Even in Death

by Eden Wildblood

  “Once a slave, always a slave…” Wynter ground, and she forced herself back to her feet and away from him.

  “Marriage is just another form of slavery, don’t you think?” he teased as she rounded the doorway, and Wynter stopped and simply scowled back at him rather than rise to his bait any longer. He couldn’t just be nice and leave it there. He always had to goad her and remind her who was boss. Well, she’d had enough. And there was her thinking she could pop in to see him and actually walk away having had a nice talk.

  She stormed to the front of the house, where the alpha was stood waiting for her, and she passed him and stepped out into the bright sunshine without a word in greeting. But then, she saw red. She turned and grabbed the vampire soldier by the throat and threw him to the ground, where she straddled him and peered into his bright red eyes.

  “Just think. All those human shop assistants must believe you’re there to protect me. Like I’m some delicate flower who needs someone to watch over her. If only they knew I could snap you and everyone else here like a fucking twig if given half the chance. My husband included,” she hissed, and then let go and was back up off him in a flash.

  Wynter then climbed in the driver’s seat and threw the soldier a pair of sunglasses as he followed her lead. “Put these on. It’s bad enough I’m stuck walking around with someone who looks like something out of a zombie movie, but those eyes simply will not do.”

  Damn, what had come over her? She truly didn’t know, but decided it was time she bit her tongue. He hadn’t done anything to her either, and Wynter knew it was Marcus she’d been trying to get her message across to, which it would thanks to his psychic connection to the soldiers at his command. The job was done, and so she drove them away in complete silence. It was time she made this mansion perfect. Or should it be, her prison that needed to be perfect?

  That sounded more like it.

  ***

  By the end of Marcus’s one-month deadline, Wynter had done everything she had set out to do and more. She had decorated and furnished the huge mansion from top to bottom, and every room had a purpose as well as its chosen style and theme. She was beyond proud of everything she’d accomplished, as well as the personal steps forward she had taken while doing the work.

  Through the hard work and busy days she had processed her grief and had time to think and process those thoughts and feelings. The days weren’t so dark now, and neither were her thoughts.

  She had also found a way of connecting with the alpha and his soldiers in ways she’d never foreseen. Not in a telepathic way, but it was like they were more in tune with her needs and seemed to always be there, ready and waiting, before she even had to ask. The alpha watched over her day and night, and while she still had her odd moments of rage directed towards him, he never backed off. Never seemed to take it personally. It was like he knew she needed to offload and it was nice to have someone around who was there for her without any games or the necessity for her to pay anything back.

  Wynter had also fixed even more between her and Marcella, and while she still remained a little closed off, she couldn’t blame her. The Priestess was in early pregnancy and still had her work to do for Marcus whenever he needed it, plus she also had a husband to care for. Wynter hadn’t failed to notice the regular visits Jack made to the office and how drained he still looked. They were all just doing their jobs, but at the same time she couldn’t help but think how it must be taking its toll on some of them more than others. Jack must need feeding and looking after too, and Wynter was surprised at how quickly she had forgotten what it was like to have to eat or sleep, or to wash and groom yourself. Those little efforts were what helped fill the day, but now she had needed to find other things to busy herself with, and had to admit it was hard now that she had finished her task of beautifying the mansion.

  Wynter was out the front of the huge house one morning, directing the gardener on some ideas she’d had for adding some colour to the façade, when the alpha appeared and beckoned for her to follow him. He wasn’t usually the one to be doing any sort of leading, and she couldn’t deny being intrigued. She followed him over to where nothing but grass lay ahead, but she knew better than that. They were standing over the underground storage vaults. The pits. Each of them filled with vampire soldiers like the behemoth standing before her.

  The five Marcus controlled were different to the others though. He had told her himself of how he’d fed them his blood and so commanded them, but how she was to become their queen and watch over the rest of them. And there had to be thousands.

  She could think of nothing worse.

  Wynter remembered the awful day when she had tried to escape Marcus at his derelict warehouse with terrifying ease. Her last day as a human had been spent fighting and fearing for her life, which she had then given up in order to save Jakob. But before all of that, she had stepped out into a stairway lined with vampire soldiers. They had been icy cold against her skin and had then grabbed at her, desperate for a taste of her blood, and she could remember that horror like it was only yesterday. And then, of course, there was the assault on Brodie’s island. They had been ruthless in laying waste to the place, and of course had been the only reason Marcus had won the fight against two Jinn and a seasoned fighter and assassin. In a fair fight, they would’ve taken him down with ease, but thanks to his seemingly never-ending supply of pasty-skinned and red-eyed soldiers, Marcus had thwarted them.

  So the last thing she wanted was to come face-to-face with them again.

  The alpha had to know this, but still he drew her forwards. When they reached the first cover he lifted it and peered down into the depths, his lips curled back in what she presumed was a smile.

  A second later he was gone. He’d jumped down into the hole and she heard him hit the ground below with a loud thud.

