“I’m not hungry. Not at all.” I folded my arms and sensed both Louis and Leticia desperate to move in closer, to bite me, be with me. Take and give. Lie with me. They would be waiting a long time. I had perfected methods of blocking my thoughts over the 321 years I was absent from this castle and this night, neither of them would understand why I was abstaining—challenging their so-called entertainments.
“You dare defy your queen?” Leticia goaded me, her witchcraft tightening an invisible noose around my neck so that I felt dizzy.
“I dare,” I managed to say, though she had hold of my voice box.
“You’ll regret this,” she warned me, and let go of her hold on me.
The two of them walked ahead and joined the masses, beginning to dance alongside everyone else. As I watched the crowds dance, not one figure without a partner but me, I thought I heard a whisper to my left, in my ear.
I’m sorry Fabien. So sorry, the voice echoed, sounding like Juniper, her spirit perhaps.
We’ll be together again. This night, Juniper. This night. Wait for me.
I’m sorry, but may strength be with you. Goodbye. Good luck.
Had Juniper ever stood a chance? Had Leticia dug her claws into Juniper’s soul so long ago, that the essence of her was always going to be skewed? I didn’t know. I knew only I wanted to die and to end this madness—preferably taking Leticia down with me.
Leticia and Louis danced the floor, taking their time to select their favourite victim. I overheard them arguing like children, fawning over who would be the more succulent feed and who looked the most lusty. They eventually selected a voluptuous, red-haired woman who looked well past consenting age but was evidently, a virgin. Vampires could tell which of the humans were virginal from the stink of their lust.
The moment Leticia and Louis stopped dancing and she reached out for the red’s breast, everyone else in the crowd vied for their chosen favourites, too, sometimes four guests to one victim.
Hands groped, the virgins groaning, their desire induced by venom and need and delirium. Anaesthetised slightly, to them little nips would feel nothing like pain, just kisses to the flesh.
Gradually the male vampires opened their pants and brought out their cocks, stroking them themselves, or letting other vampires around them stroke them. She-vampires still kept their bottoms hidden.
I watched detached, disengaged, disgusted that this was ever my life. I hadn’t attended a banquet in over three centuries but once upon a time, I would have feasted as Leticia was doing that night.
She and Louis suckled the red’s nipples, one each, as Leticia rubbed her hand up and down Louis’s length. With most other artless vampires already sucking and licking each other’s sexes, I was fixated on Leticia and Louis as they enjoyed their feast a little slower, more skilled at what they were doing.
Louis grinned and chuckled at Leticia as the red-haired girl writhed against her bonds, her eyes flicking open and shut, the whole experience like a dream to her, not reality.
Louis spread the girl’s legs and slipped his fingers beneath a full, red nest of hair, easing his digits inside her. As Leticia took their victim’s clit between her teeth, I watched from afar as little rivulets of blood fell down the sides of Leticia’s cheeks—streaks Louis cleaned as he moved his fingers in and out of the girl still.
The was just the starter. There was so much yet to come. Virgin blood was purest and therefore, could fuel a vampire with lust for days.
As Leticia took charge of pleasuring the girl, Louis moved behind Leticia, who kneeling, spread her kneels slightly so Louis could lick her from behind at the same time. Louis drew blood from Leticia also and devoured her, his nails scratching down her back, behind and haunches, the wounds dripping blood but healing immediately.
I couldn’t deny the sights aroused me and I was hard with the thought of taking blood, using blood and sharing it. I was also hard thinking about taking a virginal body with my inordinate phallus, but that was the beast in me talking, a creature that craved something new all the time, something more.
Maybe Leticia thought I would eventually join in because she never looked around to find me and beckon me over. Perhaps she thought I would join her and Louis in a bedchamber later and there, we would have our own private after-party?
What happened next? Well, Leticia and the redhead came together, their cries absorbed by other cries. They wailed, they moaned, and the virgin took her first-given orgasm with delight.
Leticia changed the position of the stocks so the victim was laid horizontally rather than vertically and while Louis spread the girl open and began fucking her sloppy pussy, Leticia rode the girl’s face with her sex.
