Nicholai stumbled toward the castle, holding flowers in his hand. They were roses, Natasha’s favorite. He had brought them as a peace offering, to help him apologize profusely for hurting her the night before. Only now he gripped them so tightly the thorns speared into his palms as he raced toward the castle, a feeling of dread gnawing at the pit of his stomach.
Several of the family had already been laid out in wooden coffins on the lawn. The King lay, his throat cut, his eyes frozen open forever to the last horrible moment of his life. The Queen was blissfully covered, hiding the evidence of how brutally she was violated. Under the hand of death she seemed to sleep so peacefully, spared the heinous way the men of the town violated her before her blissful demise.
Nicholai ran across the lawn, finding the bodies of the children in the other boxes. He watched as two burly men carried a dark haired woman’s body toward the final coffin. The long white streak of hair was unmistakable. Angrily Nicholai assaulted one of the men, twice his size, punching him square in the jaw so that he’d release Natasha from his careless arms. The man stumbled backward. When he recovered his footing he rushed Nicholai, but the other man grabbed his arm and gave him a stern look. He shook his head and the other man retreated without incident, leaving Nicholai to drop to his knees beside her lifeless body. Stems of crushed roses surrounded them both. Rain began to fall, splashing against her motionless face. Her eyes were shut and would never open again.
He gathered her up into his arms, an angry wail of disbelief echoed off of the trees that hung mournfully nearby. He brushed back her hair, caressing her pale face as he sobbed openly, not caring who might see. His heart had shattered and each piece escaped from his eyes, blinding him with tears that poured upon her sweet, beautiful face.
He clutched her to him, remembering how she felt, warm and tender around him the night before – right before he broke her heart and sent her running into the inky black night. He howled in anguish as her arms remained still at her side, never again to slide around his neck. He drew into her, laying his head against her chest where her heart beat no more. Indeed she was hollow. He kissed her blue lips, wishing he could pour all of his life’s breath into her body, wishing he’d been there the night before to lay his life down so that she might live.
All the pain he’d caused her had been in vain. That monster had killed her anyway. Only now she had died thinking that Nicholai no longer loved her. His heart rattled against the steel cold bars of regret that slammed shut on his soul.
His large hand caressed her cheek, his fingers memorizing every curve of her face. He wanted every moment back, every missed opportunity to let her know he loved her, every kiss that was thought about but not acted upon. He wanted last night back, to hold her in his arms and keep her safe from all harm. To become one with her body and soul so that no one, no one in heaven or hell, could ever split them apart.
Instead she died alone, thinking that he didn’t want her. Now he wanted nothing but.
When at last his sorrow was reduced to a steady stream of bitter tears, he lifted her up and carried her to her final resting place. The cold, plain wooden box that was not fit to carry her clothes, much less her earthly remains. But the castle had been looted and all their riches were gone, in her death she had become just like the people who had grown to hate her for her full-figured and regal beauty, and for her spirit that was meant for greatness.
As Nicholas laid her in the box, the scarf wrapped around her neck fell loose. It was then Nicholai saw the two angry red puncture marks buried in the middle of a large purple and green bruise on her skin. His blood ran cold. Every myth and legend that surrounded their country and its murky forest jumped into his mind. He quickly dismissed it as complete nonsense. Her death had been anything but mysterious. Her whole family had been massacred, and he knew exactly by whom.
He covered the injury with the scarf, kissed her once more and found the strength to leave her side. As he stumbled back toward his mount, Natasha’s hand maiden approached him. From her apron she produced two things: Natasha’s ruby engagement ring and a red box that contained her royal tiara. He did not ask how she spared these valuable pieces, but could tell from her face it had cost her deeply. It was her final gift to Natasha, who had always been so kind to her. She could not spare the Princess's life, but she could spare her most treasured pieces.
The young girl was in tears as she bowed briefly before running away to grieve for her mistress in private.
Nicholai watched her go, clutching the two precious gifts to his chest.
He would have cried, but just like Natasha he was hollow inside. And he remained that way until the night when his eyes first met Adele’s in that press conference two hundred years later.
Nicholas sighed as he looked down at Adele, who twitched and moaned in her sleep. He reached out to touch the face he thought he’d never see again. Here she was again in his lap, her body warm, her heart beating, her soul having found its way back to him. It was a moment his heart had waited for, through thousands of sleepless nights. Centuries of longing were fulfilled the very moment he looked into her familiar face. He knew each time that he had held her as Adele that they had been moments stolen from the greedy grasp of death. He sighed as he wondered how long they would have before the clock struck midnight again.
He held her closer, knowing better than all those years ago. These moments were to be cherished so that they would never be forgotten. He would not reject her again. And he would cherish her with his whole life as long as Fate allowed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
That first day after Natasha had died, Nicholai could not stay away from her resting place. To be close to her earthly remains brought him comfort. Buried under a mound of cold Earth she was alone. He hated leaving her there, especially since he cursed her to that solitary fate. When a storm came that first night, trying to drive him from where he lay, as close to her as he could possibly get, he would not move. He lay there, his soul crying out for her as the rain beat upon his back where he slumped across her grave, holding her ring in an iron grip. Let the storm rage, let the lightning burn the whole damn forest down. If dying meant he could be with her again, that was fine by him. He closed his eyes to the painful existence his life had become and prayed to open them to see her, arms outstretched, welcoming him into heaven. And he knew it would be heaven, for she would be there.
