Cathedral Manuscript-WIDE FINAL

by Addison Cain

Which fed me.

  This man, this thing who could tolerate just a touch of dying light, grasped me by the soul.

  Glancing up from the wreckage on the ground, I caught his eyes, daring much in my request. “I’m hungry.”

  He grinned. “Don’t be greedy.”

  Yet still he offered me his wrist.

  It was like drinking ebony. Glassy warm and blacker than pitch.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Telling someone as spoiled and rotten and twisted as I not to be greedy, was, in itself, silly. Even at my age, I was incapable of being anything but. Lips to skin that felt like dry paper, cautious in how I punctured, and feeling the strangest itch upon the parts of my skull that had been put back together, I sank in my fangs.

  Delicately.

  Like a lady sipping port, pinky up.

  Rapture hit me harder than my brains had hit that wall years ago. It took me by the throat, stole my soul from right out of my body, and had me tearing my lips away before more than a few drops of infinite darkness smeared my tongue.

  I could not have been greedy if I’d wanted to! To drink of that man would kill me.

  “Sure you’ve had enough, child?” He made a show of rolling up his sleeve, exposing the veins in his strong forearms and tan skin.

  He stood in the last of the day’s dredge of sun, had entered my pretty prison without effort, had offered me the taste of infinity. Did my father’s blood hold eons like this? How had I survived drinking from this man as a child? “What are you?”

  “I am whatever I want to be.” He cut me a secretive smirk, teasing, playful even. “Old, to be sure.”

  Wiping my lips as if some of that dreadful perfection might still linger there, I spoke plainly. Because there was absolutely no point in prevaricating with this one. “The older they get, the more their minds warp. What’s to make you any different than him should you take his throne?”

  He cocked a brow. “Nothing at all.”

  “I’m less than one hundred but I feel ten thousand.” I felt older than any river he might want to discuss.

  “Yet you act like you’re five.”

  True. I was aware of my faults. More aware by the minute, blockages in my mind easing until the overspill of ugliness behind them left me reeling. “I think I might need another drink.”

  If just a few drops of him had untangled hints of what was hidden in me, a mouthful might give me back what I lost that day my brains hit the floor.

  “By all means.” The same wrist was offered, the greedy girl I was nervous to so much as scratch his skin.

  My lips hovered there, amidst the wreckage of my tantrum, and mental scar tissue snapped apart and made me hate myself more.

  I remembered so many disgusting things I’d done. And considering what I’d recalled before, felt so dirty in my flesh that I wished the fading sun would literally burn it all away. Breathing over his skin, over that wrist filled with truths and punishment, I fell to my knees.

  They were cut apart on shards of glass, the pain welcome and not nearly enough. “I’ve destroyed families. I’ve rewritten histories, done terrible things… because I loved my father and craved his love in return.”

  As if he were some ancient saint and I a supplicant, he put a hand to my head. “Do you not want your mother’s love?”

  No. “My mother is dead. I doubt she had much love for me when I ripped my way out of her body.”

  “What a sad tale…” Said with what felt like real remorse. Ancients couldn’t feel real anything. He pressed his wrist closer to my hovering mouth. Offering another taste.

  And I was too young to know better. “The more of me you undo, the uglier my life will be. You should have just left me alone.” Yet still I sunk my teeth in.

  And unlike that first sip, I drank.

  Remembering rapes, sodomy, prostitution, the ways in which my father had sold me for whatever gain he might. Tears when it hurt, until it didn’t hurt. Until it didn’t feel like anything. Until I was fucked like a robot, or bent over and took it like a cow might take a bull—chewing cud and bored in my field.

  I don’t know why it was the sex that broke through first. Perhaps because under my father’s influence, it bothered me the most. I was a dishtowel, a tissue used and discarded. Nothing more than a thing to wipe fluids on and cast to the floor.

  What search was there for a grandchild in this? This lazy approach of bending my body to every immortal male’s whims.

  Two thrusts had come from Malcom as I’d bent over that table while my father had watched. I’d been physically ill afterward. Two thrusts after my sire had left the room and Malcom, the first ever, asked me if I wanted him to stop.

  And he had. Just like that. No complaints. No violence.

  Instead, he’d tried to comfort me as I cursed his cock and threatened his life.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why the idiot might think he loved me. I was not worth loving. Perhaps age had made him as mad as the man whose black blood trickled like sludge down my throat. This man who had physically pieced my skull back together ages ago, who now mentally ripped through so much damage I’d never be the same.

  Never.

  The scar tissue was still there, I was just aware of it now. And in many cases could see exactly what was hidden within its knots and gnarls.

  And the lies… the untruths planted to make me compliant. Losing those stopped my heart.

  Because I knew the answer the rest of the flock would give, I broke suction from that vein of death, and looked up at the smiling figure before me. “Do you find this all amusing?”

  “When I made your father, I knew he’d do great things. Build empires. Slaughter enemies.” Soft, manicured fingers ran through my hair. “But you might be his greatest accomplishment.”

  It was just the type of lie that fed me more deeply than any blood might. How I craved acceptance. How it had made me tolerate hell for another taste.

