Page 71 of Whispers of Ruin
Then she twisted her head a little to look at her friend. As she did, a trail of blood appeared across her neck, but she didn’t notice as she gazed at the headless body beside her.
She emitted a small sob as she rested her hand against her friend’s arm. Tears slid down her face, but no sympathy stirred within Brokk.
“What are you?” he demanded.
The woman didn’t speak as she went still beneath him, closed her eyes, and tears slid down her face. After a couple of minutes, she finally started talking. “A monster.”
No shit.But Brokk kept those words to himself.
“What did you do to me when thatthingstuck to my neck?”
“I didn’t do anything to you.”
She gasped when Brokk pushed the blade a little deeper into her neck. “Don’t fuck with me.”
She gulped. “My sister sucked out part of your essence. It’s what we feed on.”
“Will he be okay?” Kaylia demanded.
“I don’t know. No one has ever escaped us before.”
“I’m going to be fine,” he assured Kaylia.
She nibbled on her bottom lip while gazing at him. Finally, she responded. “Yes, you will.”
“Whatare you?” Ryker demanded.
“We… I…,” she breathed the word. “Iam a mandaru.”
“A what?” someone else inquired.
“A mandaru,” the woman said again. “We are a race of ancient creatures who have resided in this valley for as long as we can remember. This isourhome… or it was.”
“And you feed on any unsuspecting victims who enter it,” Brokk stated.
“We cannot help who we are,” she retorted.
Brokk understood that, but while he fed on sexual energy and blood, he didn’t suck the essence from others and leave them a hollowed-out, shrunken mess.
“So, by day, you’re beautiful women who seduce unsuspecting victims into your bed, and by night, you’re hideous monsters who suck the life from them,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed on him. “We do what we must to survive, but it wasn’t always this way.”
“How else was it?”
“We have always borne the curse of what we are with dignity and grace, but when the sun goes down, we cannot change what we become. However, we found a way to contain ourselves at night. Because while it feelssogood to feed, we never liked killing. Our darker nighttime natures relish it, but during the day, we regret what we do. So, over time, as we grew stronger, we pulled our magic together and created a sacred space to contain ourselves at night.”
“The stones,” Kaylia said. “That’s why there’s so much power in that clearing.”
“The stones,” the woman confirmed. “And for centuries, the stones worked. We survived on animals?—”
“You had sex with animals?” someone blurted.
The woman recoiled in disgust. “No, of course not. We don’t require sex to feed; it’s just a way to lure our victims in to protect ourselves.” She looked pointedly at Brokk. “Few can ever resist us, and we can often either run from them if necessary or lure them in and kill them.
“Every day, just before nightfall, we’d return to the stones and the magic there to keep us from hunting. We brought any animals we caught during the day there so we could feed. Then, one day, thosemonstersarrived in the valley, and everything changed.”
Brokk didn’t get a chance to ask why some could resist them before Ryker asked, “Do you mean the ophidians?”
