Bloodlust Denied

by Phillips, Christina

  It was her duty to destroy him, but she would never destroy Alexius, her love. The one she had never stopped loving through all the centuries, the one whose identity had been concealed from her for reasons she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  The music room door cracked open. Without even turning Alexius’ features twisted with fury, his fangs a fearsome sight but she stared at them, for the first time fascinated instead of repelled.

  Because they were Alexius’.

  “Get the fuck out.” His roar was inhuman. But the elderly manservant stood his ground.

  “There’s someone insisting on seeing you, Your Grace. And the Lady Morana.”

  Still connected to Alexius by their entwined fingers Morana pushed herself upright, heart pounding. Thanatos stumbled into the room and she gasped in horror at his hideous state.

  His long shining locks were dull and tangled, eyes glazed, his pallor tinged with gray. A black impenetrable cloak of despair enfolded her, sinking into the core of her being and she felt his agony as her own.

  Alexius stood, and his grip on her hand tightened as though he expected her to rush from his side to comfort Thanatos.

  “What’s consuming you?” His voice was harsh but she saw the flash of shock he smothered at the foul spiritual stench pulsating from Thanatos.

  She struggled to her feet, fighting the urge to keel over, to succumb to the terrifying sense of isolation freezing her bloodstream and stumbled toward him, arm outstretched.

  Alexius remained immobile, hampering her progress and she let out a shaky breath. The strength she’d recently regained sizzled through her limbs, collided in her heart, fighting against the insidious weakness snaking into her soul.

  Thanatos reached her side and she wrapped her arm around him and rested her forehead against his shoulder.

  “I thought I was too late.” His voice was hoarse. “Just moments before reaching you, I felt your soul die inside me. Vanish, as if your light had never been.”

  “My soul vanished?” That was impossible. She frowned against his shoulder, and instinctively tightened her grip on Alexius’ hand.

  “What are you saying?” Alexius’ rough demand cut through her swirling thoughts. “That you stole Morana’s soul so she had to stay with you?”

  Thanatos looked at Alexius, his eyes no longer glazed, and Morana saw realization dawn. He shot her a probing glance.

  “We weren’t mistaken.”

  Her heart ached. “Yes, we were.”

  Alexius grabbed the front of Thanatos’ shirt with his free hand and hoisted him up. “I asked you a question.”

  In that split second, she guessed Thanatos’ thoughts and grabbed his wrist to prevent him from reaching his violin, for his bow that concealed its true function of staking a bloodsucker to perdition.

  He glared at her, betrayal washing from him, before returning his attention to Alexius.

  “Of course I didn’t steal her soul. Ours souls are one. You damn well nearly killed her by abducting her.”

  Alexius released his grip and Thanatos crashed to the floor. As he got to his feet, he no longer trembled with exhaustion and was she imagining that his hair was regaining its usual lustrous sheen?

  Alexius’ voice was deathly calm. “Then who connected your souls?”

  “Death,” she said, and the full extent of the limitations of their existence slammed through her. “He chained us together so we could never sever our partnership.”

  “Look at us, Morana.” Thanatos sounded bitter. “I’ve not been here five minutes and already we’re both back to full health.”

  Ice trickled along her spine and she glanced at Alexius. He looked mad enough to rip the jugular from Thanatos’ throat.

  “I was already back to full health before you arrived.”

  “You can’t have been. I felt you inside me, dying as I was dying—” Thanatos bit off his words and narrowed his eyes. “Then nothing.” He pressed a hand against his heart. “You’ve gone, Morana.”

  “Too fucking right she’s gone.” Alexius tugged her violently to his side. “She’s staying with me, so if you want to carry on with your hunt-down-the-vampire game, you can do it alone.”

  Thanatos bared his teeth. “So that’s it? You’re going to let our bitterest enemy turn you into a creature of the damned? After everything we’ve been through together?”

  Alexius stepped forward, dragging her with him. “If you don’t get the fuck out of here within the next two seconds, I’ll tear out your fucking heart.”

