by L. L. Ash
“Everything untoward!”
“And I’ve discussed flesh and bone and blood before with you. What she wore is of no significance to me.”
“It is to me!”
“And as for your accusation of fucking her, I’ve already explained how that works too. I haven’t fucked anyone but you since we became mates. It would be pointless and disappointing. Why would I even bother?”
My chest was heaving in rage but I wasn’t quite sure why.
“She used to be your girlfriend?” I asked.
“Girlfriend? No. The only one I would commit to is a mate. She was a distraction sometimes, while I was looking for you.”
Another woman I had to know shared him. So, so many…
Tears burned in my eyes
“Your insecurity is not becoming, Lily.” He sighed and sat back, lounging.
His casual attitude had me burning angry again.
“Those all seem like logical explanations,” I said slowly.
“And yet you are unsatisfied.” He looked at me, meeting my eyes.
“You’re mean, Calix. Do you know that?” I told him in barely a whisper.
“Why should it matter to me if I’m mean? Other’s opinions of me and my behavior mean nothing to me.”
“Even mine?”
He stopped for a minute, looking into my eyes like he was searching for something.
“What do you want from me, Lily? You keep me at arms length one moment and the next you act like we’re some couple in love and I have become the villain.”
“I keep you at arms length because you are the villain, Calix. I had a lot of time to think when you didn’t come to bed last night. And I realized what it is that’s been happening to me lately. For a minute there I thought maybe… just maybe I was actually in love with you...”
His eyes widened in surprise.
“And then I realized,” I went on, crossing my arms over my stomach that was starting to hurt from my anger and sadness. “That the feelings I was having wasn’t love. It’s stockholm syndrome.”
He flinched.
And that was it. I turned and started stomping toward the door.
Chapter Twelve
A clatter and crash sounded through the wood and I stopped.
“Lily, get away from the door,” Calix was instantly behind me. “Get behind the desk and stay there. Someone is here.”
More clatter and yelling voices.
“Lily!” he growled and I was moving.
I hunkered down behind the desk as Calix went to the wall with his old armor, pulling down the sword and axe. He gripped one in each hand, fingers squeezing around the cold metal.
A series of bangs happened and Calix said to me, “Thirty seconds. It takes thirty seconds to get up here from where the others are on the bottom floor.”
It had taken several minutes for us to walk, but then again, the nightwalkers could move at an incredible pace if needed.
“You just have to survive thirty seconds, Lily,” he called to me and shifted his body into a defensive position near the door, just out of its swing radius.
The banging started on the big door in front of us and I crouched further behind the huge desk, only poking my eyes out so I could see what was happening.
Four more bangs and the door splintered open. The three vampires that stood behind it were drenched in blood and gore.
“Cal-eee!” one man sing-songed like Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’ when the door swung in. “We heard you got a new mate! Came to see if you’d share again.”
Calix roared a feral sound that made me jump.
“You will not take another of my mates!”
“But I only came to share!” The man grinned, sharp eye teeth stained the same color crimson that dripped from his mouth and down his chin.
“Over my dead body,” Calix growled, shifting his weight to the balls of his bare feet.
“Say please.” The man giggled before he launched himself forward, followed by another of his companions.
Calix was instantly brawling with the two, but I could hardly watch. My eyes were glued instead on the man coming toward me.
“Calix!” I screamed and he turned, seeing the man.
Fury contorted his face and he let out an ear splitting roar as he drew closer to me.
One of the men grabbed his leg and shirt, preventing him from coming toward me and he roared again, but this time in fear.
I was on my own.
Thirty second.
Calix started beating them off with strokes of his sword but they were quickly removed from his hands with the power of the two vampires on top of him. It went down to hand to hand combat and though he was fierce, it was two fists against four. I heard bones cracking as he tried to get free to come to me, but even fury wasn’t enough.
The man was almost to me now, stalking slowly as if he could frighten me to death. Luckily for me, I’d stared the devil in the face before and survived.
“C’mon big man,” I said, standing from my spot behind the desk.
My hands clamped on something cold and metallic and I gripped it fiercely.
“C’mon. Come to show me what a real man-pire can do?” I bounced my eyebrows at him.
He grinned.
“She’s spunky, Havoc. I like it. Let me have first go?”
“If you can catch her, fine,” the leader man who’d talked first answered. “But let’s do the job first, yes?”
He chuckled again before easing forward slowly.
“Here kitty-kitty-kitty,” he called as he reached his palm out toward me.
I had one chance and I needed to get close enough to reach him.
Stepping forward, I grinned.
“Finally. I was wondering when someone would rescue me. Are you my prince charming?”
I gave him my best faux-innocent look and he chuckled.
“I can be a lot of things, honey,” he said, clasping my arm gently as he moved me toward him.
I let him nestle me into his arms as I smiled at him, inching my hand with the letter opener upwards. Sliding my hand up his chest, I felt him grind against me as I dragged my other fist up, the one with the weapon.
