SV02-06. Slave to a Vampire

by Katrina Kahler

  He took her hand with a smile and kissed the back of it. Maybe if he was cordial, she at least would not side with Victoria on this matter. “As well as you, madam. England, I presume?”

  “Quite,” she said and her eyes glowed for a moment. “Victoria tells me you are a French man.”

  “Yes, I was, many years ago but I’m afraid I have not been off this island in nearly one hundred years.”

  “That is a shame. The world is an interesting place and you my dear boy have immortality. What is the point of that if you do not go and see for yourself what it has to offer?” she said and for a moment Bastian wondered why she was with Victoria.

  “You are quite right, but I have a good life here. I wish not to risk it, not now.”

  Haddie nodded. “That is part of why I have come. I was intrigued by this process you have created here. Would you be so kind as to show us around?”

  “I don’t want to see the process,” Ridley muttered under his breath as he tossed a dagger into the air and caught it by the tip on a finger. “I am famished. Where do you keep these donors so that I might quench my thirst, Bastian?”

  “That is not how it works here,” Bastian said and once again told himself to keep his anger at bay. “If you are thirsty then I will invite you all inside for a glass of blood. I’ve had a fresh shipment brought over this afternoon for the wedding.” He made his way to the stable door, but Victoria was suddenly in front of him once again.

  “We are not finished speaking,” she whispered.

  Her eyes flashed red with desperation and when Bastian breathed her in, she reeked of it. Whatever had brought her back to the island didn’t matter anymore. She was here for one thing: him and if she could not get it, then Tula was right. There would be blood spilled on this land and soon. Her eyes were wild as she stared him down and her lips twitched in a grin he’d seen a very long time ago. He needed to alert the other vampires on this island that trouble was coming. Victoria might have said she only brought three companions, but something about the mischief in her eyes said she had more planned.

  “No,” he said slowly. “We will continue our discussion soon, but first I must not forget my manners and attend to my guests. After all, it was supposed to be my wedding day. I would hate for the blood to go to waste.”

  Bastian didn’t want to turn his back on these vampires he did not know, but curled his hands into fists and did it anyway. Tula and Ivette were with Catherine and until he knew what Victoria was really up to, they would stay by her side. He’d felt her terror when Victoria had appeared and wished more than anything he’d been able to whisk her away to safety.

  Nothing on the island would be safe as long as Victoria was there.

  “Your woman, she is quite beautiful,” Ridley said appearing suddenly at Bastian’s side.

  “Yes she is,” he said quietly, trying to gauge who this vampire was. His words were smooth and his lips curled into an easy smile not there before. Bastian realized with sudden clarity how far out of his element he was.

  Bastian was a hundred years old, yes, but he had come to this island and as he told Haddie, had never left. He didn’t know what others of his kind were like or how they acted. He knew what he was capable of, but the only other vampires he’d met were the ones he and Victoria made together. Anton, of course he was familiar with, but his time away from the island had changed him. Bastian sensed the murderous intent in him. He had always hated humans and that had not changed. Haddie and Ridley were unknowns and that was not something Bastian was comfortable with.

  As they neared the main house, his eyes flickered up to his bedroom window. Catherine was up there, he could feel it, and for the first time since he knew he loved that woman, he wished he had prepared her for a day like today.

  He wished he would have turned her.

  Chapter 2

  It had been too long and Catherine couldn’t take it anymore. She needed to know what was happening. Tula and Ivette stood at the door, guarding it with their backs to her as if they expected Victoria to charge through it any second.

  As the realization hit her that it could happen, she gasped and sank to the floor as the room spun around her.

  “Catherine,” Ivette said, appearing at her side in a blink. “Breathe, child, just breathe.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

  Ivette helped her to a chair and brought her a cup of wine. “You have nothing to apologize for. It’s that damn woman. I knew one day she’d return and bring hell with her.”

  “Ivette, calm yourself,” Tula said. “There are only three of them.”

  “Three, that we know of,” she whispered. “You weren’t there in the beginning, Tula. You only saw her as Bastian’s lover, but I knew her when she turned us. When she killed for no reason.”

  Catherine closed her eyes and tried to breathe through her nose to keep herself from fainting. Hearing the stories from Bastian had prepared her she thought for a life with him and his kind, but maybe she’d put too much faith in what she could handle.

  “You have gone pale. Drink a bit more,” Ivette said. “She will not get to you. Bastian won’t let her.”

  “I don’t understand. What is she even doing here?”

  Tula and Ivette exchanged a red eyed glance she didn’t understand and her heart plummeted to the floor. Victoria wanted Bastian back. It was the only explanation, leaving Catherine wondering if Bastian truly did love her. She wasn’t his kind and though he said he loved her, Victoria was his first love after he’d been turned. They had a connection she could never hope to have with him. That morning she’d woken to a perfect world and now she was staring into the face of death itself, waiting for the blade to fall.

  “Distract me, please,” she told Ivette. “Anything. I can’t take not knowing what’s happening.”

