My Master

by Aleera Anaya Ceres

  And she was planning on keeping them forever.

  Antonio never thought that childbirth would take that long or be quite as painful. Esmeralda’s face had gone a deep shade of red as she attempted to push. She squeezed his hand to the point where his entire left arm had gone numb.

  He swiped away hair from her forehead in an encouraging gesture. “You can do it, querida,” he whispered, feeling anxiety down to his toes.

  Ezzy let out one last cry before it was drowned out by the baby’s cries. Ezzy dropped her head back to the pillow with an intense sigh. Antonio squeezed her hand and turned to his child. The doctor was wiping away blood and residue from the child.

  “Is it a girl?” Esmeralda asked a little weakly.

  “It’s a boy…” the doctor announced proudly, handing him off to Antonio, wrapped in a little blanket. His child fit perfectly into his arms, settling instantly, and when he looked at him for the first time, he gasped. His son had wild untamable black curls matted around his head. And when he opened his eyes, Antonio was felt a jolt of surprise. His son’s eyes were a dark blue—darker than Esmeralda’s. Where hers were the deep ends of an ocean, their son’s eyes were a dark sky, the iris rimmed in dark black and red. He whimpered now, in Antonio’s arms, a soft pleasant sound that threatened to fill his eyes with tears.

  “Hey, Squirt,” he smiled down at his son. “Wanna see your mommy?” He passed the baby on to Ezzy, who was all too eager to take him.

  “God,” she whispered as tears fell from her eyes. “He’s so beautiful. Hi darling, hello.” She bent down to kiss his forehead and Antonio reveled at the sight of Ezzy holding their child.

  “So much for the name ‘Josefina.’” Isis materialized at Ezzy’s side, still wrapped in a hospital blanket. “What will you name him?”

  Ezzy tore her gaze from the baby and looked at Antonio for help. He knew she wanted him to choose…

  He looked down. “Viktor,” he whispered. “Viktor Santiago.”

  Ezzy smiled and looked back down at the baby, who studied her curiously. “Viktor,” she whispered, rocking him in her arms. “It’s perfect.”

  “What, no middle name?” Isis mused.

  Antonio shrugged and looked to Esmeralda. “Yes,” she said firmly. “Viktor Ignacio Santiago would be perfect.” She smiled. “Just perfect.”

  It had been a month now and Viktor lay sleeping in his crib, snuggled up next to Tony Bear, the teddy bear that used to be Ezzy’s when she was a child. Her child was completely perfect in every way. He had his father’s curls and his mother’s eyes. Ezzy smiled with satisfaction and tucked the little blue blanket over his body. He stirred for a second, making noise then settled back in.

  “Oh, Antonio.” She sighed, tears prickling her eyes. “He’s simply perfect.”

  She had been so excited when the doctor announced they could leave the hospital, claiming that the baby was perfectly healthy and fine. At first she had been worried that there would be a problem, since Viktor didn’t even develop the full nine months before he decided to make an appearance.

  The doctor had assured her that nothing was wrong. He said that when women were pregnant with vampire children that the babies liked to feed on their mother’s energy and some of them developed at their own pace. Even in the womb they gained knowledge and strength and they decided when they wanted to come out, drawing just enough energy to become the right size, with the right strength in order to do so and that once they got out, there was no need to worry: the baby would develop at a slow normal pace.

  It was still somewhat confusing to Esmeralda as to how unborn children could do that, but she just rolled with it and didn’t let it bother her. Viktor was well, and that’s all that mattered. And everyone adored him!

  Even Carlos, Antonio’s older brother, whom she had never met before, had flown down from god-knew-where to see his nephew.

  Carlos looked much more like Maria than Antonio and Damien. His features were soft yet sharp and concentrated with a certain feminine quality about him. But when he opened his mouth to speak, he was the silliest person she had ever met, which set him so far apart from his sister.