All around me, dozens of these scenes played out and yet I had seen it all before. What I hungered for was Jaimie, dear, pretty Jaimie, with her hands to hold me. I was past the point of no return. Jaimie had gotten herself somewhere safe and no longer did I have anything to live for. I was not the creature for her.
Let me die this night. Let me die free of this sexual debauchery.
As I tried to turn and exit the ballroom, the guards barred the door so I couldn’t leave. I turned and saw Leticia, unperturbed, her orders to the guards already given.
After the victims were fucked, again and again, by various partners (while being bitten in between), the sacrificial lambs eventually grew tired. Nobody wanted to feast on blood after lust was drained, so before the victims fell asleep, the crowd drained the thirty men and women recently given a taste of lust. Screams broke out eventually, once the victims realised their lives were being taken, and shrieks were silenced by multiple bites, multiple draws of blood. The humans dead, drained entirely so they could never revive, the vampires filled the floor with their bodies and began tearing each other’s clothes off, eventually emerging a mass of naked bodies writhing and pleasuring one another.
I had to shut my eyes or risk being tempted to join in for one, last, pleasurable night on earth. Partners swapped and shared, identities were thrown off and couples separated to join others. It was a mass of lust and joining, the virgin blood making their appetites endless.
The guards removed the victims from the middle of the dance floor and pulled them to the edges. I ignored the fucking vampires around me and walked over to examine the red Louis and Leticia had been enjoying. The woman had died with a smile on her face but that was not for me. I wanted to die a glorious, righteous death, finally defying Leticia and everything she stood for.
I hid in a corner for the next twelve hours, trying to ignore the ravenous beasts behind me, continually tucking into one another. When everyone eventually fell asleep at the break of day, the shutters were drawn tight shut, the light put out.
“Fabien,” Leticia said from somewhere in the masses, “you defied me. At dusk, you will pay. Guards, take him to his room and lock him inside.”
I was taken away, glad to escape the stench of dead sex and rotten blood.
AT dusk I was manhandled by the guards from my chamber and taken to the Throne Room, where everyone awaited me in ceremonial dress, no blood or lust marking them to give away their antics of the night before. Everyone wanted to watch a fight and finally, they wanted rid of me. I saw it in their eyes.
Tossed to my knees before my queen, sat on her throne, she asked, “What do you plead, Fabien?”
“What am I accused of?”
“Denying the queen, who does not accept no from anyone.”
“I plead guilty, then. A thousand times, I plead guilty.”
She screamed with anger, filled with rage beyond containment. I would deny her and I was denying her, with every second I spent outside of her arms, her body and her love. I would never love her and never had. I was ready for death.
“You will die for your crimes.”
“Help my journey then and do it, NOW!” I beckoned, ready to pass to the other side and be with Juniper, finally.
“No,” she grunted, “you do not escape your miserable life so
easy. Tonight, you will fight my new champion, Louis, and you will learn why you have become surplus to requirements when he finally demonstrates who is the victor here.”
I looked up from my bowed position and into the eyes of the man sitting beside her now, given his own, smaller throne to sit on and a necklace of jewels to symbolise he had become her new partner in the world.
He betrayed no fear and I wondered if it were because he thought Leticia would bail him out if there was trouble.
There I stood, in nothing more than trousers and slack shirt, my old shoes on my feet, with nothing to fight with other than my hundreds of years’ life experience on Earth. That in itself was contradictory! I wanted to die after having lived this hateful life and my experience made me ache for death because it seemed like the only way out. I was tired and weary and had nothing left to fight for. I didn’t want this life anymore!
Leticia bade us move inside the circular seal in the middle of the throne-room floor, a seal bearing her coat of arms (a crystal skull with six daggers and diamond eyes). With her finger, she erected a force field around the circle, creating our arena. A fine, red aura surrounded us and we both knew the matter would slice our bodies in two if we tried to step outside the seal.
“Fight,” she instructed us both, “and let the best warrior win.”
A fight to the death, I looked forward to. I was ready and would not take the life of this lesser man. I’d let him win, it was only fair. Eventually he would realise Leticia was no good and leave her, find Jaimie again, and together they’d make some sort of life for themselves again.
