shower of rocks and dirt. Sarah screamed when the ceiling collapsed above them. The roof of Nathaniel’s cell came crashing down toward him and he flattened himself against the floor. Images flitted through his mind: of the bars burning into his skin while he was buried alive.
    The floor shifted like the deck of a ship on a rocky sea. “Reed!” Sarah yelled in a panic. “You have to break us out of here!”
    “I can’t! I can’t touch the bars,” Reed yelled back over the sound of the walls crumbling.
    “Yes you can! You can touch silver. Trust me.”
    “No. I really can’t. Nathaniel said it will cut my hands off.”
    “And I’m telling you that won’t happen,” she said, choking on the dust that permeated the air, desperation clouding her voice. “I touched your skin with silver . . . in my apartment, when you were unconscious. Nothing ha ppened. Please, just try, and hurry.” The floor beneath them rumbled with another aftershock, and the room continued to disintegrate piece by piece.
    The lights went out and Nathaniel could no longer see. Even a vampire needed a little light to see in the darkness. The screeching sound of metal bending and ripping filled the air, and someone crashed and stumbled through the wreckage.
    “The stairs are here. Go!” Reed’s voice carried through