“Only thing, though...” I looked into his eyes, realizing that instead of his ice blue, I saw cold, dead brown.
My mother’s eyes.
His eyes closed as he ground his pelvis against me again, and I took my opportunity. Instead of finishing my sentence, I drove the letter opener straight into his heart.
He grunted and fell, dragging me down with him in his arms.
“Lily!” Calix called in agony as he tried to escape the intruders again.
I shoved the heavy arms off me and sat up.
Calix’s eyes went from agonized to shocked when he saw me immerge, blood drenching the front of my shirt.
Instead of running for cover like I knew I should have, my strange sense of urgency told me to help my mate. His blood was my blood. I couldn’t lose him no matter how angry I was at him.
I crawled forward on my hands and knees, staying out of sightline of the vampires still trying to tear Calix apart until I reached the shiny sword. I gripped it in both hands, grunting at how heavy it was, then I lifted it up, swinging it like a sledgehammer at the closest vampire.
The sword hit with a heavy thud, blood spraying as it wedging itself through the back of his neck and down into his chest cavity where it stuck.
Havoc dropped instantly.
It took a whole half of a second before Calix managed to turn around without the extra body holding him down and his hand thrust toward the third man. Sinking into his chest, his hand exited again with a vacuumed slurp.
In his palm he held the man’s heart, still and cold before it slipped through his fingers onto the floor.
The man swayed before Calix shoved him over and off of him.
“Lily,” he called, scrambling on his knees to me, gathering me up and pressing me fiercely to his chest as he rambled. “
My darling, my love… My love, you’re alive...”
As the adrenaline wore off my entire body started to shake. Blood drenched the floor beneath us, chilling my skin where it soaked into my leggings.
“Are you ok?” Calix moved away just enough to take my face in his hands, coating my face with cold, sticky blood.
“I’m ok,” I managed through my shivering lips. “But you’re hurt...”
The gash on his cheek and the split lip he sported beneath his black and bruised eyes began to close before my eyes.
“I’m fine.” He shook his head as if he wasn’t important. “You’re unharmed?”
I nodded and he pressed me back into his chest against his torn and bloody shirt.
More commotion and suddenly people were pouring into the room.
“Prince!” several voices called as we were surrounded with Calix’s people.
“Are the rest gone?” he asked as Thomas approached.
“Some of my men are chasing them down now. I’ve sent a few to search every room to make sure. Sent several to the servant’s area too.”
“Good. Get the bastards out of my house!” he barked and most of the people left the room to obey.
Calix let me go for a minute to rip off his shredded shirt, and it revealed cuts and scrapes and scratches all along his chest shoulders and arms. They healed and shrank as every second passed.
Without another word Calix scooped me up and was on his feet, carrying me off.
“Set guards in front of every broken door and begin reconstruction of the front doors. Set four in front of Mistress’s room,” Calix called as he walked away.
I vaguely saw Thomas nod before pointing vampires this way and that.
Calix carried me into the bedroom followed by four of the burliest looking men in the room. He pressed his lips into my hair, resting his face against my head as if he couldn’t stop touching me.
When we went into the bedroom the four men stayed at the door, turning their backs to it as Calix closed the door behind us. Silently he moved further into the room, all in shambles from whoever had broken in and put me down on the edge of the tub. The mirror was broken, but the shards were close to the sink.
“I’ll have this cleaned soon,” Calix told me in a hushed voice as he turned on the bath water then helped me get my sweater off.
My shaking hands tried to help but were incapable. I released myself wholly to his care as he tried to help me clean up.
Blood had soaked through my sweater and stained my skin in spots, the spray from my thrust of Calix’s sword had left tiny little splatters across my chest and cheek and even started to dry on my lips.
“I’m so sorry, Lily,” he said shakily as he pulled up my tank top.
His eyes were strangely watery as if he were holding back tears and his voice was uncharastically soft and weak.
“It’s not your fault,” I whispered but he shook his head.
“The only reason you’re alive right now is because I pissed you off and ran. If you hadn’t confronted me… If you had been here when they arrived...”
He paused and pressed the palm of a bloody hand to his face.
“But I wasn’t,” I told him, putting as much emphasis in my voice as I could manage through the shock I still felt. “I was with you, because you pissed me off and I had to confront you because you ran away like a child.”
He looked into my eyes, his definitely watering before he shut them and pressed his hand into my hair, touching his forehead to mine.
“I’ll do better, Lily. I promise you I will protect you. I failed you today.”
I gently shook my head and he opened his eyes, meeting mine again.
“They outnumbered us, Calix. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“There was so much I should have done.” He sounded angry. “I wasn’t strong enough. You likely saved both of our lives today. You are a strong woman, Lily. I never realized how strong until—”
He backed away an inch before shaking his head again.
Calix stood me up and dragged my leggings and panties down.
“That’s what happens when people underestimate me. I only got the better of them because they thought I was a weak human. Like you do.”
