Blood on the Sun-chapter 1
Song of the Sangamar, book 2!
Keep in mind, anything you see here on SS is in first draft form. I haven’t even edited this once. But if you can point out a typo in a kind way, that’s totally ok!
If you haven’t read book 1, go check that out first! It’s on Kindle Unlimited, and signed paperbacks are in my shop!
She was in Hell. There was no other explanation for everything happening to her. She’d activated her succubus blood, and now she’d been cast into the Pit for her crimes against the Man Upstairs.
Her body dripped with sweat. Every muscle fiber in her body ached. She was in constant, fiery agony at a cellular level. Even drawing breath was painful. She fervently wished that she could just stop breathing, because then the pain would also cease, and she could be at peace.
Everything was made worse by the fact that she couldn't see anything. She had no idea what time of day, or night, it was. The passing of time meant nothing to Liliana as the minutes, hours, days wore on. She was forced to live only in the present moment. And all because of a blindfold.
Slow, measured footsteps on the stone floor behind her made her shoulders tense in anticipation. She knew nothing about the man who held her captive. He spoke to her, but only to curse in a foreign language that sounded like Spanish. Aside from basic greetings and some colors and numbers, Liliana didn't know a lick of Spanish.
Smooth fingertips dragged across her shoulders, toying with the scars where her wings emerged. He caressed the wounds with a reverence that was completely opposite the way he treated the rest of her.
Her heart rate increased at his touch, her breath hitching in her throat. She'd been fighting so hard to remain calm in his presence, to call forth her training and meditate her way through the horrors. Something about his methods short-circuited her brain, dissolving her resistance like a salt block in a typhoon.
She was porcelain fragile under the expert crush of his hands, crumbling and shattering from the pain that she couldn't seem to build a tolerance to. Her arms were stretched above her head, the burning ache just beginning to settle between her shoulders fresh. Her feet were flat on the floor, which was a mixed blessing. She could pull her hands down slightly to relieve some of the pressure on her shoulders, and she could lift herself on her toes to keep her legs from going numb.
Her hands still having sensation meant they must have put her back on the torture hook very recently. She'd suspected for some time that she'd been getting more rest than she was aware of. When she did lose consciousness, because it was never actually falling asleep naturally, she was filthy. Covered in blood, bruises, sweat, and more than a few tears. Upon awakening, she was somehow clean, with less lingering wounds. Liliana knew that her natural healing abilities took care of a large portion of what was done to her. Physically. The constant shattering of her mind was not so easy to repair.
Maybe that was the true objective. To get her to snap. But Lily couldn't understand why. To what end? She supposed it didn't really matter. She had no way to measure time, aside from the ambient temperature rising or falling, but she had been a captive long enough that any hopes of rescue were rapidly dwindling.
She licked her lips, or at least attempted to wet them with an ineffectively dry tongue. "Water? …Please?"
She had learned the hard way that speaking came with its own perils, but in this moment, she didn't care. Whatever fresh hell her captor had in store for her, she could endure it as long as she had something to drink.
"Thirsty, sangamar?"
Hearing that low, smooth voice speak flawless English was as shocking as the bucket of ice water that was unceremoniously dumped over her head, soaking her clear through to the skin. A short, clipped scream of surprise tore from her already ragged throat, the temperature difference between her skin and the water causing steam to rise into the air.
The liquid that poured over her face caused her to sputter, and she tried her damnedest to take as much of it into her mouth as she could without choking. She hoped that the salt from her skin would add nutrients or electrolytes to her system, even if it was in a miniscule way. The small amount of water that managed to make its way past her lips wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy her thirst, but it was enough for her to be able to speak without sounding like her throat was full of sandpaper.
“You called me a sangamar. You must be a vampire, then.” Her voice still sounded foreign to her own ears. Raw, coarse, feeble.
She felt and heard movement beside her head and quickly leaned away from it, anticipating a strike. The man swore under his breath, and she winced as he grabbed a fistful of her long, dark hair, holding it firmly so she couldn’t move without hurting herself. Despite that, she felt his other hand moving at the back of the blindfold. Judging from the strength in his grip, it wasn’t a stretch to assume that he wasn’t human.
She struggled with her urge to fight him. She could have been nutrient deprived and abused for weeks. Months. She truly had no idea how long. She didn’t want to pick a fight she might not have the energy to follow through with.
He released his hold on her hair and the blindfold dropped in the same instant. “Holy fuck!" Liliana whined and ducked her head low. Heavy strands of wet hair swung to shield her from the blinding brightness that pierced her eyeballs like a lance to the brain. Instant migraine. Definitely daytime. Beyond that, she’d been so thrown by the switch from cavernous darkness to midday shine that she’d been unable to absorb anything else about her environment before slamming her eyelids shut.
“Such judgment in your voice. And yet… You’re the one acting like a vampire, don’t you think?” His accent was thick, teasing, almost inviting.
Lily chuckled humorlessly. “Let me tie you up and kick your ass with your eyes covered for God knows how long, then shine the noonday sun into your face and see how you react.”
She cautiously opened one eye as his laughter echoed around her, and he slowly clapped his hands together. “There she is. I am so glad to see that a bit of water and sunshine has returned some of your infamous attitude. You truly are like a flower, Liliana.”
