by Nola Sarina
We’re doing him a goddamn favor, and still, he’ll torture us.
Levi drew a shaky breath to speak. “He challenges you, Master. We delivered your orders for his return home… he will not come. He demands you retrieve him personally.”
Levitiqas’ boots echoed with each step as he closed the distance between himself and Levi. Levi ducked his head further, never wanting to flaunt his superior height over his master, and held his breath.
“And what else?” Levitiqas said with a sneer on his lips.
Levi shook his head. “He said nothing else. He won’t come home. He won’t live this life.”
Thick heartbeats pounded in the air, vibrating the fragile fabric of restraint between Levitiqas and his subordinates, and Levi swallowed hard.
“What are you withholding?” Levitiqas growled.
“Nothing, Master!” Levi silently begged the fates to hear the truth of his words and show Levitiqas his honesty. Please, hear me!
Levitiqas’ sneer twisted into a full snarl and he snagged Levi by the back of the neck and jerked him down to his knees, submissive and beaten.
Levi cringed, but refused to cry out as Levitiqas’ blackened fingernails dug into his flesh, squeezing around his spine, carving through the skin of his bite-scar, his Achilles heel.
“Master!” Festus shouted a protest. “Levi speaks the truth! Nycholas said nothing more!”
“Yet that was not all you learned, was it?” Levitiqas squeezed harder on Levi’s neck, and finally the younger Vesper let a groan of agony escape his lips as the pain shot through his limbs, like needles jabbing into every joint, filling his bones with fire.
Levi couldn’t escape the grip, the torture, or the pain. What the hell was he talking about? He’d disclosed all he learned from Nycholas, yet the torture continued. His lungs seized and he tasted blood, and his vision dimmed with stars along the edges of black.
“Come on, Levitiqas!” Festus dared to address the master by name to spare Levi some measure of anguish. “Are you losing your shit?! Levi’s telling the truth!”
Fingers released and Levi yelped as blood flow returned to his brain, dropping to the ground on his hands and knees. He gasped to catch his breath, the feeling of bruise lingering in every joint of his iron body. He rolled to his side, unable to make a sound and unable to stand, and heard a grunt as Levitiqas grabbed Festus, too, and the beating ensued.
Hours later, on the floor of the lobby, Levi peeked open his eyes and saw Festus on the hard metal beside him. He grunted as he reached out and shoved Festus’ shoulder. His older brother rolled to face him and groaned, clutching his head.
“Thanks for having my back,” Levi croaked, his lungs burning as though he hadn’t drawn a breath for hours.
Festus wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, only smearing the black ooze into a worse mess as it still dripped out of his mouth from his throat. “Couldn’t help it, man. Truth is truth.”
“What did we leave out? We told him everything.”
Festus reached forward, his breath hitching with pain as he did, and poked Levi in the back of the hand.
Levi hissed with the sharp touch and lifted his right hand, inspecting the shattered bones. “Ah, fuck.”
“You shook Nycholas’ hand,” Festus said.
Levi held his breath and re-cracked a few crooked bones, jerking them into their proper places and biting his tongue against the pain. “So? That wasn’t worth disclosing.”
“Would we be broken into pieces right now, if it wasn’t?” Festus pulled himself to a sit and squeezed his shin, checking the bone there, too.
Levi stayed on his back, compressing the bones of his hand into the right shape as they began to knit back together and heal. “What did I miss?”
Festus chuckled. “You missed the handshake. And as Levitiqas learned while he crushed your knuckles into rubble, his handshake smelled like a woman.”
“Like a Maid?”
“No, you moron. Like a woman. A live, human woman, not digested. And you recognize the smell, too.”
Levi lifted his hand with the help of the other and inhaled, stilling with shock. “The same one? The one he supposedly devoured, years ago?”
Festus nodded. “The one Sychar said he watched Nycholas eat.”
A scream pealed from a back cabin in the Pit as Levitiqas exacted penalty upon Sychar for the lie. A string of curses followed the scream, Sychar’s youthful belligerence a futile defense against the master’s brutality, and then he was silenced with the thundering crack of skull on metal.
