by Ana Calin
She juts out her chin, happy to shock. “I’m Mark’s daughter.”
Fuck. I’m speechless and, like all emotions lately, it must show big and shiny in my face. Soraya bursts into laughter.
“See? You would have been responsible for incest if that love potion of yours would have worked on Mark and me.”
“You can’t be serious.” My brain just refuses to accept. “Somebody would have known this, I would have—”
“—Found out, because you’re a big shot assassin spy?” She huffs. “Mark keeps this as low key as possible, because, well, you know how it is—his enemies, like, for example, vampires, could use that against him.”
She laughs harder and harder as she enjoys the sight of my stricken face.
I take her chin between my fingers, bringing my face close to hers. It causes her to lose focus, and I can tell that my closeness heats her skin.
“I despise you, Soraya. For all the lipstick and white powder, you’re ugly on the inside. Even if Isolde would die at the hands of Mark or even your own, your pleasure would be short lived. Because her energy would still be out there, the energy of an angel, capable of self-sacrifice and unconditional love. And I’d be obsessing over her even so, with her dead. Of course she has negative feelings, but they were provoked. She doesn’t take pleasure in anyone’s suffering. And you know what? I would have fallen in love with her even without the love potion. Isolde Jochs—” I emphasize her maiden name, “—embodies everything worth loving in this world. Once a man gets to know her, he doesn’t stand a chance; he’ll fall in love whether he wants to or not, and he’ll be soon hooked like on heroin.”
A feeling of need washes over me as I say this, the need of taking Isolde into my arms and never letting her go. The need to protect her against all evil.
I turn on my heels and barge out the door as I realize this. I fell in love completely, obsessively, I want to hold her against my naked body, make her part of me so that no one can ever rip her away again.
Mark may be her mate, because he imprinted on her, but the emotional high in my own chest gives me a yet bigger claim. My feelings will endure forever, there is no way to break the love that now connects me to Isolde.
I can hear Soraya in the distance, calling after me, “You will pay for this, Prince of Spades! You will both die!”
That might be right. But I’ll protect Isolde until the last second, even if it means wrapping my body around hers, and taking all the torture in her place.
CHAPTER IX – Runaway Lovers
Tristan
THERE IT IS, THE OLD Father’s house. I move fast in its direction, but not fast enough to draw attention with unnatural speed. It’s late at night, a full moon in the sky, the mountain air crisp.
“Good evening, Father,” a group of old women greet from a bench in front of a fence. They gather here in the evening to gossip, it’s one of their few leisure pastimes.
A few girls sauntering down the road greet me in the same way. I respond with a stiff nod, ignoring the excited giggles after they pass me by. The old women whisper something about ‘too young and too handsome,” noticing the girls’ reaction—and thinking I can’t hear them whispering, but hell, I’m a vampire.
There has been talk in the village from the start that the devil came in a priest’s clothes to mess with the young girls’ heads. Soraya resented all those eyes on me, and she could be downright venomous with the young women at church. Still, that didn’t stop them stealing glances, or some even to eye me with an open invitation.
Doesn’t matter. This is all about to end. I’m going to take Isolde and get her out of the serpents’ claws tonight, because the maps that I discovered hidden under a floorboard in the altar reveal a way out through the mountains. They belonged to Father Ruben, and they contain a hidden route the serpents don’t monitor, because they don’t know about it.
The only thing that bothers me is that stealing Isolde away could result in open war between serpents and vampires, but Lord Dracula can always say that Isolde and I eloped without his knowledge or consent. The story hangs by a thread, but I guess Lord Dracula will have to find a solution. He is the great King of Vampires after all. I served him with devotion and loyalty for centuries, but now I met someone I want to serve more. He’ll have to understand, it’s the least he can do for me.
My heart beats faster as I spot Isolde’s chocolate hair glistening in the moonlight by the well in the old Father’s yard. There she is, my sweet white dove. In my ardor I throw down the precarious wooden gate, stalking over to her like a possessed man.
