but I brought the sword around and her fist rebounded off the fuller of the blade. The sudden contact with silver made her rear back, screaming so loud I thought my ears would bleed.
But the blow was enough to dull my senses and a faint ringing echoed in my ears as I struggled to regain my bearings.
Pain erupted along my waist and I screamed, my voice raw, as a trail of fire seemed to burn me from the inside out.
Annabelle laughed hysterically, the whip dangling from one hand, my blood mingling with Jason’s and flowing down the tilted tile floor with the rusted drain in the middle.
She lashed again and the whip licked its way around my arm. She pulled back and the force was enough to pull me closer, pull me closer to her nails she raked down my face.
My world turned shades of red and I felt a strange heat pulse in the wake of her blow and I slipped on the bloody floor, falling heavily on my side, knocking what little breath I had out of my body.
Gasping, sputtering like a fish thrown out of water, I tried to get back on my feet.
Annabelle did not let me.
One foot planted firmly on my chest, she pressed down and I screamed as my broken ribs grated under the unrelenting pressure.
“Does it hurt?” she crooned. “Tell me, does it hurt?”
I clenched my teeth, trying to rein in the pain, the tears.
I would not give the bitch the satisfaction.
“No?” Her eyes seemed too big for her face. “How about now?”
The pressure got worse.
I thought my jaw would break, but I wouldn’t say anything.
Not now.
I heard Jason’s muttered curses and the jingling of chains, but he was already too far away.
Suddenly, for the first time, I had second thoughts about walking out of this room alive.
My toes curled and I felt sweat pop up on my forehead as she came closer, breath rancid. I could count the individual lashes around her thickly lined eyes. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?”
The pain was going to put me under and once that happened, I would never wake up.
I would die and that would be the end.
Damn it.
A look of something passed in those eyes. Regret? Sympathy? I didn’t understand it. “It’s a shame. You could have been so much more. But this is where it ends. Good-bye, Ran.”
She pulled back her right hand, the nails black from my blood and I watched the hand shoot towards my neck.
Was this the end?
No. No. No.
Could I?
If I could just kill Annabelle…if I could just free Jason from those silver chains…
If only I could.
If only I would.
I let red and black fall over my vision and with the last reserve of strength left in me, I shoved Annabelle’s hand out of the way with my forearm. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her nails away from my jugular, and her fingers skittered around the edge of my neck, bringing forth blood, but not enough to kill me.
Her eyes opened wide, impossibly wide and I knew I had only moments.
Moments I could not, would not waste.
I grabbed her ankle and twisted sharply to the right.
Something snapped and she went down in a flurry of wet fabric, screaming as the bone splintered and shoved its way out of her thin, narrow ankle.
For added measure, I shoved her ankle back and Annabelle’s screams of pain echoing in my mind like a broken record.
This time, I was the one on top and when my hand touched the slippery hilt of the jian, I knew it was over.
Annabelle had time for one more scream, her eyelashes dewy with moisture as I poised the sword point over the hollow of her neck.
“No, please,” she moaned. “It’s not me, it wasn’t me—”
But her time was finished.
I let the blade drop and she spoke no more.
Screamed no more.
Saw no more.
But she was a vampire lord.
I had to make sure.
Breath coming up short, strange sounds coming out of my throat, I let the sword cut down again and again and again until I was drenched in her blood, until her head was no longer attached to her neck.
Slowly, I levered myself up to my feet off her chest, my head feeling like it was going to split open.
But I had to fight the pain.
Had to postpone.
There would be hell to pay when I woke up, but for now, for now, I needed the extra time.
Jason had managed to work one manacle loose,