  Ivette smiled gently and glanced at Tula. “Distraction, right then, well…Bastian said you enjoyed hearing his stories so perhaps I will tell you one of mine.”

  “I’d like that,” Catherine said. “Is your story like Bastian’s?”

  “Not as long,” she said, “but there is heartbreak in it. That I can assure you.”

  ***

  Liam went with the others, following the overseers tense instructions. Something was wrong. They’d been at the wedding for Catherine and Bastian and then they were walking away from it. Had the wedding even happened? He shook his head trying to clear the blurriness from it and frowned. Where was the dancing, the feasting? Why were they retiring already?

  Blood. He remembered a trail of blood.

  Up ahead someone screamed and the haziness in his head cleared away even more. All around him people started to panic and yell as the events of the night became clear once again. The woman with the severed head, walking down the aisle.

  “Catherine.” His sister. What happened to her?

  He tried to remember. Those people, they’d moved so fast and they’d been growling. Except people didn’t growl like that. Liam froze as he glanced to his left and right at the overseers and others escorting the slaves back to their quarters. Their eyes were glowing red.

  Everything he’d heard about this place was true and all around him the other slaves were realizing it, too. Liam hurried to catch up again with those in front of him as his mind raced with what to do. He’d been planning a way to rebel even after Catherine asked him not to do anything foolish. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his sister, but he didn’t trust the people that ran the place and now he knew why. They’d always left him cold, leery; now he knew why. They were beings of the night, monsters he’d been told about as a child.

  They were vampires and they controlled the island.

  Liam moved through the crowd ahead of him, searching for the few friends he’d made with the other men in his time on the island. “Do you know what’s happening?”

  Tristan and his brother Victor glanced at him with a dazed look on their faces.

  “What do you mean? Th
e wedding was lovely, wasn’t it?” Victor said.

  Liam glanced around to make sure none of the vampires were looking then hauled off and slapped him across the face. “Victor, you must remember what really happened.”

  Victor shook his head then nudged his brother hard until he too blinked his eyes rapidly and stared around. “That woman, she was holding a head! What the hell is happening, Liam?”

  “What’s happening is our chance to escape this damn island and break free.”

  “How are we going to do that? They’re still here and we’re still surrounded,” Tristan said.

  “We’ll come up with something, but we have to do it soon. I’m not going to stay here a moment longer with these monsters.” Liam glared at the one nearest him and wondered how he was going to get them off of the island safely. “I’m not leaving without my sister.”

  “Your sister almost married the leader of them all,” Victor whispered harshly. “Maybe you should leave her; they have her at the main house anyway. We can’t get inside there.”

  “You can’t,” Liam snapped, “but I have to try.”

  The brothers exchanged a look, but Liam ignored them. His sister and he made it through the attack at their village and survived here on this plantation together. If he left the island, she was coming with him.

  ***

  Victoria sipped on her glass of blood from the guest house Bastian had so kindly escorted them to. She had expected to stay in the main house, sleep in the room she had shared with him, but the moment she caught wind of the wedding, all her plans had fallen apart before her. She needed him to leave this island, had hoped he would come willingly with her, but he would not leave this place he’d built, that they had built. The vampire who sent them would not be pleased if they returned empty handed. Victoria had to find a way to draw Bastian away from his precious island and mortal lover.

  She wanted him to feel what it was to hunt, to explore, to scare an entire village of people while feasting on their blood. Bastian had missed out on that. He had become too civilized for the beast that lurked within him. But maybe there was still a way she could draw it out of him for the beast was what her master needed. Not the gentleman. No, he wanted the monster.

  “If you squeeze that glass any harder, you will shatter it,” Haddie said with a sigh, watching Victoria from across the room. “Really darling, what did you expect to find?”

  Victoria relaxed her grip, barely, and turned to the old vampire. “I expected to find him pining away for me, ready to take me back into his arms and come with me when I said it was time to leave.”

  “You mean his bed,” Haddie said. “It was all you would speak of the first time we met, how much you missed your lover. How horrible you felt for running away from him.” The old vampire rose, sipping the blood from her glass as she moved gracefully across the room. “And now you find him with another in his arms, ready to take as a wife. Did he ever ask you to be his wife?”

  “No,” she said, the word a hiss of anger. “He was too busy mourning his friend, the threat I saved us from.”

  “He does not see it that way.”

  “He never did. He was too busy trying to appease our food instead of using it for what it is.”

  Haddie shrugged one elegant shoulder. “Perhaps, or perhaps he has done what so many of our kind have failed to do. This system he has in place is quite efficient. I am curious to see more of it.”

  Victoria drained her glass and smashed it against the far wall. “Too bad there will be no time for that. We are on a schedule. You know the orders I was given.”

  “You are still certain you want to go through with this plan? Even though your love may die protecting his home? His new love? I have seen that look before in a man. He will not simply give up what he has before him, not without a fight.”

  Victoria snarled, turning on the older vampire, but the flare of Haddie’s red eyes had her lowering her hand and stepping back across the room. She covered her fangs quickly with her lips and looked away.