  “Don’t you understand, vampire?” Thanatos spat the words in Alexius’ face. “If I go, Morana dies.”

  Morana twisted in Alexius’ grasp, flattened her back against his chest and wrapped his arms around her waist. She looked directly into Thanatos’ infuriated eyes.

  “It’s over, Thanatos.” She curled her fingers around Alexius’ wrists, felt the wound where he’d shared his blood to save her life. When he’d inadvertently healed her fractured soul. “I wanted vengeance against those who had taken my brother from me, but it wasn’t love for him that kept my soul burning in anguish after I died.” Futile rage at how she had been deceived echoed through her blood. “It was because vampires had taken my beloved.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  An odd wrenching sensation deep within her core caused her to gasp. It felt as if an extraneous fragment of her soul sought freedom. Sought its true home.

  “Vampires killed your brother.” Confusion whipped across Thanatos’ features and then he stiffened, his hand once again pressed to his heart as if an unaccustomed pain pierced his core. “You had no beloved, Morana.”

  “Why would Death hide my true memories, Thanatos? What memories of yours did he conceal?” She shivered, and drew comfort in the way Alexius molded her against his body. Despite learning what she truly was, he still wanted her. “I’m no longer a Maiden of Death. Whether I stay here with Alexius or leave, I’m finished with that contract. I’ll never hunt for him again.”

  All these centuries she had performed her duties, thinking Death had granted her a favor by allowing her to seek revenge on those who had destroyed her brother. But all she’d been doing was Death’s dirty work. Seeking out those who eluded his cold touch, those who escaped the laws of nature by virtue of their unnatural creation.

  And all this time Alexius, who she thought dead, had existed in that immortal world.

  “Where’s this contract? I’d like to see it.” Alexius twisted her so she was facing him. “A pact with Death intrigues me.”

  It might intrigue him, but he didn’t look especially benevolent. She glanced at Thanatos. “Do you agree?”

  He glowered. “Why not? The vampire’s already found us. What difference does it make if we spill our blood in front of him?”

  She ignored his jibe and picked up a bowl from one of the small tables. “This will do to catch the blood. Now I need something sharp to slit my wrist.”

  Alexius clasped her arm. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

  “Allow me.” He lowered his head and as she caught sight of his fangs, she instinctively flinched. For too many years she had hunted his kind, despised everything about them. But as he pierced her wrist, a bolt of shocking pleasure seared through her blood. She gasped, caught his gaze, and as he tore his lips from her, she had to forcibly stop herself from whimpering with need.

  He held her wrist over the bowl and she watched, mesmerized, as her crimson blood dripped. Then he raised her arm and slowly licked the wound. Desire blazed from the touch of his tongue on her skin, caused her nipples to tighten and ripples of lust claimed her pussy. She fought the urge to squirm with arousal, but the look in his eyes told her he knew exactly how her body reacted to his vampiric touch.

  He turned to Thanatos, a mocking curl on his lips. “Ready?”

  Thanatos whipped out his bow and sliced his wrist, never breaking eye contact with Alexius.

  And as the contract unfolded in a swirling, crimson fog, she felt n
o sense of diminishing power. Another lie she and Thanatos had lived with for countless centuries.

  In ancient Greek, it detailed their duties, their burdens and their limitations. Nothing they didn’t already know. Impatiently Morana scrolled through the nebulous document until Alexius jerked her hand aside.

  “Release of souls. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?” He fired the question at Thanatos who didn’t bother to respond. “It says here the terms of the contract will be nullified should either of you discover the true fate of your soul mate.” His lip curled in obvious disgust. “I never thought Death would sink to such romanticized shit.”

  Morana cradled her wrist as molten rage scalded her veins. Death had entered this clause, and then tried to make it unbreakable by stealing the memories of her life with Alexius, by hiding the true fate of her brother and the reality of her own mortal demise.

