Chapter 1 Blood slave. The word was enough to send a cold chill of terror down Arianna’s spine. She shuddered, swallowing heavily, and repeatedly, as she tried to wet her suddenly very parched throat. Her lips hurt, they were chapped and cracking. She’d had nothing to drink in hours; the fire that had consumed parts of the forest had burned into her throat. The smell of smoke clung to her; she could taste the ash upon her tongue. She would have given anything for some water, but she was fairly certain that her misery and discomfort would soon be coming to an end anyway. The dead did not require water after all. Surprisingly the thought of being dead aroused even less fear in her than the alternative did. And that alternative was becoming a blood slave. The thought of being kept, of being trapped and used for the most disgusting means known to man, was enough to make her want to rip out her hair and run screaming in horror. She did neither however, simply because she could not move enough to carry out either action. She was trapped, surrounded, penned in by the bodies crammed tightly against her. The raid on the woods had been successful. The homes of many had been ripped apart, destroyed, set ablaze. Their lives had been irrevocably destroyed; they would never see their loved ones again.