This is only the first page of chapter one, NOT the full chapter.
Chapter 1 - Screams and Whispers
Milbank's halls rung with screams. They had done every day since Will's retrieval, five weeks earlier. I could no longer remember what silence was, or what peace was. I could barely remember what it was to allow my eyes to close and to allow sleep to pull me under.
Had I slept at all in the preceding week? I wasn't sure, the hours were blurring together into a delirious haze. My body was desperate for rest, and yet, staying awake was necessary for my mind. Avoiding sleep was the only way to prevent my own pained shouts adding to those echoing from the Sire and Second's apartments, where Conn and Will were locked in their separate, hellish nightmares.
Covering my ears did nothing to drown out the cries and pleas. It did nothing to block out the wave after wave of pain, humiliation, and fear, which flowed from Conn and into me. His nightmares had gotten worse again since learning that Tiw was working with Osier. Much worse. He dreaded a return to Valhalla, almost to the point of being incapacitated by his fear, and I suspected that he still believed it an inevitability.
Every time we lost a vampire to the Bloodied Hand, or to mortal thugs wielding tiwaz marked stakes, Leof's nightmares became more intense. And, much to our dismay, we'd lost several over recent weeks. Osier, himself, hadn't yet made his threatened move against Fenn, but his people and those he'd persuaded to follow Tiw were as active as ever. So active, that we weren't the only cohort to lose members.
All of the northern cohorts had lost people, and even the southern cohorts had suffered token losses. The type of losses that made me wonder if they were removing the few people who wouldn't willingly follow where Haltwhistle had led. Or maybe they were sacrificing just enough to avoid raising suspicions about their perceived invulnerability. After all, in the past, Osier had attacked every cohort, in every district. It would look odd if the southern cohorts lost no one. Either way, the Bloodied Hand's influence was spreading too quickly for us to stop it, and Tiw's influence was expanding along with it. We were losing the war.
Losing. The thought almost provoked a bitter laugh. If the whispers in Milbank's corridors were to be believed, we'd already lost it.Perhaps the whisperers were right.
Chapter 1 - Screams and Whispers will be uploaded in full tomorrow, 23rd October. Looking forward to hearing from you all again. Welcome back to Darcy's world! A xxx
