Blood Born by Linda Howard Page B

of, at least, written in English. Even though she understoodall the words, they were strung together in ways that didn’t make sense.
Light of the dark, dark of the day
—yeah, right. It was gibberish. But the monsters took their gibberish seriously, so Nevada tried her best to do what they wanted.
    Then, slowly, the words in the books began to resonate with something deep inside her, began to take on meanings that went beyond the words themselves. She couldn’t quite put her finger on exactly what it was, maybe something like a current she could ride, a door she could step through, or both. But there was
something
—and it called to her. So what at first she had been doing out of desperation she began doing willingly, and then even eagerly, though she hid that from her captors.
    Six months into her captivity, she successfully cast her first simple spell. It wasn’t anything much, she’d tried to reheat some food that had gotten cold because she was distracted by her reading—the food was pretty terrible because vampires weren’t interested in eating at
all
, so being cold had pretty much made the stuff inedible—but the spell
worked
. She’d been so excited she had jumped up and down and done a happy dance, because all this reading and studying was evidently accomplishing something after all.
    Then she had wondered what she was so happy about, because she was smart enough to figure out that, if she managed to reverse this spell the vamps were so concerned about, then she’d have no more value to them and they’d kill her
and
her family as casually as if they were swatting flies. It stood to reason that if she could reverse the spell, she would also be able to reinstate it whenever she chose, or lay some other nasty spell on them, so of course they intended to kill her.
    Her only chance, and the only chance her family had, was to hide how fast her skills were developing untilshe was strong enough, skilled enough, to do … something. Another kind of protection spell, maybe. A liberation spell. Hell, she didn’t know. Just
something
.
    She’d played along as best she could, reassuring them that she was learning, demonstrating small spells for them when they pressed her for proof of her progress. The weeks and months had turned to years, and she would have gone crazy a long time ago if the work itself hadn’t been so engrossing—and if it hadn’t been for Sorin.
    She didn’t know what his last name was. Maybe vampires didn’t have last names. No, they’d once been humans, so surely they
did
, but none of those she had met used a surname. She guessed that when you lived for hundreds of years last names stopped mattering, because it wasn’t as if they were going to have kids and pass the name along. Nevada didn’t understand why she liked him. No, it wasn’t even something as simple as “liking.” It was something more. Nothing sexual, nothing romantic, but some sort of tie she couldn’t understand. She felt safe with him. Okay, not exactly
safe
, but safer.
    Sorin was … well, she didn’t know what he was. Not the leader, because that was the bitch who thought she was some kind of queen, but nevertheless all the others kind of deferred to him. It wasn’t just that he was big and muscled and gorgeous, with blond hair and glowing blue eyes, or that he was like some kind of general in this battle or war they were fighting. (They weren’t exactly forthcoming with her—she only got bits and pieces when they forgot she could overhear them. She tried to put it all together into a story, but huge gaps were missing.) The other vamps
respected
him. He was in some position of power, because they listened to him. Well, the bloodsucking bitch queen who ran this sick show didn’t, but from what Nevadacould tell she didn’t listen to or respect anyone except herself.
    And Sorin had protected her, hadn’t allowed any of the others to feed from her. His reason had been completely logical: the work and study load