  Even Maria had ogled over Viktor, but so had Isis and Anya as well. There was something going on between Isis and Anya, though Esmeralda didn’t quite know what and she wasn’t sure it was really her business to ask, though she was quite curious.

  Behind her, Antonio wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her against his body. He rested his chin on top of her head. “You did good, querida.”

  She laughed. “I had help.”

  “You’re welcome.” He smiled. “But I’ve been thinking…”

  There was a pause that made Ezzy turn her head up to look at him. “What were you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking we should…” He bent down and whispered what he wanted in her ear, causing her to shiver. Antonio trailed kisses down the back of her neck.

  “I’d like that,” she whispered as she led him out to their room. They fell through the door in a rush, pawing at each other’s clothes with desperation. Her fingers moved aside his leather jacket till it fell from his shoulders and onto the floor. His fingers slid up her shirt and found her breast, kneaded it, his touch sending electric jolts all over her. The feeling made her feet go out from under her and they both fell to the ground together. She gasped as his finger slipped to the inside of her waistband. “Antonio,” she breathed as her pants were pushed down.

  “Hmm?” He kissed her deeply, fumbling with his own pants.

  “I love you,” she gasped as his pants came undone and he entered her.

  “I love you too, Ezzy,” he rocked his hips in slow movements. “I will love you always.”

  Epilogue

  Victoria rubbed the tiredness from her eyes and looked around the station; it was empty, the lights were dimmed low, the doors to the offices were shut and locked.

  Terrance was on his computer, typing away at the keyboard. She could tell from his posture that he was tense, and she didn’t blame him, after the week they’d had.

  She stretched her arms over her head and, knocking her paperwork to the side, stood up to make her way behind Terrance’s chair. She rested her chin on the top of his head and, placing her arms over his shoulders, ran her hands against his chest in soft sensual movements. She felt him relax instantly.

  “Time to go home, Terrance,” she whispered into his hair. He grunted, and continued to click away. She rolled her eyes and parted from him, back to her own desk. “The thing I hate the most about this job is the stupid paperwork afterwards.”

  She grabbed all of the papers she had been filling out and placed them neatly into the files and shoved them into her drawers, locking them. When she finished, she walked back over to Terrance, who was still clicking away. Victoria was suddenly annoyed that he was paying more attention to the stupid machine than to her, especially since she had almost died on the job. She swiveled his chair around so that he was facing her.

  Without hesitation or waiting for his permission, she kissed him.

  His lips were rough against hers, but inviting and familiar. She leaned into him, her hands resting on the arms of the chair for support. He wrapped his arms around her waist as if by instinct and slid his hands up her back until they found her hair, running his fingers through her curly strands. She nipped his bottom lip and he moaned deep in his throat. With her left hand, she undid the top button of his pants and raked the inside of his waist line with her fingernail.

  He tugged at her hair and explored the inside of her mouth, a feeling of excitement vibrated through her and rubbed across the bulge in the front of his pants. He groaned and pulled her closer to him until she fell into his lap in a straddling position. Victoria was very well aware of the new cameras installed around the room and she didn’t even seem to care; lifting up his shirt, she ran her hands across the muscles on his stomach and chest.

  “Wait.” He pushed her away, his breathing was hard with desire. �
�Cameras,” he whispered on a low breath. Annoyed, she nodded and hopped off of him. “In a moment,” he promised, smiling lightly, though she could tell it was strained, and she couldn’t blame him. She was in the mood for some serious stress relief, but he was right. As much as she wanted him, the police station wasn’t the right place to do it, or else they’d both be suspended.

  Terrance turned back to his computer and clicked a few more buttons, prepared to turn it off while Victoria slipped into her brown leather jacket. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to Terrance. “Ready to go?” She asked, leaning over his shoulder and looking at his computer screen—which he still hadn’t turned off.

  “Yeah, yeah, just a minute, I’m going through the last pieces of evidence.”

