She had found a new level of respect for the green-eyed male.
She had also discovered a deep affection for the young female vampire, Lilah. The brunette regularly visited Snow to sit in the wooden chair near the four-poster bed and read to him, keeping vigil at his side whether he was unconscious or raging with bloodlust. Her mate, the sandy-haired elite vampire Javier, often came with her and she knew it was because he feared for his mate and wanted to protect her from Snow if something bad happened.
There were others at the theatre who visited too. A mixed blood male with fair hair and intriguing markings came from time to time, and always apologised. Payne felt responsible for Snow’s current state. He wasn’t alone in that feeling.
The succubus who was bonded to Javier’s younger brother, Andreu, shared Payne’s sense of guilt. She had been the one to kiss Snow, stealing his energy and rendering him unconscious.
“Aurora.” Snow bucked and growled, his tone dark yet pleading.
She frowned at him. She knew not why he said that word so often but it had drawn her to him that night on the stage of the theatre all those weeks ago, and it drew her again each time he spoke it, as though he was calling out to her. He always spoke that word in a voice edged with pain and she ached to do something to ease his suffering.
She ached to bring him back to the world. He had never suffered like this and she didn’t like it. She felt as though he was fading from this world and she could do nothing to stop it from happening. She felt as lost as those who loved him, who spent hours at his side, hoping for him to return to them.
Antoine burst through the mahogany panelled door to her left, his expression revealing his panic as his pale blue eyes sought his older brother. He shoved his long fingers through his wild brown hair and stalked across the room to the bed where it stood against one of the shorter sides of the apartment, opposite the bathroom at her back.
“Snow?” he whispered, fear mixed with hope in his voice.
Snow failed to respond. He lay still on the bed, but not unconscious.
Antoine neatened the black bedclothes, covering his brother’s legs and drawing them over his waist to hide his black boxer shorts and give him some shred of dignity. He heaved a sigh and went to the ebony nightstand beside the bed, retrieving the wad of cotton wool and tearing a piece from it.
He wetted it with something from a glass bottle and then rounded the bed to Snow’s feet. She watched on as he cleaned the dried blood from Snow’s ankles and feet, his actions careful and speaking of the deep affection that he held for his brother.
She felt sorry for him. Sympathy. An emotion well within her grasp. She had felt it for Snow too once and it had changed the course of her life, and she was no longer sure it had been for the better. Perhaps she had thought it a long time ago.
Antoine finished cleaning Snow’s ankles and wearily tossed the soiled cotton wool into the overflowing waste bin near the black nightstand. She hated the colour of Snow’s room. Everything in it was morbid, funerary, and left her feeling it was a tomb for the living dead.
A grave for a man who was waiting to die.
Antoine tunnelled his fingers through his hair again, shoving it out of his face, and sat on the edge of the mattress on Snow’s right. Only he was brave enough to sit so close to him, and she admired him for it and the faith he had in his brother, especially after everything that had happened between them.
Snow’s younger brother sighed again, the sound as weary as his appearance made him look. He was normally a neat and elegant man, dressing in fine tailored shirts, polished Italian leather shoes, and perfectly pressed slacks. Now he wore crumpled black trousers and had fastened only the middle three buttons of his charcoal shirt, the tails of it left to hang outside his trousers. His feet were bare.
“Snow?” Antoine leaned forwards, planted his right hand against the mattress and stroked his brother’s brow with his left hand, clearing the ribbons of white hair from it.
Again the urge came, the strange need to mimic that action he did so often when he visited his brother.
Another urge joined it as she sensed Antoine’s pain and knew his secret fear. He feared that Snow wasn’t strong enough to pull through this time. His brother had been seeking his death for centuries and Antoine was afraid that Snow would take this as his chance to escape the pain of his life and find eternal peace.
The sympathy she felt for Antoine grew stronger, consuming her, and she wanted to reveal herself to him and ease his suffering by reassuring him that his brother would not leave him and he would wake soon.
She would see to it.
The door opened again and Sera entered, blinking sleep from her forest green eyes and struggling to tie her long blonde hair into a knot at the back of her head. She rubbed her eyes and then fastened her dark red silk robe around her waist, covering her black slip.
“Antoine,” she said softly and her mate turned and looked over his shoulder at her, his pale blue eyes flooded with fatigue and pain. She opened her arms to him, crossed the room and wrapped them around his shoulders. He settled his head against her chest and she ran her fingers through his hair. “You need to rest.”
“I cannot… not while…” He turned and buried his face against her, and she tightened her grip on him, holding him close and dipping her head to press a kiss to his hair.
“He will be well,” she whispered and continued to stroke the shorter hair at the back of his head. “Give him time. You need to rest too… this has all been too much for you and I don’t want—”
Sera cut herself off.
She knew what the female vampire wanted to say but couldn’t. She feared that Antoine would follow his brother and lose himself to the bloodlust he fought to keep at bay if he didn’t keep his strength up, both physically and spiritually.
Sera stepped back and took hold of Antoine’s hands. He looked up at her and nodded, and she released him. He rose to his feet and then pressed one knee into the mattress and leaned over Snow. He pressed a kiss to his brother’s forehead.
