The pain of hunger, of bloodlust, woke me first.
“Get up.”
Johann’s voice was second.
My master’s
command fired through my veins, mingling with my desperate hunger. I lunged
toward his voice, my fangs snapping on air as iron shackles clanged against a
stone wall and bit into my wrists. Light and heat from the torch in his hand
made my eyes water and my skin prickle. Shadows danced around us in the dark
stone room, bouncing off the wooden door behind him.
“Listen to
me,” Johann spoke, and I lunged once more, his heartbeat loud in my ears. His
scent was maddening, and I snapped my teeth again, my fangs cutting my bottom
lip and the thoroughly disappointing taste of my own blood tinging my tongue.
“Kaiden!”
Johann shouted, and I froze.
“Kaiden, what are you doing here?” My
mother’s voice was weak, breathy. She looked like a doll from her place on the
bed. A broken doll with graying hair among tattered bedclothes. A roach
scuttled on the wall behind her, and the scent of sickness and rot filled the
room. “You should go. There’s nothing left here.”
There had always been nothing.
“That’s your name. Kaiden.”
Johann’s voice snapped me back to reality, to the crumbling wall I was chained
to. Johann sat across the room, his gun across his lap. “Are you understanding
me, Kaiden?”
Kaiden. Not
servant, not vampire. That was my name.
“How?” I
asked, my throat dry from hunger and thirst. How had he known my name? I had no
idea how long I had been here, and no moonlight penetrated the stone walls, but the lack of complete exhaustion told me it
was still night. My weakness and hunger, however, told me it had been hours. I
had never gone this long without some kind of blood before.
“There are
some in the village who remember you.” Johann’s words hammered in my skull. “A
young man with white hair and red eyes. A useless drunk who’s mother was a
whore. They say you were a demon, and that she fathered you with the vampire.”
“That’s not
true!” I growled, then stopped, the anger fading as fast as it had come. Why
should I care? That was another life. I—no, Kaiden—was long dead, killed in an
alley by a vampire. My master.
I was dead.
It didn’t matter anymore. My master’s orders were all that mattered. And he had
said to kill—
“Kaiden!”
Johann shouted, and I blinked. “Listen to me. I can help you.”
Saliva
filled my mouth, and I swallowed. My fangs still pricked my lower lip. I could
not find the words I needed, and growled instead, the scent of blood filling my
nose. His heart beat loud in my head, a steady, calm drumming that inflamed my
hunger with every pulse.
“Listen!”
His voice cracked in the flatness of the stone room. “Do you want to survive as
a man, or die as the demon everyone claimed you were?”
My growling
stopped. I looked up, meeting his dark eyes.
“Tell me,
Kaiden.” The sound of my name chased away the biting, curdling edge of hunger.
“Tell me what you think you are.”
“I…” Saliva
and hunger thickened my words. “I am a servant.” My master’s orders boomed once
more. Kill him!
“You are not just a servant,”
Johann said, his voice the only thing keeping me from snapping my fangs at him.
“You are a thrall. A man turned by a vampire lord, bound by his blood, to serve
him forever until you die.”
I fell
silent. I knew that. I hadn’t known the name, the term thrall, but I knew what
my existence was.
“But,” and
now Johann stepped closer, his scent overwhelming. His heart beat steady. “If
you truly didn’t care about anything but blood, were truly the mindless thrall
that the others were, you would have died with them last night. But you didn’t.
Why?”
I blinked,
focusing on his gaze. He stared at me, his torch burning in his hand. The light
hurt, and I looked away.
“Why,
Kaiden?” Johann said again. The torch in his hand hissed as the wood and pitch
burned.
“Why do you
even ask?” I said. “I didn’t want to…” I trailed off. I was already dead.
Saying that I hadn’t wanted to die would sound foolish.
But it was
true. “I don’t want to die,” I said, a growl entering my voice again. “So if
you’re going to kill me, I won’t let you.”
He stood,
fast for a human but still slow to one like me. He left, the wooden door
slamming shut behind him, leaving me in darkness so thick not even my keen
senses let me see through it. I closed my eyes.
His light
footsteps echoed on stone for at least a hundred paces before fading. A large
building then, but clearly not one in the village. I would have heard familiar
sounds, and there was also the fact that no sane vampire hunter would imprison
a vampire in a human town.
I leaned
back against the wall. His scent still lingered in the room, along with the
stench of mold and droppings from small animals. One of the other servants had
always complained about her sense of smell—“The whole castle smells like rat
crap,” she had growled at us, “except for master’s room.”
Master.
Without Johann here, the order had faded, but it was still there. Kill the hunter.
I lunged
once more against the cuffs, pain flaring down my wrist for a split second. Any
harder and my wrist would break.
If I got my
fangs in Johann, the break, and any other injuries I had, would heal. I could
get out of the cuffs and hunt him if I tried hard enough. That would be what my
master would want of me.
I prepared
to lunge again when his footsteps returned. And this time his scent was mixed
with something else—fresh blood.
My nostrils
flared, hunger cramping my stomach. Deer, just like I had last night.
It wasn’t
human, but it was better than nothing.
