Beyond the Night Read Online Free

about coercing her? Mirya had always been good to her. She just needed a place, a respite, so she could figure things out. Make a plan. Mirya, of all people, would understand.
    Senna discarded her blood-soaked clothes and unwrapped the drenched bandage. The wound was still raw, the pain still lanced through her when she moved in certain ways.
    She wondered, as she washed thoroughly, if the pain would ever go away, if the raw edges would ever heal.
    She touched her neck and shoulder, still feeling for the puncture wounds she couldn’t detect. She had to believe the bite hadn’t gone that deep, that the Countess’s blood could defeat any alien blood infused in her.
    She had to.
    She sifted through the dresses on the bed for the one with the fewest hooks and buttons, that fit without the torturous undergarments she’d had to wear. She had to fashion another bandage to cover her wounds, to which she sacrificed another petticoat. Tucking the obsidian between her breasts, she dressed carefully since she couldn’t check a hem or see if all the buttons were fastened.
    Once dressed, she felt normal. Well, as normal as a creature with an unholy bloodlust, and urges warring within her that she had yet to learn to control, could be.
    But Mirya wouldn’t know that.
    It was time to go.
    She stood on the threshold just inside the outer door of the town house and envisioned Mirya’s hovel, tucked in between two buildings at the end of a long alley, well away from the heavily traveled Lombard Street.
    Mirya’s place, she thought with a surge of unaccustomed feeling, and in an instant she was standing at the corner of the alleyway, in the midst of a stream of people and carriages.
    The noise of wheels rattling and people talking felt deafening. She saw lamplights burning all along the alley. As she drew closer to Mirya’s hovel, she heard scraping and scratching, as if something was being moved around. And then dead silence.
    She knocked. “Mirya.”
    No answer.
    â€œMirya!” Even Senna heard the feral tone in her voice.
    â€œGo away.” Mirya’s rusty, old voice, laced with fear.
    â€œMirya—” Still that snarling voice. Senna tried to tone it down. “It’s me, Senna.”
    â€œNo. It is not you. Go away.”
    How did Mirya know? “I’m coming in,” Senna said with an authoritative growl, certain that her desire would transport her where she needed to go.
    But it didn’t work this time. She couldn’t penetrate the walls, she couldn’t seep in under the door. The creature Senna was not welcome because she had not been invited in.
    â€œLet me in.” Her voice sounded tight, cold, impatient. She’d compel the old witch if she had to. She didn’t want to have to. “Mirya—?” She couldn’t get that anger out of her voice. She focused full force on Mirya’s mind.
    Invite me in.
    No response. Senna girded herself. Mirya knew all kinds of mystical things. She could read minds and foretell the future. She might well be chanting some spell or putting up some kind of magic barrier against Senna’s attempt to control her.
    â€œMIRYA!” A command Mirya could not deny.
    She felt the give in Mirya’s soul, the resignation and admission that Mirya was too old and too fatalistic to put up much more resistance.
    â€œInvite me in.”
    â€œCome if you can,” Mirya answered her grudgingly. It sounded as if she was moving whatever furniture she’d thought would be a barricade away from the door.
    Senna closed her eyes. Inside. She found herself in the small front parlor of Mirya’s home, a room in which Senna had confessed, cried, slept, sought comfort, a room Mirya was now ready to defend with her life as she reached for the fireplace poker and turned to face Senna.
    They stared at each other for a long moment, Mirya’s eyes dilated with fear, as if she saw the bloodlust in Senna’s