Chapter 188: Vampire Luna

The hard impact against the ceiling rattled my entire brain, sending a sharp wave of pain shooting down my spine. Gravity violently reclaimed my body, and I crashed flat onto the splintered wooden floorboards with a sickening thud, knocking all the air right out of my lungs.

I lay there gasping for breath, my vision swimming in dark dots as I rolled over onto my stomach. I frantically turned my head around, my wild, bloodshot eyes searching every dark corner of the small cage to see what invisible monster had just thrown me into the air.

Before I could even push my arms off the ground, that same terrifying, unseen force blasted against my ribs like a battering ram. It lifted me straight off the floorboards with blinding speed, hurtling my weak body backward until my spine slammed hard into the solid wall behind me.

"Ahhh!" I shrieked, clutching my chest as I slid down the rough wood, landing in a heap on the dusty floor.

I squeezed my hands tightly around my stomach, my teeth grinding together so hard my jaw ached. It felt like a localized hurricane was tearing through the narrow space of my mind and body. I slowly opened my swollen eyes, panting heavily as I looked around the empty room once more. There was no ghost in the shadows, no hidden guard, and no invisible spellcaster standing outside the iron bars.

A horrifying realization suddenly struck my chest like an icicle. It wasn't an outside enemy attacking me—it was my own hybrid body violently rejecting the human food I had just forced down my throat.

A wave of unimaginable agony erupted deep inside my abdomen, ripping a loud, blood-curdling scream straight out of my raw throat.

"AAARGH! GOD, PLEASE!" I screamed, rolling onto my side and curling into a tight ball on the floor.

The pain inside my belly was so pure and excruciating that I desperately prayed for faintness to take me away into unconsciousness. My insides felt as if they were literally catching fire, melting from the inside out. It was the exact same agonizing, corrosive burn I had suffered back when I was forced to taste vervain—only this time, the fiery poison wasn't sitting on my skin. It was locked deep inside my internal organs, burning through my stomach lining with unholy fury.

A violent heave shuddered through my chest, and the swallowed mass of macaroni began traveling back up my esophagus, threatening to burst out of my mouth.

No! Absolutely not! I thought wildly, slamming my hand over my mouth and forcing my teeth tightly shut.

I groaned with every tiny grain of strength remaining in my bruised body, using pure, unadulterated willpower to swallow the burning bile back down. I refused to throw it up. I refused to let my body win this fight. I was not going to give up now after coming this far, and I was going to fight my own cursed biology with every single drop of blood left in my veins until I earned my freedom from this dark cage.

Feeling the heavy mass crawling back up toward my throat again, I forced my trembling legs to push me off the floorboards. I stood up on shaky knees, hoping that standing upright would force gravity to drag the meal down into my intestines to digest by force.

Hot, bitter tears streamed continuously down my pale cheeks, soaking into my neck as a manic, painful smile involuntarily pulled at the corners of my lips. I was sobbing hysterically while laughing at my own horrific luck. I was dying on the inside, piece by piece.

What a twisted joke, I thought bitterly as my vision blurred with fresh tears. If I refused to eat the food, I would slowly starve to death behind these bars. But if I actually forced myself to eat it, the reaction would kill me just the same. Death was standing right in front of me either way, so I had no other choice left except to endure the agony and force my way through the fire.

A wild, frantic determination took complete control over my mind. Abandoning all caution and fear, I lunged forward across the floor, dropping back down beside the wooden tray. I grabbed the rest of the steaming macaroni with my bare hands and began shoving massive handfuls straight down my throat without chewing, swallowing everything down in huge, desperate gulps.

The thick pasta felt like hot, molten lava sliding down my neck, searing the skin of my throat as it entered my stomach. Yet I kept eating anyway, stuffing my mouth continuously until every single noodle was gone from the bowl.

The very second the tray was completely empty, a strange, faint sensation spread through my limbs. My supernatural hybrid blood was attempting to trigger its quick healing factor to repair the internal burns, giving me a tiny, momentary burst of physical relief.

Panicking from the lingering burn in my throat, I grabbed the glass flask and drank every single drop of the warm milk, desperate to cool down the fiery heat in my chest.

The instant the sweet liquid hit my bloated stomach, my belly churned with explosive, unnatural power. The invisible force detonated once again, launching my body into the air like a discarded toy.

"AAGHH!" I screamed as I was thrown back and forth across the cage, my back, head, and shoulders smashing brutally into the hard stone walls and iron bars, up and down, over and over again without stopping.

I frantically reached out my bloodied arms during one of the violent airborne bounces, managing to wrap my fingers tightly around the cold, reinforced bars of the cage door. I anchored my weight against the iron, using every ounce of my strength to stop my body from bouncing around the room like a ragdoll.

The internal agony inside my gut was growing rapidly worse with every passing second, tearing through my sanity until I was sobbing uncontrollably. The severe allergic reaction had taken over my entire body—every inch of my skin had turned a bright, inflamed red, covered from head to toe in furious, maddening itches that felt like hundreds of crawling insects under my flesh.

I couldn't take it anymore. The fiery pain in my stomach and the agonizing itch on my skin were driving me completely out of my mind.

Having no other choice to escape the unendurable torment, I pulled back and slammed my forehead directly into the solid stone wall of the cell.

BANG!

A blinding flash of white light exploded behind my eyes, but the agonizing burn inside my belly didn't stop. I pulled my head back and slammed it against the stone again with everything I had left in my weak body.

BANG! BANG!

Warm, thick blood broke through my skin, pouring down the bridge of my nose and covering my eyes in a dark red veil, but I refused to stop. I kept hitting my head against the unyielding wall repeatedly, over and over, driving my forehead into the stone until a loud, sickening crack echoed through my skull, and everything fi

nally went completely black.