Levi dropped his head back on the floor of the train. “Fuck.” Sychar was only sixteen when selected for immortality, and the sound of his agony wrenched Levi’s heart in a protective way. Sychar’s wounds were not likely to be mortal, but any torture inflicted based on Levitiqas’ intolerance of compassion pissed Levi off. “Fucking shit.”
“Fuck fucking shit is right,” Festus said. “Now we get to find Nycholas, and his woman.”
Sychar screamed again as Levi recovered from the torture and dragged himself back to his cabin to rest.
When Levitiqas caught up with the traitor and his woman, the torture would be tenfold for all involved. And Levi would have to watch it, despite what his morals would not allow him to watch Festus do to his meals, because Levitiqas was the master and Levi couldn’t refuse him.
Some days, he wondered if he’d trade it all for the chance to die and be done with the hell of living as a serpent slave beneath Levitiqas.
Some days, he wondered if he’d trade it for something more dangerous, something worse.
Worse, but irresistible… as Nycholas dared to do. He dared to do it twice.
But I must not think of it. Ever.
Awakening
Vesper-induced sleep was deep, divine, and… no! I jerked awake and sat straight up, grunting loudly. No! Shit! Memory flooded back to me, of tasting Nycholas’ teeth and slumping beneath his anaesthesia. I glanced around but didn’t see Nycholas anywhere, and panic crashed through my core.
“No, no!” My heart pounded against my ribcage and my fingers tingled with dizziness and the shock of an abrupt awakening. Where was he? How long had I slept? Did I waste a whole night sleeping? How many of Nycholas’ few, precious, remaining hours vanished with my error? I scrambled with the blankets, finding myself again pants-less and tucked neatly beneath the sheets, but they tangled on my sweaty legs and I growled at them.
I growled louder as my frustration built, and I let the sound peak as a scream.
And then my head throbbed at the volume and I dropped it into my hands to catch my breath. Why was I so mortified that I’d slept? Why did I care so much about what he needed from me?
Photographs and impossible reflections flashed into my mind. Nycholas, naked, taking me from behind, his fingers digging into the heavy flesh of my hips. A cut on my cheek, a master’s eyes boring into mine with hatred… I shook my head violently. What the hell?
Nycholas burst through the door and dove to my side, cradling my hands between his. “What happened? You screamed.”
I stared at our hands – powder white twined with the faint tan of my own, and I thought I remembered digging my fingertips into the skin of his chest once. “What did you do to me while I was sleeping?” I whispered.
Nycholas shook his head. “I undressed you, and put you to bed.”
I jerked my hands away and scooted back, more memories flashing, muted by his drug. His mouth on my breast. My hand wrapped around his length. My mouth in places I wanted to taste, his body tangled with mine… “Nycholas,” I said, my voice trembling with emotion and fear, “did you fucking rape me while I was out?”
He shook his head more vigorously and held up his palms, his eyed frightened.
I scowled at him, my memories of his body buried inside of mine – in more ways than simply the missionary passion of the previous night – blazing forth through my brain. “Did I bust you in your fucking lie, you monster?!�
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Nycholas grabbed my wrists and I grunted at his forcefulness.
“Yes, I lied, Calli, I lied, but not about what you think. I wouldn’t take you without permission!”
I tugged once but he wouldn’t let me go. “You lied to me!”
“To protect you!”
I jerked once more, and again, he refused to release me, and my fingers burned as the blood vessels in my wrists popped. “How could you?! After how I loved you, after all I endured because of you for four fucking years after you left me!”
Nycholas sucked in a breath and so did I.
What did I just say?
What?!
I stopped fighting him. The taste of his hypnotic potion, his venom, or that venom mixed with his blood, lingered on my tongue like the morning after alcohol.
Nycholas released my wrists and his expression melted into the deepest sorrow I’d ever seen as he stared at the purple lines of his fingers along my skin. He sank down from his knees to sit on the floor and brought my hands to his face, and tears streamed down my cheeks with confusion, sorrow, loss, and love, as Nycholas kissed the fresh bruises he gave me.
