Read Online Born in Twilight: Twilight Vows by MAGGIE SHAYNE - Free Book Online

me, I pounded on my cell door, screaming and kicking at it. But no one came to tell me why they’d done this to me. No one came near.
    I sank to the floor only when I sensed daylight painting the earth, slowly stealing my consciousness. And this time, when I woke, I was in a far different place.
    I was sealed in a dark, coffinlike box. Panic took a firm hold on me, and I beat against the lid with my fists, screaming until I was hoarse.
    At last, the cover was lifted. I flew from my prison, only to be gripped by three strong men. I kicked and shouted. I asked them, pleaded with them to tell me why they’d done this, what their intentions were. But to no avail. I was injected with the familiar drug, returned to the pathetically weak state I spent all my waking hours in, and then they let me go. I slumped to the floor, sitting up, eyelids heavy, and warily examined the room around me.
    The sterile white walls were gone now. I was in a dungeonlike cell, with barely any light. One of the men pulled me to my feet, and ushered me close to the rear wall, while another clamped shackles around my wrists, and then my ankles. I was chained, chained to the cold stone wall at my back.
    A glass of the detestable liquid was pressed into my hand. The chain was long enough to enable me to drink. And yet I did not. I stared at the glass, and shook my head. “No,” I told them, lifting my chin in defiance. “I won’t drink. I’d rather die than go on living in this prison! Let me go. I demand you let me go!”
    One of the men chuckled, and shook his head. “If you don’t feed, you’ll lose your baby. You don’t want to starve your own baby, do you?”
    I swallowed hard, tears flooding my eyes so that the men swam before me. I couldn’t do that, couldn’t starve my own child, and they knew it. They knew it.
    Oh, God, what had I done? What had I done to deserve this particular hell? Only then did I fully understand what a grave mistake I had made. Willingly, even eagerly, I had made myself their prisoner. Their guinea pig. I could scarcely believe it was true. They saw me as a creature. A laboratory rat, and I was, from then on, treated as such.
    I drank, because I had little choice, and so I lived. Lived on their drugged liquid, kept too weak to break my chains or fight my captors. Each night I remained chained to the cell walls. But the days were far worse. For each dawn, as soon as the day sleep overtook me, my vile captors took me down from my wall and sealed me inside that coffinlike box. More often than not, dusk would fall, and I would awaken still trapped in that tiny cement sarcophagus. I’d claw and kick and cry, and I’d hear them laughing as they passed me by, not letting me out until they were good and ready. It seemed they enjoyed my panic.
    They no longer tried to conceal the disgust in their eyes. I was treated as an animal. For the sake of the child I carried, they continued to provide me with sustenance, and warmth, and sanitary conditions. For the sake of the child. I knew that. And I knew, too, with a growing sense of terror, that what became of my child once I’d given birth, was completely beyond my control.
    And I knew something else in those long months of my captivity. Those long months of a loneliness more intense than anything I’d ever known. As the child grew in my womb, as I felt it there, living and even moving eventually, I spoke to it. Wrapped my arms around my swollen belly and cradled it. I even sang to it, in a voice that surprised me with its preternatural range and purity. I’d always loved to sing, but I’d never found such joy in doing so with my flawed, mortal voice. Now I thought I must sound like the very angels. And as the time passed, I came to realize that I loved the baby I carried. She—and for some reason, I was certain, even then, that she was female—she was the only living soul I spoke to in all that time.