  Victoria knew what that meant, it meant his lust had probably been swept away and he was going to just drown himself in his work. Victoria threw her hands up in defeat and turned to leave. At this point, she could care less if he followed her or not. She just wanted a warm bath and a comforting bed and to go home to her cat.

  “Victoria, come look at this.”

  “No thanks, I’m going home.” She pulled her car keys from her pants pocket.

  “Savvy sent me what they were able to recover from the destroyed video cameras in screen shots.”

  “Oh, how exciting,” she feigned. “But we already know that Caesareon was the one who broke in here and broke everyone out. Well, Caesareon is dead and so are his minions; all the prisoners were captured and thrown back in jail, so what’s the problem?”

  “Just come look at this,” he muttered. She obeyed, unenthusiastically, and looked at the screen. “Tell me what you make of this picture?” A picture popped up on the screen, black and white, angled directly from the inside of the cell, catching the perfect view of the culprit. The picture was a frozen shot; the prisoners were back up against the wall, barely a blur. She could barely make out Rich’s figure, held down on the floor by someone. Inside the cell, mouth open, obviously talking to the prisoners, was a very small vampire. His face was young and round, his dark hair was cut very short. But there was something extremely familiar about him.

  It wasn’t just the way he was standing, but his facial features were strikingly similar to someone else. His eyes were slanted—almost like a cat’s—his eyebrows curved in an arc darkly, there was an ancient innocence about him, but there was menace there as well. And Victoria automatically knew who he was, because he resembled his older sister in every way.

  “He looks like—” Sse began.

  “Yes, he does,” Terrance continued “I think we’re missing an important piece to this case.”

  Victoria bit at her bottom lip, swallowing the thick lump in her throat. It seemed that their job wasn’t quite finished yet, and there was a new investigation to begin.

  Letting out a sling of curses, Victoria pulled out her cell phone to call her boss and tell him what they’d uncovered. He answered his cell phone gruffly, like he had been woken from a good dream, and she explained to him their predicament, all the while staring at the screen shot of Isis’s younger brother.

  Turn the page for a bonus story: A Time to Repent

  A Time to Repent

  Fuck the Otherworld! Damien told himself over and over as he walked through the grim world that death had promised him. It wasn’t like it was an interesting place, and it wasn’t like there was much to do around it but wander. And it wasn’t at all like the real world. Everything in the Otherworld was a silvery blue, almost holographic, like a video game or a digital futuristic world.

  And it was white. A color too bright for his sensitive eyes and only made him squint them while they watered. He had the urge to kick something over, to break something. It was too bad that there was nothing in the Otherworld that he could break. It was positively blank.

  It infuriated him being there, and it was his stupid brother’s fault. Antonio, he sneered. If it wasn’t for that stupid fool, Damien would be alive and healthy at this moment, doing as he pleased.

  Stupid Antonio, he cursed. If he hadn’t returned to the Santiago mansion none of the drama would have gone down; and all for Esmeralda, a girl who hadn’t even been worth all of that trouble.

  He had thought so, at first, that she would be worthwhile—a replacement for his true Soul Mate. She just looked so much like her at first that he couldn’t help himself.

  He remembered pulling Esmeralda out of that closet, she had only been eight at the time and he had thought nothing of her but a little nuisance, it wasn’t until she had grown up, gotten taller, filled in had he noticed her womanly essence, still young but he could see in her eyes—something grown up about her.

  In her face, he had seen Esperanza.

  In the shape of her face, the same ivory color of the skin, the same blue eyes, the same height and delicateness. But, Esperanza’s hair had been black, the sheer shiny kind like ink that he loved to run his fingers through.

  He found Esmeralda’s red hair to be obnoxious and certainly annoying.

  That was before he thought that Esmeralda could be Esperanza’s reincarnation. He had been a fool to believe in such silly little fairy tales such as ‘reincarnation.’ It only proved further that he hadn’t been in his right mind.

  The two were nothing alike.

