Wake of Darkness by Meg Winkler Read Free Book Online

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it, she wouldn't survive. He gently laid her on the ground at his feet, her
rotund belly looking like a tiny mountain in comparison to the rest of her
drained body.
               
                With lips still covered in her blood, he tore at
his own wrist and cupped her head towards the wound.
               
                "Drink, my darling," he cooed.
               
                Her tongue swept across it tentatively before
her lips closed on it. In her relative weakness, her draw against the wound as
she sucked the blood from his body felt like the most delicate of kisses. She
pulled harder against the cut; blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and
down her jaw, resting near the wounds he had inflicted.
               
                He watched her eyes carefully, waiting for any
sign of the change, worried that it wouldn't happen. It shouldn't have been taking
this long.
               
                But suddenly, her eyes widened in shock. Her
back arched and she bellowed a guttural, hellish scream. Her body convulsed and
he tried to comfort her, but she lashed out at him, bit at him, threw her arms
towards his face. He could do nothing but stand aside and watch in horror as
his golden angel fought against the convulsions of death.
               
                Suddenly, she folded in on herself and tore at
her belly with still human-weak fingers. And with another convulsion, her back
arched and what seemed like a river of blood and fluid spread out from beneath
her heavy skirts. Lisandro watched in horror. His creator had never told him
the terrible nature of the transformation. He was terrified that something was
wrong. He watched the light go out of her eyes.
               
                And then, he heard something crying. He stared
blankly into the night as his normally swift brain struggled to process the
sound. It wasn't Astrid, who by now was pulling herself up and taking in the
visions of the night with her new eyes.
               
                Lisandro looked at the soaked ground that lapped
up the blood from Astrid's womb as surely as she had lapped the blood from his
wrist moments ago. A tiny creature kicked at the night. Her hair was as black
as his own, but her eyes were violet like Astrid's had been in life.
               
                "Dear God in Heaven," he gasped,
staring at the baby in horror. "What have I done?"
               
                He reached down tentatively and scooped the baby
up into his arms. She wiggled in his embrace and smile slowly crept across her
baby pink lips. Lisandro looked up at where Astrid had been standing. She was
gone.
               
                "Astrid?" he asked the too-still
night. "Astrid?!"
               
                He spun around, forgetting the fragile creature
in his hand. Astrid was nowhere to be found. And in that moment, had Lisandro
had a heart to break, it surely would have destroyed him. She had abandoned
him.
               
                The baby squirmed in his arms and cooed at him.
He looked down when he felt a tiny tug at his long hair. Their eyes met and she
smiled again. Lisandro was entranced by her eyes, so much like his love's, and
he smiled back.
               
                "And what shall I call you, little
kitten?"
               
                Something in the night caught her eye and she
seemed to be cataloging the stars with her little newborn mind. A name came
back to him, from a place far away and a time he had all but forgotten. His
mother's name: Catherina.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
    Present Day—Texas
     
    Catherina pled fatigue at Sophie's
insistence to hear what she had to say, prompting her to