  “What does that even mean?” Thanatos frowned at the clause. “What does that have to do with the meshing of our souls?”

  She gripped Thanatos’ arm and pulled him around.

  “Our souls become whole when we discover the truth about the one we’ve always loved. And a healed soul can’t shelter a splintered fragment from another, Thanatos.” She shook him, trying to make him understand. “It means we’re free from each other. We don’t need to be together in order to survive.”

  Thanatos glanced at Alexius then stared at her and she saw comprehension dawn in his eyes. Comprehension and horror and finally outrage at how they had been deceived.

  She turned to Alexius. His face was an inscrutable mask.

  “May Thanatos spend the night here, Alexius? Just one night.” He wouldn’t stay longer than one night, even if invited. She could see in his eyes how he ached to be gone, not because he no longer loved her but because there was nothing left for him here with her.

  Alexius strode to the door and the manservant who had brought in Thanatos opened it without a word.

  “Jane.” Alexius spoke to the housekeeper who was so much more than a housekeeper. “We have a guest for the night.” He jerked his head at Thanatos to follow Jane up the stairs and with one last glance at her, Thanatos obeyed.

  She watched Alexius as he paused in front of the portrait of the golden-haired woman and slowly joined him. How different she had looked when she had been Alexius’ wife. Had Death given her this body for that very reason?

  “So you have discovered the truth about the one you’ve always loved.” His voice was pure ice and she shivered, wrapping her arms around her waist. He obviously didn’t feel the same about her, was still obsessed with the Grecian perfection of her previous incarnation.

  “Yes.” Her voice was husky with unshed tears. For more than two thousand years, she had unknowingly mourned his loss, yet survived. She wasn’t sure she would survive his ultimate rejection.

  Alexius clung onto his icy façade by sheer willpower alone. He didn’t give a damn what Morana really was. In truth, the fact she had been a fabled Maiden of Death fascinated him, as did the notion he’d escaped destruction by her hand only because he’d refrained from slaking his bloodlust that night in the alley.

  For the first time in forever, he’d met a woman who could share his existence, a woman who didn’t need his vampiric gift or curse to survive endless centuries. A woman whose past he wanted to inhale, in whose future he wanted to be irreplaceable.

  And she, through an indecipherable turn of Fate entwined with the contract forged with Death, had discovered her soul mate still lived in the mortal world.

  But he would never allow her to leave. Immortal or not, his preternatural talents exceeded hers and she would remain with him because why the fuck shouldn’t she?

  He shot her a glance. She was staring at the portrait of Thea and he could see the tears glittering in her eyes.

  He gritted his teeth and glared at the likeness of his beautiful wife. Thea, with her mischievous smile and the captivating way she would dance and clasp her hands around her hair and hold the curls high off her neck. Thea, whom he had loved, still loved, and would always love, but who had been dead these last two thousand years.

  “How did you manage to commission the masters?” She was still staring at the portrait, deliberately avoiding his gaze. He glanced at Thea, then back at Morana. She looked as if her heart was breaking, the way his heart was breaking except he didn’t have a heart.

  The fuck he didn’t.

  “I had an original miniature.” He growled the words, pushing the thought that threatened to implode his world to the back of his mind. He would not utter such insanity. “I commissioned various masters over the centuries to capture her likeness. They could change the color of her gown, but never the style.”

  She made an inarticulate sound of agreement and the thought pounded through his brain.

  He would not allow her to leave. He didn’t want her to leave.

  She couldn’t leave him. How could he face the rest of eternity without her in his life?

  How could he force her to stay when she had suffered as much as he for her cursed immortality?

  The words seared his throat. Tangled on his tongue. Feebly fought the barrier of his teeth.

  “What really happened to Theron?”

  And the words vaporized. He stared at her, wondering if he had misunderstood. “What?”

  She flicked him a brittle glance.

