Blood Craving

by Gabrielle Bisset

  “No. Maybe it’s too cold for them,” he joked.

  Gunther laughed hard at his jab at the poorly clothed prisoners who wore barely enough to keep them warm in springtime, much less during the cold winter nights in northern Germany.

  “That one the other night didn’t seem to mind the weather. He was barely wearing his fucking pants when you caught him.”

  The memory of the poor fuck he’d caught three nights before flashed through Erich’s mind. He’d been a fast one, making him break into a full run to get him. Still healthy enough to run even after a few months in camp, he’d almost made it to the fence line. By the time he caught up with him, the man was out of breath but his eyes flashed a look that told him he still had some fire in him.

  And it was his job as a guard to make sure that fire was put out.

  So he did his job the way he always did, and when he watched them drag his limp and lifeless body away, blood still oozing out of him as it left a trail on the snowy ground behind him, all his fellow guards congratulated him.

  And to celebrate his latest kill, he went into town the next night and found himself the best looking whore around to fuck before returning to the barracks to retell in all its gory detail the story of the latest prisoner he’d murdered.

  Murder was the wrong word. This was wartime. Nobody was committing murder. The prisoner had been some Frenchman who should have paid for the past sins of his people anyway. Fucking French. Two fucking wars his people had been fighting because of them. Nobody could convince him one less Frenchman on the earth would be any crime.

  “How many did that make for you, Erich?”

  Lighting a cigarette, he took a long drag and slowly let the smoke trail out between his lips. “Twenty. There’s still nearly a month left in the year, though.”

  Gunther laughed loudly again, this time slapping Erich on the back. “There’s no one like you. Camp champ!”

  “Someone’s got to do it. These fucking people keep pouring into here every day and we’re expected to make sure they don’t get out of hand.”

  His anger boiled just below the surface at the change of the camp from a prisoner of war camp to one of them like the army had set up all over the eastern regions. He didn’t mind killing people, on the battlefield or right there in camp, but dumping thousands of people on them in just months made his job almost impossible.

  “I hear you,” Gunther said as he nodded his agreement. “And now they’re sending us all those fucking Communists. They’re even worse than the French.”

  Erich took another deep drag from his cigarette and then tossed it away. “We’re going to be lucky if they don’t fucking overrun us before this war is over.”

  “Not if you have anything to say about it,” Gunther joked as he turned and left him at his post.

  Sion squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push away the memories of the human he’d been back then. Even now, over seventy years later, who he was made the bile in his stomach lurch up into his throat. Vicious and cruel, he’d been the perfect German soldier in 1943. Back then, if he’d ever had an attack of conscience, he would have been able to say that his twenty kills that year paled in comparison to those of the guards of the special camp that held Jews and gypsies.

  But his conscience never bothered him then.

  The human he was—Erich Sturmer—never thought about the men he killed other than to count them, brag about the details of their deaths at his hands, and see them as the spoils of war. He’d never been anything other than the detestable creature he was in that camp in northern Germany during the Second World War.

  Belsen. The scene of his crimes.

  Those twenty men were just a few of those he’d killed in his life. Cringing, he remembered every one of their faces. He’d never been able to remember them as a human, but once he’d been turned, the memory of each and every one of them never left him.

  His sire told him it was one of the side effects of becoming vampire. The one who’d saved him from that life of hatred and rage, Isiah renamed him Sion because he believed there was good in him. Then he took him away from that camp and that life, along with dozens of other guards and prisoners.

  Kali gently shook him by the shoulder. “Sion, what’s wrong?”

  He calmed his mind for a moment to answer her. “Nothing.”

  “You can tell me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He tried to figure out exactly what to say. Nothing seemed to make sense. “I don’t know. My mind’s racing with thoughts I haven’t had in years. I can’t seem to control them.”

  “Maybe you need blood. You’ve been staring at this computer for hours.” Taking him in her arms, she held him to her and stroked his back. “I can help if you let me.”

  Kali’s blood called to him like a Siren’s song. Never before had he craved blood like this, and a tiny voice deep inside his mind whispered that something was wrong. A warning that something had changed in him.

  She is an ancient, so maybe it’s that. She did say their blood is different.

  Sion pressed his mouth to her neck and touched her supple skin to his lips. It felt warm. No vampire had ever felt warm to him. What was happening to him?

  “Take what you need. All I have is yours,” she murmured as she pressed against the back of his head to urge him to drink from her.

  The temptation to taste her again filled his mind completely, drowning out any caution that tried to hold him back. Want turned to need and denying himself became impossible.

  Rearing his head, he waited just a moment for his fangs to slam into his mouth. They ached for the taste of her, their razor sharp points a hair’s breadth away from her gently pulsating vein, and with the first push through her skin, his body came alive.

  Her blood tasted sweet but stung, like honey with a dash of cinnamon. It flowed into his mouth and over his tongue, thrilling his taste buds and making his cock harden like steel. Its effect filled his mind with visions of every moment of her existence, the highest highs and the lowest lows.