“Don’t you dare give up.” His voice cracked and tears filled his eyes.
Antoine straightened, turned, and walked swiftly out of the room. Sera stroked Snow’s cheek and sighed.
“You’d better be listening to him, big guy. You know he can’t live without you. None of us can.” She brushed her knuckles along his straight jaw and then turned and followed her mate from the room, closing the door behind her.
Another door closed and she was alone with Snow again. His breathing quickened and she knew what was coming. He had been still for long enough, had regained some of his strength, and was now going to use it in an attempt to break free of his bonds.
It was always the same.
He would go in circles, a pattern she had learned by heart over the past few weeks. He would fight, and then rest, and then fight again, and then take a shorter rest as his frustration mounted, and then he would fight harder than ever, and fail to free himself.
The end result was always the same too. Exhaustion, leading to unconsciousness. Sometimes he was out for days. Other times it was only minutes before he began the cycle again.
Snow turned savage, the change between placid and violent swift and startling. The chains rattled and then groaned under the pressure of his harsh movements on the bed. He tugged at them, powerful body bowing off the mattress and his muscles bunching and tightening as he fought the restraints that kept him flat on his back. Helpless.
The cuffs bit into his ankles and wrists, and his flesh seeped droplets of blood that the thick restraints then smeared across his skin, renewing the stains. He snarled and fought, lashing out with his fists and feet, shaking the whole bed. The metal sliced deeper into his wrists, until rivulets spilled down his bloodied arms and soaked into the black sheets. Crimson tainted the overlong strands of his white hair and stained his shoulders and neck too. His eyes rolled open and then back again, a flash of scarlet irises and thin black vertical slits for pup
ils.
They had been red since the night he had first stirred after the incident on the stage, a sign that his bloodlust still had a strong hold over him.
They were red even when he was unconscious.
His lips parted, revealing enormous fangs.
She pitied him even as she despised him.
Her feelings had never been as muddled as they were now.
He sniffed and suddenly stilled, and a prickle of awareness ran down her spine. He had sensed her. How?
He bellowed in fury and thrashed violently against his restraints, causing the metal post that secured his left ankle to bend slightly. Fresh blood ran over his ankles, coating the steel cuffs. He fought harder and it pained her because she knew that after this time he would fall unconscious.
She should leave.
Her place wasn’t here.
She knew that in her heart, but that same heart had urged her to come to him when she had felt his pain and his distress. Now that she had seen how fiercely the bloodlust gripped him, she couldn’t turn her back on him. She needed to do something to help him.
She could calm him, but if anyone discovered what she had done, she would have damned herself.
She edged closer to him, her heart thumping crazily in her breast, her gaze locked on him and watching for an attack even though she knew he couldn’t break his bonds and reach her. He tried to lunge for her, his blunt claws scratching at the air. His red eyes shot to her, focused and sharp, locked on her like lasers.
Her stomach fluttered but her step didn’t falter.
She swallowed her trembling heart and reached out to him, afraid that he would somehow manage to injure her but strengthened by the knowledge that she might be able to do something to crack the hold his bloodlust had on him and guide him back to his loved ones.
She stopped at his side and dared to lift her cloak so he could see her, hoping it would calm him and he would see she wasn’t a threat to him. She gently lowered her hand, intending to touch his face as the female, Sera, and his brother had.
Snow snapped at her fingers and tried to bite her, his sharp fangs gleaming in the low light from the lamps around the black room.
She changed course and settled her hand on his bare chest instead. His powerful heart thundered hard against her palm. A heavy tribal beat.
It accelerated as she stood over him and then she shifted her eyes to meet his and it began to slow to a more gentle sedate rhythm.
He blinked slowly, long dark lashes shuttering his crimson eyes before lifting again to reveal them to her.
She whispered to him, soft words in a tongue that was probably foreign to him now.
A song to soothe him.
She sung of soaring in a midnight sky, dancing over mountains, and reaching towards the horizon, beyond the snowy valley and the frozen waterfall.
Snow stilled, his expression turning docile, and she bravely moved her hand to his face, stroking his stubbly cheek as she softly sung to him of a prince and his love, his kingdom on earth while hers was in heaven.
Two worlds too far apart.
Two hearts too close to part.
Snow blinked languidly again and then his eyelids drooped and he settled heavily into the bed, his arms lax and hands hanging limply from the cuffs. She focused on his wrists, on the red lines that slashed across them, and willed them to heal.
She brushed her fingertips across his cheek and whispered, “Sleep… dream… remember who you were.”
Voices sounded in the hall and she tore herself away from him, stroking his cool cheek one last time and leaving a streak of beautiful colours on his skin.
She stepped back and spread her wings, her eyes still locked on him.
The vampire slumbered peacefully, and it warmed her heart and gave her hope.
“Take more care of yourself. I will be watching.”
The door behind her opened, throwing golden light across her and Snow, though she cast no shadow upon him.
She was already gone from this world.