I couldn’t grab onto the memories I needed. They were there, somewhere in my brain, but I couldn’t find them. All I’d forgotten… the amnesia of four years ago and the accident I endured… the reason I couldn’t remember the flipping truck or the smashing glass… it hadn’t happened.
I knew what I could remember. Nycholas’ grip on my sides, his lips on my cheeks, my fingers fisted in his hair while he buried his inside me… I knew him in stolen bedrooms, in stolen showers, even in stolen cars and outside beneath the starlight… so many times, so many memories and months wiped away by his poison…
I reached up and stroked the scar on my cheek where I was told remnants of a windshield had cut me.
“It wasn’t glass,” I said, and my voice was gruffer than usual, deadened and stunned.
Nycholas shook his head and buried his face in my bare lap, breathing deeply of my scent. I let my hands fall to his hair as I held him, my lover, the man I knew I loved but couldn’t remember for so long.
“It was my fault.” Nycholas gasped. The pain in his voice sent new tears flowing from my eyes, and I let my lids flutter closed so I didn’t have to see the blur of the world through water. The blur in my mind was confusing enough. “I loved you, Calli,” he breathed. “I loved you so. You were so warm, and so safe, and I just wanted you to stay safe.”
A flickering of a memory came back into my mind and I twitched. All those nights of passion, from behind or with him on top, my fingers digging madly at the skin of his shoulders in a fit of orgasm… in all of the memories, I had no tattoos on my arms.
“Why did you put needles into your skin to color it?” he had asked me.
He hadn’t been wondering why a human being would do such a thing. He wanted to know why I did, why I didn’t look like the girl he knew, the stupid, eighteen-year-old idiot that fell in love with an immortal and cherished him for a year before a fabricated accident stole her memory…
The color of the gold woven between the flowers of my tattoos was always wrong. Not like his hair. Not like the strength of his golden cords.
“I colored my arms to fill the vacant space... the emptiness. The void I felt without you.”
He kissed my wrists again, and didn’t speak while my entire world shifted and came into clearer focus.
“Tell me why I don’t remember,” I whispered, my throat too choked to manage speech. “Why did you take it away from me? My memories of you… of us?” I found his chin and lifted him up, and he followed my fingertips into the bed where he hovered over me, between my legs again.
I welcomed the feeling. The heavy pressure of Nycholas’ body felt like the home I hadn’t been able to find.
He stroked my hair back from my temples and ran a finger down my cheek, over the scar that ruined my beauty.
“I love you,” he said. “I loved you one thousand, four hundred and sixty two nights ago, the last time I saw you before I found your colorful shop, and I love you still.”
Another flash in my mind: this one of Nycholas, dispensing his poison and mixing it with his blood, and my tongue lapping it eagerly to revel in his smooth hypnosis as he pleasured me with that roughness I craved. His drug was my drug, and I took it often, like ecstasy produced in his body, brewed and made just for me. The high was like none other, and numbed away any pain he delivered as he lost himself in me over and over again for a year.
I took his hand from my hair and laid it on my breast, where he squeezed, and I groaned, and I remembered.
I’d been his lover for over a year.
“My master found out,” Nycholas whispered. “We’re terrible at keeping secrets from him, and I endangered your life because I am stupid, and because I was weak. He tortured the truth from me, and I hated myself for every moment of that betrayal, and when he caught up with me later – with us…”
Black eyes with silver pupils. The master. “Levitiqas,” his name rushed from my mouth like wind, because I’d known it all along.
“He cut you,” Nycholas whispered, placing a tender kiss on my scar. “He cut you with his bare finger. He said he’d tear out your heart, so I took you and ran. I couldn’t watch you die under him as I watched my other… the one I bit. I have a knack for evading things that chase me, and my brothers cared enough about me to let me go a few times.
