But now all that sweetness the drug had brought out in him had turned sour. Now it just dulled his mind so he couldn’t think. Gone were the euphoric feelings it had brought out in him—the love and emotions he’d kept hidden since becoming vampire—and in their place was left an addict who couldn’t see how little control he had left.
As the tears from the reality of how little there was left of the man she’d fallen in love with rolled down her cheeks, she felt his lips against hers. His kiss so full of passion made her not want to deny him, but even sex between them had been affected by Bliss. When they’d first made love, he had been caring and sensual. The drug took that away and left simply the physical.
“I need to feel you, Kali. You’re all I thought of all day,” he moaned as he worked to tug her t-shirt over her head.
She tried to fight him, but he overpowered her. As he threw her shirt off to the side and turned to doing the same with her panties, she wished it wasn’t like this with him anymore. All she wanted was the old Sion, but she didn’t know how to get him back.
“I know you want it as much as I do. Don’t fight it.”
He held her hips tightly as he slid into her, and somewhere deep inside the excuses she always made rose up in her mind. She should have just pushed him away, but in some way she liked the way he was with her now.
Ashamed, she buried her head in the space between his shoulder and neck and let him fuck her, hating how much her body responded to the feel of his cock. His body invaded hers over and over, each time touching a spot no other male ever had, and as much as she wanted to say she didn’t love it, she couldn’t.
The Bliss stripped away the aloof part of Sion she’d never been able to reach, leaving him completely open. The effect made him more animal when they made love than anything else because he had no inhibitions.
Kali wondered if because of this change he’d gone with anyone else in all those hours he spent away while she slept. Quietly, she asked the question she dreaded the answer to. “Have you been with anyone else?”
Sion’s eyes flew open, and his movements stilled. As they sat there with his cock inside her, she waited for his answer, terrified at what it would be.
“No. I don’t want anyone else.”
“Even when you go out without me looking for Bliss?”
He hesitated and her heart sank, but after a few moments, he shook his head. “No. I have all I want right here.”
She closed her eyes to stop her tears, but they came anyway. She wasn’t sure if she was crying because she was happy he hadn’t slept with anyone else or because she was sad their time together had devolved to a point where she had to ask the question.
He began pumping into her again, pulling her close. “Don’t cry,” he whispered in her ear. “Let me show you how much I want only you.”
Kali believed in her heart that Sion thought this was the way he could best show her how he felt, but all it did was leave her empty. This wasn’t making love or even sex. This was lust driven by Bliss.
Nothing more.
When he finished, he rolled her off him and lay on his back looking up at the ceiling. Part of her wanted to ask what he was thinking about as he silently stared off, but another part feared what he might say. When she’d been lost in the throes of the drug, it manifested in her a desire to simply go inside herself and never come out again.
But in Sion Bliss showed itself far more vicious. In him, Bliss took over and made every terrible memory come back true as life in his mind when he didn’t have the drug, so he craved it to chase his demons away.
He turned to look at her, and in a moment of coherence she saw so little of lately, he whispered, “I won’t always be like this, Kali. Sometime in the future, I promise it will be better.”
Sitting up, she looked down at his face and saw the anguish that signaled he was losing the battle against the Bliss. His high wearing off, all he was left with were the memories. Sadness filled his eyes, as it did every time they began their awful march through his mind, and before she could try to stop them from taking over, he was lost to them again.
His words slipped in and out of his native German when the memories overwhelmed him, almost entirely obscuring the male she knew existed in him. Gone was the logic and the calm level voice he used, replaced by a wildness that covered every part of him and made him look mad.
Those haunting grey eyes she’d looked into and found love in morphed into a look of steel, hard and ruthless without caring and joy anywhere to be seen in them. Pain and suffering flashed in them, a reflection of what he’d done as that man he was in those horrible days of 1940s Germany.
Raising his voice, he clenched his fists and barked, “Beweg dich, oder ich schieße!”
Kali had no idea what the words meant, but they terrified her just the same. She couldn’t ignore the unmistakable threat in them. The gentle and balanced soul she knew had been replaced by the angry vampire next to her, and she feared if she didn’t get away from him at that moment, he might finally hurt her.
He continued to rant on in German as she quietly slipped off the couch and began to walk toward the door. Whatever memories he was having that night, she couldn’t be there for him for fear staying would endanger her life.
Turning the doorknob, she heard a rustling sound behind her and before she could even turn around, he was on her. He slammed her into the door and pressed her against the wood with his forearm across her neck. Her heart slamming against her rib cage, she tried to push him off her, but it was no use.
“Sion! It’s me, Kali! Sion!”
The look of madness in his eyes told her he had no idea what she was saying. His face contorted into an expression of rage and then he practically howled the same words he’d said before.
“Beweg dich, oder ich schieße!”
Terrified of him and what he might do to her, she pleaded, “Sion, I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t know. It’s me, Kali. Please listen to me.”
