The smell drove the Beast mad with hunger. Not fresh, drinkable blood, but old from deaths past.

Beneath it all was the thin, faint scent of blood. Beyond that, the Beast could smell the mold in its straw nest and the sharp, tangy smell of the metal bars. The musty, dank smell of wet rock permeated every surface. The Beast snarled and sniffed the stale air. Wanted to run thought the night, chasing down prey and drinking it dry. Wanted to sniff the deer and the bears and wolves. It wanted the woods and the smells of the animals it fed on. It hated the unending darkness and the unchanging scent. The Beast counted time by sunrise and sunset, and in this prison, it could see neither. It didn’t know how long it had been there. It didn’t know how many times it had slept and woken in its prison. The floor and walls were flat, cut stone, so different from the rough, natural cave wall of the hallway beyond. Metal bars, deeply embedded in the floor, blocked the only way out. The room was twice as wide and four times as long as the creature. Even its breasts had changed, shrinking and clinging tighter to its body, so as not to be in the way. Its neck twisted so it could easily look up when it ran. Its hair, long and red, became matted and filthy, but no longer fell into its eyes. Its pale white skin was covered in dirt and mud, the better to be unseen in the woods. Its toes grew stronger, able to flex the talons on their tips and dig them into the ground as it hunted. Its arms had grown longer, its legs shorter, to compensate. The more it relied on scent to hunt, the more time it spent on all fours. Long ago it had stood on two legs all the time. It rarely did that these days, preferring to lope on hands and feet in a springing run that kept its nose closer to the ground-the better to sniff out prey.

The room was scarcely higher than the Beast, if the Beast stood. For the Beast, the stones themselves emitted light, turning the black to a deep gray that showed the length and depth of the prison cell. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.įor any other creature, the room would have been pitch-black. Interior layout and design by Colleen Sheehan of Write Dream Repeat Book Design No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.Īmazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of, Inc., or its affiliates.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Special thanks to Kindle Press for this amazing opportunity. Not Everything Dies © 2017 by John Patrick Kennedy

Scorn of Angels by John Patrick Kennedy