Darkness and Light by Beth Cam (self help books to read .txt) 📕

human girl had slipped under his detection; frustrated, frustrated that a human had done it; and questions... Questions that were something like how? How had it happened?
He glared down at her in absolute annoyance.
He could feel her fear. It rolled of her like waves of the sand, and he could sense her honesty. Her desperation to live.
In a way it made him a little glad.
Glad that he had the choice of whether he should take it away from her, or bind it, which was one and the same. The only difference was if he killed her right there and than she'd have peace soon after while he would be left annoyed and angry that someone had managed to slip by his normally perfect sight.
He starred down at her, and readjusted his knife so that it fit against the left side of her throat.
He could see more tears welling up in her eyes, her lips trembling, her little heart pounding under her ribcage... The streaks of tears down her temples.
"Would you like to live?"
He brushed a stray strand of hair away from her moist forehead. She reacted to his touch by holding her breath. It amused him.
"Or would you prefer I cut across your neck like this..." He demonstrated by sliding the knife across her throat, firmly and slowly, as if he were savouring each second.
Her eyes grew and he saw horror in them as she felt him cut her throat open, just enough so that her skin parted. Hot sticky blood trickled down from her throat in a slithering crooked motion, and at the smell, the sight
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to calm herself down. Ok, he was going to kill her. In fact if that painfully stinging feeling and the hot something trickling down her throat was any indication he'd already cut her neck. Depth didn't matter. She'd bleed to death without a doubt.
She tried not to panic, not to move but instinct insisted she react. And react she did, by hitting him across the head with the arms he'd let loose moments ago.
She caught a flash of disbelief and anger flash across his stony features. It gave her the strength to continue on with her suicidal attempt of escape but she made her mistake when she rolled to the side and sprang to her feet, placing her back to him.

He couldn't believe it.
He just couldn't grasp what the little fool had dared to do.
Anger ripped through him like a battle axe, but the shock was what controlled his limbs. Which is why she managed to stumble off as far as a few feet before he came to and acted.
With both hands around her bleeding neck she ran, ran for her life, fear eating at her from the insides like a mighty crazed beast, but she only made it a few steps before the sense was knocked out of her as something hard, like a man's bony fist, met her head.
Her sight blurred, and with the loss of vision she stumbled, almost tripping over at the last minute as her assailant's powerful arm folded across her abdomen, pulling her back into his chest.
She coughed, her eyes ablaze, her heart pounding with fear. He would kill her now she sobbed, covering her mouth with her palm. The move brought the sticky red blood from her neck to her mouth infiltrating her sense of smell and taste but she couldn't care less.
She. Was going to die.

He grabbed both the human's arms from off her mouth and pulled them behind her before shaking her into submission.
A couple of sobs escaped her bloodstained lips, but she did a good job of holding the rest back. If they were anything close to the amount of tears he felt streaming down her cheeks, he was glad. He pulled her back against him and held her there, yanking at her hair again so she could look up at him. Accept this time, she really did cry as his handiwork across her neck ripped further.
"That was foolish."
He snarled against her ear. The arm that was around her waist tightened as the other stayed tangled in her hair.
She sobbed a reply, having obviously lost her tongue.
"Do you honestly think you had the slightest chance of escape?"  
He laughed, his laugh cool against the breeze... Cruel...
She shivered, and tried not to make a sound, or move a muscle.
"Do you have any clue as to who I am?"
He ripped his glove from his hand with his teeth as he starred down into her rounded frightened eyes.
"I was the one who ruined this place."
Her eyes widened in terror, but before she could react further, both his bare hands hand slipped up against her temples, and the next thing she saw was a blinding blue light before a gulf of consuming darkness.

 

Chapter IV

The sharp bout of pain that pierced her side summoned her from out of her deep dreamless slumber. Ouch.
Her eyes remained closed but her face contorted into a grimace as she slowly moved her torso again. Something hurt.
Something hurt badly. And it wasn't just that one place at the bottom left of her rib cage, it was her whole aching body.
Hoping to message the pain away from her ailing lower abdomen was when she realised... something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
Why was she sleeping upright?
Why were her hands slinked behind her and bound by what felt like the cold heavy shackles of a chain? Why did it feel like she was no longer safe inside her haven of smelly deteriorating corpses?

