Hemophobia by Breanna Lynn (free romance novels txt) 📕

flashed red. I told myself that her irises were reflecting the blood on the snow, and all of a sudden I was seized with terror.
Blood. There was blood everywhere.
“Anna? Anna, what happened?” I asked, clasping my hands together imploringly. Something slick coated my palms, and when I looked down I gasped at the sight. Translucent venom, mixed with traces of red. Human blood. What had I done?
“You did well,” she repeated, her gaze sweeping the array of bodies. I followed her gaze and stared at the object it came to rest on.
It was mangled and shredded, hardly recognizable as a body. The head was nearly severed from the neck, multiple bite marks visible on the remaining skin. The eyes had rolled upward into their sockets, venom dripping from the tear ducts and pooling by the open mouth.
The limbs had been torn off, all except a portion of the left leg. When I looked closer, I was shocked and disgusted to see that it, too was ringed with bite marks.
“I…I did that?” I gasped, staring at the corpse. Annabelle watched me, her expression a strange mixture of satisfaction, pride, and something dark, something I could not place.
“Yes,” she said, watching my eyes go wide with horror.
“I…I killed him…it. I killed it.” I refused to believe that I had been capable of such grisly violence, but Annabelle’s nod indicated otherwise.
“Yes. This is our land now,” she said, and when I gaped at her, she shrugged daintily. “They owned it,” she explained, her eyes flashing with ruthless determination.
“This is the coven that owns this land?” I repeated dumbly, and her gaze swept the pile of bodies once more.
“Not anymore,” she answered, her gaze lingering on the contorted corpse of the vampire I could not remember killing. “It is ours. And so it shall remain.”

***

Annabelle’s voice cut into my thoughts and brought me back to the present.
“We will not lose this battle,” she said, forcing me to hold her stare. I nodded dumbly, dazed from the memory. For an instant I could even feel the neck of the second vampire I’d killed, ice-cold and slippery beneath my hands, slick with others’ spilled venom. I saw his eyes, wide with terror. I heard his desperate pleas for mercy.
I met Annabelle’s steely glare with one of my own. “We will not be defeated,” I said, and she nodded in approval, her lips curling into an evil-looking smile.

_______________________________________________________________

The hours flew by until the sun finally set and darkness descended. The sky was a deep shade of blue when we set out, creeping slowly toward the caves on the outskirts of our land. By the time we were within a hundred yards of the caves, it was nearly black. Thick clouds covered the stars and the moon, turning the sky into a replica of what it was the night we first fought for this feeding ground.
I opened my mouth to ask Anton where exactly he had last seen the other coven, but thought better of it. The possibility that they would hear my voice was too strong, and it would cost us greatly to lose the element of surprise.
As it was, there was no need to ask. Moments later we emerged into a clearing, and, just like the night we first fought on this land, I froze in terror at the sight that met my eyes.
Human bodies littered the ground. Some of the vampires had finished feeding and were lazily leaning against tree trunks and boulders, watching the others drink with only a hint of hunger in their eyes. Others had their fangs sunk deep into rapidly paling necks, the human faces already slack and their moans of pain nearly inaudible.
I watched as one of them, a tall, lanky vampire whose golden hair shimmered even in the faint light, slowly pulled his mouth away from the neck of a small human girl. Her face was one of a teenager, but her limbs were thin and she looked like a tiny porcelain doll in the vampire’s hands. She was still screaming in terror, blood dribbling in two slow rivers down her skin. The vampire tossed her aside, and as her head hit the solid layer of ice, her screams faded into unconscious moans of pain.
The golden-haired vampire slowly licked the blood off his fangs, seeming to take pleasure in the horror that filled my eyes as they followed his movements. He lunged for Eliza, who stood on the far left side of our group.
Leon thrust his arms out, his palms meeting the other vampire’s chest, and the golden- haired vampire flew backward while the others sprang into action. I stood and shook with agonizing fear. I had not thought it was possible to feel such terror.
Leon snarled as his head swung from side to side, fighting off two at once. Eliza hissed nearby, sinking her fangs into the arm that was wrapped around her neck and freeing herself from another vampire’s grip. Anton shoved me backward and leaped at a vampire that had been reaching for me, fighting hand-to-hand with him, their fangs snapping inches from each other’s necks.
I searched frantically for my sister in the fray, one thought echoing in my mind.
Blood.

There was blood on the snow, blood on their fangs, blood on their clawed hands. I could not move for the fear that seized me.
I felt a stinging pain at the base of my skull, a razor point of white heat that forced itself deeper and deeper into my head until my sight was abruptly shrouded in black. Through the dark haze I saw Annabelle’s eyes flash ruby-red as she opened her mouth and shouted something at me. A moment too late, I saw the golden-haired vampire lunge for her throat, fangs extended, and I watched her topple to the ground under his weight before my sight was extinguished completely.
I sank into a sea of black, wondering idly if I would drown or if there would be something below to break my impossibly slow fall. My thoughts grew incoherent and words became difficult to string together in my mind, and soon the thoughts were extinguished completely.
Stefan! Stefan, let go! It’s over, let him go!