“Here,”
Johann said as soon as the door swung open. The carcass of a fawn was slung
over his shoulders, and it hit the ground in front of me with a dull thud.
“Have your fill.”
I was on it
before he finished speaking, my fangs in the animal’s neck through the tough,
fibrous skin. The blood was cool, not the fresh heart-pumped blood I wanted,
but it still filled my stomach, filled my body with strength and took the edge from
my bloodlust.
When I
lifted my head, Johann was staring down at me, his expression flat. “Animal
blood is all a thrall needs to survive, yes?” he said. “You have never had
human blood before.”
I nodded,
licking my lips. The puncture wound from my fangs was gone.
“Why did
you attack me tonight?” Johann asked. “Tell me.”
“I don’t
serve you,” I answered back. “
“I could
kill you, you know,” Johann responded, his heart still infuriatingly steady.
“You are a vampire, and not a particularly powerful one. A thrall. The lowest
of the low. Most do not have an ounce of intelligence. They are no more in
control of themselves than that animal who’s blood you just consumed. So let me
guess. Your master ordered you to kill me?”
I stayed
silent.
“I thought
so.” He nodded. “But you, Kaiden,” and when he used my name I paid closer
attention, “are different. Slightly, anyway. You ran when you suspected your
life was in danger. You planned. You are not mindless.” He leaned closer, and
if I had not just eaten I would have snapped at him again. “And if you listen
to me, and believe what I have to say, I think I can help you.”
I narrowed
my eyes. “What could you possibly have that I want, that you’d be willing to
give?”
He smiled.
“Pretty words for a thrall.”
“You’re the
one who said I was different.”
“Yes.” He
nodded, pausing, the smile fading from his face before he took a breath. “What
if I told you that you could become a vampire lord in your own right?”
I fell
silent, awash in the small sounds of vermin scuttling in the stones I was
chained to and the steady beat and breathing of the human next to me. A vampire
lord. Like my master. The beauty, power and grace of my master, would be mine.
I felt no excitement at the prospect.
“You think
I want power?” I finally said. Johann frowned.
“Do you
want to die instead?” he asked. “Because your only option is death or moving on
as you are—a vampire. Become a lord, and you won’t be such a slave to your own
bloodlust.”
I stared at
the human, his scent filling my nostrils. With my stomach full, he smelled
different, a combination of spice and pine that I found pleasing for a
different reason.
I wondered
if becoming a vampire lord meant I could bed others the way my master did.
“How would
I do this?” I asked.
He shifted
his weight, tensing muscles the way I would if I anticipated an attack. “By
killing your master,” he answered.
Something
in me thudded hard. Not my heart. It was deeper, an instinct I didn’t know I
had that made me bare my teeth and narrow my eyes.
“I knew you
would react that way.” Johann spoke louder, and I realized I was growling, my
teeth clenched. “You’re a creature of instinct, a dog defending his master. But
think, Kaiden!”
My name again.
The room grew silent.
Johann
moved, putting his back to me and turning back, a thoughtful pace. A very human
thing. “If you kill your master, you will feel again. I mean really feel,” he
leaned closer, sending his scent over me. I don’t think he realized it. “Feel
emotion, feel pleasure beyond slaking your hunger. You will feel ambition. Your
life will have meaning!” He met my eyes, his a startling gleam. “Don’t you want
that?”
I dropped
my gaze. In my mind, I saw the same image, of a woman dying on a bed. I tasted
a hint of alcohol, a bitter tinge on my tongue.
I had never
wanted anything. I had never thought my life had meaning. The realization made
me feel deader than I already was.
“I had no
life before,” I said, clinging to those memories. It was strange to do it. I
had been so ready to forget, but now it seemed important that Johann
understand. “You know. You spoke to the villagers.” I met his eyes this time.
“They called me a demon. I had nothing. Why would you think I—”
“You chose
it, didn’t you?” Johann snapped. “You let him bite you.”
I didn’t
blink. “Yes.”
Johann
rocked back on his heels, his gaze fixed on a point above my head. I craned my head up. There was nothing there.
“Did you
know what would happen to you?” he asked finally.
The
emptiness I expected didn’t come. It was simple nothingness, not sadness the
way it had once been, what had made me seek out my master. The vampire.
“I thought I would die.”
“Perhaps that’s why,” Johann said,
and his tone made me tilt my head. “Most who become thralls desperately want to
live, and the vampire violates their wishes by giving them complete absence of
life. But you…you wanted to die, didn’t you? So your master’s commands aren’t
as strong as they should be. You chose it, Kaiden.” I swallowed. “For all the
pathetic life you may have lived, you made a choice.” He sighed. “Was it really
what you wanted? Because I could kill you, right now. It would be quick.”
I leaned my head back, the stone
scraping against my hair. He would give me what I wanted.
No. What I had wanted. Before I had
run from a hunter who I knew would kill me, disobeying my master’s orders.
Regret almost climbed my throat.
Regret for the life I once had, thrown away.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to
die.”
“Good,” Johann said. “Then you will
come with me, Kaiden. And you will kill your master.”
Check out the other Wednesday Briefers!
Check out the other Wednesday Briefers!