  “You won’t be a good king. Not if you created Darius and let him run wild for thousands of years.” It had to be said. “You don’t care.”

  “Can a father not love his son despite his… shortcomings?” The tip of a finger tapped my nose. “Can he not love his granddaughter?”

  I was not falling for it. Not again. “You only saved me because Malcom traded eternal fealty. Otherwise I would have dragged myself to my death, alone, scared, and missing half my brain!”

  “We could debate why I was where I was when your lover found me and fell to his knees. I could spin tales more beautiful than any your father planted in your mind. But to be true, I can’t recall exactly why I walked where I walked that day. There is something else here that draws my thoughts. Something I want but can’t find.”

  Negotiation, politics, and plain demands. This was my safe space. This was comfortable. So I rose from the ground, bloody knees ignored, and asked pointblank what the sire of my father could possibly lack.

  All I received for an answer was a kiss on the cheek. And then he was gone, right as the sun vanished and night broke in.

  For two more days I was kept locked in my rooms, living in a new mind that felt alien and too large. For two days I tidied my mess. Piling up broken, glittering things. Sweeping them with the remains of my ruined wardrobe.

  There was more chaos than clean. But some parts of my tiled floors did sparkle as if freshly polished. The rest were cracked, broken, and in need of replacing. I slept, and I dreamed, and I drank more water from the tap. And as the hours crept on, as the sun rose and set, I found that tap water tasted better than any blood I’d ever known.

  Malcom came on the third night bearing food. I refused his wrist, eating chicken wings off the bone and chugging a local, frothy beer, and found I liked both things.

  Heaven help him, he tried to talk to me, but I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t stubbornness, not at its heart. It was something unnamable. I had almost a century to process and only a handful
of hours in which I’d been able to do it.

  I thought of the Seine. A river I’d only seen in pictures and how Vladislov had tempted me with the idea of it. I thought of Paris, and art, and modern women, and food.

  I thought of what real love might feel like, staring at the male who believed in his heart he felt that emotion for me.

  Puzzling over this concept as I sucked the marrow from the bones. Staring at Malcom, at a man beautiful beyond description and devious as my devil of a father, I thought long and hard over the mechanics of it.

  And wasn’t sure our kind was capable of such a human thing.

  “You have permission to fuck me, if you want to.” That was all I said to him over that dinner of peasant food and beer.

  It earned a sad smile, one from a man who just might know the exact torture of a broken heart. “Not tonight, my love.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Malcom

  The state of her rooms was a reflection of the state of her mind. Piles of shattered things, spots she’d cleared, everything sharp and ready to harm her—her glass cage where my beautiful bird could never sing.

  In all my centuries, I’d never seen a being look so sad. Not even the humans kept by the worst vampire houses. Not even the cattle who’d lost everything only to live out their remaining days drained of the last drop of blood in their veins. Until withered and unwanted, burned where thousands of others just as unwanted as they had been sent to burn.

  Ash that floated over a polluted city, forgotten, mourned… nothing.

  “You’re thinking to yourself right now how anyone could love you.” And I didn’t understand how it was possible, but I loved her even more in that moment. To the point I thought my heart might burst and the soul I’d sold was returned to me.

  She didn’t answer or shrug, just watched me. Waiting for some trick, that little girl in a blue dress all grown up. There was no minute flinch when I took her hand. A first. Rubbing warmth into her fingers, I relished this intimacy. I took things slowly with my virgin.

  That’s what she was now, reborn. Jaded, and aptly named.

  Paying strict attention, I smoothed each of her fingers from base to tip, gently attended the webbing between them, before turning her palm up, to spread that flesh with my thumbs. My flower melted, just a little of that ice she’d been encased in from birth seeping away from simple kindness.

  “You are not what he made you to do, or the traits he coerced you to embrace. I have always seen the real you. I see it now. And someday, you will too.” I pressed a kiss to that palm, and felt a tear fall from my cheek to drip down her wrist. I, the old, tried warrior, wept for this damaged thing that was beyond dear to me.

  And by her sudden, violent retreat, I think it might have frightened her more than any torment her father might bring down upon us should he discover we even shared such a conversation. Hand to her heart, fingers fluttering, lips thin, cheeks white, eyes wide. She gave an inch, even as she took another step away.

  Rising so she’d be forced to see all of me—my stature, my strength, my prowess, and my superiority to other males, I declared, “I do love you. Every single thing about you. I always have.”

  “I’m grotesque.” This she said, looking down at her body as if all she saw was rotting flesh and bloated limbs.

  I flashed to her side, took her fingers again, and kissed the tips. “But there you’re wrong. You’re clean. Brand new. Mine to treasure.”

  Challenging, because she was born royal and would never easily cede, Jade sneered. “How do you know that you don’t just love me because Darius made you? How do you know it’s real? I’ve had my thoughts ripped apart for the last few days, and let me tell you, most of what is trapped in my skull is utter bullshit. It’s no different for anyone else in this place.”