“But they don’t care so much, now… Levitiqas has wiped all compassion from their minds. He has absolute control over them, and he tortures them in ways I’d never dream of doing to another being. Just as he tortured me before I found you, before I found a reason to run away.”
“So this time…” my voice was still hidden behind my terrified whisper of the truth, “he’s after us both, and your brothers will help him find us.”
Nycholas shook his head. “No. He thinks one of two things: that you are dead, or that I wiped you blank and left you forever. My brothers haven’t asked of you, so I assume he thinks I devoured you. As long as I blank you again and he never discovers our reunion, you’ll live safely, and I’ll die, and you will not endure this again, my sweet Calli. You’ll never face such a cruel hand, such a horrid recollection of what happened between us, the danger I exposed you to… because I will be gone, and I will not be tempted to come back to you and start it all over.”
I shook my head and took Nycholas’ other hand and placed it over my other breast, and when he squeezed, arousal shot through me like heroin, pulling me apart and sticking me back together in depths and ways I never imagined were possible. Nycholas. He made sense, because he was mine before. Mine, still.
“I loved you for a year,” I said. “I’ve missed you for four. All four years, I wondered what was missing, why I couldn’t remember… and it was you, Nycholas. Don’t take it from me again.”
Nycholas laughed, that breathy sound I’d felt along my cheek so many times before I forgot him. “Clearly, you do not remember… that as stupid as I am, I’m twice as stubborn.”
“Can’t you change me to keep me safe? Make me one of your kind…”
He silenced me with a hand over my mouth, and another tear slipped free of my eye. “No. It’s why I’ve fed so hungrily, lately… to quell the temptation to bite you. If I make you a Vesper, I will die anyway, and then he will claim you, Calli. It is far worse than death, to be a slave to a master of hate. Believe me.”
“Claim me?”
“When a man and a woman of our kind unite… the connection is unbreakable until death. We call it a tame, because the creator owns the creation. Death leaves the surviving Vesper seeking comfort and ownership… and Levitiqas would happily make you his, to torture and kill slowly.”
My heart clenched. “Is that what he did to your… creation? All those years ago?”
Nycholas pulled my shirt aside and kissed my breast. The mouth I wanted between my thighs…
“No. He killed her. He de
creed that if we – I, or any of my brothers - broke the rules again, he would claim the next one any one of us made.”
I shivered. I was the next rule he broke. I was the reason he fled… he wiped my memory, saved my life, and couldn’t bring himself to die before having me once more. One night left, after I wasted this one.
I had questions. So many questions. But they would have to wait, because it was far more important to my body and soul that I get naked, now. I wriggled out of my shirt and rolled onto my stomach, and Nycholas’ mouth found my shoulder with caution as I pressed back against him in a stolen bed once more.
He filled my body, healed my soul, and I remembered every moment of his masterful tongue… every time he called my name, every time I screamed his. He moved within me harder this time, as hard as I remembered, as hard as I wanted… and it hurt so damn good. I drank up the exquisite pain and cried at the pleasure, my orgasm ricocheting through my body from head to toe, from past to present, forgotten and recalled all at once. Nycholas grabbed at my back as he quickened his pace, and he released into me with a savage sound of carnal satisfaction, his hands claiming me so tight I thought I might truly break this time, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I was his. Forever his, whether I knew it or not, whether he permitted me to remember him or not. When he withdrew from me I cried again, and then I shouted at him for being careless, and then I slapped him as he’d predicted I would and damned him for thinking to abandon me again.
But he was right: he was more stubborn than stupid. He was more love than bad. And I had absolutely no power over any of it, so I just let him touch me, love me, and fill me again. We twisted, rose, and fell together over and over again, and I hurt from the inside out, my heart burning with an agony deeper than that in my belly.
When the morning broke, I was exhausted and starved, and Nycholas grabbed a loaf of bread from the kitchen and brought it to me in bed because there was no way I could walk after how thoroughly he delighted in me all night long. I thanked him and ate, and drank the water he delivered, too. I watched him fall asleep beside me when the sun peeked through the cracks at the corners of the windows where the blankets he secured couldn’t reach.
