by Addison Cain
And now there was work to do.
I took a step toward a twisted bit of metal that had once been banked by panes of glass—a piece of my prison—and found it suiting. Like a pike, it rose from the cracked ground, sharp, tall, appropriate for a view of such a lovely garden.
“I loved you too,” I said, lifting the head without meeting Daddy’s blood-red eyes.
Shoving it upon the spike made the exact sound one might expect a head crammed onto a pike might make. And there Darius would stay, unable to scream, facing the east to take in the sunrise. I’m not sure if it was out of kindness—so that he would not be alone in those final minutes—or if it was out of an unbroken sense of obligation, but I remained at his side as the first rays peeked over the horizon.
He burned at first light, smelling of sulfur and evil, melting onto that metal rod until nothing but a mass of charred flesh and blinding bone showed through the fiery mass. Yet, inside that ruined shell, I was uncertain if he still lived. If day by day he’d suffer over and over in the blazing beauty of sunlight. If that were his punishment for whatever true sin he’d committed against a creature so impossibly more powerful than him, it was laughable.
I didn’t know if he’d heal without blood, or for how long he’d be left on display. I didn’t know if he’d be stolen by a zealot, or if the birds might eat him. All I knew was that I was reborn in the wafting stink from his smoking flesh.
And that I wasn’t going to cry anymore.
***
That night, I fell asleep in Malcom’s arms. I awoke in Malcom’s arms. I took sustenance from his body and pleasure from his attention. And as the evenings stretched by, there were no more political events or human maneuverings. No parties or fundraisers or bending over in back alleys for my father’s chosen stud.
Instead, there was a world to see, and a loving warrior to guide me through it. Though I’d lived in that city from birth, I knew nothing of it but what I’d been required to experience. So, he took me to restaurants, he took me dancing, played with me, taught me to smile.
Malcom gave me opulent gifts, and poetry in languages I couldn’t decipher. He took me out to films. We walked in parks. I learned about him: the names of his mother and sisters, the battles he’d fought and triumphs he still recalled with pride. His favorite color and the blood type he preferred above all others.
And though I was still uncomfortable with the change, the man took great pride in the fact that my eyes were now the same shade as the ruby he’d locked around my throat. A trait that made it a touch harder for me to fit in with humans, but was easily concealed with contacts or chic sunglasses.
Malcom taught me how to hunt, just as he would have taught any freshly-turned. He gave me access to his herd, and I found their existence not near as dreary as I’d imagined. The blood of happy humans was so much sweeter than that of those who despaired, he’d said. Not that my angel was a saint. He was a carnivore, the ultimate predator, and I found watching him feed to be exceedingly erotic.
And though I had no desire to mingle with them, I began to understand my people. A people vastly reduced in this part of the world. Less than half of what had been left within the throne room when I’d left survived that night. Vladislov had scores to settle. I’d even heard a rumor that he’d approached the former queen of France, smiling as he’d told her that sharing that cake with me decades ago was the only reason any had been left alive at all. Marie Antoinette had not found the ‘let them eat cake’ reference anything but terrifying. Which Vladislov, no doubt, found hilarious.
I wished never to go back there. Should those survivors wish to see me, they would come to my building, my kingdom, my sanctuary where Malcom saw to my every last need… almost.
“When?” I demanded, impatient in every way.
Smiling, nuzzling my neck, Malcom murmured, “Soon.”
Through those days and those nights and those moments with my lover, I had known deep gratification and a lightness of spirit, but I had also known deprivation. Though he would give me endless physical pleasure, he had denied me his cock.
And made me a beggar.
For weeks. Months. Seasons.
Don’t get me wrong, his fingers and tongue were magic. The tricks he knew beyond imagining. The man was capable of getting me worked up into such a state I sang out his name like a hymn. But that cock, unless I was feeding from one of its veins, it was not in my mouth or my pussy.
He called me his virgin.
I found I relished the endearment far more than I should.
“Define soon!” Because this was torture, this endless waiting with no real answer. I was so wet, always wet, and I had not forgotten the feel of him. Which is why I primarily chose to dine from the prominent vein twisting up the side of a glorious erection. It was the only way to tempt him to spill. To let his seed mingle with his blood and leave me boneless yet sadly empty.
“No.”
“Am I being punished?”
Another of his grins, freely given and so beautiful I sometimes forgot what I meant to say. “You are being adored.”
Diving between my legs, he licked my clit with abandon, rough with a flick of his tongue at the end of each swipe until my legs shook, and I found I’d lost the words to beg for more. Replete and breathless, I’d lain like a bit of flotsam on the waves, and felt him snuggle me.
“When I claim you—savagely fuck you, as you so elegantly demand—you’ll never doubt what you are to me. I’ll know when you’re ready, and that day is not today.”
Bastard! He didn’t get to dictate or deny me something I’d had practically every single day of my existence. Something it would seem I could hardly think straight without.
A single time I’d threatened to find another who would ride me until I was satisfied.