“Did,” he said quickly. “I know better now.”
He took my hand and helped me step over the ledge and into the water. It was blissfully hot.
I sat on my butt and began scraping and rubbing the blood off my skin, but he stayed my hands.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” he whispered, taking a cloth off a shelf before dunking it in the water.
One slow and gentle stroke at a time he released the drying blood from my hands. We didn’t speak, and hardly moved besides the stroke of the cloth down my skin. Finally he looked me in the face and hesitated before wiping the blood from one cheek.
“What you did was incredible,” he said eventually. “What you did took strength and bravery and cunning. You would have made a great warrior.”
“Only because I’ve been at battle for as many years as I’ve been alive.” I snorted. “I’ve had to learn those traits to survive.”
“Then maybe we have something to thank your mother for, afterall.”
“Maybe,” I agreed and closed my eyes.
He finished my face before I dunked my head and hair in the water. A bloom of blood spread around me in it before I straightened again.
Calix stretched and reached up, his chest almost brushing by my face as he retrieved my shampoo.
“Will you allow me?” he asked, holding it.
I nodded.
Quickly he was perched on the edge and his hands were working into my hair. It lathered thick before he pulled the drain.
“You need new water,” he said simply, shaking his hand off from the hot water as he turned on the tap again.
“Is it ok?” I asked suddenly, only feeling a little dorky for the head full of shampoo and bubbles. “Will the hot water hurt you?”
“It’s uncomfortable. It won’t hurt me.”
“I can do it—”
“Please, allow me,” he breathed, regret written all over his face. “Let me worship you as you should be worshiped.”
Was this him trying to make things up to me? It was not the time or the place, but I wouldn’t deny him, either.
A soft knock on the door.
Calix looked at me.
“I want to hear it too,” I told him, trying to dunk my head again to get the soap off.
He helped me sit back up straight when the soap was gone and I moved to stand but he pushed me back down by the shoulder.
“You aren’t finished.”
“I want to hear whatever it is they have to say.”
“You’ll allow him in?”
“Who is it?”
“Thomas.”
“And you trust him?”
“With my life,” he nodded.
“Then let him in. If you trust him, then I should too.”
Calix gave a sharp nod before nudging my legs up.
I hugged my knees to my chest to cover what I could and he said quietly, “Come.”
Thomas opened the door slowly.
“Your trust in me is humbling, Mistress,” was the first thing he said when he entered, standing at a distance from Calix and me in the tub.
“What is the assessment?” Calix asked right away.
“So far we’ve counted six dead. A couple of them got to the servants and there are, at first count, twenty-eight dead.”
I gasped.
“Is Janey… Is Janey ok?”
“We don’t yet know the name of those who have been killed,” was Thomas’s answer.
“And the six?”
“Your house staff,” he said.
“Where is Petrick?” I asked suddenly, realizing it’d been too long since we’d seen him.
“We found him near the door. We believe he was the first to the intruders. He died trying to stop them from getting i
n.”
My hand slapped over my mouth as I started to cry.
And I had just begun to get to know him.
Calix’s head dropped, his eyes closing in pain.
“And we’ve caught all the intruders?”
“We have. The entire castle has been swept and we’ve got the bodies of seven. We also found one with a letter opener in his heart inside your office.”
Calix’s head lifted and he looked me in the eyes.
“The letter opener? You stabbed him in the chest?”
I nodded.
“Oh, good girl, Lily,” he smiled, pressing his hands to my cheeks and kissing me quickly.
“We’ve moved him. You’ll be able to...interrogate him when you’re ready.”
“Wait, how is he alive?” I asked, surprised. Maybe I hadn’t killed two men today.
“A stab through the heart doesn’t kill us,” Calix explained. “It only paralyzes until it is removed.”
So he was going to live! My guilt eased by half.
“So I didn’t kill him? He’ll live?”
“You didn’t kill him,” Calix agreed. “But he will not live past his usefulness for information.”
“Do we know who it was?” Thomas asked.
“It was Havoc.” Calix looked at him now. “No doubt it is the Dorians. Only question is if it was on an order or if the psychopath decided to drop in on his own. He’s on the verge of starting a full on war with us. And the Drakos never lose.”
Thomas nodded.
“Move him to a room in the dungeon. I don’t want to ruin as much as a sheet with his blood. He deserves nothing.”
Thomas nodded again before heading toward the door.
“Wait,” Calix called. “Your phone.”
Thomas pulled out his cell phone and handed it over.
Calix pushed a series of buttons before putting the device to his ear.
“Bampás,” he said after a minute. “We were attacked… yes. I ask you to please take Lily. She will be safer with you at the Archontikó...No, I can have her on a plane within hours...”
I shook the water off my hand before snatching the phone away from Calix.
“Papa,” I said to stop him speaking mid-sentence.
“Lily, my daughter… Are you alright? Were you hurt?”