  Clinging to her, he took every last drop she offered, loving the sensation of truly knowing the woman he adored. Waves of happiness and love washed over him, followed by dark and painful memories he’d never heard her talk of, and just when he thought he couldn’t hang on anymore, they were pushed out and replaced by that sweetness and light he’d always found in her.

  “Sion, I need your blood. You’ve taken too much and I don’t think I’ll be able to—”

  Her barely whispered pleas filtered into his mind, ripping him from the incredible sensations her blood had given him. Opening his eyes, he pulled back from her neck to see her lifeless form in his arms. As terrified as the first time, he quickly offered his wrist and pressed it to her lips.

  Kali took from him as she usually had, her fingers desperately holding his arm as she pulled on his vein. Slowly, after about five minutes, the color came back to her cheeks, and he knew she’d be okay.

  “I’m sorry I took too much again. That’s never happened to me except with you,” he explained while she closed the holes in his wrist.

  A look of concern filled her eyes for a fleeting moment, but then she smiled up at him. “It’s okay. It’s my ancient blood. I hear it’s pretty powerful stuff.”

  “Makes me feel like a lightweight.”

  Kali stood up next to him and playfully ran her hands through his hair. “You’ll get used to it eventually. I’m more worried about what was wrong with you before you took from me.”

  All those memories his mind had dredged up came flooding back to him with her comment, but he couldn’t tell her about them. He’d never told another soul what he’d done—what he’d been as a human. Only his sire truly knew.

  If Kali found out the vampire she loved had been a monster as a human, she’d never want to see him again.

  Sion knew that, but he couldn’t blame her. What he’d been no one could understand. Even he didn’t want to believe it. Now after all those years of pushing his emotion
s down, finally having the chance to truly to be with the woman he loved meant having to deal with them because of what her blood did to him.

  It was a trade-off he wasn’t sure he could handle.

  He couldn’t tell her that, though, so he lied. “It’s the stress of everything going on, I’m sure.”

  A tepid lie at best, but better than telling her the truth that her blood made him remember all the things he’d worked every night and day for decades to forget.

  “I’m worried about you, Sion. I know seeing me fall back into my problem hasn’t been easy for you. I’m sorry about that. With everything else you have to deal with, the last thing you need is to have to nurse me back from my addiction.”

  The sadness in her eyes made him feel like shit. If only he could tell her the truth—that as much as he had been disappointed by her going back to Bliss, he was more worried than angry. But then he’d have to admit what taking her blood did to him, and he couldn’t tell her that.

  “No need to be worried. I’ll be fine.”

  A tiny smile hitched up the corners of her mouth, the emotion slowly reaching her eyes until finally he saw the happiness in them. He wanted her to always feel that way around him. Never in his human life or his time as a vampire had he made another being happy before Kali, and he wanted to believe it hadn’t been just a fluke.

  As foreign as the feeling was to him, he truly wanted to make her happy.

  But wanting to and being able to were two completely different things, and as he watched the smile fade from her face, he knew even at that moment he wasn’t succeeding. He was too matter of fact, too terse with her.

  “Would you like to go out tonight?” he asked, hoping to remedy the look of hurt in her expression. “We could go see a movie or anything you want.”

  “Really? You want to leave these rooms?” she asked, her eyes wide in surprise. Clearly, he hadn’t been as successful as he’d hoped in showing her how much he cared in the all the time they’d spent together.

  “Sure. Whatever you want to do.”

  Kali looked down at the books spread out across the table. “I should get back to work. I need to catch up on the time I’ve lost.”

  Sion took her hand and kissed it. “I know, but an hour or two away from your work won’t hurt. The Order can’t expect you to work every minute of the night. Just a little while and then we’ll come back.”

  Throwing her arms around his neck, she hugged him tightly to her. “Thank you so much. I know dealing with all my problems and emotions has probably been like torture for you, but this means so much to me that you want to make me happy. No one has ever done that for me.”

  Sion stroked her back as a smile formed on his lips. Not a forced smile or one he had to pretend was real so he didn’t look like a robot. No, a real smile she’d brought out in him.

  A real smile brought on because he’d succeeded in making her happy. He could get used to this.

  Sixteen

  The sound of the church bells nearby told Ramiel the sun was close to setting and soon it would be time to rise for the night. Opening his eyes, he looked to Noele’s side of the bed and saw it empty. In a split second, his heart slammed into his ribs at the thought of why she’d be up before it was safe for her.

  He quickly slipped one pant leg on and hopped out toward the living room as he forced his other leg into his jeans. No sign of either his wife or his son made his body go on red alert for if both of them were gone, something was definitely wrong.

  “Noele! Where are you? Theron!” he yelled, his voice fringed with the terrible fear that he’d lost everything he loved dearly in life.

  “Ramiel, what’s wrong? Why are you yelling like that?”

  Turning, he saw Noele standing in the bathroom doorway with a mascara wand in one hand and an eyelash curler in the other. He was sure he’d never seen a more beautiful sight and sighed, letting the stress ebb from his body.

  “I woke up and couldn’t find you or Theron.”

  She smiled and walked over to give him a soft kiss on the lips. “Did you have a nightmare?”