Isolde turns on her heels, startled. There’s an apron around her small waist, and she’s holding a bucket of water.
I can’t control my yearning anymore; I grab the bucket and toss it on the ground, the water spilling. Isolde stares baffled at me as I grab her waist and yank her close, inhaling her scent deeply and sinking a hand in her thick, chocolate hair.
“Mine,” I groan, cupping her head to prevent her from leaning back, and claiming those soft, warm lips. I groan with satisfaction as their sweetness fills my mouth.
She’s stiff in my arms at first, but as soon as I part her lips with my tongue, claiming her mouth in a deep kiss, her body turns to jelly. She moans, her arms going around my neck.
“I’ll be damned,” comes a whisper from behind the gate. It’s the girls from before, I can hear them clearly because of my vampire senses. They’re spying between the fence slabs.
“It’s the young priest and the old Father’s nurse,” they say.
Doesn’t matter who sees us anymore, because I’m taking Isolde out of here. I break our kiss, taking her face in my hands and looking deeply into her eyes.
“Isolde, I need you to know—Soraya and me, that wasn’t real,” I say eagerly, not caring that the girls can hear, too. What matters is that Isolde knows the truth. “The whole relationship story, it was an arrangement from the beginning. She doesn’t mean jack to me, but you—” I press my lips on hers, talking between kisses. “You set my heart on fire, my white dove. I’ll take you away from here and have you all to myself, even if it means living in hiding for the rest of our lives.”
“The rest of our lives is a long time for a vampire and an immortal human that took a serpent’s blood,” she whispers, staring at me with wet eyes full of emotion. But then she shakes her head, getting a grip. “Besides, without the serpent blood I will return to my human age, and I’ll eventually die. In the end, you’ll be alone in this world, forever hunted, forever doomed.”
“I don’t care. What I feel inside—” I hit my chest. “Is worth any sacrifice. I will live out this emotion, Isolde, no matter what it’ll cost me. Besides.” I pull her close again, my eyes boring into hers, full of fire. “I can turn you into a vampire. That means you’ll never see the sunlight again, and you’ll have to stay away from all things silver, but I’ll make sure your sacrifice is worth it, Isolde. I’ll do whatever you ask of me, I’ll be your servant, I’ll put the world at your feet.”
She smiles, taking my jaw between her hands. “Tristan, my love,” she whispers, offering me her lips. I come down on her mouth, kissing her desperately, and she loses herself. I press her soft breasts against my chest, and she grinds herself harder against my body, her hands knotting in my hair.
“Jesus, they’re gonna fuck right here,” one of the girls mutters behind the fence. I can hear the sound of her licking her lips, her eyes alight with anticipation. She wants to watch.
“Wait.” Isolde breaks the kiss, breathing hard against my mouth. She tries to take a step back, but I can’t let her go.
“There’s something you need to know, something important,” she says while I plant thirsty pecks on her lips. I can’t stop, I’m in a craze. I missed her so fucking much. Hell, is this what Lord Dracula was going through with Lady Ruxandra? Wasn’t it hard to even fucking breathe when she wasn’t with him?
Isolde pushes me harder, trying to talk.
“Why
deny me,” I plead, mindlessly leaning after her, my lips begging for her kisses. “You know we both want it, right here, right now. Everything else can wait.” I don’t even care about the spectators, let them watch the young Father plunge his cock inside the woman he yearns for. I look the truth full in the face—I’m madly in love, I’m a fucking maniac.
She glances fearfully at the house. “The Old Priest, the one cursed with ugliness.”
Her words are only whispers, but they’re enough to make me freeze. Vampires are rarely confused, we make connections in our heads very quickly.
“That Old Priest? Here?”
She nods, wringing her hands.
“He is the old Father who served at the church in this village until he was supposedly too old to do it. He told me he kept his face hidden from you all this time, because he didn’t want you to recognize him, but when he heard my name, he couldn’t control himself.” She bites her lower lip like a child feeling guilty. “I didn’t give him my married name. I introduced myself as Isolde Jochs.”