She stood at the edge of a white battlement, staring down at the world far below her, distant and indistinct.
It was done.
Now she had to leave him alone or her master would discover that she had sinned again because of Snow.
He would never forgive her this time.
CHAPTER 3
Pain. Blinding. Debilitating. Sickening. Pain.
It rocked every inch of him. Throbbed deep in his marrow. Lived inside him and refused to die, no matter how hard he struggled to contain and obliterate it.
There was peace too though, a strange sense of calm and warmth that felt as though it was trying to subdue the pain and drive it away. There was also a weird notion that he hadn’t been alone.
Snow’s head thumped the hardest, fiery lightning splintering across his skull and causing his eyes to ache. He opened them a sliver but the light pierced them, increasing his agony, and he screwed them shut again. He tried to rub the salt and grit from his eyes and grimaced when steel cuffs bit into his wrists, causing sharp lances to jab across them.
His ankles blazed too.
He managed to crack his eyes open enough that he could see his wrists. Shackled and scarred. Multiple lacerations. Dried and fresh blood.
Snow focused on them and his body, taking mental note of any injuries and how weak he felt, trying to gauge how long he had been chained to his bed. Possibly a few days. His senses came fully back online.
He wasn’t alone.
His gaze slid painfully down to the male sitting in the wooden chair beside him to his right.
Snow spoke but it came out as a gravelly rumble. He cleared his throat, realised it was sore, figured he had been screaming his head off as usual, and tried again.
“How long have you been in the room?” It took a lot of effort to get that many words out. He drew in a deep breath and it wheezed past his throat and rattled in his lungs. Snow changed his previous calculation to over a week without leaving his bed. He didn’t normally feel this refreshed after an extended period lost to his insanity though.
Perhaps he was wrong about how long he had been lost to his bloodlust. He might have screamed more than usual this time.
It would help if he could remember what had triggered his latest round of crazy.
“Not five minutes,” Antoine said, his voice a low steady rumble that spoke of fatigue. His brother looked like hell too, dishevelled and weary, and that made Snow look away.
Guilt gnawed at his heart. He had worried Antoine again. Hurt him.
“I sensed you calming and came to check on you, and found you sleeping soundly so I thought I would stay a while to keep you company.” Antoine raked his fingers through his thick brown hair. It was longer than usual. Definitely more than a week. More than two? “I did not mean to wake you.”
Snow frowned at his brother’s odd words.
“You did not wake me. I wasn’t sleeping… I mean… I was at least conscious.” Snow looked himself over, the pain in his eyes fading as they adjusted to him using them again. Clearly, he had missed something. He didn’t remember sleeping. He remembered the rage, the dark hunger for blood and violence, the insane craving to kill everyone who came near him but being unable to get free and satisfy that desire. He remembered feeling trapped in his body, caged by his bloodlust, unable to break its hold over him. He recalled coming around from bouts of unconsciousness to rage all over again too. He had been doing neither of those things prior to this moment. “I was asleep.”
Antoine nodded, a glimmer of hope and curiosity in his blue eyes, and rose to his feet. “And you are awake now. Very awake.”
Snow understood why he looked curious and what he was implying. His bloodlust had receded. Receded but not gone. Snow could feel it lurking within him. Something had driven it back but it was waiting to seize hold of him again. Something that had made him sleep too. He never slept before coming around from one of his attacks. He was always unconscious or came out of it
while awake.
Antoine took some items from the ebony nightstand to Snow’s right. Cotton wool and antiseptic by the looks of things. His brother doused a wad of the white padding and moved to Snow’s feet, and began cleaning the blood from his ankles.
He looked at his younger brother and frowned, unable to shake the feeling that he hadn’t been alone, and it hadn’t been Antoine’s presence he had felt.
“No one was in here with you?” he said and Antoine shook his head, came up beside him and began cleaning his neck and shoulders. “You did not hear anyone singing?”
“No.” Antoine’s expression darkened, as though the thought of someone being in here with him disturbed him. Had he been that far gone that Antoine had wanted to keep everyone away from him? Someone must have come regardless. He sniffed and smelled Antoine and Sera, and lily of the valley mixed with snow. No one at the theatre smelled that way. “Perhaps you were dreaming?”
Snow hoped his brother was right, but the sense that someone had been here with him plagued him, together with the song. It had been familiar. His brow crinkled as he struggled to remember it, the tune and lyrics drifting towards the surface of his mind only to slip through his grasp and disappear again, teasing him.
He growled. “Someone was singing… I swear it, Brother.”
Antoine moved to sit on the bed beside him and gave him a sympathetic smile. “Do not push yourself. Will you take a little blood?”
Snow forced himself to nod. He wasn’t hungry but it would ease Antoine’s mind and help Snow maintain his current mental state. It would also take his mind off the feelings he couldn’t shake. Maybe Antoine was right and he had been dreaming. He had long ago made it a habit to forget his dreams upon waking, because he never saw anything good in them. His dreams were where the past waited to punish him.
Seeing his brother every night and knowing what he had done to him all those years ago was punishment enough for his sins.
Unleash (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 6) Page 2