Lily stretched her fingers, curling them back into fists and feeling satisfying crackles in her knuckles. The mild burning between her shoulders was starting to intensify, so she shifted her weight up onto the balls of her feet.
“Unlike my namesake, I’m the type of flower with thorns.” She exhaled heavily, fully opening both eyes and beginning to soak in her surroundings. Anything she could use to free herself. Take him down. Any possible avenue of escape.
“The gears in your head are turning so quickly that I can almost see the smoke coming from your ears, sangamar. It’s adorable.”
She ignored the jab at her intelligence, eyes darting about as they adjusted to the brightness. Through the large window that illuminated the room on the opposite wall, she saw nothing but sand. Sand that stretched on beneath a relentless, scorching sun to the world’s end. Lily knew she definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore, much less New York.
“You seem to know so much about me, but I don’t know anything about you. Or what you want with me.” Lily cleared her throat as her voice crackled. Her skin was crawling at the sensation of him standing behind her. She hated not being able to see him at all, and he was close enough that she could feel him, near enough that too deep a breath would have caused contact.
“What do I want with you?” His laughter startled her, the gusts of air fetid and hot against her ear.
She tried to cringe away from it, away from him. She might not have remembered everything that had happened since her capture, but that laugh… It activated every instinct in her body that told her to run.
His hands slowly wrapped around her waist, fingers pressing soaked cloth into her skin with pressure that was a thinly veiled threat as his chin settled on her shoulder. She bit her lower lip to keep from crying out at the sharp sensation of thick fingertips digging into a bruise on her abdomen that wasn’t fully healed.
“I want nothing with you, Liliana.” His words were a soft, lilting purr against her skin that might have been pleasant, under different circumstances. “I am merely an instrument. Perfectly designed to help your true self awaken.”
“My succubus blood is already running the show. I know you’ve seen the scars from my demon wings popping out. What do you mean my ‘true self’?” Lily told herself that the tremor in her voice was small enough that he wouldn’t be able to hear the fear in her words, but she knew he could hear her heart pounding, threatening to burst through her ribcage like a war hammer through a ripe melon.
She gritted her teeth, air hissing out as his grip on her tightened, squeezing her abdomen between hands so large that his fingertips nearly overlapped as spots danced in her vision. “Those foolish children stirred the impure aspect, Liliana. Filthy, hideous demon wings aren’t what I need from you.”
She couldn’t draw a full breath and swung a foot back, striking his shin with her heel and as much strength as she could summon. She hadn’t done any major damage, but it was enough for him to let go of her. She sucked in the air deeply, gratefully.
Then the world was swimming, spinning, her ears filled with a high-pitched ringing that drowned out the frantic thumping of her pulse. Her brain needed a moment to register that the man, vampire, whatever he was, had slapped her across the face. She tasted the unmistakable tang of copper from her lip being dragged over her teeth, and a trickle ran from her nostril.
She was still conscious, but only barely. She couldn’t get her body to move. Couldn’t even lift her head. Her heartbeat fluttered in panic, but she was immobilized from a single slap.
Hands cradled her face gently, the pad of his thumb dragging through the blood from her nose, smearing it across her tanned cheek. She watched him suck the red from his own digit, a little shiver of pleasure wracking his unreasonably tall, lean frame.
“Even unclean, you taste of divinity, Liliana.”
Fingers gripped her chin as her eyelids fluttered, and she struggled to make out any discernible features as he looked down at her. “The Hell spawn blood in your veins isn’t what I want, sangamar. There is purity locked away inside you, unsullied as the freshly fallen snow. Together, we’ll coax your angel wings into this realm.”
Lily snickered, and it was a sick, wet gurgle. How she managed to speak was a mystery, but she couldn’t go under without one last dig at this psychopath. “I could go on for days about all the ways I haven’t been unsullied in decades, bloodsucker.”
He shook his head slowly, a heavy affected sigh of disappointment dropping from his lips. “Pretty little flower… How many times must we mar your petals before you learn to just shut that fucking mouth of yours, hmm?”
Before another retort could crawl out of that same mouth, he pressed a hand to the back of her head, stepping in close and clamping her nostrils and lips shut with the other. Storm grey eyes widened and she flailed against him, her entire body rocking as the chains she hung from rattled while her oxygen was cut off.
He tutted softly, hushing and calmly smothering her as she tried to fight, attempted to free herself. “It’ll only take a moment, now. Just let the darkness take you, Liliana. Soon enough, you’ll shed it and step into the light, and all will bask in the radiant glow of your glory.”
He was strong. Too fucking strong. Even at full operating capacity, she wouldn’t stand a chance against him without a weapon. She thrashed until she couldn’t anymore, and the darkness shrank her vision to a hazy pinpoint of light, until even that was snuffed out.
The second she lost consciousness he released his hold on her face, and life returned to her body with a desperate wheeze. “Always making things more difficult than they need to be. Almost more trouble than she’s worth.”
He watched her dangling there for a few minutes, her body swaying softly like the branches of a willow in a summer breeze. She was beautiful, even drenched in water and spattered with blood. Poetic in a way he couldn’t put into words. But she’d be most beautiful when he made her his. Truly his. Not in the simple, carnal way the Winterbournes had tried to claim her. But on a deeper level. A soul level.
The creaking of the chains brought him back to himself. Resisting the urge to kiss her lips, to taste her blood once more, he called with a booming voice: “Come fetch your future Queen!”