Hemophobia by Breanna Lynn (free romance novels txt) 📕

same time. Hands shook my shoulders, and my head snapped back as I blinked rapidly.
When my vision cleared, I found myself staring into Annabelle’s eyes. I started to turn my head, trying to see where we were, but her hands held my head in place.
“What do you remember?” she asked, watching me intently. I grimaced and shook my head, shutting my eyes. Memories flashed through my head, strangely vivid.
I remembered the golden-haired vampire leaping at Eliza, Leon pushing him back, Anton shoving me aside when I refused to move. I remembered Annabelle falling as she struggled with the golden-haired vampire. But everything in between then and the moment I regained consciousness and found my hands wrapped around his neck was gone, as if someone had reached into my head and pulled it out.
There was something else. Pain. Heat. Needles of pure agony threading through my skull.
“Pain…” I groaned. “Pain in my head…”
“You remember no pain,” Annabelle commanded, her eyes flashing red.
Had her eyes changed color? No, surely her irises were simply reflecting the bloody snow. What had I meant to tell her? I remembered something about the battle…something I could not recall now, something important…
“Stefan?” Annabelle’s eyes widened at me innocently. “Stefan, did you say you were in pain? What hurts?”
“Nothing.” My answer was mechanical, my lips moving almost before I was aware of it. “No pain.”
“Good,” she said, staring down at me. Her expression was strangely cold, even calculating. “Very good.”
“Annabelle.” Anton’s tone was urgent, pleading. My sister released me and turned to him, allowing me to observe my surroundings.
Blood coated the ground, mingling with rivers of venom that flowed from the bodies of vampires we had killed, throats ripped out or limbs torn from torsos, flesh missing from their shoulders and calves with bite marks ringing the wounds.
Miraculously, the five of us were mostly unharmed. Eliza’s hair was matted with blood and venom and, even as I watched, a gash sealed itself on her cheek. Leon was watching his broken knuckles heal with his perpetual apathetic expression, but we had suffered no serious injuries.
The wave of shock that hit me was so powerful that I was able to gaze at the blood with only minor pain. For now, nothing could overpower the crippling sense of regret. How many I had killed was inconsequential. What mattered was that I had killed them, had dismembered their bodies and broken their necks, and did not remember doing any of it.
Anton argued with my sister in a low voice, distracting me from my morbid thoughts, and I rose slowly from the ground and moved to look at what he was crouched over.
It was the girl, the one the golden-haired vampire had tossed aside, the one that was still screaming when the fight began. Blood had dried in two thin streams on the side of her neck, and her hair was congealed with venom that had seeped into it. She was whimpering and trembling, her eyes shut firmly and her hands clenched into tight fists.
“Impossible,” Annabelle hissed, and just then, I realized that the bite marks on her neck were gone. Her skin had stitched itself together like Eliza’s had, leaving no trace of the wounds.
She was changing. The venom that had entered her bloodstream when the vampire fed on her had been left to spread.
“We cannot leave her here,” Anton declared, although his firm tone faltered as he recoiled slightly from my sister’s furious glare.
“We cannot bring her with us,” my sister said in a tone that promised violence if he refused, but Anton shook his head.
“She looks just like her…” he muttered, and I wondered if he was talking to us or to himself. “Just like Valentina…”
“She is not your sister.” Annabelle’s reply shocked me. Anton had a sister

?
“I know that!” he snapped, his hand moving to curl beneath the girl’s limp neck. “But Anna, I cannot leave her here!”
My sister stared into his eyes, and the two seemed to have a silent conversation, much like Eliza and Leon had when they agreed to the fight. Finally, Annabelle turned away, her icy gaze piercing through me.
“Leon,” she called, looking away from me, and he stepped forward silently. Annabelle jerked her head in the direction of the girl, and Leon nodded once, moving toward her quickly. Ignoring Anton’s protests, he reached for her, but was stopped when Anton suddenly grasped his arm and yanked it back, hissing at him and baring his fangs, looking perfectly capable of tearing Leon’s arm off.
Annabelle stared at him, her incredulity quickly replaced with fury. “You defy my orders, Anton?”
To my amazement, he nodded determinedly. “I cannot leave her here,” he repeated, and Annabelle’s glare intensified. Her expression was as cold as the ice on the ground.
Suddenly, her eyes softened, her cold expression fading to be replaced by the kindness I knew she was capable of. “Take her,” she said quietly, and Anton pulled the girl up, cradling her body in his arms.
Leon and Eliza quickly piled the shredded corpses together and Annabelle struck a match on the sole of her boot, throwing it onto the heap. Flames blazed up and engulfed the bodies as the five of us ran swiftly toward the house we occupied, leaving all evidence of the massacre behind us along with the rapidly lightening horizon.