When his eyes opened again it was to another sunrise without his beloved Natasha. He pulled to his feet and in doing so noticed something he hadn’t noticed before. There were footprints that walked right up to where he lay on the ground. His brow furrowed as he glanced back up to the castle where those footsteps now led.
He had run into the castle then, charging through the empty, burned out ruins. “Show your face!” he shouted as he ran from room to room. When he got to Natasha’s private suite, he was shocked to find her wedding gown, spread out on her bed, somehow spared from the chaos and destruction of the night before. It lay there, waiting for her as though she would return.
He fell to his knees in front of it, his hand gingerly tracing the lace trim, the soft satiny material slipping through his fingers. It lay flat on the bed; it would never know the full curves of her body. His eyes burned with tears as he was reminded of her soft bare body pressed up to his the night he threw her out of his bed.
His heart couldn’t take the immense weight of his regret and he jumped to his feet and ran from the castle. He didn’t stop running until he hit the stream that separated her father's land with the rest of the community scattered through the surrounding hills.
There he fell into the dark wet dirt, finding yet a deeper reserve of pain, wailing from the pit of his soul long, mournful, guttural sounds of true suffering which words could never express.
He opened his hand, shaking with rage, to see the ruby ring he’d placed on her finger, its sharp edges cut into his skin. He remembered how she’d glowed when he had first slipped it onto her finger, tears of happ
iness flying from her cheek as she threw herself in his arms, screaming yes so loud even the angels could hear it.
He remembered the plans they made, the dreams they shared, the plans for children – lots of children – to share in their love. And now she was gone, taking all their dreams with her.
All he had left was a ruby ring she’d never wear again. Every single promise they had made had been broken. With a yowl of rage he hurled the ring into the murky water. He stumbled home in a stupor.
Though it was hopeless, Nicholai could not keep away from her. He returned that night and slept beside her yet again. Again the storms raged to drive him away, again he woke to sunshine and fresh footsteps. This time he did not go into the house, he could not bear to see that dress again. On the third night he was riding over the terrain to sleep beside her once more when something spooked his horse and threw him into the brush, knocking him unconscious. He did not wake until the following morning.
He slept right through Natasha clawing through her grave, as well as her first kill – a hunter camped out in the forest who counted out the jewels he stole from her family. His new riches were the only way to live down the nightmare of how things had turned on him when he’d tried to claim the oldest child.
He had tried to forget the sound of the fluttering wings and the yellow eyes of something not human and not animal. They were eyes he saw again before his death, when Natasha, now undead, had come to extract her revenge.
Nicholai slept right through Natasha’s return to her home, walking up the grand staircase, and meeting Thaddeus in her personal suite. Nicholai also missed Natasha bowing down to the man who was now her master, whose long fingers caressed her bloody chin. He was proud of her first kill, motivated by anger, fulfilled by a lust for vengeance. He knew she had been perfect for his wife when he first saw her riding across her father’s land, wearing trousers, straddling the horse as good as any man.
Thaddeus had reminded him of his first love, the one who had created him and given him the bounty of immortality. Dying had been worth it to be with her, Thaddeus thought at the time. But as the centuries passed he realized Eve had many loves, and Thaddeus was not one of them. She’d turned him into a killing machine and left him to his own devices while she preyed on those for whom her lust truly burned – women not unlike herself.
When Thaddeus first saw Natasha it was Eve who appeared before him, her long red hair covering what patches of black lace and silk did not. She leveled those incredible cerulean eyes on him. “You have found another, Thaddeus.”
He had smiled at her then. He knew Natasha would get Eve’s attention. Her spirit would arouse his Mistress and how much it would pain her to watch Thaddeus take possession of her, when Eve herself could not. Perhaps that was why he threw himself into pursuing her with such vigor. Not only would he have a bride much like his beloved, his beloved would feel the sting of loss and rejection. It was the best of both worlds. Revenge and lust – life’s great intoxicants.
Eve stalked them both as time passed and Thaddeus attempted to convince King Desislav to let him marry the Princess. Eve’s unrequited lust turned into intense hatred for the young dark haired beauty. There was something in her that threatened Eve somewhere deep down. And she didn’t like it.
She would have killed Natasha herself, but something in the girl frightened her. Instead she leaned on her strengths and attempted to woo Thaddeus back to her. He used her cruelly, as cruelly as she’d used him, and returned to his chase.
Before long Eve had been sufficiently been replaced by another obsession. Thaddeus would not stop until Natasha not only became his, but loved him in a way no one had ever loved Eve, or could.
As Thaddeus’s new bride knelt before him he knew he could control her. When they made love he knew that Eve would feel each caress, every kiss. And she would burn for both of them then, in the same way he’d burned for her for four hundred years. She would envy him the younger beauty until her soul rotted inside her. Perfect punishment, Thaddeus thought.
