Soul Bound

by Ella M. Lee

  But I’d still killed a sentient creature. One that had been human, sometime long ago.

  One that tortured and raped and ate humans, the tiny voice reminded me.

  Fair enough.

  Ren changed into casual clothes. When he came out of his bedroom, he draped a heavy, gray robe over my shoulders. I gathered it closer.

  “I thought I wouldn’t have your full strength,” I said finally, our first words shared aloud since outside the bar.

  He smirked. “You don’t,” he said, and the words chilled me.

  I’d exerted hardly any effort to kill a vampire with only a fraction of his power.

  Demon, indeed.

  He stood in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. His eyes were clear again.

  “Why do you sometimes leak shadows?” I asked.

  “This form is imperfect, and it isn’t that good at containing my power.”

  “I’m starting to like them,” I said. “I’m starting to like all of you, now that I’m getting to know you.”

  I almost slapped my hand over my mouth to retroactively contain the honest words, but they’d been pulled out of me by the affection and contentment in Ren’s expression.

  “What did you do earlier?” he asked. “When that vampire touched you, you…disappeared in my mind. Well, not exactly. You dimmed. It was like the thread stretched, and you were a million miles away. I could barely feel you. There was something blocking me.”

  I looked down, embarrassed. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just let myself go. Ignore what’s happening. I had to learn to do it, otherwise I probably would’ve killed myself by now. I needed something to help me get through it all.”

  Ren frowned, studying me. “A defense mechanism,” he said tentatively. “I understand. I have those, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I may have to do that again…at Shaw’s. If I do, don’t ping me with questions. It’s distracting. I can usually keep my cool if I turn off, so I need it to work.”

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  I wanted to ask him more. To know what his own defense mechanisms were and, more importantly, why he had them, but he spoke first.

  “Have you ever killed anything before?” There was that genuine, unabashed curiosity again.

  I shook my head, feeling lead settle in my chest, choking me.

  He nodded once, as though he understood the weird tumult of emotion within me, the pride, and pain, and happiness, and guilt. How many things had he killed? Demons? Vampires? Humans? He looked like it was easy for him. He didn’t even seem ruffled right now. Nothing in our connection was giving me even hints of negative emotion from him.

  “What will make you feel better?” he asked.

  I sighed. “Chocolate chip cookies. Can you alchemize those?”

  He drew back, startled, chuckling. “No, but I have a phone, and I can order them from a delivery service.”

  I smiled. “Would you?”

  “If cookies make you smile like that, then yes.”

  “Thank you.” I gave our thread a little brush, to emphasize the point. I was getting better at this, the subtle ways I could convey myself to him, getting better at not scaring him or startling him. Or maybe he was getting used to me.

  He leveled his gaze on me and gave me a serious, intense look. “I don’t know if it matters, but I’m proud of you. Proud of your quick reactions. Proud of your ability to use my power. Proud of your drive to defend yourself.”

  I nodded. “It matters.”

  Chapter 29

  No amount of cajoling could get Ren to try a chocolate chip cookie. He claimed he didn’t like sugary foods, and he swatted my hand away, although he accepted a glass of milk when I offered.

  Our thread was lifesaving for me. Every time I got close to the edge of confused guilt or panic over the fact that I’d killed a vampire, Ren redirected my attention with a sharp tug.

  I’d finally changed out of the scrap of clothing that barely qualified as a dress and settled on the couch in front of the cozy fireplace. The city sparkled outside, and I studied it longingly.

  Ren laid stretched out next to me with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, looking relaxed. Clearly not a being easily fazed by double murder.

  “What’s it like where you’re from?” I asked, recalling that ocean in his painting.

  He opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling. “It is colder and more barren than this realm. There are pockets of fertile life—you would see them as huge jungles, I guess—but a lot of it is frigid, sandy desert and expansive oceans with island chains stretched across vast distances. The weather, the air, the light, the landscape…it’s all harsher than here. It’s much larger than your world, too. Vast beyond your comprehension as a human.”

  I ignored the slight against my kind; Ren didn’t know better. He always said these things frankly and matter-of-factly, almost innocently.

  “Do you like it there?” I asked.

  “It is my home.” He didn’t offer any emotion to go along with that statement.

  “Do you like it here?” I asked.

  “Some of it, yes,” he said. “My realm doesn’t have cities like this one, so I enjoy them.” He glanced at our empty plates and glasses; we’d been depleting the food in his fridge all night. “The food is nice here. Very fresh and flavorful. Different.”

  When we were this close to one another—within touching range—the thread between us was comfortably taut but not yearning.

  Regardless, I reached out and touched his hand. His eyes flicked to me for just a moment before he wrapped his cool fingers around mine.

  “Do you miss home when you’re here?” I asked, stroking his smooth skin gently.

  “No,” he said. “There’s nothing there to miss, really, and I can return whenever I want.”

  “Family? Friends?” I prodded.

  “Family is family. We spend time with one another when we desire it. They are eternal, and as you saw, they can follow me here when they want,” he said. “I don’t have friends.”

  “And no mate,” I said, even though he’d already confirmed it.

  “No.”