Her words only seemed to make him angrier, and he pressed his forearm harder against her throat. Sure she was only seconds away from him crushing her windpipe, she tried once more to reach him. Not by words since she couldn’t talk anymore but by actions.
Cradling his face, she looked into his cold grey eyes as he stared down at her and prayed he’d see she wasn’t who the Bliss was making him think she was. The rage she found in them frightened her, but this was her only chance to reach him.
Her throat ached and the force against it made breathing next to impossible. Every second that ticked by was another closer to her losing consciousness. All she needed was him to see she was there in front of him, but was he too far gone?
Please, Sion. Look at me. It’s Kali. You love me like I love you. Please come back to me.
Her eyelids fluttered, closing as the last moment of life left her. She hadn’t reached him at all.
Kali opened her eyes to see Sion standing over her staring down in horror. She sat on the floor in a crumpled heap where she’d fallen just as she’d lost consciousness.
But why was she still alive?
Swallowing hard, she felt stabs of pain tear through her throat. She winced and quietly croaked out, “Sion? Do you know it’s me?”
He nodded and hung his head. Looking away, he said, “I’m so sorry. I tried to kill you. I didn’t mean to do that. I thought you were someone else.”
His voice sounded so sad it nearly broke Kali’s heart. The words seemed to be torn from his body.
Slowly, she stood on her feet, bracing herself against the very door he’d slammed her against. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. I know this is all my fault. You would have never gotten hooked on this poison if it wasn’t for me, but I can’t stay here and watch you lose against the Bliss. I just can’t.”
He shook his head and reached out to hold her hand. His voice full of anguish, he begged, “Please don’t leave me. I promise I’ll get better.”
She knew better, but she lov
ed him so she couldn’t just leave him there. No matter how much she knew she should.
Kali pulled him to her and hugged him, feeling all the sadness inside him pour out as they stood there alone with no one else but each other to live for. She doubted he’d ever choose her over the Bliss and that broke her heart, but the thought of giving up on him was worse.
“Let’s get you to bed, Sion. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
He lay back down and inhaled deeply, as if what they’d just been through had taken all the life out of him. Holding him to her, she pressed her cheek to his chest and accepted whatever would happen, she’d be there for him.
No matter how ugly it got.
“I thought I killed you.”
Lifting her head, Kali searched his face to find out if he was having another memory or if he was talking about her. He looked down into her eyes and nodded. “I thought I killed you, and as I stood there looking down at you, I felt emptier than I’d ever felt.”
“I’m okay now. It’s all right.”
“You should leave me and this place, Kali. Leave and never come back.”
She knew he was right. She should leave. By staying, she likely would get nothing more than to see him disintegrate night by night right before her eyes.
None of that mattered. All that mattered was she loved him.
“I’m not going anywhere, so do your worst. I’ll still be here.”
Sion squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. “I’ve already done my worst. It haunts me day and night as it has since the moment I was made vampire.”
Kali suspected she shouldn’t ask about what he meant, but she had to know. They were in this together, so no more secrets.
“Tell me, Sion.”
His frown deepened. “No. I can’t. You’d never want to be near me again.”
Sliding up his body, she whispered, “I won’t leave. I promise, no matter how bad it is.”
“I did things no man should ever be forgiven for. Nothing can change what I was.”
She kissed him softly on the lips. “You aren’t man anymore. You’ve done your penance, Sion.”
He opened his eyes and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how long it’s been. Seven decades or seven hundred years. I’ll still be that same animal I was who didn’t care what he did to those around him. I can never change that.”
“What was that you were saying before to me? I don’t know German, so I didn’t know how to answer.”
Knitting his brows, he repeated his words, but this time in a voice just above a whisper. “Beweg dich, oder ich schieße. It means move or I’ll shoot you.”
“Why were you saying that?”
Sion sighed and ran his hand over his head. “I was having a memory of one night years ago.”
Kali rested her chin on his chest and refused to look away, even though she knew that’s what he wanted. “Tell me.”
“You don’t want to know that part of me.”
Wrapping her arms around him, she hugged him to her, molding her body to his. “I want to know every part of you. I love you, and that means all of you.”
“You won’t love this part.”
She said nothing else, and after a short while he began talking and she listened to the story of the monster he was as a human.
“I was never gentle or kind a day of my life before I became vampire. I hurt people just for the sake of hurting them and enjoyed cruelty. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t that person. So when it came time to join the army, I relished the idea of killing people. It made me hard just thinking I’d get to kill the other side’s soldiers.”
Kali closed her eyes as he told of someone so foreign from the vampire he was now. His stories of hurting others made her cringe in pain, making her think of the cruelty of her sire. But with each moment she lay there horrified at his behavior, she reminded herself that was the man he’d been, not the vampire he became.