I saw real anger that night. I felt it in the sting on my skin when I’d been pulled over his knee.
That same night he’d given me Ethan, freshly-changed and ridiculous. Arrogant, and unaware that he was trapped in servitude for a century or more. Though this had been explained to him repeatedly before Malcom found him ready to enter our home.
Which Ethan still considered his home.
He went straight to the fridge to grab a beer, popping off the cap and taking a swig, only to immediately spit it back up. There would be no more craft brews in his future, a concept that had still failed to sink in.
That entitlement alone made him unattractive to me, though vampirism had done nothing but add to his beauty. He’d kissed me. The taste of his mouth on mine when he’d rushed forward with all the enthusiasm of a puppy, was unwelcome.
Malcom had given me his word. My body for this creature. Our agreement was that I could fuck Ethan to handle my urges. And Ethan was hard, very hard, as he rubbed against me and rambled on about all the clubs we’d be seen at together. How as immortals we’d control Wall Street, the White House, rule the city like king and queen.
“And what of your blonde and your child?”
Did he not realize he’d never see either of them again? That he’d not be permitted in public for at least two generations?
He acted as if nothing had been mentioned.
After all, he’d learned I was a princess. I could pull strings and there was no need for him to serve. Maybe I’d give him a sip of my blood so he could go into the sun too! Oh, we’d go to Belize, soak up the rays and play in the waves.
This man was an idiot.
And though I was practically starving for cock, his was the last I’d consider.
Malcom had taken him away. I think he might have killed him afterward, to be honest. I didn’t care; I just never wanted to see him again.
The whole event had left me in a mood for a night or two, one lifted by a trip to the opera with a beautiful man on my arm. And a sea of familiar faces unsure why I ignored their invitations and waved them away from my box.
I wore white. I always wore white for Malcom, and
I suspected that had I placed a veil on my head, it would have done nothing but given my vampire pleasure.
And it hit me, leaving me smiling during intermission as if I were in on his trick. “You’re waiting for me to call you my husband.”
Malcom kissed my fingers and said nothing.
The lights flickered, and the second act began.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Malcom
It took her a year. Pouting, arguments. Four seasons, timed almost to the day that she’d brought down the Cathedral to begin truly accepting her place in my world. One year for her to be ready, to experience a healthy relationship and life the way a modern immortal might crave.
We had all the time in the world for her to capitulate. But she would not be truly happy without that one last, small concession. Patience I could and would afford her. Not that she wasn’t regularly corrected. Over my knee, with orgasm denial, with timeouts and physical restraint. Still so young, so impetuous, so mine.
I didn’t ask when I’d thrown out all the clothing she’d owned before she’d become my wife. My female—my pure, clean, worthy female—would wear white, and only white. Let her believe it was she who chose such things to please me. Let her scoff when a true wedding gown, carefully selected of course, came to hang in a position of obvious importance in her closet.
The minx refused to call me husband.
Were I introduced to humans at all, it was only as Malcom. Even if I pawed her before other interested men. Even if I kissed her dizzy and smeared all that red lipstick she loved to paint on her mouth.
She found my silent insistence on the term irrelevant. Thought to punish me for refusing her my cock, though she was blood and cum drunk on me several times a day. Absolutely addicted. Those glowing red eyes of hers never even glanced in the direction of another male or female. Quite a feat, considering her appetites and former temperament.
The collar locked around her throat, she could not get it off. This bothered her greatly. But the statement it made was far more important than her frustration. We were forever. A concept for one so young that had to feel weighty and intimidating.
I might never remove that collar from her throat, what care had I if it clashed with her fashion choices or chafed her skin. One day as a God, she’d still wear it.
“You don’t wear a collar! You don’t wear a ring!” This she’d spat at me when I’d caught her at her vanity picking at the mechanism with some tool. A tool she’d thrown with such precision it had pierced me right through the shoulder. Which was fucking hot as hell. My princess was learning.
An hour later there was a ring on my finger. I’d been keeping it on hand for just this occasion.
At first glance of the hammered band of steel, she blushed, frustrated to be thwarted, then settled into my side so I might read to her in old languages. So she might know she was safe, loved, and would endure through her tricky transition.
Jade healed.
Considering the amounts of blood she’d swallowed straight from a demon’s veins, it still took a remarkable amount of time. I’d catch her in the kitchen, talking to herself as she made a sandwich, piecing out old memories and not sure which was real and which was fake. She’d get stuck in circular arguments with her reflection, grow frustrated to the point of tears, drain me, as if the answers might lie at the center of my steadily beating heart… if only she could get to it.
What mattered most was that she had made herself the sandwich. It sounded like so small a thing, but was so epic in a world where she had hardly wiped her own ass.
So we would talk and I would tell her what I knew, fact from fiction. What I could not confirm, we’d consider together. And I found in doing this, I too began remembering things. Things that had Darius still ruled, he would have crushed me on the spot for holding in memory.
Devious Darius had a great secret.
One he’d gone to remarkable lengths to conceal.