Voices sounded through the blackness, dragging me slowly into consciousness.
Stefan! Let go!

Someone was shouting my name…The voices blended together, Annabelle and Anton and Leon, and even Eliza, her usually mocking tone now tinged with fear and hysteria.
“Let GO!” someone yelled, and all of a sudden I could see again. I could feel my hands, constricting around something, twisting and yanking something that, despite being cold and hard as stone, gave way easily beneath my fingers.
I looked down and nearly retched. My hands were coated in venom, and I watched in helpless horror, unable to pull away as my fingers methodically dismembered a torso. Limbs littered the ground, torn to pieces by what I could only assume were my own hands. My fingers were wrapped around a head, twisting it off the neck of a vampire that seemed oddly familiar.
It was the golden-haired vampire, the one who had leaped on Annabelle just before I blacked out.
“LET GO!” Annabelle screamed, and that same point of pain shot through my skull, heat threading through it. Someone screamed in agony, and as my hands came up to clutch at my head, I realized that I was the one screaming.
Instinctively, I pushed against the pain, trying desperately and irrationally to drive it out of my mind. The heat seemed to falter, and before it could spread any further, I gritted my teeth and tried with all my might to force it out of my head. Abruptly, the heat vanished, but with it came the excruciating and shocking sensation of my mind being pulled through an impossibly thin tube, my thoughts bleeding into someone else’s head. For a moment I was linked with another being, and in that instant I saw the battle unfold before their eyes.
“Fight!” they shouted at someone, whirling to avoid an attack.

I realized that it was my sister’s voice, screaming at me to fight off the vampires that were descending.
I watched myself stumble forward, and a strange red light illuminated my horrified face. The light was suddenly doused as the perspective tipped and rolled.

I realized that this was the moment when the golden-haired vampire jumped on Annabelle.
An arm entered the vision I shared, swiping at a hand that reached for something. Fingers barely grazed the neck of the body I occupied before the arm pushed the hand away.

Annabelle. I was in Annabelle’s mind, watching the fight as she remembered it.
My body went rigid, and I stood stock-still in the middle of the icy field. Around me, the battle raged on. Anton sank his fangs into a vampire’s neck and jerked his head back, the vampire shrieking in the instant before his throat was ripped out, the sight nearly identical to that night we found him, so many decades ago. The body fell to the ground and Anton leaped over it, growling as his hands grabbed at another’s shoulders.
Leon moved like a flash of lightning, lifting a petite vampire girl and flinging her over the ground, her body skidding several yards. Eliza, fighting off another vampire near the spot where the girl’s body came to a stop, lifted her foot and brought it down on the girl’s neck before she could rise to her feet. The sound of shattering bones could be heard all around the clearing.
I saw that my body still stood motionless, my irises clouding over until they were completely obscured.
By some signal, perhaps the flash of red light that illuminated my face once again, my body lurched forward and I sank my fangs into the shoulder of a vampire who had his back to me, reaching for Eliza’s hair and trying to yank her backward. My fangs tore out most of the flesh on the vampire’s right shoulder as he shrieked and whirled to face me, and my hands snapped his neck before he could retaliate.
I saw myself whirl around in search of something, someone, and I watched as my hands latched onto the next thing that passed by.
A streak of gold flew past, stopped abruptly as my hands wrapped around the vampire’s neck. His fingers curled around my shoulders, but my body quickly spun away from his grasp and my hands reached for him once more, my fingers tightening around one of his wrists and yanking. With a horrible screech, his arm came free, and venom oozed from the ragged stump at his shoulder. He snapped his teeth and let out another awful shriek of pain before he leaped forward.
Again, I sidestepped him and sank my fangs into his leg, jerking my head sideways and tearing out a portion of his calf. He screamed again, more venom burning through the ground as he tried to latch onto my neck with his remaining hand.

I watched in horror as my hands wrapped around his torso and lifted him into the air, still shrieking, and brought his body down over a cluster of rocks that shattered under the force of his fall. My hands tore at his torso and limbs as he tried in vain to twist away from me, and then, finally, my fingers were wrapped around his neck and I was twisting it, his eyes bulging and his screams echoing in the night.
A solid wall of heat slammed into my head, forcing my thoughts back into my own mind, and with it came the feeling that someone was splitting my skull open. The link was severed, but the pain raged on.

***

“Stefan. Stefan, wake up.” I recognized my sister’s voice, her tone commanding and desperate at the