SV02-06. Slave to a Vampire

by Katrina Kahler

  Tears filled her eyes and she beat against Tula’s chest over and over until her strength left her and she collapsed against him. “Please,” she begged, “please, I have to find him.”

  Tula held her tightly and Catherine stopped fighting, to break free of his arms. “I know, Catherine, but you will get yourself killed,” he told her sternly. “I watched one daughter die before my eyes and I will not watch another girl do the same if I can help it,” he growled.

  Catherine forgot about the family Tula had once been a part of, and when she glanced up through her tear filled eyes, saw the face of a man who knew loss, a father who could not stop his family from dying. She could sense his love for his lost family and a terrible sense of guilt. Slowly she nodded.

  “I’m sorry, Tula, I just…I keep thinking of what that bastard might be doing to him and I can’t…I can’t do anything to stop it.”

  “Not yet,” he said, “but we will go after them, I swear it to you, in due time.”

  “I will not wait forever, Tula,” she warned, wiping her face on her sleeve. “I will not.”

  “Kendi is getting ready to go with several others to try and find where they were taken,” he told her. “Once they have something, one will report back while the others see if they can find a trail. I swear to you, the moment we know which way to go, we will go after them.”

  She believed him and wondered how many more days and nights she would have to pace around this old monastery before they were able to move again. Bastian could be tortured during all that time. He could be killed, but she knew Tula was right. Running after them blindly would only get her killed.

  “Why don’t you head inside and speak with your brother?” Tula suggested.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked quickly, knowing Liam was still uncertain about having so many vampires around, though they at least had not tried to kill him.

  “Nothing, but perhaps he can help calm your mind.”

  Catherine glanced once more around the surrounding forest and swamplands. The muggy air clung to her skin and she found herself homesick for the chilly nights and wolves howling across the moors. A touch of home would calm her and distract her from thoughts of escape, despite Tula’s words of assurance.

  Mary, awakened by the commotion outside, smiled at her as she passed and asked if she wanted her to join them. “No, you rest,” Catherine told her. “I’m not certain how long we’ll be able to stay here.”

  Mary settled back against the stone wall and her eyes closed. “Liam said the same thing,” she whispered before exhaustion overtook her again.

  As Catherine descended farther beneath the main level of the monastery, the colder the air grew. If she breathed, she would have been able to see her breath which had her wondering why Liam chose to stay where it was so cold, though compared to the muggy air up top, down here would remind him of home. There were many rooms, but Liam was in the largest one in the very center, glaring down at yellowed maps of the terrain. The writing on them was in Spanish and Catherine made a note to ask Bastian one day, how he’d come to own them.

  “According to Tula,” Liam said without glancing up, “we’re at the southernmost tip, right here.” He pointed to a place on the map and frowned. “The closest major colony is all the way up on the eastern coast. St. Augustine. Never even heard of it.”

  “It’s a fort I think,” she told him. “If you and Mary went, you would be able to book passage home. I could have someone escort you there.”

  Liam shot her a look. “I’m not leaving you. You’re wasting your time trying to persuade me.”

  She shrugged. “Can you blame me for trying?”

  “No I suppose not,” he said, and sighed as she shifted the maps around. “I’m just worried about you is all. What happens if I leave?”

  If she had been normal, she would not have heard the words at all, but since she was not normal, she heard them clearly, along with the intense fear that he tried to hide. Catherine reached out and covered his hand with hers. “I’ll be fine, Liam. I’m not going to get myself killed.”

  He took her hand and held it tightly. “I am not worried about that. Well I am,” he said quickly, when she laughed sharply. “But what I’m most worried about is what you might turn into.”

  Her blood turned cold and she pulled her hand back from his. To know her brother worried the same thing, did not make her feel better for her prospects of not turning into a monster. Of turning into another Victoria, mindless and blood thirsty. With Bastian taken though, she was close, so close to that dark abyss, and worried if anything happened to the man she loved, to the last family she had, she would lose the bit of control she held onto.

  You’re stronger than me, Catherine, Bastian’s words repeated in her mind.

  She wanted to believe him, but there was no way to know how long she would resist the temptation to let loose the darkness within?

  “I’ll be fine,” she managed to say. “Truly, you don’t need to worry about me.”

  “I’ve known you a long time,” he said with a laugh. “Catherine, you cannot lie to me.”

  “No, no but I can try. Liam, once we know where Bastian and Haddie were taken, I’ll be leaving. I think you should take Mary then and find somewhere safe.”

  He frowned and returned his eyes to the maps. “I like it here,” he muttered. “I’m not going anywhere. Older sister or not, I’m not listening to you.” He lowered his head and did not look at her again.

  Catherine smirked and found an old chair in the corner. She sat down and watched her brother, whispering to the shadows, “You never did, little brother. You never did.”

  ***

  Bastian grunted as he was thrown hard to the ground, smacking his head against it. A cage door clanked shut and a lock slid into place. Groaning, he struggled to pull the hood off his head and squinted around, trying to see where he was.