  This was the question I had been pining for. “Because your bastard of a father tried repeatedly to take it away from me. And every single time he failed. I’m far older than you, I know how to maneuver in ways you’re too impatient to grasp. I know my love is real because he forbade me from ever telling you how much I cared. Forbade me to woo you, to be kind to you, to even touch you unless it was to draw your ire.” I pinched a strand of her hair, the way I had for ages. The way that always pissed her off. Only this time, she looked down at my fingers and saw what they were about. “All he could do was forbid. Take small moments from my memory… but they always grew back. They grew back because since I held you in my arms, all I’ve ever thought of was how to love you best.”

  Narrowing her eyes, it looked as if she’d react as she had thousands of times in the past to my touch. Shove me away and hiss that I was beneath her notice.

  But that wounded bird resisted, fighting the urge so hard her eyes closed from the effort. Brow tight, several deep breaths expanded her chest. More of my fingers stroking her hair, pushing her to try.

  She whispered, “Vladislov is far worse than my father. Do you grasp that?”

  “I think you misunderstand him.”

  “I drank from him. I saw what he was.” Eyes opening, she gave me a look. A look that spoke more than the words that followed it. “He stood with me in the sun.”

  Ancients were different than other immortals. God-like, and necessary to keep our numbers in check. To rule hordes of bloodthirsty beasts. And one day both Jade and I would stand amongst them. We too would be changed by time, altered, blood black as death. But we would do it together, whole of mind, and sound of heart. The same soul, in two separate bodies, reunited.

  Fated.

  The reason I never took another wife. No female flesh as spoils of war.

  I had recognized her from the moment she’d been delivered into my arms. And should I die, I would be reborn to find her again. For eternity. Over, and over.

  Because there was no such thing as heaven or hell. This I knew. There was only with or without one’s soulmate.

  But she was too stuck on other issues for me to breach such a weighty subject. “It doesn’t matter what he is. What matters is what we have.” I needed her to understand that the trivialities, the cost to be together, was nothing. I’d destroy entire countries, burn them and all living things in their borders, laughing, if that’s what I had to do so I might claim this female. “Your father envies me for what I achieved in finding you. Vladislov envies just the same. All those doomed to endless life who have not discovered their other half covet this, whether they know it or not. Recognize what is before you and forget the rest. It could be so easy, Jade.”

  So easy to just sweep her into my arms and carry her off to the place I had prepared. Lock her away from all things dangerous, where she would be only mine until she grew stronger. Until she understood and accepted what this was.

  “You’re not listening to me!” A sigh, one heavy with frustration, and she swatted my hand from her hair. “Talk of love, if you want to. Talk of”—she gestured between us before she began to pace—“all of this. But you’re ignoring my point because you know I’m right. That creature will eat us on a whim.”

  Her panic was… unfortunate. I’d hoped these days might have cleared her head. “He and I have an arrangement.”

  “He created my father.” The confession spoken with awe and terror.

  That I had not known, though such knowledge only gave me faith that soon all I had sacrificed and all my darling had suffered would reap us the ultimate reward. So I got to my knees before this woman, and startled her all the more.

  Before she might dart back, I took her hips in my hand. Held her before me as I groveled for her love—for more effort from my lady, even though I know she suffered. “And your father made you. Once a toddler who could cast gates without chanting, so powerful in magic that he fractured her mind so she might never move against him. Darius wants you to think as little of yourself as possible. Degraded you into dust. I did all I could to shield you; though it might not have always appeared that way, I did. And I have gathered s
uch splendors to please you. Every desire that’s truly yours, I can fulfill.”

  “You’re a little bit insane. You know that right?” Wiping her eyes with the back of her hands, she gave me a look of pity. “Neither of us will survive whatever game Vladislov plays.”

  From across the room came an overly gentle, “You may call me Grandfather.”

  She screamed, jumped right out of my hands, portal and all. To appear twenty feet away. Tottering on her feet, unsure how she did it, Jade fell flat on her ass into one of her piles of my broken gifts.

  And there she cried like a baby. Mind a ruin, body abused for so long she couldn’t differentiate what was her choice from what wasn’t, and in pain. When I stepped forward to go to her, to try again to explain, Vladislov appeared from the shadows and held up his hand.

  Eternal fealty. I had to obey.

  So that entity—that creator of great, evil things—went to her instead. Crouching down, wiping her tears, and whispering things I’d never know.

  I’d never know them because part of our arrangement was that I could never ask. And Jade, she never offered information. What I’d pulled from her over the years, was taken by force.

  But my lady calmed: the type of forced calm minutes away from violence. A kind of violence that came from desperation should the beast who had cornered her make one wrong move. The kind of violence that would see her ended. Wounded rabbit, rabid wolf.

  For this woman, I was not above begging. “Please, don’t hurt her.”

  “She…” The man’s long, thin fingers, stroked her wet cheek. “She is my family. Are you not, child? If I let your daddy run wild for eons, why would I tarnish this precious flower?”

  “Please,” I said again. Darius knew sweet words too. Darius had learned them from him.

  And I had bet our entire futures on the whims of a God.

  “I cannot recall the last time I offered someone succor.” And how chilling such a phrase could be from something so powerful.

  For he had not offered it to little Jade. I had paid for it. But now he looked amused, long hair draped over his shoulder and waved, impeccably combed, just like the rest of him. A fancy man for all his less desirable features.