With part of him alive in me, there was just enough to recall her face. I’d torn out her fangs and delivered her to a rotting, bored, and unkind king who had not moved from his throne in a century—not even to feed.
One who from that day forward no longer sat his throne.
One who abandoned us all for… a Pearl.
***
Jade
The evil had not been exorcised, but it had been shifted just enough to make it tolerable. Unsure if that was the proper description, I ignored the sounds of construction, ignored that simply approaching the passageway to such a place made me sick to my stomach. And I entered the Cathedral, though I’d sworn to myself I’d never do so again.
A new freshly-turned servant waited, and unlike the previous history of flagging, stupid, rude, and wasted baby vamps, this one knew me by sight. “My lady.”
To the pretty girl I turned over a snow-white coat, my pair of crystal-encrusted Louboutins clicking over fresh marble floors when I walked past. Marveling. The whole vestibule for my favored entrance had been redone, the center table boasting a massive spray of fresh flowers highlighted by electric light.
Unnerving.
The massive, spiked wooden door between this false façade and the altar to the undead throne had somehow survived my onslaught, rehung and waiting, should I dare push it open.
It wouldn’t do to be seen hesitating before a servant, yet still my hand met the wood and I failed to push.
“He’s expecting you.” Kindly offered, extremely nervous, she tapped a message into her tablet.
The he in question had not been told I’d been coming. Not even Malcom knew I was here. But Vladislov was a veritable God. And only Gods knew what Gods could see.
Hinges sang, well-oiled as I bore my weight against something it would take ten mortal men to move. And then I was home.
The Cathedral.
I might have thought I was Alice stepping through the looking glass, this world so different, far removed from the one I’d known.
Yet almost the same.
Stone, candelabras, the scent of beeswax and incense and oil. But bright with electric light. Under my radically expensive shoes some cracked stones remained, highlighted by new, fresh blocks of rock. As if the building itself was testament to what had happened here. And what could happen again. The walls were… changed? They were the same? Mirrors and paintings—a painting of me wearing white—and tapestries and literal cave drawings all brought in to highlight a throne that my father had sat.
Had ruined.
That had been taken from him on a whim.
And that sat empty.
He was waiting for me, the girl had said. But he was not here.
How I had suffered in this room once upon a time. Not just the day my brains had been dashed against a wall, but for decades afterward when I had been brought low and shamed. And that throne sat empty.
And he failed to appear.
So I dared.
Much.
I dared my life to climb the steps of the dais as I had as a child, to put my hands to the armrests I’d swung from all those ages ago. And I sat my ass in that seat.
Head steeped in my hands, exhausted from the work of it, I found a minuscule slice of rest in my exploit. This wasn’t play. I wasn’t queen. I’d never rule, and I hated most of the survivors who’d been forced to rebuild what I’d demolished.
“It suits you.”
I didn’t look up, not with my head spinning as it was, but I did answer my grandfather. “Coming here was a mistake.”
Footfalls I heard as he climbed the steps. “One of many you will make, and learn from. Mistakes define what we are. Each worth so much more than any victory.”
Was that so? Well then, I was rich in experience and saccharine in the smile I offered. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I was angry with this man. This thing who’d hung my picture on the wall. This force that had upset my life and left me with glowing red eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”
/> “Well… I’m so unaccustomed to honesty when it comes to our kind where do I even begin to answer?” The teasing, it was so Vladislov.
Sagging back, boneless and finding the seat infinitely uncomfortable, I snarked, “My guess would be that you demand I stand from your throne. Perhaps you tear off a limb or two, drive home the point that this was no place for Darius’s whore daughter to rest.”
It was always that waved brown hair I noticed first. Perfect in the unison of its movement. Then it was the ugliness of his beautiful voice. “But you currently sit the throne. Should it not be you who command me?”
I’d play this game. “I command you to release Malcom from his vow.”
“Done! See how easy it is to rule as queen?”
He had to be joking! Had to be. For if he wasn’t, I might bring down this entire new building and piss on the ashes. But the bastard was adjusting his cufflinks and so goddamn full of himself he may as well have burst from his seams.
I had a life to spend with Malcom and it did not include listening to the bitching of immortals. “No.”
And all playfulness was lost in that instant, a demon spreading proverbial wings, that had they existed would span the room in pure flame. Towering over me as I sat his throne, to correct one who dared disagree. It didn’t affect me as it would have a year prior. Instead it drew me to my feet to face this thing. This true immortal monster.
“I don’t want to be queen.”
“At no time did I ask you. Consider that, granddaughter.” He pushed a lock of hair behind my ear, reverent in the way he touched my face. “I never ask. Remember that should we banter as the eons pass.”
“You promised me the Seine…” And with that latent conversation I should not have held so close to my heart, I’d thought I’d been offered freedom.
“The Seine you shall have, and your husband I shall make free, if…” He, the most powerful vampire that might exist rolled up his sleeve to show me a wrist marked with black veins. “If you drink all your belly can hold.”
