I knew Leticia often used my body to experience sex as a human. Residual memories told me she liked human sex more than vampire sex because there were few male vampires who had the strength to overpower her physically. It was after those times she used my body to enjoy human sex, I felt sicker than sick. The feeling was indescribable. I knew she was so impenitent in her actions and that feeling of utter evil sank into my soul, like a deadly, viperous snake slithering and gnawing as it coiled through my system.
However, just that one kiss with Fabien on New Year’s Eve had made me thankful I had come back—and I forgot the sacrifices I had made to get here, such as the downfall of my parent’s marriage, not to mention everything else.
From the time we were just babies (Jaimie and I), Leticia visited my mother in dreams and made her paranoid and superstitious. My father (second father, in fact) divorced my (second) mother after she began to talk incessantly of magic, secrets and other worlds—subjects of no importance to him.
I never knew my first mother because she died in childbirth and my original father mourned her all the days I knew him. No doubt he ended up mourning me, too. To have had two fathers and two mothers was the strangest thing—because they were all different.
So, three months had passed since I last saw Fabien and I was worried about my love. She, being the witch I hated to name, hadn’t visited me for an exorcism either so I knew it was highly likely she had done something with Fabien, but I knew not what. For so long I had feared what our reunion would mean for him and now I was certain he had either been killed or worse—forced back into her bed.
On Easter Day, rather than face my hateful mother, I decided to spend the day with Jaimie and Louis at their snug, little house in the more residential and leafy Leeman Road area. Even as I walked in through their front door that day, I sensed my sister was different. I could just tell.
When she poured me a glass of wine and only juice for herself, I asked, “When are you due?”
She smiled, green around the gills. “Going by my dates, perhaps September, though I feel so pregnant already. I feel really sick.”
I gave her a good look over. “You could be having twins. They say extreme morning sickness is associated with twins. Double the fun.”
She looked terrified. “I’ve considered it but I don’t want to worry myself unnecessarily until we’ve had the first scan next week.”
I took her hand and assured her, “I know your husband is amazing but I’m always here if you need me.”
She looked sad. “I feel like this distances us even more! Me and you, I mean!”
“Yes,” I agreed. Jaimie’s life was taking her in a whole different direction to mine.
For a start, I was irrevocably in love with a vampire who could never be mine.
Marriage and babies were never for me, anyway, and somehow I knew it.
I gestured around the room, at all the cake stands and decorations, bags of icing everywhere. “How can you stand to be around all this stuff when you’re feeling sick?”
She laughed. “I just instruct Louis what to do and he does it after he gets home from work.”
I joined in laughing. “I can help too if you like!”
“HA! You’ve never been creative.”
I shrugged. “You’re so right.”
In my past life as a barmaid, I was a counsellor to the men suffering matters of the heart. As Jodie, I had become a lawyer, mediating in family matters in much the same way.
“We haven’t seen any more of that weird man, Fabien… have you?” she asked with a question in her eyes she didn’t want to ask. We were identical twins and she knew I wasn’t telling her something.
Plus, I may have seemed sadder than usual.
“I haven’t seen him, no. He seems to have disappeared. He did seem odd.”
“Umm. Like one of the characters Mum used to describe to us in those strange fairytales she’d recite.”
I drank a mouthful of wine and nodded. “I really despise our mother, you know.”
“I know. She is hard work, I know. I hope to do much better.”
Somehow I knew, Leticia and my mother got along well. Too well.
“Of course you will do better than her,” I told her smiling, and I helped her get on with making lunch, acting as though my heart wasn’t breaking with every minute more I spent without Fabien in my life.
Yet it had always been this way.
THAT night I dreamt as I often did, of the day my old life ended, when Juniper died. Leticia had fed from me until I felt I had nothing left and then I was only vaguely aware as her animals feasted on my entrails until I knew no more. The last image I saw before my light went out was Fabien, struggling wildly against her control. She was just so powerful, he had no chance of winning. His eyes fiery red, his hair on end with rage, he was furious. He had so much strength and still, nothing could stop her taking me out of the equation.
