AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He wasn’t expecting any of that. I could see it in his eyes. I gritted my teeth, as both of us refused to be the first one to look away.
“I thought you were smarter than that,” he finally said in a calm voice which made his sentence all the more chilling. I could hear the undertone of threat, and I knew that a swift punishment was coming.
I tried to remind myself that I had to remain calm. The doppelganger’s behavior depended on it, and in turn, the fate of my family as well. I couldn’t allow him to push me over the brink of rage. Maybe that was exactly what he was trying to do right now. I couldn’t let him do that to me.
“I have chosen my side a long time ago,” I replied. “Yours is a dark and unforgiving world. I don’t want to be a part of it ever again. I have found my place and that place is by my wife and daughter.”
He shook his head incredulously. “They are not your kind. We are.”
“No,” I corrected him. “You are mistaken. I am not your kind. And I will never help you. In fact, I will fight you every step of the way, because King Theodore is more of a king to us than you’ll ever be to any of these vampires, because you only think of your own selfish goals!”
As Constantine’s anger surged, his fist struck me with a force that sent me reeling. The impact was like a lightning bolt of pain, shocking me to my very core. I stumbled backward, tasting the metallic tang of blood in my mouth as my body collided with the cold, unforgiving stone of the chamber wall.
“How dare you!” he shouted, as his eyes blazed with fury, his regal demeanor shattered by the rage that consumed him upon hearing my words.
“I am not afraid to speak the truth,” I said through clenched teeth. “My human parents taught me that.”
I clutched my throbbing cheek. I could attack him, but I probably wouldn’t come near him before the guards tackled me down. Once again, I had to remain patient and bide my time. I had to make him believe that he had won this round.
Constantine’s anger continued to burn like an unquenchable fire as he returned to his throne. His eyes, still ablaze with fury, fixated on me as if I were a loathsome insect that had dared to crawl into his domain.
“Guards!” he shouted, his voice like thunder, echoing through the chamber.
The two massive, stone-faced guards who had been lurking in the shadows immediately sprang into action. They approached me, their expressions blind loyalty to their king, devoid of any empathy. The guards seized me with an iron grip, their fingers like vices around my arms. I offered no resistance. I expected to be taken back to the room, where I would be given more time to think of my options. That wasn’t that bad at all. But then, I realized that Constantine’s plan was different this time. Much more malevolent.
“Take him to the hole,” he told the guards, his gaze unwavering.
I had no idea what the hole was, but I knew it wasn’t good. The guards carried out their duty with mechanical efficiency, dragging me away towards the door. I cast a final, fleeting glance back at Constantine. He wasn’t looking at me at all. He had turned his back to me, almost as if I was of no interest to him anymore.
They kept dragging me through dark, narrow hallways, and everywhere we turned, there were more guards. Escaping was impossible. I could see that now. Even if I did manage to get out of the locked room or the hole as Constantine called this new place, I had no chance of navigating these hallways with all these guards on duty.
Still, I tried not to let that dishearten me. I had to stay vigilant. I had to stay sharp. Finally, the guards stopped me. I saw a hole, and without any words of warning, they unceremoniously threw me into it. It was not deep enough to stand in, so I was forced to crouch in a wretched, hunched position. I felt as if the very earth itself had conspired to become my prison, a suffocating embrace that threatened to crush both body and spirit.
The walls of the pit were slick with dampness, the moisture seeping through the earth like tears from the land itself. The ground beneath me was a mixture of cold, hard stone and damp, clinging soil. It smelled of decay and desolation, a scent that seemed to permeate every breath I took.
Above me, the guards closed the pit with a heavy, rusted grate, sealing me inside like a caged animal. The sound of the grate sliding into place echoed through the pit. The guards went and took away light with them. As darkness enveloped me, I was left with nothing but the sound of my own shallow breaths and the distant echoes of my own despair.
In the oppressive darkness of the pit, my world had narrowed to a suffocating void. The absence of light was absolute, rendering everything before me as an impenetrable abyss. Every attempt to move felt like a futile struggle against the weight of the earth itself. I stood no chance against such an enemy.
With each passing moment, my senses adjusted to the absolute absence of light. My fingers clawed along the damp walls, searching for any hint of relief from the oppressive confinement. The stone, rough and irregular, offered no solace. It was as though I had been buried alive. Claustrophobia, a fear I had long since suppressed, gnawed at the edges of my sanity.
My eyes strained fruitlessly to perceive even the faintest glimmer of light. But the only thing I saw was infinite darkness. Now I knew what it looked like. It was so utter and all-consuming that it threatened to engulf me whole. Shadows danced at the periphery of my vision, elusive and tormenting. I could almost see them. I could almost feel that hope of oncoming light, but it was just a twisted game that darkness was playing on my mind.
My thoughts, which were once a cacophony of emotions and turmoil, were now quiet. In a moment when I needed them the most, I couldn’t hear a single thing. Even my mind was wrapped up in complete darkness, and I couldn’t imagine the faces of those I held most dear. This was the most frightening thing of all.
I was trapped in this void, where there was nothing but the relentless thud of my own heartbeat, which I felt in every extremity, almost as if my heart had exploded inside of me, and now the million little pieces were beating in unison, scattered about my body.
I felt like screaming from the top of my lungs, but when I opened my mouth, no sound came. There was nothing. I was nothing in the hole. I wrapped my hands around my body. Constantine had left me here to die. I was almost certain of it.
And at home, a doppelganger held the fate of my family in his hands. I couldn’t imagine a worse scenario than the one I had found myself in. I tried to blink away the darkness, but it was a futile attempt. Nothing I did yielded any result. My body had given up. My mind was also on the verge of doing the same thing.
Then, a flicker of hope. My mind conjured up Cass. She was smiling. I could almost hear her sweet chuckle. It was far away, barely audible but it was her.
Was I dying? It certainly felt so.
But if I was going into the embrace of my daughter, I didn’t care whether I was alive or dead.
Chapter Twelve