  Wynter inched closer to the dark hole and she let out a cry when she looked inside and found hundreds of pairs of red eyes looking up at her. Everything inside of her was screaming for her to run away, but she instinctively knew she had to do this. She had to follow him inside, no matter what horror awaited her in the depths below.

  She transformed into white mist and billowed inside, and hit the ground in complete silence before returning to her human form. For a few seconds, all she could do was stare at the naked men and women before her, and they simply stared back. They watched her just as she was watching them, and Wynter knew she wasn’t hiding her fear well at all. She expected for them to pounce and readied herself to transform and rush away, but instead, they began to fall to their knees before her. Each of the soldiers put their heads down and their hands up, and Wynter didn’t need any direction to know what they wanted of her.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and reached for the closest pair of hands. The man before her was pale and cold as she expected, but as soon as she made contact, something changed within her. Wynter wasn’t repulsed or fearful like before. Instead she felt herself flood with something else—devotion. The man was connecting with her on some sort of psychic level, and he was sharing his emotions with her. She could sense he was hungry, but that wasn’t what was driving him. No, he was relieved to have her there. Comforted by having a mistress again, and that seemed more important to him than anything else.

  The soldiers truly were unlike any other vampires Wynter had met since starting work for Marcus. They were primitive and almost childlike, and she could see now why they were the ultimate force to have at anyone’s back. They had no ulterior motives and played no games. All they thought about was delivering true and proud subservience. And loyalty. It didn’t occur to them to be disloyal and Wynter was quickly in awe.

  She moved from one to the other, being sure to press her hands against every single one of theirs, and by the time she had been to each of the thousand or so vampires in this particular horde, she finally had some kind of understanding for who they were and why they had been created. These vampires didn’t have lives to lead or loves to hold. The
y had once been men and women, just like she had, and yet they had evidently been given a choice. The hordes weren’t simply vampires who had been left to go hungry or had suffered a curse of some kind. They had been turned this way because the magic behind their immortality had deemed it so. The soldiers had been bred and cultivated for one purpose—to fight for the vampire world should an uprising occur.

  She suddenly understood how they were merely humans who had chosen this over death, and she wanted to help them. To give them the afterlife each of them deserved. And yet, they didn’t want to be freed or to be given any other purpose. They only wanted to be taken care of. The soldiers in this horde had adored their previous mistress and had seen Camilla like a mother. They had missed her, and Wynter knew she was the right person to take over from her. Marcus could never show these soulless vampires that kind of love. He could barely love her, and so, as she stood beneath the opening and readied herself to go, she made them a promise.

  “I will be your queen,” Wynter called, and she sensed their approval in return. She didn’t need to say another word, but instead felt their bond begin to form in her mind. They wanted her. This was what the alpha had been trying to convey to her for weeks but she’d just thought he was trying to get closer to her himself, when actually he was more like their spokesman. He had been trying to make her see, and now her eyes were wide open so at last she felt ready.

  She transformed again and spirited herself up and away from the first horde, and was followed by the enormous thud of the alpha landing on the ground behind her.

  “Wynter is queen,” he stammered after covering the opening again. She nodded to him and smiled.

  “Yes. It appears I am,” she answered, and then stepped closer to him. Wynter didn’t know why, but she then climbed up onto her tiptoes and placed a gentle kiss against his cold cheek. “And you’re learning to speak more. Why?”

  He didn’t answer, but she saw his gaze move from her to the house and back again, and got the idea. Marcus had everything to do with the changes in them. He wanted his chosen few to be the ultimate soldiers. Not just the alpha, but the others too.

  Her husband probably also wanted his to be better than her followers, and Wynter shook her head as she stepped away again. If she was right then it meant he was doing so for one of two reasons. Either he simply wanted to have soldiers that were superior to her hordes because he could then continue to have one up on her, or because he knew that should she command the soldiers effectively they could end up more powerful than he could ever have anticipated.

  Wynter wondered if she might be able to push them harder and prevail where Camilla had failed, and decided she wanted that more than anything. Another excellent job done by her, and even though she and Marcus were indeed a team now, she would still know she had gone one better than he had ever expected her to.

  And she started by doing the same thing she had just done with each of the remaining pits of vampires beneath their grounds. It took hours, but by the end of it she had connected with the thousands of soldiers now completely at her command. They were hers now, and she decided that while leaving them in the pits and in their sort of stasis wasn’t the most glamorous way for them to live, there ultimately wasn’t any other choice. At least in them, they were safe and contained, and as she wandered back to the house, Wynter thought of all the ways she could bring nourishment to them without the need for human sacrifice. Perhaps a sort of blood bank? Yes, that would make sense.

  She was still deliberating when she reached the front doors of the mansion and found Marcus lazing against the jamb with a smile.

  “My sweet.”

  “Good evening, Marcus. Have you finished your work?” she replied, and then she was suddenly filled with dread when his eyes flashed with something vile. He clearly wasn’t in one of his better moods, and she didn’t need to guess why. He had to be envious of her having connected with the hordes without his say-so. It was the only explanation. No matter his apparent love for her, he still had to rule her. Still seemed to need to control his bride, even in this strange immortal life she had been delivered unto.