  “A cage? You put me in a cage?” he snarled and lunged for the metal bars, rattling them as hard as he could while glaring at his captors. They smirked and walked off, leaving him on the outskirts of the firelight. “Where are we? I demand to see your Master! Where is he?”

  “Shut it, you,” one of the other vampires yelled, not even bothering to turn around.

  Bastian growled, but ceased his shaking for the moment. He took a second to take in his surroundings and tried to make out the rest of the encampment. It was large and filled with vampires. The glow of their red eyes caught the fires dotting the clearing in the swampy terrain. He searched for other cages, any sign of Haddie, but she was missing from view. He had been unconscious for most of the walk here, but swore he heard her at some point before they dumped him in the cage.

  “What happens when the sun comes up?” he yelled, staring at the open sky overhead.

  The vampires ignored him and Bastian pushed against the bars, fighting to find a way out of this damn cage. The sunrise wasn’t too far away and he was not going to die in a cage.

  ***

  At the other end of the camp, far out of sight of Bastian’s cage, Haddie was dragged into a tent and thrown to the ground, hands still bound in front of her and a black hood over her head. Steps retreated away from her and she hurried to yank the hood back, glaring around the tent. There was a cot on the far end and a table topped with an oil lamp, but nothing else.

  She pushed herself to her feet, working at the ropes that bound her wrists together. When they dragged her into the camp, she heard Bastian coming too, cursing and snarling to be let loose, but where they had taken him, she did not know. Haddie sidled closer to the tent entrance and peered out the open slit, hissing to find three guards standing just on the other side of it. She could try to take them on, but with her hands bound, it would be an easy fight for them. She was old, but one of them had at least a hundred years on her and that was enough to make the difference between winning the fight and losing it.

  With the ropes slowly loosening, she backed into the tent again and contemplated smashing th
e oil lamp. A diversion would be enough for her to make a run for it. But she wasn’t here to escape, she and Bastian needed to take down the Master.

  “Why would you want to destroy me, Haddie, when together, we can accomplish great things?”

  Haddie slowly raised her head, bones aching from the very cold running through her body, his voice so close to her again. She had planned to return to this camp to kill him and yet here she was at his mercy.

  “If you swear you won’t run, I’ll remove those ropes for you,” he said, and a moment later appeared before her. “Haddie, my beautiful Haddie.”

  She did not move, but the man with long hair braided back severely from his face reached out and gently untied the rope until it fell at her feet. Rubbing her wrists, she did her best to hold his gaze, but the moment his eyes flared red, she bolted for the tent flap. He snapped his fingers and the three guards shoved her right back inside, sending her to her knees again.

  “I thought we’d been over this,” he said on a sigh. “You belong here with me and the sooner you accept it, truly accept it, the sooner you can be a part of what I am creating.”

  “And what are you building this army for, Master?” she spat. “You have yet to state the purpose.”

  He smirked. “You wish me to tell you after what you did? You cost me quite a few soldiers as well as Victoria. I assume Bastian is the one who killed her? Pity, she loved him dearly.”

  “No, she wanted the man to be a monster,” Haddie argued. “She did not love him.”

  “Love is fickle,” he said with a shrug. “Her form of love was a little aggressive I’ll admit, but she had a fire in her I will miss. But at least Bastian’s new lover is still alive. Quite powerful too, by the feel of it. She will do nicely with me.”

  Haddie laughed darkly. “You think she will join you? After what has happened? You took her love from her and she nearly died at the hands of Victoria, or did you not see all of that when we were dragged into your camp?” she challenged, glaring him down.

  His eyes narrowed and the red intensified until it sucked Haddie in and she could not break free. “Leave us,” he growled to the other vampires. Haddie could not turn to see if they’d left. The Master held her too strongly in his gaze, and fear slithered down her spine with a sharp touch of cold seeping into her bones, into her very being. “Why do you make me do this to you, Haddie?”

  She tried to fight his hold, but her muscles refused to listen to her commands and all she could do was stare at him wide eyed. “Don’t,” she gasped out with a hiss. “Please don’t.”

  His lips curled into a snarl as he reached out his hands and rested them on either side of her head, pressing against her temples. Vision blurring, she did her best to shut him out, but it was too late. He was inside of her and there was no stopping him. Her eyes closed tightly as images raced through her mind, memories she never wanted to relive again, and there they were, staring her in the face.

  When she saw her love fall to his knees before the Master, Haddie begged for him to stop, cried for him not to make her see it again. But the Master only laughed and pressed his hands harder against her temples.

  “Every time you defy me, this is your punishment. Watching your love die,” he told her. “And every time you defy me, I will kill him again and again until this is all you see every waking hour of your life.”

  She screamed the moment her love’s head was separated from his body, her own body quaking in rage. “Let me go you bastard,” she snarled, even as tears slid down her cheeks. “Enough!”

  “Tell me everything you know of Bastian and his new woman,” the Master growled. “Tell me!”

  “No! I won’t,” she whispered, barely hanging onto what little resolve remained within her.