  With a sigh, he kicked at empty white air, shoving his hands in his pockets, head drooping. He wondered if it would be possible to conjure something up with his mind, much like Antonio had while they were in a dream state. He doubted it. It seemed like the Otherworld did what it wished, when it wished, without regard for its inhabitants.

  The whole place could split down the middle and suck spirits into a vortex if it wanted to, and there was nothing anybody in that hellhole could do to stop it.

  Fuck the Otherworld! he growled into his head again.

  “Watch your language, mijo.”

  The voice that spoke was soft, accented, and very much familiar, and it seemed as though it were coming from absolutely nowhere. He looked around frantically, feeling his heart shatter against his ribcage. It was a voice that he hadn’t heard in so long, a voice that he had missed terribly; a voice he had grown up with.

  And then he saw her.

  She materialized out of the nothing, a mere blur at first, like someone staring through a foggy window, and then her outline appeared, the same holographic blue as everything else, and the center of her body rippled and with each flow of movement, color appeared before him, of a woman, small in her stature with a straw hat on top of her head. Frizzy curls spilled out from under it, blowing against her dark face. Her eyes were a replica of his own.

  It had been years since he had last seen his mother alive. Only then did the sheer cruel reality settle into his heart.

  They were both dead.

  “Hello, Damien.” She smiled sadly at him. He saw a crystal tear, silvery blue run a path down her plump cheek. It was surprising, he could faintly make out a bit of color here and there on her, the darkness of her skin, the brightness of her pink and blue floral dress.

  “Mamá?” he choked out in disbelief. Was she truly real? Or was the Otherworld playing a cruel trick on him, only to torture him even further for his sins upon humanity?

  “Yes, it is me.”

  He smiled widely, from ear to ear, and stepped forward to hug her, to feel that familiarity of her arms wrapped around his protectively, as they had done millions of times before when he was young. But when he approached her, she took a fearful step back, away from him, like his presence was toxic in nature. His smile disappeared and he froze in his tracks.

  “Why do you cringe away from me, mother?” There was menace in his voice, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. Her reaction hurt him at a physical level that was almost impossible to bear. He was lucky he didn’t fall apart right then.

  “Because I am afraid of you,” she admitted without preamble. “I am afraid of what you’ve become.” Another tear fell down her cheek. “What has happen
ed to you? Why have you done these things?”

  So that’s what it was about? He thought bitterly. She was here to lecture him about the mistakes he’d made while he was still alive. He didn’t feel like he needed a lecture. He had gotten yelled at by Antonio, by Esmeralda, he had gotten killed for his “stupidity” and now he was suffering in the Otherworld for it. What more could she add on to that pile? What could she possibly have to say?

  When he didn’t answer, his mother continued to speak. “You realize you have hurt your brother beyond imagining? And you almost killed that nice young girl, how could you?”

  Damien felt a vein in his throat twitch. Of course, it all came back to this, to his little brother’s delicate feelings getting hurt. It had always been that way, even when they were kids. No matter how close he and Antonio used to be, he had still felt a bitter resentment to his twin. Damien would try and try to please his parents, who barely seemed to acknowledge him. Antonio didn’t even have to try and he had them won over, eating out of the palm of his hand. It wasn’t fair then and it wasn’t fair now.

  “Why do you care so much about Antonio?” he demanded.

  His mother only sighed. Behind her, another dark blue outline appeared, followed by line after line until it looked like a rough sketch of an armchair behind his mother. It was very much real, though, because she sat in it, crossing her legs together and leaning her face upon her open palms.

  She sighed and then gazed up at him. “Because he is my son,” she said.

  “But I’m your son too!” His voice rose to a shout, despite the emptiness it didn’t echo or bounce against the walls around them. He wondered if it could be, perhaps, because there were no walls. “You never seem to care about me—not as much as Antonio, anyway.”

  His mother stared at him incredulously. “Of course I care about you both equally. But we must face the facts: you are here and he is not. Because you were the one that made bad decisions, not your brother.”