  “No. I don’t know why I was so worried, but when I didn’t see you next to me and Theron was nowhere nearby, I got worried.”

  “I let him go with Dante for a while. I thought it would be nice if you could sleep in a little before you had to go to meet Nico. Guess that didn’t pan out, huh?”

  She spun around to head back to the bathroom, but he caught her in his arms and pulled her to him. Kissing her like she possessed the air he needed to live, he let himself get lost in her for a long moment, not wanting to think about meetings or the Sons but only of how much he loved Noele. He closed his fist in her hair and tightened his hold as he deepened the kiss, wishing he’d never have to leave home again. To stay there with her and their son for the rest of time would make him the happiest man on earth.

  She pulled back and winked. “Someone’s in a good mood suddenly.”

  “Just happy to see you this evening,” he said as he pushed her hair back off her face to see those beautiful eyes of hers. “How are you feeling today?”

  Her hands cupped her swollen belly. “Not too bad. Nothing like I felt like with Theron. I think that means this one’s a girl.”

  Ramiel chuckled. The idea of them having a girl didn’t bother him at all, no matter what his wife thought. He didn’t relish the idea of a teenage girl and the boys he’d have to terrorize, but having a daughter sounded nice. What he hoped was whatever sex their child was that they’d be a normal child.

  Well, as normal as a born vampire could be. He just hoped for a baby who stayed a baby for more than a few weeks. Theron had been an infant for so little time that they’d barely gotten the hang of changing his diapers before he’d grown too big for them and they had to tackle toilet training with a little boy who wasn’t even four months old.

  “Well, then we’ll have a baby girl. I think that would be a good thing.”

  Noele tickled his sides as she turned back into the bathroom to finish her makeup. “Are you ready for another female in your life? Before me, you didn’t even have one and now you’ll have twice as many to deal with.”

  Leaning against the door, he watched her make herself even more beautiful than nature had. “I’ll be fine. Plus, I always have Theron to be on my side.”

  “To be on your side?” she asked in the mirror. “You make it sound like opposing armies.”

  That wasn’t far from the truth, as far as he was concerned. Between his son and himself, they took up about twelve square inches of the entire bathroom, while Noele’s makeup, lotions, shampoos, conditioners, and no less than five electrical appliances devoted to making her hair look the way she liked took up the rest of the area. He had a hard time imagining what the room would look like with another female added to the house.

  “I think we might need a new place if it’s a girl,” he said with a smile, knowing his wife understood his meaning.

  She turned to face him and twisted her face into a fake grimace. “You know, I could just let my hair go and never wear makeup again. I mean, as long as you don’t mind walking around with someone who looks like a frizzy haired troll, I’m cool with it.”

  Ramiel cupped her face in his hands and kissed the tip of her nose. “Baby, you couldn’t look like a troll if you wanted to. I love the way you look, with or without makeup, so whatever you want to do is fine with me. But I’m just trying to be practical. Two females with this much stuff might mean we need a bigger house.”

  Rolling her eyes, she chuckled. “Well, since babies don’t wear makeup or straighten their hair, I think we have a little while until that happens, dear. What time do you have to leave for your meeting?”

  “I told him I’d be there by eight. He’s got some news from Vasilije from the east. He’s been spending some time with the dragons, so any news from there is important.”

  Noele began to ask about how Vasilije was handling losing Sasa, something she had more knowledge of
than him, when the front door opened and Theron came running toward him.

  “Daddy! Uncle Dante and I went to the beach and stuck our feet in the sand.”

  Ramiel wasn’t sure, but he thought his son had actually grown by a few inches since he’d seen him that morning as he was tucking him into bed. That didn’t seem possible, though. He’d never grown that quickly, but now as he looked at where his head touched on his stomach as he hugged him, he was sure something had changed in him.

  As Theron trotted off to the living room, Dante strolled through the door wearing his usual shit-eating grin and chucked Ramiel in the shoulder. “How’s it going, Dad?”

  He hated when the clyten called him that. It wasn’t bad enough Dante had just become a vampire in the 1980s and Ramiel had been turned in the 400s, but now being called Dad by him made him feel even older.

  “Don’t call me that. Have you heard anything from Terek?”

  A confused look settled into Dante’s face. “No. Should I have? He’s been deep in training with Ilona.”

  “Didn’t he go east with Vasilije?” Ramiel asked, feeling for the first time out of touch with his fellow Sons. He had been spending more time with Noele because she was pregnant, but he hadn’t thought he’d been spending that much time away from his duties.

  “Dude, do I look like the damn encyclopedia? Show up at a goddamn meeting sometime.”

  Talking to Dante was sometimes like talking to the wall. Or a teenage version of a wall. Both made him want to smack the hell out of something, and at that moment something was his face.

  “By the way, I think you, Noele, and I need to have a conversation.”

  Ramiel looked at Dante expecting to see the same kidding expression he usual wore but saw that had been replaced by a look of complete seriousness. As they walked into the living room, he asked, “Oh yeah? About what?”

  Taking a seat on the couch, Dante leaned back and put his arms behind his head. “About his new ability.”