  “Fine, if you want to be rough, Haddie, I always enjoy it rough,” he growled and the images shifted in her mind again, but this time it was not her love dying: it was herself being tortured, stakes driven into her body over and over again. Pain engulfed her body and she could not hold back her screams any longer. They tore from her mouth as she watched herself turn to dust in the Master’s hands.

  ***

  “Let her go! Get away from her,” Bastian roared from his cage, banging his whole body against the bars as Haddie’s screams ripped through the camp. “Damn it!”

  “Don’t worry,” one of the vampires leered as he moved to the cage. “Soon enough, it will be your turn with the Master.” He lifted up a heavy canvas and pulled it over the cage, blocking out Bastian’s view of anything else. “Enjoy the day.”

  Bastian growled and rattled the bars again, but exhaustion took over and he stopped before he wore himself out completely. The canvas was heavy enough to block out most of the sun, but he knew it was going to be a long and painful day beneath the heat. With nothing else to do, he sat on the ground and closed his eyes, trying to block out Haddie’s blood curdling screams. They sounded so much like Catherine’s, he had to keep reminding himself she was far away from this place.

  Hands clenched tightly on his legs, Bastian did his best to focus on anything but the screaming, or the cage he was trapped inside. Haddie wanted him to practice using his ability to sense what others were feeling and it seemed he had nothing else to do for the moment. Most of what he sensed from the other vampires was satisfaction, a dark hunger for blood, but beneath that was a ripple of fear. Haddie mentioned many of them were not fully under their own control anymore and Bastian assumed those were the ones he felt in that moment. The more he focused, the more he felt as if a bit of him reached outside of the cage and walked amongst the others, moving around them. Even though his eyes were closed, he could clearly see the camp laid out before him in vivid detail. He reached out and touched one of the vampires, expecting him to turn around in alarm, but nothing happened.

  Bastian frowned and touched him harder, but the man did not flinch.

  “Interesting,” he mused quietly and continued on through the camp.

  As emotions hit him like waves one after the other, he tried his best to sift through them and when he felt an intense string of panic, whipped around towards it. There was a large tent set up across the camp.

  “Haddie.” He stopped mid step. If he went in there and the Master was there, what would happen? He did not even understand what the hell was happening to himself at the moment, or if he was actually solid form or not.

  Bastian wanted to aid her, but she herself told him if he wasn’t ready to face the Master then he would most likely get himself killed. Though her screams echoed on, he forced his feet to take a step back and turned instead towards the darkness around them. Catherine said they were at the monastery. It wasn’t too far from where he and Haddie had been taken, but where he was now could be even farther away than the twenty leagues they were supposed to go. This didn’t look like the actual encampment, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t.

  He closed his eyes and reached out into the darkness, stretching across the night wind and wrapping around trees, searching for any sign of his love. When he grew weak, he closed his eyes tighter and pictured Catherine in his arms, his lips on hers, her hands running down his back. He thought of her words rushing through his mind in a torrent of want and love. He was about to give up when suddenly he sensed her anxiety for him, her fear, and followed it like a hound, searching for his woman through the mass of other vampires. She sat in a chair in the darkened room of the monastery, asleep, but far from peaceful. His heart twisted as he reached out a hand and softly ran it down her cheek.

  “Catherine,” he whispered, wishing more than anything that he was right beside her. He bent down and allowed his lips to caress hers. She moved against him, whispered his name and then her eyes shot open to stare right into his.

  “Bastian,” she said louder, but he could not respond.

  Two rough hands grabbed him and Bastian was dragged back into his body as he was slammed into the side of the cage.

  “That’s enough out of you,” the vampire sna
rled in his face as he smashed Bastian’s head back into the bars again and again until he could not see straight. “Master says if you try anything again, he’ll bring you Haddie’s head.”

  Bastian snarled, but was weakened and all he could do was slide to the bottom of the cage in defeat. He wanted out, but he would not risk Haddie’s life. The vampire had proved helpful and getting her killed was something a monster would do. Something Victoria would do.

  He glared at the canvas thrown back around his cage and settled in for a long day, thinking of Catherine and dreaming of holding her again.

  Chapter 7

  Days passed and with each one, Bastian’s strength and resolve waned. The canvas only blocked the worst of the sun’s rays, but the heat of the day pressed in around him and beat down on his cage hour after hour. His mind drifted as hallucinations of Catherine appeared before him, glimmering in the muggy air. Each time he reached for her in desperation and each time his hand grabbed nothing, but air. Rage and despair filled him, sending him into a howling fit as he attacked the cage door. It never budged.

  Haddie’s screams reached him most nights and as he demanded to see the Master, anything to try and make the sounds stop, he was told it was not yet his time.

  All around him he heard the constant hum of voices and tried to make sense of what was happening next, but his mind could not hold onto the words. Hunger pushed him to the edge and his throat was raw from the intense burning. Blood, he needed it, but they only laughed every time he asked for it. On what was either the fourth or fifth night, with Bastian gently knocking his head back against the bars to take his mind from the pain in his throat, the canvas was pulled off. He watched as the sun set and the cage was unlocked.

  “Get up,” a rough voice snarled, but Bastian refused to move. “I said get up. The Master wishes to see you now.”