He wanted to take Natasha immediately, but he knew she still pined for Nicholai. Bloody mortals, he thought to himself with a scowl as he watched her curl into her window seat and stare at the moonless night. Thaddeus hoped the horse that had thrown Nicholai had killed him. Once he was gone, Natasha could give herself totally to him. It was only a matter of time. And they had plenty of that. He was nothing if not a patient man.
After all, he had pined for Eve for nearly three hundred years.
What he didn’t know is that Nicholai had only been stunned, and when he awoke the next morning he finished his lonely, faithful trek to Natasha’s grave.
When he got there he discovered her grave had been disturbed. Panicked he used his bare hands to dig his way to the bottom to find her. She was gone. Not only she was gone, but so was the wooden box in which she lay.
Again he looked up at the castle. There was no movement in the windows. Nicholai remembered then the two holes on the side of her neck. He wiped the dirt from his hands and made his way toward town.
There in the middle of town was a body hanging from a tree. It was the body of a man involved in the revolt, who had been drained of blood, and his head slumped over to the side. Through a gaping hole in his neck one could see how his neck had snapped, the skin around had been torn through like an animal.
But an animal had not tied him up for the rest of the village to see, at least not the four-legged kind.
That night Nicholai was on his way back to the castle when a gypsy grabbed him from the shadows and pulled him into a shack. Her strength was surprising for a frail, old woman.
Normally he steered far clear of their superstitious flights of fancy, but when she uttered Natasha’s name she had his complete attention. He grabbed her fragile arms and cried, “Do you know where she is? She’s not dead, is she?”
“Nor is she alive,” the old woman told him. “She is undead. Cursed.”
“I do not understand,” he said, shaking her slightly. “Tell me where she is.”
“She is with him,” the woman told him cryptically before lowering the boom. “She is a vampire. She feeds on the blood of the living.”
Nicholai released her with a savage, “No!”
“Your destiny is clear, Nicholai.” He spun around when she spoke his name. “You must kill her master and set her free.”
Even Nicholai had heard the legendary tales. He understood exactly what the old woman was saying. “If I do that, she’ll die,” he said, his heart unable to wrap itself around the thought of losing her twice.
“She is already dead,” the woman told him. “Do not let her soul die as well.”
As Nicholai raced from the strange old woman, she morphed into a beautiful redhead. Eve's laugh bounced off of the darkened walls.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Adele squirmed in Nicholas’s arms as she wandered the dark halls of her past. In her dream she relived the awful days after she’d been turned by Thaddeus. The lives she took, and how gleefully she took them, satisfying a lust for revenge that had been reborn with her.
Every night when she’d return, she’d bow before Thaddeus and he would praise her. Every night she’d go silently into her room, sit by her window and pray that the nightmare would be over soon; that she’d wake up wrapped in Nicholai’s arms and all of this would just be a distasteful dream.
That day did not come. Instead Thaddeus grew more insistent in his affections. She squirmed in his arms as he tried to embrace her, and his kisses fell everywhere but where he wanted. She turned from him and tried to keep her distance, and Thaddeus grew impatient with her game of cat and mouse.
Finally he had had enough. She had pulled away from him when he tried to hold her close, wiggled out of his arms and walked back to her place by the window. It was where she stared into the darkness each and every night until the dawn threatened to appear and she took her place in the coffin he’d placed beside his own.
This time he would not gi
ve her the space she silently requested. This time he walked to the window and sat beside her. “Why do you look so sad, my love?” he asked, running a finger along her flesh, leaving a trail of goose bumps behind.
She moved away from his touch. She knew what he wanted, and she also knew she would never give it to him. “I do not love you, Thaddeus,” she said quietly, not looking him in the eye.
Thaddeus was angered, but tried to hide it as he turned her face to look at him. His eyes, one blue and one brown, tried to seduce her. “Don’t you know I would do anything for you? Whatever you want, I will give to you.”
She steeled her spine against the seductive pull of his gaze. He had taken her life when she had let her guard down before; that was all she was willing to give him. “You cannot give me the love I had. You cannot give me the life you stole.”
“I give you something better,” he told her. “I give you immortality. There are no limits to the loves and the lives you will have.” He grabbed her by the neck with his bony hands. “And take,” he said as his mouth turned up in an evil grin.
She simply shook her head as tears flowed down her cheek. She wanted the life she had. “I want Nicholai,” she had said, turning away from the anger in Thaddeus’ face to sob quietly into her arms.
Tears stretched over the centuries to escape from Adele’s sleeping eyes as she tossed and turned in Nicholas’s lap. He held her close, knowing her journey through her past was nearly through. Soon she would remember how it all ended and why they had met again. He willed his strength into her body as his own mind recalled their last meeting as Natasha and Nicholai.
Nicholai spent an agonizing week trying to figure out a way to save her life and still kill the monster that had contaminated her. He spoke to priests, he spoke to mystics, and he spoke to his own heart. Finally he concluded that the only loving thing to do would be to set her free. He’d already lost her; he couldn’t allow her to lose herself. She was no longer Natasha, neither was she a monster. She was a lost soul that needed to be freed from her chains.
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