Outside the cylindrical chamber stretching up to the vertigo-inducing ceilings, the coven gathered round but they all looked far away and fuzzy, beyond the barrier of our arena.
“Begin!” she commanded.
Louis launched at me as he had the night he arrived at Krill, pinning me to the floor, his teeth vying for my throat. I wouldn’t kill him, nor would I allow him access to my blood and anyway, he wasn’t such a new vampire now and had lost his initial strength. For some reason, without the fear of death hanging over me, I didn’t feel so weak anymore.
His hands around my throat and mine around his, we couldn’t shift, couldn’t move—suspended.
“Fabien, you will die,” he reminded me, his eyes frozen in hate.
“Oh I will, but not before I have taught you a valuable lesson.”
He snarled. “What lesson?”
I couldn’t help but goad him. “Jaimie said you never loved her as I did.” I laughed with my eyes so he knew it was true. His tongue lashed wildly and he thrashed, trying to overcome me.
“You bastard. You bastard.”
“Little boy. You are no match for me. If you win tonight, it is because I let you!”
“Raaargh!!!” he screamed, and I tossed him off me so he almost fell through the deadly, red mist. He narrowly avoided it, rolling the other way.
He grunted wildly, his anger out of control. I jumped into the air, suspended, mentally laughing at him. I quickly took a look across the room to where Leticia sat (still living inside Juniper’s body), her hand against her cheek as she watched with amusement. Indeed, she knew Louis was no match for me and this was a game to her. She wanted me to win. She wanted it so badly, hoping the taste of victory would give me just enough lust to want her, too. She had no idea how much more complex than that I was.
I fell back to the floor and he came at me, his cock hard as he pinned my arms above my head, pushing against me. “Fabien, ask for mercy before I rip out your throat.”
“And what, then? Louis? What then?”
“I leave this place and find Jaimie. I should never have left her.”
“But you did,” I reminded him calmly, “and she is better off without you, is she not? How can you go back to her now, after this? After all you have enjoyed here, in this domain?”
He was still at war with himself—over losing his old life and gaining another. He couldn’t let go of Jaimie but he couldn’t imagine leaving Leticia’s bed either, not with the delights on offer.
“Why did she prefer you?” he growled.
“I have a passion, she said,” I admitted, “one you never did. I could die tonight gloriously and still, I would be the victor, because I lived long enough to learn the pursuit of many is nothing compared to the pursuit of one, and even if just for one night, I shared something true with her.”
He ground his teeth, his fangs so long they wept with venom. This was a fight of mental agility, not physical strength.
“We’re getting bored. Hasten before I kill you both myself!” Leticia shouted.
“See how she treasures you, Louis, see how dispensable you are to her. A life of emptiness beckons with the witch, that is all that beckons!”
“Then I will find Jaimie and make it right.”
For a second everything slowed and I was assaulted by an image in my mind, of two blonde-haired girls living with a bloodthirsty father, and a beautiful wife who trusted her husband implicitly. Yet behind the scenes, I knew, he would cheat, he would want their blood. How long before he changed them, too? How long before Jaimie realised her human body no longer satisfied his needs? How long before her heart broke, knowing for sure she’d married a man so quick to seek thrills with an uncomplicated woman as soon as his marriage hit the rocks?
He snarled, readying for an attack. With all those thoughts in my head, I realised this was a waste of time. Rage submerged me in its ample bosom, dragging me into and within the red mist of fiery doom. I had no thought other than to cut off all those possibilities before more lives were ruined. What took place next happened so quick, I could not reverse what was a natural, base, instinctive reaction. He scratched five claws angrily down my face and bit into my neck. He took a few hearty sucks but venom no longer had control of me after hundreds of years spent learning how to wield it. His biting me was a trivial matter, but made him distracted. In one, quick move, I took his head in my hands and twisted so his neck snapped, instantly.
His body fell, half my throat with it, and the crowd cheered. Applause surrounded me and yet, I had never felt so wretched. I healed instantly but I hurt, the sight of him dead a sorry one.
“Finally, Fabien remembers his place!” Leticia stood and clapped.