  “Do not forget who saved you, Victoria,” Haddie said calmly even as her eyes continued to flare. “Who brought you to your new master. It would be a shame for me to suddenly regret my decision and that of the vampire you are now under the protection of.”

  “Of course,” Victoria said tightly. “I will not do anything to make you feel as such.”

  “Good,” Haddie said. “I would hate to lose someone with so much potential.” She left the room and drifted upstairs to one of the bedrooms leaving Victoria to fume alone over her injured pride.

  How dare Bastian move on from her to a human. A human? Did he think it could ever compare to what they had together? He spurned the memory of her as if she had not helped him build this plantation and all of its profits. As if she did not help him turn those he still kept by his side. Victoria’s growl erupted from her throat as she slammed her fist into the nearest wall.

  “You could use a hunt,” Anton whispered from behind her. “Come, let us go find someone to drain dry before the sun rises.”

  Victoria pulled her fist from the wall, shaking the dust from it. “I am not hungry.”

  “For the blood or for the kill?”

  She didn’t move. The thought of ripping an innocent’s throat out did sound appealing. Anton moved in behind her, his hands gliding over her shoulders and down her arms.

  “To hear their heartbeat quicken as you near…smell the fear on them, the sharp tang it adds to the blood,” he whispered in her ear and she shivered. “Knowing you’ll drive your fangs into their throat over and over again.”

  His words rushed over her like a sensual wave and she turned to face him, eyes red with excitement. He was not Bastian, he never would be, but that didn’t mean Victoria couldn’t get her uses out of him.

  “A hunt it is then,” she whispered, “for tomorrow there will be a bloodbath.”

  If Bastian would not leave with her willingly, she would do whatever she could to force him from the island, make him see the beast that lurked within her, was the same deep within him. It was either return with him at her side, or drag his bleeding and broken body back to her new master. All she needed to do was find the correct motivation.

  “Anton, there is going to be a change of plans,” she hissed quietly, running her hands through his hair. “After our hunt, meet with the others. I believe I know how to remove our dear friend from the clutches of this place.”

  ***

  Bastian led Victoria and her trio of vampires to their rooms in the guest quarters behind the main house. He was not going to let them stay in the house with Catherine so close. He needed to find a way to warn the others on the island without saying anything in Victoria’s presence. She was plotting something as always, but now that she knew he loved Catherine, he saw how her eyes turned.

  Whatever Victoria’s plans had been, they were bound to be worse now.

  “Sir,” another vampire, Bowen said as he stepped from the shadows. “Word has come back.”

  Bastian followed the vampire inside and they moved to the parlor. “What is it?”

  “She is not here with only three vampires,” Bowen whispered only loud enough for Bastian to hear. “We have found many more, hidden along the coast of the island.”

  Bastian growled, but did not lash out as he wanted. “Do we have any indication of what they plan?”

  “Attacking the plantation, maybe the other island. I do not know, sir.”

  “She did not return simply for me.”

  “It does not appear so, sir. We fear she seeks to destroy the plantation.”

  “Alert the others. I want the overseers around this house the moment the sun rises and the rest of our kind to be prepared for a fight. I will take Tula to the island under the cover of sun tomorrow.”

  Bowen frowned. “What are you going to do?”

  “The plan I put in place long ago in case this ever occurred. Thank you, Bowen.”

  Bastian made for the stairs and ran up t
hem in a blur, his need to hold Catherine driving him to rush through the bedroom door and straight to her side. She didn’t even flinch when he wrapped her in his arms tightly, kissing the top of her head before he stared down at her.

  “Tula, Ivette, you may leave us but stay in the house,” he said, his eyes never leaving Catherine’s. “Let the others know I want an eye kept on Victoria and our other guests at all times. Even after the sun has risen.”

  They bowed their heads and in a blink were gone, the door closed quietly behind them.

  “I am sorry I had to leave you on our wedding night,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed and despite the worry and fear he smelt on her, she smiled. “We are not married yet.”

  He frowned, brow furrowed as he tried to think of a way to finish the ceremony that night. When he made to turn for the door, her arms tightened around him and his eyes flared red when he saw her lip quiver.

  “Please, do not leave me again. Not with her here,” she whispered. “That woman, I thought I knew what she would be like if we were to ever meet, but…I was wrong.”

  “Do not worry, my love,” he said and cupped her face gently in his hands. “I will not let her touch you.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

  Bastian’s frown deepened. “You worry for me?”

  “Of course I do, Bastian. She has come here for you and if you do not give in to her, what do you think she will do to you?” Catherine said. “I only know what you told me, but I saw the look in her eyes. She will either have you or she won’t and I fear if that means killing you than she will do it.”

  A tear slipped from her eye and Bastian’s thumb moved up to wipe it away, licking the wetness from his finger as his red gaze turned even brighter when she watched his movement with rapt attention. She worried for him, cried for him. If Bastian had not known he loved this woman before, he did now without a doubt in his dead, un-beating heart. Did he tell her what he learned of Victoria’s other forces on the island? No, he would keep that to himself for now. She did not need to be frightened for him or herself anymore.