Hemophobia by Breanna Lynn (free romance novels txt) 📕

young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, but her size was that of a child. Her clothespin legs were bent at the knees under the blanket, and her ribs stuck through her shirt like matchsticks. Her hands were pressed together, palm-to-palm under her cheek.
I had never taken a human life. I was brought blood by Anton or my sister, but I never saw the victims’ faces. I never heard their screams.
I watched the girl turn slowly onto her side, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. She shifted slightly in her sleep, the blanket slipping off to reveal a large bloodstain on her pale green shirt. I cringed away, grimacing, and when I turned to leave I found myself face-to-face with my sister.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a deadpan voice, and I jerked my head, standing and moving away from the bed. My sister followed me, throwing a look over her shoulder at the sleeping girl.
“You want nothing to do with her,” my sister said in a commanding tone, and for a split second her eyes turned red. Then my vision clouded over for a moment. When I blinked, I did not immediately understand where I was. I looked past my sister and saw the girl lying on the bed, and realized that I was in the attic. For some inexplicable reason, the sight of the girl displeased me. For some reason, I wanted her out of our home.
“I want nothing to do with her,” I informed my sister, the words tasting bitter in my mouth and sounding strangely familiar.
“She is a danger to us,” my sister added, and I was quick to agree.
“She does not know our ways.” I stared at the girl, her innocent features seeming to twist, the pained frown on her face seeming like an evil smirk. “She could betray the coven. She could ruin us.”
My sister nodded along with my words, glaring at the girl. “Leave her be,” she said, and prodded me toward the staircase. “Get some rest, brother. You overestimate your strength. You are weakened from battle.”
I turned and lowered myself through the trapdoor, extending a hand to my sister to help her through. She leaped down delicately, forgoing the stairs, and landed softly on her feet despite the distance of the fall. I carefully stepped off the staircase and turned back in the direction of my bedroom.
I felt my sister’s eyes on my back the entire way back to the room, but when I turned around, the hallway was empty once more.

______________________________________________________

I slept free of nightmares for the rest of that evening, and it was well into the next morning when I finally awoke. My memory of the night before was a blur. The clearest part was my sudden contempt for the girl upstairs.
When I peered out into the hallway, it was empty as usual. I slipped through the door and up the splintered staircase that led to the attic, pulling myself through the trapdoor hastily. The girl was lying in the same position on the bed, but I could hear the difference in her breathing. It was harsher, labored. The pink had faded completely from her cheeks, leaving her skin frigid and white. Her hair was still knotted, and I felt an inexplicable urge to untangle it for her.
I moved toward the bed slowly, listening for movement on the lower levels of the house. When I was close enough, I knelt by the girl’s bedside and reached over, my fingers drifting over the crown of her head. I let my hand hover for a moment before lowering it gently, so my fingertips just barely rested on her head.
She looked so young, so fragile. Her now-white skin completed the image of a tiny porcelain doll. I pitied her in that moment. She had nearly been killed that night. A memory like that would haunt her for the rest of her eternal life.
Without warning, her hand came up and her fingers wrapped around my wrist, just as they had in my dream the night before. She bolted upright, the blanket falling away to reveal her bloody shirt. I gulped and forced myself to lock eyes with her, praying that her glowing emerald irises would be enough to distract me from the sight of the blood.
“Who are you? Where am I? What do you want from me?” the girl hissed, her voice high-pitched but menacing all the same. I looked closer, and saw the fear that lurked in her eyes behind the burning anger.
“I am Stefan, you are in our home and we do not want anything from you except your silence,” I hissed back in an equally threatening tone, forgetting both my fear and my feelings of sympathy for the girl.
“Your

home?”
“We are a coven of five.”
“A what?”
This girl was irritating me, and I could not help but wonder if this was the reason for my wariness of her. Perhaps my subconscious had sensed her dullness. Surely she was not so thickheaded as to imagine any alternate explanation for what she had witnessed the night of the battle. It was a traumatic experience, to be sure, but for some reason I was having difficulty pitying her again. The emotion had fled my body, and I found myself speaking in a harsh tone and staring down at her with a resolute look.
“A coven,” I answered. “A family of vampires.”
“Vampires

?!” she screeched, pulling her hand away from my wrist and reaching up to feel her face, her expression one of pure terror. Her fingers drifted toward her mouth, and she yelped when she felt her fangs.
I clapped a hand over her mouth, muffling her sounds of protest.
“Be quiet

,” I hissed through clenched teeth, glancing over my shoulder for signs of movement on the stairs. After a few moments, I released the girl and glared at her. “If you make another sound, so help me, I will–”
My words were interrupted by the sound of creaking wood. I turned toward the sound, and a moment later my sister pulled herself through the trapdoor and into the attic. Her steps were heavy, and I noticed that she was wearing those same thick-soled combat boots she had been on the day of the battle.
“Stefan.” Annabelle studied me critically, her eyes flashing. She seemed to take no notice of the girl, who was now beginning to hyperventilate on the bed.
“You should rest, brother.” My sister’s voice was colder than usual, and sharper. “I will stay here for a while with her.”
I nodded obediently, my movements almost robotic as I stood and descended the staircase from the attic. I felt as if I could not stop moving if I tried. I knew my sister’s eyes were watching me the entire way down, much like I had the night before.
When I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, I soon fell into a deep slumber, oblivious to the pained cries that echoed from the attic.

***

Snow swirled around me, my sharp vision unimpaired by the thick fog that hovered mere inches above the frozen grass. I blinked, and bodies appeared around me on the icy ground. Beneath them were pools of fresh blood and scarlet slush.
I turned and saw the familiar golden-haired vampire, his mouth stretched into his signature smirk and his hands wrapped around the shoulders of that petite blonde human girl. Blood dripped in two thin lines down the side of her pale neck.
She stumbled forward, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping. Fresh blood gushed from her wounds. She took another step and started to fall. Instinctively, I moved forward to catch her, and when I had set her on her feet once more, I saw that my palms were slick with fresh blood.
“Help me…” she whispered, staring up at me. Her irises were beginning to glaze over.
“Help…help me…help…” her voice was growing steadily louder as she took another step toward me, and then another. “Help me…help me...help…” her voice was near a shout now.
I stood there, unable to move as she continued to stumble toward me.
“Help me…HELP ME!”

I shot up in my bed, gasping, just in time to hear the girl’s voice scream those exact words from the attic.

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Publication Date: 01-24-2010

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