The arena walls faded, evaporating, and Leticia bade everyone leave, claiming she and I would feast on the remains.
FABIEN
THE THRONE ROOM empty, I knelt by the lifeless body of Louis and wiped a sorry, bloody tear away. If I had not bitten him on Christmas Eve last year, none of this would’ve happened. He would never have become this souped-up version of his former self, all sin and need and want. Where did the man he used to be, go? Who knew? How could one man be so duplicitous?
She walked around the seal of the throne room where Louis and I remained on the floor and snarled, “So weak, Fabien. You are pathetic.”
I looked up into her beautiful face and saw only ugliness, only evil. Her red robes were outstandingly beautiful, as was her body, still. However the way her words curled Juniper’s sumptuous lips was vile. I stared down at the dead body by my feet and wept not for myself, but for the man I’d been forced to defeat. It was an honour killing, it was a kill to prevent what was surely to come—more death and destruction at the hands of Louis and Leticia’s pairing.
“Why do you cry for this weakling?” She tossed her hands up in the air, rounding the circle in which we remained. Though I’d won the battle, I remained imprisoned in the same Hell the dead man had escaped. “You won! What could be wrong with that?”
Yet more angry, red tears fell. “It should have been me! ME! It should have been ME!”
She kicked the dead body and laughed. “You idiot. Get over it.”
I guarded my thoughts: I didn’t think I was the stronger, I believed he would win. I thought death was mine that night, I’d even have welcomed it. I would still have welcomed it, right then.
She knelt before me, a qu
een kneeling, and snarled, “What is wrong with you? Get up.”
I could tell she was anxious, fretful, knowing this hadn’t turned out the way she’d planned. I would not be controlled anymore, never again, and she had sacrificed her new pet to try to bring me back round to her way of thinking. It was unconscionable to imagine Leticia and I could ever share the same world for even one, more day. She was driven by her urges, more than any other being on earth. It’s what made her queen of the undead, the one person who didn’t care for life, who fucked and used other vampires for her own end, but gave them a place of sanctuary and a life of competition to be part of. What other pursuits could the undead find during the long passing of the centuries, other than to find kinship with those like them?
“I was doomed all along. Now, this seals it,” I told her firmly.
I was ready for the end.
I began making for the exit, more to make a point than leave. It was my Green Mile. Leaving might’ve been possible if I’d changed into my winged self and flew straight out of one of the stained-glass windows up above. However I knew I’d be shot down by her before I even got halfway to Valdoria’s protected borders.
“I’m your queen. You don’t get to leave me. You’re the only one capable of standing by my side. You made all this happen… it’s all your fault. All… you!” she shouted after me, even as I continued stomping away.
I was doomed.
Cursed.
Death happened to us all, didn’t it?
I’d defied her long ago and the sands of time hadn’t been in charge of when I would die, she had. I’d defied her too many times.
I was going to die.
I was ready.
Behind me I heard the sharp scratch of metal on metal as she released a long dagger from a scabbard at her belt. It came at me precisely, and fast, but even though I could’ve done, I didn’t try to stop it. It pierced my long-dead heart and made me feel void, nothing.
Taking Juniper from me had left me dead so long ago… so very long ago. She was dead to me over 300 years before, the night they brought her here and Leticia drained her body before letting the skulking filth of this palace feast on the remains. No magic could have undone what was done that day, not reincarnation either. The Juniper I’d loved had died that day, taking all her precious quirks and old-world ways with her. The girl who’d reincarnated, Jodie, had seemed to be a replica but she was very different to Juniper because she was modern. The perfect love I thought I’d had with Juniper was false. It was a fallacy. A fantasy. It had been one night. Just one. I’d been in love with becoming human again, not with Juniper. I’d been in love with her human body, but not her. I’d never discovered her favourite colour, favourite flower, favourite season or food. I’d been struck so much by her beauty, we’d never got to know anything real about each other. Why would we have conversed? What could we have talked about? My life at Krill? Her life at the alehouse and how much trouble she’d be in if her father found out about us? I thought I’d been mourning for centuries for a girl I never knew, when in fact I’d been mourning a life I wanted back—my human life.
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