Why was her body on fire?
Then it all came back to her in a rush and her eyes flashed open.
The demon. It was him.
Where had he taken her?

Glancing around she was immediately overcome with a slow wave of dread as her blurry vision began to focus.
Tents. Tents everywhere. To her right, to her left, in front, behind, just everywhere.
But what made her heart quicken and her mouth go dry was the moment she realised she had been placed dead centre in the middle of the camp, and was tied to the tall thick pole, that held a large billowing black and blue flag with what looked like the symbols of fire and lighting arranged upon it.
It seemed strangely familiar but she could not place it. Perhaps they had worn it or carried the very same sort of fabric the day they had come and destroyed her home. Killing, destroying, torturing—torturing. God... No!
She whimpered allowed than quickly slammed her mouth shut as panic swept through her.

"Come on!" She cried softly, pulling at the chains that bound her hands behind her, wiggling and yanking her body away... away from her binds.
Visions of Balterzar's mangled face and mutilated body fell before her eyes, haunting her, taunting her, telling her this one thing.
That that would soon be her. A rush of tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away, attacking them roughly with her shoulders as she continued to fight her binds to no avail.
They were going to hurt her.
Oh god no!
She glanced up into the sky as more tears began to blind her, praying, mumbling, muttering under her breath prayers of mercy to the God of the heavens, Akail, the God the villagers professed ruled the skies and earth.
"Please please please!!! Akail have mercy!"
She cried, overcome with a torrent of helplessness and agony like such she'd never known.

A voice, arrogant and thick like caramel tore her from her desperate pleas making her body grow weaker, and her heart all but fail.
"If there's any god you should be begging, it's me."
In her moment of despair she had not noticed the ink black foreboding stallion looming afar off, nor its dark master.

He gazed down at her with eyes uncaring and merciless. No hint of an emotion rode upon his features other than the rare hint of disgust.
Sometimes, he did not care, if that was shown.
When his men saw it, they would cower, but with her, she had only needed to hear his voice and the pathetic human had sunk into the tiniest ball possible.
He gazed down at her, looking over her small weak and helpless body, and a deep loathing filled him.
He had known when she'd awoken, seen when she remembered her night, and felt it, when her fear overcame her. She knew than, knew what he had planned wasn't going to be pretty. But at least she wasn't stupid. But then, if being chained to a mast in the middle of an army settlement wasn't a pretty clear indication that soon one would be the centre of attention, they would have to be a fool.
Anger had filled him, intense anger when she'd gone had started begging for help from a god who was as weak as his people.
Disgust rolled of him like waves as he gazed down at her with two burning devouring eyes.
Yes. He was indeed the only god around that had the power to save her right than.
Sadly for her, she had just infuriated him.

Her throat tightened and her heart stopped.
It was him. The demon. The one who had had every last villager savagely murdered, young and old, and had also sliced her throat the night before.
She dropped eye contact with him when she remembered and uselessly tried to catch a glimpse of the slash across her neck or even the deep hack on her arm.
Useless. Her aching neck would not strain so low
"I healed your neck. I left the arm unseen to." He spoke, as if he had read her mind.
She looked back up at him questions flooding her mind.
"How? Why?"
Her voice sounded raspy and harsh, unused and ugly.
He remained stoic and unmoved.
"I merely prefer to drag your life out for as long as I wish for what joy can one derive from a dead body?"
He trotted closer so that her wide fearful eyes could see the honesty in his harsh cruel expression.
"Next time, you will think twice before hiding from me. Sadly though, you won't have a next time."
"No...."
She whimpered, as both rider and horse turned, and galloped off,
She clamped hers eyes shut, trying to push out his words, his face, his eyes.
But all she could see was the truth written all over his face as he said those words, "you won't have a next time."