I never expected he would spend centuries mourning me after that—waiting for me—but he had. I fancied this was something she, Leticia, hadn’t anticipated either.
The nightmare repeated and I always woke knowing, if we were to ever be together again, he would have to change me this time. To a vampire, like him. I would be too weak otherwise, unable to defend myself against her and any other enemies he had.
I wasn’t afraid of death but I was afraid of never loving Fabien again.
But where was he?
◊◊◊
BACK at work after enjoying the Easter weekend, I wondered what the point was anymore. What was I doing? Why have I come back to this world? I would often ask myself. Life seemed utterly pointless now all hope seemed lost. He was gone, possibly dead, never to return.
I sat at my desk listening to a client, a so-called mother, screaming and cursing in regards to her husband, whom she wanted to press charges against so he couldn’t see his kids anymore. I’d already called the police to check up on her story and they told me the night she allegedly got beaten up by her husband, he was seen drinking with friends at a local pub—all night. Thirty-odd people agreed to vouch for him. She either beat herself up or got someone to do it for her so she could point the finger of suspicion at him. With my personal life at an absolute standstill, I had no time for her that day—my patience reduced to zilch.
“Mrs. Houghton, for fuck’s sake, get yourself another solicitor, because you are full of toss and shit. Piss off!” I took my landline out of its cradle and began dialling our security guard, Viveca, a tough bitch who’d thrown a ton of nutcases from our offices. We were mostly charging for counselling services, not for organising divorce, child custody or maintenance payments. Not to mention the elderly and their assets and the distribution of monies to pay for healthcare and whatnot.
Why do I do this? I asked myself for the hundredth time.
She continued bullshitting without remorse… “Useless father, don’t deserve the kids I giv’ ’im, look what he did,” she pointed at her black eye, “you don’t believe me… you must be a downtrodden bitch ya self! Eh, are ya even listenin’ to me?”
My head down to dial the number, Mrs. Houghton came at me when I wasn’t expecting her to. She tugged on my arm and I flinched. With just one small move, she flew across the room and crashed into the wood-panelled wall, splinters and rough cuts flying everywhere.
She gasped, winded, and screamed, “GBH, GBH! I’m getting you on GBH!”
Thankfully Viveca had already heard the scuffle and came to my rescue. “Mrs. Houghton is a poisonous and vicious liar! Please escort her away and make sure she never returns, Viveca!”
Viveca grabbed the woman in a hold and surveyed her disapprovingly. “Sure, Ms. Crosshair. Sure thing, she ain’t a pretty one, is she?”
“Fond of throwing herself about, so I’m told!”
I picked up the largest chunks of wood and threw them in the bin before chucking myself back into my office chair after all was quiet again. I considered I was strong to have managed that.
I’d always known I was strong but nobody had provoked me as badly as Mrs. Houghton, EVER!
I stood and examined my Edwardian desk, a chunky, oak object with two sets of drawers, a large writing pad on top and large, round feet that looked heavy too. I slid my fingers underneath the top and easily lifted the entire weight of it from the ground.
A knock on the door shocked me and I dropped my desk—almost on my foot! Everything which had been on top of my desk went crashing to the ground, including my laptop and a ton of files!
“Shit, Jodes, let me help!” Boris exclaimed. He was one of the partners who’d no doubt come to check if I was all right. “What the hell did she do in here?”
“Psycho, psycho woman!” I shouted. “I need the rest of the day off! I can’t… this is ridiculous. I need a break. I haven’t had a holiday in months and this place is like the bloody Jerry Springer Show!”
He squirmed, the idea of a holiday baffling him. “Take the day… we’ll talk about a holiday when you get back. You may have to take the notes from the Bowers case though… need the report on my desk tomorrow morning, remember?”
“Okay.”
