Read Online LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) by Billie Sue Mosiman - Free Book Online

here at the top of the bag? That's the area you're going to pierce. The rest will happen naturally. I'll hold this for you and help you position it so it will drain. Next time you'll be able to do it alone."
    "But how do I . . . ?"
    "Put your mouth here," he said, indicating a spot at the top of the blood bag. "When you do, close your eyes. Don't think of anything. It'll be all right, trust me."
    She approached closer and eyed the bag. He held it out to her carefully, and she moved her lips toward it. Don't think about it, she told herself. They say you must do this, so just screw up your courage and do it.
    Her lips came into contact with the cold plastic. She tasted condensed water drops that warmed in her mouth. She had her teeth around the top corner of the bag and dosed her eyes. She'd never be able to do this. She'd never be able to rip through the thick plastic to get at the dark ruby liquid inside.
    Suddenly her body spasmed and she felt her father's hand holding onto her shoulder to keep her in place. She heard, as at a distance, her mother's soothing voice, but she didn't know what she was saying. She heard Eddie urging her on, saying what he'd said to get her to concentrate on moving her toes. "You can do it," he was saying again. "C'mon, Dell, you can do it."
    There was a sensation of movement behind her top lip, as if hard sticks had been shoved against her incisors and straight into her gums. It didn't hurt very much, but she reacted against it, trying to pull away from contact with the bag. She heard her father's voice command her to. "Be still, stay."
    The strange sensation grew, and she moved her tongue away from the side of the bag to feel her top teeth. She felt her incisors, now long and pointed, like miniature daggers. Her tongue flicked away swiftly and fear filled her. Fangs! They had grown of their own accord, without her intervention or thought. How had it happened?
    As soon as the sensation of growth in her mouth ceased, the fear fled, and a deep feeling of desire overwhelmed her. Her olfactory senses sharpened, and she could smell the scent of the blood right through the plastic. Now it was like the scent of delicate perfume.
    She was about to open her eyes and pull back when something inside her forced her teeth down around the top of the bag, her fangs easily piercing the plastic. She knew her father was lifting the bag now, tipping the contents up so that her fangs could get at it.
    She had to do nothing of her own will but obey the strong call spiraling through her to partake. At this point she knew she could not pull back from the thing her body yearned for most in all the world. The blood spilled over her incisors, chilling them, and she could feel the coldness sweep through tiny openings in her fangs. The blood swept through hollows and into small veins in the roof of her mouth, moved rapidly into larger veins at the back of her head, and coursed down through her neck into her blood system. It moved like cold snakes entering her body.
    She knew it as life. She sensed how alive the blood was, how new, fresh, and sustaining. She thought she could feel it mingling with her own pooled, coagulating dead blood, reviving it. Her brain exploded with ecstasy, and her body quivered with electric currents of pleasure. She lost herself in the rush of feeling that came on the heels of the commingling going on from her head to her feet.
    Without warning, someone placed a hand to her forehead and forced her back. Her mouth released the bag with a sucking noise that sounded as loud as timber falling and her eyelids flew open. She felt droplets of blood slide down from her upper lip and felt her incisors retract of their own volition, pushing back up into the recesses of her gums with a shriek of pain that caused her to bring her hands to her face.
    She wanted more! Why were they depriving her?
    She wasn't finished, though she could see the bag was emptied. She needed another one, and another.
    "There, there,"