______________________________________________________

That night, sleep overtook me despite all my efforts to remain awake. Though we could last weeks without sleep, the exertion of the fight had exhausted me. When I closed my eyes and the blackness washed over me, I found myself standing on the scorched battleground once more.
I knelt among the ruined remains of the pile of bodies we had burned. I saw whole bits of flesh, scraps of muscle and tissue that had escaped the flames and now lay shriveled on the ice, soon to be covered in a blanket of fresh-fallen snow.
The blood had burned away completely, the only evidence of the human massacre being a large pile of ash on the burned patch of land where Leon had piled their bodies along with those of the vampires.
Innocent people, every single one of them. I still saw every dead face, all those heads dangling on bloody necks as the vampires drank. Countless pairs of eyes, wide with horror. Countless frozen mouths, open in silent screams of agony.
A flash of gold flew past me, and I whirled around to see the lead vampire, the last one I had killed, standing behind me with a cocky smirk on his face. In his hands he held that tiny blonde human girl, the one that resembled someone Anton knew.
No, not just someone he knew…his sister. Valentina, he had called her.
The vampire slowly lowered his mouth to the girl’s neck, and she whimpered as his lips brushed her skin. Without warning, he plunged his fangs into her neck. She shrieked in surprise and pain, but her voice cut off quickly as the vampire turned her neck and bit down on the hollow of her throat. When he raised his head, his fangs were coated in her blood and the girl’s eyes were rolling upward into her head, already starting to glaze over.
I snarled and lunged at him, both of us toppling to the snow. The girl fell aside, forgotten, as her blood stained the snow ruby-red.
When we fought, it seemed so familiar that I could have sworn we had both done it before, as if we were acting out choreographed steps we had been practicing. My hands were around his neck in a flash, and when he grasped my shoulders in retaliation, I spun away and reached for him again.
I took hold of one of his wrists and jerked it towards myself, his arm coming free with a screech like nails on a chalkboard. He snapped his teeth and screamed in pain before he leaped forward. I sidestepped him, the motion all too familiar, and bit into his leg. He made one last attempt before I grasped his torso and slammed him onto the frozen ground, tearing at his limbs before I got a grip on his neck and twisted it, snapping the bones as his screams died down, leaving their echoes behind.
I turned to the girl, lying forgotten on the snow. Her eyes were wide open and glassy. I reached over, nausea settling in my stomach, and made to gently close her eyelids.
Just before my fingers touched her face, a hand shot up and grasped my wrist with inhuman speed. The girl sat up, and as her eyes rolled down so that her irises were visible, I saw that they were glowing with newfound life. She opened her rosebud lips, and smiled at me, revealing fangs.
Human blood dripped from their razor-sharp points.

With a gasp, I bolted upright in my bed, my hands clutching the sheets so tightly that I had trouble loosening my grip. Scarlet waves filled my vision, and for a moment I thought I was going to drown in the blood.
I took another breath and forced myself to look around, remembering that I was safe in my own bed. Shaking my head, I slid off the mattress and walked to the door, peering out into the hallway to ensure that it was empty before making my way to the staircase at the end of the hallway.
The steps creaked under my feet as I climbed the rickety staircase, my hand trailing along the metal railing. Somewhere in the house, Leon’s snores cut off abruptly, and I came to a standstill, scarcely breathing. A moment later, the chainsaw-like rumbling started up once more, and I took a calming breath before continuing up the staircase. The wood was coarse and splintered beneath my bare feet.
The girl was being kept in the attic, Annabelle had told me. Because Anton refused to let any of the others dispose of her, they had agreed to wait for her to complete her transformation before deciding what they would do with her.
I pushed the trapdoor open slowly, waiting for it to thud quietly onto the floor of the attic before I reached through the opening and pulled myself up and into the room.
Moonlight streamed into the room through a small crack in one of the boards that covered the sole window in the room, and I quickly draped a scrap of cloth over it, covering the light. The room darkened slightly, the only light source now being the small lamp that rested on the nightstand near the ancient, intricately carved bed that the girl lay on. The lamp lit the room with a rosy glow, though the shadows that it cast on the other wall of the carvings in the bed’s headboard were significantly sinister.
The girl whimpered quietly, and I whipped my head around, staring intently at her. She whimpered once more and then fell silent, her hands twisting in the sheets much like mine had been. I wondered if she, too, was having a nightmare.
I crept closer, glancing warily over my shoulder at the trapdoor every few steps. I stopped when I was about a foot away from the bed and stared down at the girl.
Human skin had always fascinated me. It wasn’t quite as smooth as ours, but it was warm and it came in so many shades and hues. Vampire skin was icy and white, impenetrable by all but another vampire’s teeth or claws.
This girl still had color in her cheeks, two pink stains against a rapidly fading, light peach background. Her hair was pale blonde and appeared to be shorter than mine. It was tangled and matted with dirt and bits of grass. I was amazed at how small she was. Her face was one of a