  “If you had a mate, would you soul bond with her like this?” I asked, a pang of jealousy streaking through me at the thought that someone else could know Ren like I did.

  He was still studying the ceiling. “Maybe. This is an interesting experience. It makes me wonder if I ever felt anything at all before. Feeling you is so…different.”

  “I know what you mean,” I offered.

  Ren’s emotions and thoughts were close enough to mine that I could interpret and understand them, but there was a tenor to them that was somehow completely foreign, a sense that everything he felt was coming from a different place entirely.

  But I’d been alone for so long that even being close to a demon was filling some emptiness in me, and I wasn’t ashamed of feeling affection for him.

  “And you?” he asked. “Before this, did you have a mate? A family?”

  Despite the seriousness of the question, I laughed. “People my age don’t have mates, usually. I had a boyfriend. It wasn’t really serious.”

  Even though I’d wanted it to be. His name was Devin, and seventeen-year-old me thought I loved him. Now I couldn’t even imagine the light innocence of that relationship—not after being tortured by Franklin for a year, and not after the intimacy of this soul bond.

  “Family?” Ren prodded.

  “I have family, I guess. If you can call a mostly absent dad and a deadbeat mom ‘family.’ I was dying to finish up my senior year and move as far away from her as possible. I just thought that would involve, you know, college. Not whatever this is.”

  Ren’s interested eyes were on me as I talked, making me self-conscious. Here he was, saving a father he didn’t even like, and I couldn’t be bothered to worry about my own flesh and blood. The truth was, they hadn’t crossed my mind much in the last year, and I doubte
d I’d crossed theirs. I thought of freedom frequently, but true freedom—not a return to whatever life I’d previously had.

  “What would you study in college?” Ren asked. “Art?”

  I shook my head. “I like it, but I’m not very good. I’d do something more practical. Something I could make money with. Not all of us can alchemize random garbage into gold.” I poked his shoulder gently.

  “You can do that now, and so much more,” Ren said, a breathy laugh escaping him. “What a beautiful lion you were earlier, feasting on a vampire’s heart.”

  I looked away as heat crept up my neck at the pride and affection in Ren’s low voice.

  “Will you come closer?” he asked quietly. “I want to talk to you.”

  “I’m sitting right next to you,” I said.

  “Closer, please,” he said in his purr, tugging my hand very slightly.

  I sighed, rolling my eyes and flopping down next to him on my stomach. I stretched out, pushing his legs out of the way with mine, and he shifted to make room for me. We were now side-by-side, the lengths of our bodies barely touching.

  “I like what you did tonight,” Ren said. “I’m impressed with you, and I’m glad you’ll be going to Shaw’s estate with my power. But you have to be careful there. You need to blend in. You need to act human. My strength and speed and knowledge can be there to help you, but you can’t go in with the idea that you’re going to burn the place down.

  “Tonight, you faced a young, weak vampire. You did it well, but I don’t want you to get overconfident. At Shaw’s estate, there will be three royals, and others who might be old and dangerous. You cannot take them on yourself. You cannot hurt vampires or appear special if you want to live to complete your task. You must exercise caution. You must school your fear and your rage. You cannot slip up. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, echoing the motion with an affirmative touch of the thread.

  He turned his head to look at me. “It isn’t written in our conditions, but if you want revenge, I will help you with that after the dagger is destroyed. Until then, you must keep focus. You have one job. You will need to pick and choose your battles carefully. You will need to be very smart.”

  I gave him a light shove. “You picked the wrong human if you wanted smart.”

  The corner of his lips quirked into a smile. “I like my human a lot.”

  I swallowed the heat that threatened to flush my skin, but he smiled because I hadn’t quite kept my pleased reaction from our bond.

  I settled closer to him. I liked our bodies touching one another, liked that he was comfortable beside me. I thought of my panic earlier, when I’d been frightened that he was abandoning me. It seemed so silly. If he felt anything like I did right now, abandoning me would kill him.

  What an insane thing this soul bond was, but it was worth it for that bone-crushing power.

  In an almost absent gesture, Ren touched my hair, playing with a few strands of it, twisting them in his fingers. “Your hair is very pretty.” His eyes were shining with admiration.

  I smiled weakly. “So is yours.”

  His amusement pinged down the thread. He let his hand slide down my hair, and it landed heavily on the square of my back. “Tomorrow, I will teach you some basic alchemy. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned into him, sending a hint of agreement down the thread. After that, I sent a glimmer of what I felt while resting next to him: That I didn’t think anything would be more enjoyable than this very moment.

  Chapter 30

  The next morning, Ren told me, apologetically, that we only had two days before he was sending me off to Shaw’s estate.

  He spent those two days telling me more about vampires and demons, teaching me alchemy, buying me foods I liked in an attempt to get me to eat more, and touching our thread reassuringly.

  He showed me a drawing of the Kallatric Dagger. It was described in that blue book he’d had me look at on my first night with him. He’d also seen it before, so he gave me his impressions of it and the feel of it, assuring me that I’d be able to sense its power. He had me touch and hold the blue book frequently, since that was the closest I’d get to understanding the essence of the dagger.

