Once Upon a Twist by Michelle Smart, Aimee Duffy Read Free Book Online Page A

a statue. She had not uttered one word of protest over Ana’s removal from the Ball. “Izzy, don’t worry. I forgive you.”
    Colored relief washed over the tall girl’s face. “Ella, I am so sorry, for everything.”
    Ella reached for her hand. “I know. They’re your family. It’s very hard going against the wishes of those you love.”
    Izzy squeezed it in return, just as an enormous explosion, followed by the sound of smashing glass, resounded through the ballroom, loud enough for the orchestra to halt their music and the dancers to stand rooted to the spot.
    Time stood suspended. No one uttered a single word.
    In those short, fractured seconds, Ella felt as if she were floating high above it all, able to observe the startled, but not as yet frightened, expression on the guests’ faces.
    A soldier burst into the ballroom, stopping short when five hundred pairs of eyes fixed expectantly onto him.
    Ella waited for him to speak. And waited some more. But all he did was stare at the crowd and blink repeatedly.
    Taking matters into her own hands, she hurried over to him, dragging Izzy along with her. “Is it them?” She spoke quietly, making sure not to move her lips too much.
    The soldier simply gawked, as if he could not believe a woman would address him.
    “Well?” she harried, rapidly losing patience at his moronic stupefaction. “Have the undead arrived?”
    And then she saw it wasn’t the usual misogyny over her sex preventing him from talking. It was terror. And as she looked more closely she could see tiny flecks glimmering from the reflected lights of the plentiful chandeliers scattered all over him. His face was marked with a scattering of tiny red marks which, with a horror that froze her veins, she recognized as blood.
    The veritable explosion…
    The echoes of smashing glass…
    Her chest icy with fear, she took a step back, her heart starting a rapid drum that vibrated through her, dimly aware the whites of the soldier’s eyes were reddening.
    Too scared to blink, she witnessed the color drain from his face, turning the skin a strange, pale grey.
    Think.
    And still she stared.
    Think!
    Like watching a sand-carving disintegrate in the breeze, Ella watched as the soldier’s features morphed from terror into an expression of such blandness that a cold snake slithered up her spine.
    Her involuntary shiver had the effect of clearing her brain of the freezing fog holding her in its grip.
    The ballroom was so silent the sound of a solitary footstep would break the spell that was locking them all into a terrified trance.
    She could not move her gaze from the soldier’s eyes. In the depths of the darkening redness still lurked a shred of humanity. She could see it, clinging in there, the last ray of light from the possessor of the body’s soul.
    Fight , she beseeched him with her eyes. Please, fight .
    In her heart she knew it was a losing battle. Not only was she terrified of the consequences when the humanity that bound the two of them together broke, but she was scared for this body’s soul, the very thing that made this fleshly animal human.
    And then the light in his eyes went out.
     
     

Chapter Six
     
     
    The soldier’s lips twisted into a macabre, marionette grin, his teeth bared, dripping with an abundance of gloopy saliva.
    Only the heightened adrenaline coursing through Ella’s veins saved her. The second the creature lunged at her, she shoved Izzy as hard as she could out of the creature’s reach.
    Together they plunged to the floor, Izzy slamming onto the cold surface first with a sickly crack.
    There was no time for Ella to check her stepsister for injuries. The creature, which until seconds before had been a living being, had stumbled but remained upright. His blank yet somehow lascivious gaze was no longer fixed on them. It was now directed at the other guests, who were all inching backwards, still unaware of the mortal danger they were in.
    And then he pounced, jumping five feet