Things go fast in my mind. “Which connected you to Juliet.”
“He actually expected this to happen. He says I was part of some great plan.”
“Let’s go find out more about that plan.” I take Isolde’s hand and start towards the house, determined to get the truth out of the old creep. It’s hard to keep my desire for Isolde in check, but this is huge.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for him after Gruia and the witch Victoria died,” I tell her. “So the bastard was hiding in this God forsaken village all this time.”
“Wait, Tristan.” She stops me on the porch, taking my face in her hands. “Things aren’t so simple. He’s not the same man you know. He’s...younger.”
“Younger?”
She tells me a short story about the Old Priest sneaking inside the Northern Monastery of the Black Monks, and provoking Abbot Lucian to spew his Black Curse at him. Turned out he won the gamble, and the curse gave him the ability to change his face.
“He says he has Father Ruben, and if I want see him alive again, I have to do what the he says.”
I grab her shoulders. “He threatened you?”
“Not directly, but Father Ruben is important to me, Tristan. I can’t leave this place without him.”
I turn to the house and walk in, shielding her behind me.
I’m determined to get the truth out of the Old Priest, and then kill him. He should be brought to Lord Dracula’s justice, but he messed with Isolde. That means he’s mine to deal with, and it won’t be pretty. I won’t tolerate anybody hurting her, in any way. My sweet white dove has taken enough evil, and I won’t let another drop of it touch her.
But the room where the Old Priest should be is empty.
“I left him right in that chair, over there,” Isolde says, pointing to a chair by the window. She sidesteps me and walks into the room, turning in circles, trying to make sense of this. She’s baffled.
“Where could he have gone?” She inspects the window, but I already know he didn’t get out through there. He went out through the back of the house and went deep into the woods, faster than an old man ever could. He must have done it in his younger form.
All I need is a glance and a few whiffs to reconstruct what happened in this room in the last twelve hours. I already know he sent Isolde for milk, then he kept her talking. In his young form he didn’t need her assistance as a nurse, of course, but then he sent her for water. He must have sensed me coming, caught my scent, so he needed to get her out of the way so he could escape. But how come I didn’t catch his scent all this time? Can he mask it?
I narrow my eyes as a thousand calculations go through my head. If he can turn into a younger version of himself, then maybe he can turn into other people as well. That way he would smell like someone else, and I wouldn’t catch his scent. Secondly, he told Isolde he would use her in his plan. But then he ran away. All my senses sharpen as I understand what’s happening.
I grab Isolde’s hand.
“Come. We’re getting out of here.”
“But the Old Priest? Father Ruben?”
“The Old Priest revealed his identity to you, then sent you outside when he caught my scent, knowing we’d meet and you’d tell me. Then he ran away. I’m sure he wants to be followed, and I’m sure that would lead us into a trap. But I have other plans for us.”
“Tristan, I can’t risk him hurting Father Ruben.”
“It won’t help Father Ruben if we let the Old Priest win this game. Besides, I know a way to win your freedom, Isolde. I know how to get you away from the serpents once and for all. You’ll never have to lay eyes on Mark’s despicable face again in your life.”
I pull her out of the house and out the gate, passing right by the spying girls. It happens so fast that the girls don’t get the chance to conceal themselves properly. They stare at us with open mouths as Isolde and I rush by. The old ladies even demand a, “What in God’s name are you doing, Father?”, to which one of the fascinated girls responds dreamily, “He’s eloping with the woman he’s forbidden to love.” Once during confession she did tell me she was hiding romance novels in her attic, so I guess that explains her poetic streak.
Isolde’s small hand clenches inside my fist as I lead her down the earth path toward the woods. We’ll go deep into the pine forest, up the mountain, and into the caves.
“Tristan, everybody’s staring,” she whispers, trying to keep up with me.
