Cloud City (Anna Strong Vampire Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page B

strikes meant fortunes to be made and miners in lonely, isolated cabins an easy food source to be tapped.
    Leticia set down roots in Leadville. Her business flourished. There were enough killings to keep her well fed and her true identity concealed. For that was the nature of a mining town. Disagreements were settled with a gun or knife. Bodies would be left on the sidewalk. Leticia saw that they were properly buried. After she’d fed.
    Now here I was, a young man, in her arms, moaning with pain and the pleasure of her teeth at my neck. She decided I would become her companion. She hesitated only a moment before tearing open her wrist. She held my head with one hand and pressed her wrist against my lips, keeping it there until she saw my throat move. I came to gradually, drank slowly, hesitantly at first, but as my life force grew stronger, so did my demand for the blood. Soon I was holding her wrist to my mouth, greedy, insatiable. When she knew the change had taken place, she pushed me gently away.
    I remember looking at her with eyes full of questions. My body hummed with new life and I felt stronger than I’d ever felt before. I was sexually aroused, too, and she felt the stirring of my lust.
    He sighs as if the memory still filled him with pleasure.
She opened her gown and welcomed me in.
  
     

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Jonathan stops. The story of his becoming provoked in him a far different response than the story of mine does in me. His voice is filled with wonder reflecting the depth of feeling he still has for the woman who turned him. I was taken by force by a rogue who intended to rape and kill me. The only thing I feel for that bastard is hatred.
    Jonathan’s story raises so many questions. Why did they part ways? What became of Leticia? Is she still alive? My head swims with possibilities. Vampire relationships seem short-lived at best despite the prospect of immortality making ‘til death do you part’ more than just a cliché. Or maybe it’s because the prospect of spending eternity with one person too often becomes a cliché of another sort: familiarity breeding contempt.
    Sophie shatters the fragile shell of silence with a snort. “So the story you had me write was a lie. Prendergast is right. Your fortune belongs to him, the human descendant.”
    I blink over at her. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
    She glares at me. “Isn’t it obvious? Jonathan isn’t a blood relative. He’s not even a bastard child. He’s the product of an unholy alliance between a vampire whore and –”
    She stops suddenly with a gasp, clasping her hands to her midsection and doubling over.
    Jonathan’s fury radiates outward, a rabid, raging storm that he is using to cause Sophie physical pain. I’m frozen in shock. I didn’t know he was capable of such a thing.
    Sophie has fallen back on the bed, drawn her body into a fetal position. She is moaning, a terrible keening sound that sets my teeth on edge. It rouses me to action. I start for her, sending a message to Jonathan, yelling at him to stop.
    Suddenly, the tone and timbre of Sophie’s cries change.
    She sits up, eyes flashing, the guttural sounds from her throat morphing into a language I don’t understand. Her words spew forth like a geyser, as if by the sheer force of their intensity they are unleashing an internal defense against Jonathan’s attack. She is no longer in pain. She is wresting control from Jonathan.
    She is casting a spell. I feel Jonathan’s presence slip away as she continues the incantation. Her eyes are closed, her hands clasped in supplication. I don’t recognize her. An aura of magic, dark and ominous, surrounds her. Her face is a mask of grim determination, all vestiges of softness and compassion gone. The Sophie who saved my friends and was willing to sacrifice her life to right a wrong committed by her sister is swallowed up by this other. Watching her, dread chills my bones. At this moment, she reminds me of Belinda, the