Let sleeping evils lie... Stefie is a feisty young reporter that goes looking into a town's darkest secrets and learns that cutting into old scars can bring more than blood to the surface. Vel. Trapped in darkness. Locked away for all eternity. His only companions are the rats and creatures of night; which feed upon the death of old buildings as the worms would devour a putrid body of flesh. His sanity splintering away, rotting and collapsing like the walls that have held him captive for so long. ---------------- Excerpt: "You swore you would protect me." It was an accusatory whisper, and the most that she could summon when looking up into the tempest that raged beneath the surface of those black eyes. She wanted to run, to get as far away from him as her legs could carry her, yet she was frozen to her place as surely as if chained there. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run that he wouldn't find her. Hadn't he already proven it was so? "So you're going to kill me now?" she demanded, her chin coming up in defiance of the fear knotting in her stomach, "like you did my uncle? Why? What have I ever done to you, Vel? Other than release you from that prison you belonged in!" That brought a snarl from him, as carved-iron arms lashed out to strike the walls on either side of the window she was pressed against, imprisoning her against the icy plane of glass. The hard flesh of his chest burned against her palms as she helplessly stared up at him. Feeling the heat of his breath on her face, and the furious ropes of energy that vibrated between them as if a living thing that sought to bind her helplessly for the slaughter. "You swore..." His mouth crushed down against hers, devouring the last of her words before they could even be spoken. His lips and tongue were firm and demanding, yet urging her to respond with an agonizing sensuality that nearly dropped her to her knees.