Page 27 (1/2)

Chapter 1

Blood slave

The as enough to send a cold chill of terror down Arianna’s spine She shuddered, sing heavily, and repeatedly, as she tried to wet her suddenly very parched throat Her lips hurt, they were chapped and cracking She’d had nothing to drink in hours; the fire that had consumed parts of the forest had burned into her throat The s to her; she could taste the ash upon her tongue She would have given anything for some water, but she was fairly certain that herto an end anyway

The dead did not require water after all

Surprisingly the thought of being dead aroused even less fear in her than the alternative did And that alternative was beco trapped and used for the h toin horror

She did neither however, sih to carry out either action She was trapped, surrounded, penned in by the bodies craainst her The raid on the woods had been successful The homes of many had been ripped apart, destroyed, set ablaze Their lives had been irrevocably destroyed; they would never see their loved ones again

The fortunate ones, the ones that weren’t chosen to be blood slaves, would be bled outright Their blood would be drained unwillingly, and painfully, from their bodies A hundred separate needles would pierce their skin before they were finally killed The blood would be bottled and saved for later use The unfortunate ones, the blood slaves, would be used over and over and over again before their owner became tired of them and either sold them off, or bled them dry

Arianna prayed fervently that she would be bled dry at once She would rather feel the sting of a thousand needles than be repeatedly used forthat if the vampires found out who she was, they would never allow her such a corant her the merciful death she fervently hoped for

She glanced at the people surrounding her She knew they would all willingly die before they revealed her identity, she also knew that she had been a fool, a co herself to be captured in the first place If theseleverage over the cause, over the rebellion They would try to use her against the rebels that lived within the woods, hiding, ainst the vampires that hunted them relentlessly The vampires that had taken their world and twisted it into a cruel mockery of what it had once been

At least that hat she had been told they’d done

She did not re She did not recall a world where food had been purchased in stores, and homes had been heated and cooled She kneorld of woods and conceal for her meals She kneorld that was brutally hot or deathly cold She kneorld where there had never been a consistent roof over her head A world where her father was the leader of the rebelrelentlessly trained to take over her father’s position one day