Chapter 9

But death would not come.

Sugar lay motionless. Seconds, minutes, hours passed, but still the breath of life heaved in her lungs. She shivered with the piercing cold, felt the hard ground press against her body, heard the wind’s eerie voice as it moaned through the trees.

“Let me die!” she finally shouted up at the horned moon, but no answer came, just a winking of the slice of silver that peeked at her from behind ragged clouds. Finally, when the sky opened up and battered her with wind and rain, she dragged herself up from the graves and trudged toward the mansion. Climbing the steps of the portico, a swirl of blackness overcame her and she collapsed.3

On a bloody battlefield between Hell and Neraka…

“Judas! Judas! Judas!”