  I impressed Ren with how well I understood vampires, so he focused instead on describing their relationship to his kind of demons. Vampires were afraid of their Baphometic parents, but they were also often as proud as rebellious children now that they had their own world to dominate. The average demon could still crush any vampire under its thumb, but demons appeared infrequently enough in the Mortal Realm that not all vampires knew much about them.

  The royal vampires, however, weren’t really afraid of demons. They knew royal demons couldn’t touch them, and royal vampires tended to surround themselves with enough power and strength that they didn’t consider normal demons a problem. If anything, the royals were on better terms with demons than other vampires, and often offered them trades to get things they wanted.

  Ren had done his homework on Shaw’s estate. The head of this branch of the family was Shaw himself. In the picture Ren showed to me, he was raven-haired, with doughy features and sharp, light eyes. He had the pale, thin skin of older vampires, with his veins showing strongly through. Ren told me he was something of a collector, and liked to surround himself with beauty—art, architecture, women.

  His mate was a vampire female named Cassania, dark-skinned, stern, and beautiful. She didn’t care about Shaw’s dalliances with human women, and she didn’t do much other than tend her gardens and attend parties to drink from unsuspecting humans.

  The final royal on the property was Weston. In his photo, he was bronze-haired, blue-eyed, pale and handsome, with thick brows and an arrogant nose. He was a “cousin” of Shaw and Cassania, not from the same bloodline as them, but he was a friend, and he liked Shaw’s estate and often called it his home.

  “Stay away from him,” Ren said. “Don’t draw his attention.”

  “Why not?” He hadn’t given this same directive about the other two royals, even though all vampires were equally dangerous and deadly.

  “He’s sadistic and unpredictable,” Ren said. “He might as well be a demon, for all he follows vampire rules and societal norms. But he travels frequently. With luck, he won’t be there at all.”

  I merely sighed. I was hoping to avoid vampires altogether while there. I might not even get bitten if I was only on the property for a few days, especially if plenty of other humans lived there. It was possible I could get in and out without being noticed by anyone at all.

  Ren repeated his warnings about using his powers. There was nothing more important than finding the dagger, he reminded me, and our conditional bond—my freedom—hinged on that. If I tipped my hand too soon, I’d be screwed.

  I understood. I needed to keep my eye on the prize.

  I tried alchemy with Ren, but I wasn’t very good at it. Knowledge was harder to dig out of him than innate magical power, it turned out. Although I could touch materials and feel their properties, picking out the formulas for mutating materials was like searching through the New York Public Library without an index. He’d spent a very, very long time studying these things, after all, memorizing god-knew-how-much information.

  If he knew what I wanted, he could “push” the formula to me, but if I searched, it took forever. So instead, he taught me some basic alchemical formulas and spells—mostly for metals and stone and wood and water—and commanded me to memorize them.

  There was one more thing I had needed to practice. I’d gotten surprisingly comfortable with Ren, but I needed to be able to switch myself off. I’d been so good at it with Franklin, at letting myself not care what he did to me. Ren had ruined that, though. The soul bond lit me up, and it was now far too hard to let myself go, especially in his presence.

  But he wouldn’t be close to me when I was on Shaw’s estate.

  “I’ll be nearby,” he promised. “Near enough to get to y
ou quickly once you’ve retrieved the dagger, but not too close. It would be best if I weren’t connected to this task at all.”

  “Yeah, I get it. I’m on my own.”

  We were sitting side-by-side on the couch when I said this, and his frustration pinged down the thread.

  “I’ve given you everything I can,” he said.

  And that was true—I wouldn’t stand a chance at all without his help.

  But I had no idea how much of a chance I stood with it, either.

  When it came time for us to go, Ren had to soothe me into it. I paced the apartment nervously, adrenaline flooding me each time I let myself get close to thinking about being back with vampires.

  Ren felt my fear. He put his arms on my shoulders, and studied me through shadowy, concerned eyes. “Ari?” he asked softly.

  My jaw trembled. “I don’t want to leave,” I whispered, near tears.

  The words were unfair. They would hurt him, but there was no way out of this for me. Even with the soul bond, he had more pressing things to care about than some human girl he’d just met. I still had a job to do for him, and freedom to earn. Whatever we felt for one another was secondary to that.

  A means to an end.

  But just as I was reminding myself of that, berating myself for imagining the demon could care about me in a meaningful way, affection pinged down our thread.

  Ren touched my chin with a single finger, tipping my face up toward his. With deliberate, careful motions, he leaned down and placed a kiss on my lips. My whole body went weak, the touch sending something like an electric shock through me.

  After that first kiss, he offered another, both of them firm and strong. My heart raced, each beat filling it with calm reassurance from Ren’s adoring touch.

  He gave me a supportive, encouraging smile. “You’ll be back. You mean more to me than you think, and I will not abandon you.”

  Chapter 31

  Ren didn’t take me to Shaw’s estate himself. He drove us ten hours south from New York City to a rendezvous he’d set up with a vampire trader. That trader was selecting humans to bring with him to Shaw’s estate, and Ren was going to make sure I was one of them.