A Beautiful Sacrifice

Chapter Seventeen

She was back at that rock. At the very second she saw his eyes. She did not know him, only that he was there to kill her. The image was there vaguely in her mind. But the image was only aiding the feeling inside of her. That feeling of utter fear. That fear that clenched at the muscles in both her stomach and her chest. That fear that clouded her mind and made so many thoughts run through her at such a high speed.

                Her body was writhing against its restraints, her ankles and wrists rubbing at the iron as she twisted and pulled to be free. She lay on the floor, chained; lost in the midst of a nightmare. Whilst trapped in her mind she only had that one image. She heard only the eerie sounds of her worst fear; she saw only the one thing that made her more afraid than she had ever been before. In short, he stood there watching - looking through the tiny gap in the door that was barred and not made of block metal. In the darkness his eyes saw everything and he watched her with a gleeful smile on his face.

                He was a specialist as such sadistic powers… and he loved to create fear. To evoke it and nurture it so it became stronger and all consuming. He took pleasure in watching her cower in her very sleep. He was smiling along, his face pressed up against that little slot, when it faded. His glee turned to confusion, turned to anger. He raged, fumed, and finally pounded on the door. Her fear had stopped. She was no longer tossing and turning on the hard ground. Her legs and arms did not flail around and the shackles did not chav her skin. The frown between her eyebrows disappeared. Her muscles relaxed. She was calming down and he hated it! It meant he was not as strong as he thought he was, or as strong as should be. Growling an otherworldly, loud and menacing sound he finally turned away from her and walked from the door. He would try again. She was but a woman! She would break all too easily, he just needed to try something new.

Joseph was right by his side, his cousin, and almost a brother to him. Both had fed, Perttu on Joseph, Joseph on someone else before he had gotten to Perttu’s house. The atmosphere was tense. Adon was worried sick for Lily but the fact remained; he would neither leave his own mate, nor let her go on the rescue party. He would not sacrifice her safety and he felt guilty for not going to aid Lily himself. As many soldiers as there were in their house Adon was the strongest, despite his age, and he would not leave the house undefended by him. So it was settled - he was staying behind. He had bowed his head at his own son at that decision. The guilt wracked through him and he felt like he had let his only son down.

                Perttu understood why his father had decided to not come along and he did not blame him but his father did not hear that statement, he saw his own faults. Not dwelling any longer on that situation he concentrated on the ground under him. Whoever had taken Lily had erased any signs of footprints on the ground and it was hard to trace magic. But Perttu was no ordinary vampire. He was the son of Adon and Adon was in charge of an entire coven. And by god that coven stretched wide and far. Perttu was to take over from his father in a few hundred years’ time; he himself was looked up to and relied on as he worked with his father to take on the responsibility. Learning to track magic was one of those duties. He could not be a soldier himself if he couldn’t do this. Their were higher expectations for him.

                He held his hand out in front of him, letting his sensitive palms feel the air around him. The hardest thing about the techniques was that it required the very air particles to be felt. There was no power if you couldn’t feel what you needed to manipulate. Or what had been manipulated. Magic created particles of its own and they blended into the Oxygen and Nitrogen and so on that formed air and it mingled with them. Magic particles were larger, they vibrated more, they tickled the palm. It took a lot of concentration to feel them however and he stayed like that for a good couple of minutes with his hand stretched out so he could feel for the air around him.