The Power Read Online Free Page B

its companionship and protection. It continued to hiss and growl at me, and I lifted it to speak to it, to calm it, but then my eyes locked with its eyes and something powerful seemed to take over me.
    “ I didn’t realize what I had done until it was over and the cat, Tabby, lay lifeless in my hands. Its blood was spilt clumsily all over my dress and my mouth. I reeled back in horror, tossing the cat’s lifeless body away from me, and I rose and ran as the insanity tried to take control of me. I had to fight it. I had to fight whatever was doing it’s best to take me over. 
    “ I ended up outside in the cool moonlight of the gardens, somewhere lost within the maze of hedges that Widow Winter’s late husband had planted years upon years ago. I sank down onto a stone bench and cried into my hands. It couldn’t be! I hadn’t done what I had just done, I told myself. I was insane. I had to be! Widow Winters would surely see me hung for my crimes! 
    “ “The fear will leave you.” I heard a calm, female voice whisper in my mind. My eyes shot upward, looking for the delusion that had visited me the night before. She was crouched on the bench across from me, examining her long, sharp fingernails as if nothing was wrong in this picture. When she looked up, I gasped and shrank back in terror. Her eyes were no longer blue; they were a startling, glowing white. She was not human, I decided in horror, and I rose to run again, but I stopped short, for I knew that whatever this woman before me was, I was surely to become. I turned, staring at her in wonder, in confusion, and in fear, and she stared right back in shocking calmness.
    “ “You are a creature of the night now, young Lillian.” She stood to tell me, and she walked toward me with purpose. I took a step back, waiting, wondering what she had meant by her words and fearing for my life at the same time. “You called for me. I came. I gave you what it was that you desired. You are immortal now, all powerful, all strong.” She told me, and I swallowed the new fears rising in my throat.
    “ “Immortal?” I questioned, not understanding.
    “ “A vampire.” She said, her lips not moving. “You wanted to die. I assisted you in your wishes, but I also gave you birth. You are my daughter now, Lillian, and I am your dark mother.” She told me. Mother? I thought of my real mother, of her gentle hands and sweet smile. I thought of how warm and safe I had felt cradled in her arms. I looked at the woman before me, tall, powerful, and dangerous as a Viper!
    “ “My mother died when I was five years old!” I shouted at her in furious denial.
    “ “Your mortal mother, yes. You mourn her greatly, though you barely knew her. It is strange how your human emotions work, most curious. Soon, that pain will leave you, as will all the others.” She said as if in way of explanation.
    “ “How can it leave me? You make no sense! My mother died as well as my father and brother! I have no one left!” I screamed out in anguish, and she moved toward me so that she stood only two feet before my face. She looked down at me and touched my face, but her hand did not burn against my skin this time.
    “ “The pain will leave you.” She confirmed. “Seven days of light, Lillian, and then it shall only be the darkness that is your world. You have lived in one of those days already. Six more and you shall kiss the sun goodbye forever.”
    “ “What does that mean?” I cried out in alarm. “I don’t believe in vampires.” I shook my head in mad denial. How could what she was telling me possibly be true? Vampires? I had read about the creatures once, Gail and I had, in one of her dime store novels. We hadn’t been able to sleep afterward and later had insisted that we had seen shadows against the bedroom walls.
    “ “That is too bad, young Lillian, because you are becoming one. There are others as well, but you must beware of them. Vampires are solitary creatures. We do not