Yet I already knew…
I wasn’t going to stay in this job.
Not when I had a bank account full of cash.
Not when I knew where Krill Castle was.
I remembered!
Sod Boris.
Sod Mrs. Houghton.
Sod such a thankless job!
I was going to take a leaf from Jaimie’s book and change my life!
Maybe I had the strength, after all.
I just needed to know what had become of Fabien!
LETICIA
NOBODY PLEASED ME. No one until Fabien, of course. He pleased me and when he no longer wanted to please me, the thought of once more being starved of a competent sexual partner drove me to kill his new mate, mercilessly bringing an end to Juniper. How he thought he could possibly ‘love’ anyone, let alone a human, was beyond me. We vampires did not love.
Just a few weeks had passed since he returned to Valdoria after 300 years’ absence. The day of his ceremonial welcome home (which he hadn’t expected, of course), he seemed shocked to find me alive, speaking, and well. He hadn’t foreseen I didn’t use Jodie’s body perpetually, just when I needed her. How could I trust more than a few hours’ absence from my kingdom wouldn’t result in me being deposed, or worse, killed?
I trusted no one. From the people who guarded me to the people who got to feed and live in safety because of me—I didn’t trust a soul or non-soul. Never had.
My witchcraft had been relatively weak until I turned vampire and became stronger than I ever conceived possible. Able to wield my powers in a more sustainable fashion, I quickly got to realise others who were much weaker than me wanted to benefit from my gifts. In the eleventh century, some tried to capture me, some tried to enslave me, but I evolved beyond my contemporaries.
My powers had always been mine to possess and benefit from, that’s all there was to it. The lesser vampires bowed to me because I had dual capabilities. Few of us did. Fabien was the only other who had the power of telepathy and my belief was, he and I were a singular breed, dying out. Why, I didn’t know. All I knew was that he was the only vampire worthy. So when he told me he had fallen in love with a human, I just couldn’t brook it.
She had to go.
Except I’d underestimated the naïve affection he harboured for her.
In the aftermath of Juniper’s death he refused me his body so I banished him unless he changed his mind. I’d always thought he would return but he hadn’t, not for centuries, and he’d left me feeling starved of his body and his love. How I’d yearned for the day he would walk back into my castle and into my bed. How I’d dreamt of it, night, after night, after night.
Cursed world. He had to return, some 321 years later, still full of amour—for her.
Juniper, Jodie, whatever her name was. He still loved her, only her, and I had suffered centuries’ longing for nothing. Time hadn’t healed that nonsensical notion of his—that vampire and human could find harmony. We both knew they couldn’t. He was in love with an impossibility.
He had finally returned to Valdoria—just, still in love with her. He’d tried to profess his love to me since his return, had even asked for my forgiveness, but I knew who his heart really belonged to and I hated it.
When he slid back into my bed and pretended to love me, through his profane bedroom ministrations at least, I knew the truth and I was already planning the ultimate revenge. He was so lusty and so full of desire that momentarily, I believed him to be honest, until I remembered of course—he had just gone without for so long, and I was at least strong enough to put up with his savage needs.
He thought I couldn’t see the thoughts he had tucked away in corners and underneath hats inside his mind. I could read him better than a book, for I didn’t even need to see the pages to hear his words. He was waiting for the day to kill me and to get his revenge.
However I had resolved, already, if he could never love me—I wouldn’t allow him to love anyone else. Also, if I couldn’t have him, I didn’t want to put up with this world anymore. I wanted to be welcomed back into the bosom of my sisterhood in the netherworld and there, live without bodily need, without this itching, gnawing scratch of mine—to have him just once tell me he loved me and mean it. I knew he never would, not truly.
If only she hadn’t come between us, we’d have gotten along fine, happily fucking for millennia perhaps. He might not once have told me he loved me but at least I could still con myself he was mine. For conning myself I was, knowing full well people could fall in love in a heartbeat—yet despite thousands of fucks with me, not once had he exhibited a slight morsel of love buried within his actions. I was a masochist to love someone who would never love me.