“Doesn’t matter anymore. I’m done hiding our—” I want to say ‘love,’ but I’m not sure she feels the same. I don’t want to scare her with my intensity, with my obsession for her. “Our affair. Let Mark come and claim you. I’ll turn him into a pile of festering meat.”
I glimpse goose bumps above Isolde’s wrist, up her forearm to the sleeve of her gown. It’s early summer and the air is warm, so it can’t be because of the chill. It must be because of what I said, which I guess appalled her.
Villagers come out of their houses, stopping at their gates with hands on their hips, trying to make sense of the scene—the priest hand in hand with the Old Father’s nurse, rushing down the main road like eloping lovers.
The more we approach the edge of the village and the dark forest, the faster I become, and Isolde struggles to keep up. As soon as we’re in the woods, hidden from human eyes, I scoop her up and run with her at vampire speed.
Isolde
TRISTAN PUTS ME DOWN at the entrance to a cave. I’m dizzy as hell, needing Tristan’s supporting arms to balance me on my feet.
“What in the world happened,” I manage, but then I have to pause because every time my voice vibrates I go nauseous. “The forests went around me in a blur.” I stop a very ungraceful belch in my mouth. My hair and my clothes are all messed up, my cheeks cool and tender from the friction with the air. It feels like I’ve just been spit out of a centrifuge.
“I had to be extra fast in order to save time,” Tristan says. “I was hoping you’d enjoy the ride, but maybe it was too much in the end.” God, his smile is beautiful. I stare at him like an idiot, he must think the ride fried my brain or something.
“Here, have a drink.” He helps me over to a small spring by the cave, like a thread of a waterfall flowing into a trough of rock shaped by Mother Nature. It’s beautiful and peaceful here, with crickets in the grass, crisp mountain air, and the breeze of freedom sending a pleasant rustle through the pines.
Tristan helps me sit in the grass, since my brain spins inside my skull every time I make a move.
“It was a little too fast, I need to rest for a bit.”
“All right.” He sits by my side, his scent of frost and infinity infiltrating my senses. Remembering what happened back in the village, I still can’t believe it—this beautiful vampire prince making a love declaration that drained the blood from my head. Jesus Christ, what did I do to deserve such bliss—he’s truly as in love with me as I am with him. If my suffering was the price for this, then I
gladly accept it, I’m even grateful for it.
I lie down on the grass, wanting to enjoy this moment with him. I look up at the starlit sky with the big full moon that casts a mysterious light over the landscape. My God, it’s so easy to enjoy the wild when you feel so secure, so protected. Even though we’re in deep trouble with serpents in the surrounding villages, and not really having a place to actually escape to, I feel safe. Tristan is with me.
My eyes move from the sky to my beautiful vampire prince, who’s propped himself on his elbow by my side, drinking me in. He traces my cheek with his other hand, his silky touch stirring yearning in my core.
“Tristan,” I whisper. I want to cry out that I’m in love with him, that I’m probably even more obsessed with him than he is with me, but before I do, there’s something else I have to get off my chest. I take his fingers in mine, resting our united hands against my face.
“When I thought that you preferred Soraya over me,” I say quietly, “I wanted to punish you, badly. And even though I can’t begin to describe the relief I feel that it was all a hoax, I still—” No, this is too embarrassing. I try to look away, but Tristan takes my chin between his fingers, guiding my face back to him. His face is close to mine, his nostrils flared.
“Tell me,” he encourages softly. “There’s nothing I will judge, I swear, and there’s nothing I can’t take—except if you want to dump me.” His face becomes fierce, those electric blue eyes searing. “I’ll never let you go; in that respect, I’m worse than Mark. My love isn’t the detached, selfless love that everyone professes is the best. It’s the possessive need of a devil.”
“And I wouldn’t change that for the world,” I whisper, trying to control my arousal. My body vibrates at his words. “But you hurt me deeply, Tristan. You gave me a safe haven that I desperately needed, then you pulled the rug out from under my feet. I felt like an abandoned child taken in, fed, and loved, and then thrown back into the street. I’m afraid I’m not able to get over it just like that.”
