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"Get them out!" I yelled.
"Isaiah—" began Elena, breaking out of his grip.
He shoved me to the floor and spun around, staring at his escaping victims. I gasped for breath
now that his grip on my throat was gone and peered back at the door through the tangle of my
hair. I was just in time to see Mason drag Eddie over the threshold, out into the safety of the
light. Mia and Christian were already gone. I nearly wept in relief.
Isaiah turned back on me with all the fury of a storm, his eyes black and terrible as he loomed
over me from his great height. His face, which had always been scary, became something
almost beyond comprehension. "Monstrous" didn't even begin to cover it.
He jerked me up by my hair. I cried out at the pain, and he brought his head down so that our
faces were pressed up to one another's.
"You want a bite, girl?" he demanded. "You want to be a blood whore? Well, we can arrange
that. In every sense of the word. And it will not be sweet. And it will not be numbing. It will be
painful—compulsion works both ways, you know, and I will make sure you believe you are
suffering the worst pain of your life. And I will also make sure your death takes a very, very
long time. You will scream. You will cry. You will beg me to end it all and let you die—"
"Isaiah," cried Elena in exasperation. "Just kill her already. If you'd done it sooner like I said,
none of this would have happened."
He kept his grip on me but flicked his eyes toward her. "Do not interrupt me."
"You're being melodramatic," she continued. Yeah, she really was whiny. I never would have
thought a Strigoi could do that. It was almost comical. "And wasteful."
"Do not talk back to me, either," he said.
"I'm hungry. I'm just saying you should—"
"Let her go, or I'll kill you."