It wasn’t even that he didn’t judge me as good enough. He just didn’t love me. It was an irony he fell for a human, when he could have everything he ever wanted with me. Yet none of my magic and none of my wiles were powerful enough to evoke the potent mixture of chemicals that caused people to fall unquestionably, unfathomably and unreasonably—truly in love.
I’d witnessed it over the centuries, the act of falling in love I mean. I’d observed it and knew I was cursed never to have Fabien fall in love like that with me. It wasn’t going to happen. I’d found my only equal but he didn’t want me. Some sort of ill-fate was working against me, it had to be. Or, maybe love wasn’t as controllable as all the other elements I wielded. Maybe I couldn’t have it all and this was my punishment. To be so powerful meant I was destined to always be alone.
I hated that I loved him. Mostly because I hated love, but also because he didn’t love me back. He was planning his revenge, I knew, yet he hadn’t foreseen that I had been planning much longer—and his end was in sight.
Death for him and death for me. It was the only end I would feel satisfied with.
Fabien is mine!, I repeated to the sisterhood and all the orders I belonged to, night after night, night after night, yet it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. Nobody could help me.
There was not a potion in the world to make someone fall in love—not one witch or warlock had the patience to sit for centuries creating the exact chemical balance. It was a secret recipe.
It was life’s eternal mystery—the reason why people fell in love. Why they would even want to love, willingly choosing this fate, was disgusting to me. Love was a weakness and meant servitude, something I could never accept for myself, ever. It wasn’t me. I was destined to rule, not the other way round. Love would never rule me. I ruled. Only me. Nobody else. Me. Therefore, I would never render myself lesser to be what he needed me to be.
Yet I’d loved him from the beginning, anyway. I’d panged. I’d twitched and burned in the dark hours—only for wanting Fabien. Why? Only reason I knew, was that he was a physically beautiful anomaly, like me. What other reason would there be?
&nbs
p; Yet the hourglass emptied.
Time ran out.
Jodie had no doubt missed him and she would make her move as soon as she realised I had given her superhuman strength.
I knew it.
FABIEN
IT HAD BEEN three months since I returned to Valdoria. Three months of pure hell and continual torture. The very minute I crossed the threshold of Krill Castle, weak and tired from my journey, Leticia’s guards took a hold of me and imprisoned me in one of the jail cells beneath ground.
They’d been expecting me. There was I, thinking I had the upper hand, when that was far from the truth.
There I was kept, shackled face-down for thirty days and thirty nights, and every night someone arrived to flog me until I had no more energy to scream. I didn’t feed in all that time and at the end of my penance, I was a little more than weakened—I was near-dead.
I was ready to accept death and would even have welcomed it, because I could see no future for myself and Jodie. However, it was at the end of this period of time that Leticia pulled me from the bowels of her castle and back into her bedroom. Letting me feed on her, my vampire instincts kicked in and we returned to our old ways.
Except there was one difference to the old days. Now, she felt the necessity to keep me tied to the bed all day and if I tried to escape, her guards would send me back to prison once more for a repeat of the detestable penance I had no wish to suffer again.
Three months to the day since I arrived back (two of those moon cycles having been spent employed as her blood and sex slave) I waited, as usual, in bed all day as the sun skimmed the earth. Shards of light poked out of the sides of the wooden shutters as all the other vampires slept in contained dungeons, peacefully sheltered in complete darkness. I could find sleep no more than any other living creature could during bright daylight hours. Slivers of light touched me not but terrorised me nonetheless as I kept my eyes trained on the shutters all day long. Because I was strong I could day-walk but the sun still zapped my vampire energies and even tiny particles of light which filtered through the room, small though they were, seemed to suck my energy out as I laid there day after day, waiting and watching, unsure of why Leticia had brought me back here.
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