  “I saw the—carnage.” She swallowed and the tip of her tongue dampened her lips. “Until tonight I always believed he’d been brutally mutilated by vampires but now I know that’s a lie. How could they? Theron was a vampire. He killed me.”

  A strange echo whirled inside his skull and for one horrifying moment he lost feeling in his legs and his arms. It was as if his essence had been lifted from his body and left to float in an insubstantial void where reality and madness merged.

  He tried to speak, but his voice had vanished. And then feeling returned and he stumbled inelegantly against the wall, against Thea’s frame, and he remained there, immobile, his gaze fixed on Morana’s uncertain frown.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Her voice was soft. No trace of condemnation. Still he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, as this insane impossibility pounded through his brain.

  She reached out to him, hesitated, and her hand dropped back to her side. “We heard of the attack on your hunting party. How you’d all been slaughtered by the barbarous Spartans.”

  Morana was Thea. He dragged his hypnotized gaze from her and looked at the portrait of his golden-haired wife, then turned back to the black-haired, dark-eyed seductress who had stolen his dead heart and reminded him there was joy to be had in this world.

  “I was mad with grief.” Her voice trembled and he wanted to comfort her but instead he remained slumped against the wall, unable to tear his eyes from her.

  She glanced at him, as if unsure she still had his attention. “I vowed vengeance against those who’d taken you from me, Alexius. And then Theron returned.”

  Finally he heaved himself from the wall as the memories he’d tried so hard to suppress flooded through his mind.

  “They killed all in our party save Theron and me. When I realized the truth…” He stopped, muscles tensed. When he’d realized what had been done to him, what he was, bloodlust had consumed him. He’d decimated the vampire colony where he’d been taken, had witnessed the madness of Theron and thundered after him, knowing he would return to his beloved sister but not wanting Thea to see her brother in such horrific circumstances.

  Never had he thought Theron’s madness would extend to murdering his own kin.

  “I was too late.” Self-loathing engulfed him. “I pulverized his brain across the wall, scattered his entrails across the courtyard. But still you were dead, Morana.”

  This time when her hand tentatively reached for him, he met her halfway, twined his fingers through hers and gently tugged her toward him.

  “Death came to me with a proposition. He knew of my vow to
avenge your death, and as Theron attacked me, I realized what he’d become.” She shivered, and he draped his arm around her shoulders and held her securely against his body.

  Thea. Morana. His beloved.

  “My body was ruined. So he gave me this one, and then tampered with my mind so I forgot who it was I loved, forgot it was you I wanted to avenge. All I could recall was my hatred of vampires because they had taken Theron.”

  “He knew if you remembered me, you’d one day discover I’d survived that night.”

  “All these years I’ve been hunting your kind, Alexius. Destroying them because Death’s so twisted with fury he can’t take them.”

  Heated possessiveness roiled. His arm tightened around her. “If they had dared to touch you, dared to presume they could taste your blood, then they deserved everything you gave them.”

  She looked up at him. Blue eyes or dark, they were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, because they were hers.

  “Will you ever be able to love this body as much as you loved my other?”

  His forehead touched hers and although his heart had died and his soul had been wrenched from him millennia ago, warmth filled his chest, heating the organ that pumped blood through his body and deep inside where no physician could ever discover, a flame burst into existence.

  “I’ve always loved you, Morana. Even when I didn’t recognize this body, I knew, somehow, you were my beloved.”

  She smiled, and it was Morana’s smile yet it was also Thea’s. “I’ll love you forever, Alexius.”

  The lingering remnants of guilt fluttered into ash.

  “For eternity, my love.”

  The End

  About Christina Phillips

  Christina Phillips is an ex-pat Brit who now lives in sunny Western Australia. She has always loved writing, and while her efforts in eighth grade usually involved space ships, time travel and unfortunate endings, as soon as she discovered romance novels a whole new world opened up.

  She writes hot ancient historical romances about tough Roman warriors, sexy Highland warriors and deliciously bad vampires who, no matter how torturous their journey, are always guaranteed their happily-ever-after.