Dance Until Dawn Read Online Free

the light from the old-fashioned oil lamp that he carried. The yellow flame flickered in the damp air as he moved further into the room.
    He stood the lamp carefully on the floor and then came towards me.
    Terror gripped me, and convinced that he’d pull out a knife at any moment, I ran to the end of the bed and squatted down, in an effort to make myself as small as possible. I pressed back against the hard damp wall, feeling thankful that most of the narrow bed now stood between us.
    ‘Don’t come any closer,’ my voice sounded thin and hoarse.
    ‘My apologies, I forgot about the lack of light in here,’ he said. His voice sounded calm, almost matter of fact – he could have been talking about the weather.
    I pushed shaky hands through my long tangled hair, and rocked back and forth. I didn’t want him any closer to me, I really didn’t.
    He continued to move closer. How I wished I could push myself through the wall in order to get away. I bit my lip to prevent a frightened sob from escaping.
    The now familiar pain suddenly clawed at me from inside my body, and I screamed in agony. I began to babble, sounding incoherent even to my own ears. ‘Do something! Help me! Let me go … please, give-me-my-
life
-back.’
    ‘I cannot give you that,’ he said. ‘I can give you almost anything else.’ He paused. ‘But not that.’
    ‘The pain …’
    ‘The pain you feel is the Thirst. It is caused by your need to feed. With each night you abstain, the pain will grow, and you will become weaker.’
    ‘So feed me.’ I gasped as another onslaught of pain caused me to double over again.
    He brought a silver phial from his pocket and stood in front of me.
    ‘You should try to sup from this,’ he suggested, as he held it out to me.
    Warily I took the phial from him, even though my hand shook with the effort. The smooth surface felt strangely warm, and I risked a glance at him. His face was devoid of any expression, as usual, except for his eyes, which glowed eerily with their hypnotic green light. I pulled the stopper out from the bottle and sniffed gingerly at the opening. It smelt odd, yet strangely familiar, a musky, almost metallic aroma.
    ‘What’s in here?’ I asked.
    ‘What you need to survive,’ he replied.
    ‘Is it poison?’
    Yeah right, like he’d tell me if it was.
Yes, of course it’s poison, so I can peel your skin off and get someone to stitch it back together once you’ve died a revolting and painful death.
    ‘It is not poison.’
    I had no way to know whether he was speaking the truth or not. His impassive face belied the gleam in his expressive eyes. I raised the bottle to my lips, even as I fought against the voice inside my head, warning me, screaming at me not to drink from it. My legs trembled, and I sat down on the bed before I fell over.
    ‘It will lessen the pain.’
    Anything that could lessen the gut-wrenching pain in my stomach had to be worth a try. Against my better judgement, I took a large swig from the bottle and realised, far too late, what it was as I swallowed.
    Blood
.
    The warm, viscous liquid made me gag almost the moment it went down my throat. Retching, I toppled off the bed onto my knees, and vomited violently. A dark red stain covered the flagstones, reminding me of what I’d attempted to drink. What
he
had made me drink.
    I stood and hurled the phial at my tormentor as I screamed obscenities at him. Words I didn’t even realise I knew. My fear of him had been replaced by horror and disgust at what he’d made me do.
    He caught the phial easily in one hand, his face composed and devoid of expression. ‘For such an innocent-looking beauty you have a man’s colourful use of the English language.’
    ‘Sexist bastard,’ I added for good measure.
    My insides still felt queasy, and I screwed my eyes shut. My mouth filled with bile and I could still taste the strong metallic taste of blood. In fact, I didn’t think I would ever be rid of that foul