  “The plans are in motion for my new empire, but I will have to continue working on them during the implementation stages. I simply wanted to come and see you. To see what you’d done with the house,” he answered, but Wynter wasn’t falling for his nice-guy routine. Something was definitely off.

  “And?”

  “I don’t like it,” he told her, his smile fading. “So I’d prefer it if you’d start again. The gala I’d planned is also to be postponed indefinitely…”

  “I couldn’t care less about your gala. And, I do like it, so no I won’t be starting the decorating again,” she tried, and rather than respond, her husband simply stepped aside and showed her the carnage that lay behind him. He had laid waste to everything she could see. The wallpaper had been ripped from the walls and her carefully selected furniture was now in shards scattered across the marble floors. Marcus had done this to spite her. He’d clearly decided to waste her time and effort without a care, and he certainly didn’t seem about to apologise.

  Wynter wanted to scream. She wanted to curse him and hurt him back, but the damn forces inside of her wouldn’t let her move so much as a muscle towards him in hatred. No matter what he’d done, the witch’s heart beating within her was loyal to him and loved him so much she wouldn’t lash out. Even when he’d done something this cruel and vile, and all because he wanted to get one up on her. There had been no reason for him to trash the place, but he had done so anyway, and she didn’t need to see the rest of the house to know he would have done the same from top to bottom.

  She turned and stalked away without a word to Marcus. Without giving him the satisfaction he so desperately seemed to want. She was desperate to know why he had done it. What reason he’d had for ruining all her hard work, but knew the vile vampire would give her nothing but lies and torment. Never the truth. Perhaps she’d been right to think he was jealous that the hordes had welcomed her so adoringly. Or maybe he was simply angry because she’d finished her given task while he still hadn’t completed work on his new empire. Whatever his reasons, Wynter was filled with renewed hatred for him, and so she put as much distance between them as possible.

  She stormed down the driveway, her feet pounding the gravel path, and then after a few more metres she transformed into mist and took flight.

  A warm, dark night had fallen and so scattering into the wind felt like heaven, and she let the gentle caress of it sweep her away. The sensation felt freeing and it dulled her rage, which she urged herself to let go of. It wouldn’t do her any favours to detest him more than usual. It was what he seemed to want, for whatever reason, and so she fought it. Fought herself and her natural urge to fight back.

  Wynter carried on floating away, but then suddenly it was like she’d hit a brick wall. She tumbled downwards and hit the gravel like a mist rolling across the hills, and then took form where she lay. The gates that led to the mansion were right beside her, and she knew exactly why she had come to such an abrupt stop. It was the magic all around the house, and of course the magic within her.

  Even when up on her feet Wynter couldn’t take another step away from the house, and so she instead turned to the left and went for an impromptu walk around the gardens beside the house. As she returned, she found an old oak tree. An ancient and magnificent tree that she quickly scaled and then found the perfect perch in.

  Wynter stayed there for hours, just watching the night’s sky. She stayed there to watch the sun rise the following morning too, and still didn’t budge when she saw half-a-dozen trucks pull up outside the house and more than twenty workmen clambered out of them.

  She cursed them, her husband most of all, and stayed in her spot to seethe and spy on them as they cleared the debris Marcus had left in his violent wake. The first day was spent taking away everything she had meticulously put in, and Wynter didn’t move a muscle the entire time. She remained there
even as night fell once again.

  But she couldn’t stop from wondering why he’d done this. And why he’d been so ruthless in destroying everything she had worked so hard to achieve. Marcus had to know where she was, but at least he was thankfully leaving her alone, rather than keep rubbing what he had done in her face. Wynter guessed that was at least something she could remain thankful for, but she was also glad for not feeling the cold or the damp of being outside for two days straight. The tree wasn’t all that comfortable, but she didn’t have bones or muscles that needed stretching off, plus she didn’t have a tummy that was rumbling and needed tending to. She could simply lie there and be still, and as she bounced between her various forms, Wynter forced all thought away and found herself starting to reflect back on her life. It was cathartic and a much needed exercise, and as she lay there meditating, the world simply carried on around her.

  Days and nights passed in a blur and all the while she remained in her little bubble. She shut it all out and focused inwards. Deeper and deeper she delved, and by the time she had made peace with what she found there, she came back around to discover that not only had more than a fortnight passed, but that the house was alive and bustling with guests.

  The driveway was rapidly filling up with newcomers and Wynter knew it was time she finally headed back inside to find out what was going on. To return to the life she’d chosen to embrace, and back to him.

  She transformed to mist and wafted over to the house, where she could see Bryn standing in the doorway. So, he had survived the fall of Marcus’s empire. One of the chosen few no doubt, and he was ushering people inside like some kind of butler. There was no part of her that wanted to be seen going in the front like a guest, and so she drifted over to the back of the house instead, where she took her human form and this time opted for one of her old corporate outfits. If Bryn was here then that had to mean this meeting had something to do with Marcus’s new plans and so, still technically being a member of his staffing team, she decided to join them for the unveiling.