“But I didn’t go to the front. Instead, they assigned me as a guard to the Belsen camp. At first I was disappointed because I didn’t think I’d get to shoot anyone there, but I remember that first day when the camp commandant told us our job was to make sure the prisoners stayed safe but stayed, and I knew he was telling all of us that we could do what we’d been trained for. I saw it in his eyes. He hated the enemy as much as I did.”
“Was this a death camp like Auschwitz?” Kali asked, her heart in her throat at the mere thought that the man she loved was one of those monsters who’d killed millions.
Sion remained silent for a long time as she tried to accept that he had been one of those men who’d exterminated nearly an entire group of people for some baseless hatred. When he finally spoke, she felt some relief but knew he didn’t.
“No, Belsen wasn’t a death camp.”
Kali felt herself begin to breathe again as he continued talking, his body shaking as he spoke about what he’d done. Belsen may not have been like the camps she’d heard about, but his actions there had caused those prisoners to suffer more than anyone ever should, war or not.
“I caught him sneaking out in the middle of the night and yelled those words hoping he wouldn’t stop and I’d be able to kill him justifiably. I loved killing people. The feel of the gun in my hand, the cold metal pressing against my fingertips as I aimed for their heads. Other guards aimed for their legs to stop them, but I always aimed for their heads.”
Tears welled in her eyes as he recalled how he’d shot the man for stealing a simple crust of bread. He said he did it without an ounce of remorse, but now as he told the story to show what kind of monster he was then, Kali heard the utter sorrow at what he’d done.
Looking up at him, she saw tears in his eyes. When he stopped talking, he closed them and turned away from her. “How can anyone ever be forgiven for something like that?”
“This is why you closed yourself off for all those years?”
He nodded. “I was a monster as a human man. If my sire hadn’t turned me right after that night, I would have killed more innocent people. How could I be close to anyone knowing what I truly was?”
“Sion, your sire saved you from being that person. He saw something good in you, hidden beneath all the rage and hatred that covered you then.”
He turned to face her and sighed. “I have no idea how he saw anything good in who I was then.”
Kali pressed a soft kiss onto his lips, hating what his past was but loving him. “You have a destiny as a Son of Navarus, and even though you can never make up for what you did then, you aren’t that animal anymore. You’re the Son who brings logic and reason, and with your drones, you’re going to be an important part of defeating the Archons and stopping their tyranny over our people.”
Her mention of his fate made Sion frown even deeper. “I don’t know if I can even be that anymore.”
Exhausted, he drifted off to sleep as she held him in her arms and prayed that she could find the way to save him from the Bliss and the demons that haunted him. If she couldn’t, he’d never fulfill his destiny. She couldn’t let that happen.
Eighteen
Marc Verrater’s new secretary looked up in fear from her desk as he marched by her, ready for his meeting with Magistrate Consera and their new allies. Witches. It had been years since Marc had seen a witch. Fuck, it had been years since anyone had seen one. Just by chance, he’d met one right after he became an Archon, when they were still enemy number one to most vampires. Not terribly impressed with her, he’d drained her dry before she could perform any of her fucking hocus pocus on him.
But Consera wanted them on the Archons’ side, so Marc would have to keep his fangs to himself this time. No loss. Their blood wasn’t very good anyway. Too bitter.
He had a few minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin, so quickly he slid open his desk drawer and stuffed his hand toward the back where he kept his stash of Bliss hidden. One vial sat alone just out of his fingers’ reach, so he jammed his arm completely into the drawer and roo
ted around until he felt the cool glass touch his hand.
Instantly, a feeling of relief washed over him. In just a few seconds, he’d be on his way to that beautiful place of oblivion the drug took him to, that feeling that reminded him still of what it was like to taste Solenne’s blood on his tongue.
Lifting the vial to his lips, he let the liquid drain into his mouth, sucking the last of it onto his tongue before tossing the container into the trash can next to his desk. He closed his eyes and waited for the feeling he craved every minute of the day and night. After taking so much that night, he knew it might take longer this time, but the wait would be worth it.
And when he finally felt it begin to ease through his veins, all he knew was heaven once more.
He loved these moments more than any other now. Bliss was all he thought about, all he craved. The drug made his life livable for the first time in so long.
Marc sat back against the cool black leather of his office chair and let the euphoria take him over. His breathing slowed and nothing but pure pleasure existed in him as thoughts of the one female he’d ever needed filled his brain.
Solenne.
Without Bliss, he couldn’t stop himself from being overcome by the feeling of rage at her loss because of Emily, but now all that was pushed aside in favor of how similar the effect of the drug was to the effect of her blood in him. He clung to that, able to think through the haze of Bliss that he was enjoying her blood instead of a synthetic substitute.
The sound of his office door opening tore him from his fantasy, and he opened his eyes to see the magistrate standing in the dim light with someone else. Forcing himself into the role he knew he had to play, Marc stood from his desk.
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