She bucks in his hands. Her head rolls against the pillows. As he works on her she come achingly close to orgasm time and again, gasping as Darius whisks each potential climax away with a stilling of his tongue. She wonders for a second how he’s able to taunt and tantalise her so precisely. Hold her on her rising edge with such precise skill.
Because I’m here with you.
His mind reading doesn’t feel like a violation so much as another level of intimacy. Darius moves then, comes up to kiss her. He presses his mouth to hers and she tastes the sweet-stickiness that clings to his stubbled skin. She reaches down to tries to get his fly undone, but she finds herself fumbling. One of his hands takes over, flipping the buttons open while he holds himself over her, supported by one taut arm and a kiss.
When he moves inside her the feel of his cool smoothness sends her spinning, spiralling into overload. She barely feels, barely registers what is happening, even before the walls of her consciousness comes crashing down and she loses herself to the feel of him.
A few small moments of recovery later, she is limp against the pillows. More sated than she thinks she has ever been. Darius is lying beside her.
‘Did you feel it too?’ she says softly.
‘The edges. It is hard to stay in your mind when the sensations are that strong. Perhaps with practice.’ He reaches over and places his hand on the flat part of her chest, just below her collar bone. ‘All of this part of you flushes when you come. Did you know that? As well as your face.’ It’s when he says that, with a thickness and a hitch to his voice that she realises – though her haze of satiety – that Darius is still tense. Tight with arousal and desire
‘Darius. Do you need …? What do you need?’ Deep inside her a traitorous voice says another vampire is what he needs.
‘Blood. You.’ Darius swallows visibly. ‘Will you bleed for me?’
‘What? Me?’
‘You can say no, of course. Your free choice. Always. But will you? Or, at least, will you consider it? I don’t have to bite you. I have some razor blades. I can cut you or you can cut yourself. I don’t want to drink, just taste you. Just the tiniest drop would …’ He stops talking – he’s panting heavily – and looks away.
She looks at him. He’s still so aroused, clearly frustrated by it. His hips are rocking slightly. His cock is still hard between his thighs. ‘Do you need to? Um, do you need the blood, I mean?’
Darius nods. ‘To finish? Yes, I do. Just a drop on my tongue, Merle.’
‘I really can’t do that.’
Darius inhales. ‘OK. I understand. I know what you were brought up to think of me.’
‘It’s not that. It … I can’t let a vampire drink from me. It was bad enough that Kristina tried to … You can’t release any other way?’
Darius shakes his head. His voice is sharp, almost sulky, ‘No.’
‘What do you normally do?’
‘You know. Blood Rites. With Kristina. Or Oberon if she’s being really pissy with me.’
‘Right, so do you need to go and see Kristina now?’
‘What I’d most like to do is to taste you. But if I can’t have that then Kristina … I won’t if you don’t want me to. But it would be nice not to have to sleep like this.’ He looks down at his jutting erection.
‘But if it were me. If I did let you use my blood, that would still work? The same as Kristina? She told me it had to be another vampire.’
‘Well, they do say that. The vampires. The other vampires. Maybe it is true for them. I really don’t know. But I know I can be aroused to completion with human blood. I would very much like to prove that to you.’
She looks at him. Naked and hard and so beautiful. Half an hour ago she wouldn’t have thought she would be able to refuse him anything. But this? This is … ‘Darius, I …’
‘You can say no,’ Darius says again.
She holds his gaze. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I can’t do that. It’s too strange.’ Too vampire. ‘I’m sorry.’
He nods. ‘That’s fine. It’s OK.’
She bites her lip. ‘I think you should go to Kristina now.’
He moves to slip off the bed. Then pauses. ‘Would you like to watch me with her? See how it works. It might help you understand.’
Her imagination pulses. Darius in ecstasy. The thought of watching his face as he scales that peak and comes achingly close, his face contorting with need and greed. The thought of hearing him cry out in that shattering moment. Of watching every last one of his barriers come down.
She wants to see that. She wants to give him that. And to do that she has to bleed for him.
She watches him go to Kristina.
Day 19
‘Darius, what did you mean that time in the dungeon when you said you could leave my parents alone, but you couldn’t leave me alone?’
She’s watching him dress. She stayed in his bed over night but he didn’t return until after she was sleeping. He paused, fastening his shirt cuffs. ‘Ah. I was wondering when you were going to ask me that.’
‘Because you heard me ask Kristina?’
‘Yes. I am sorry. I was watching her, not you.’ Darius walks back over to the bed. ‘And she was right to say she wasn’t allowed to talk about it. The truth is mine to tell.’
‘So when are you going to tell me?’
‘Tomorrow night. Have dinner with me. Let me tell the story properly.’
‘Why? Why must I wait until then? Haven’t I waited long enough?’
‘We both have,’ Darius says. ‘We both have. But we must not get so close and then rush these things. This must be taken slowly. Trust me. I’m only thinking of you.’
Day 20
Dinner the following evening isn’t served in the vast and formal dining hall Merle is kind of expecting, but an intimate little room on the ground floor full of soft inviting furniture. There is a bright fire and enough gold and gilding that everything seems to glitter in the dancing light.
There is a bay window. Probably the most surprising thing in the whole room is that the curtains hanging at the windows are open. It’s almost night outside and, in the gathering dark, she can just see the fringe of trees where the castle’s wards are placed.
Set in the circular space made by the window is a small table. One place is set for dinner, the food already waiting, hidden by a silver salver. Darius sits at the place opposite. In front of him is a tall stemmed glass. The glass is semi-opaque – a milky white – so the contents look pale pink. Perhaps to spare her the full sight of him drinking blood while she eats.
She takes her place at the table and he leans forward with a smile and lifts the salver. Underneath is an amazing looking meal of salmon with wild rice and spinach. Her stomach leaps. Food while she’s been in the castle has never been this exciting.
She picks up her fork and pokes the greens. ‘Is there garlic in the spinach? I probably shouldn’t eat garlic if we’re going to …’ She feels herself starting to blush and stops talking. But this time blushing somehow doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.
She looks up at Darius, who smiles and says, ‘No garlic’
‘Oh. Oh!’
He laughs. ‘I’m not sure if it would actually repel me. Most food is not pleasant. But I’ve never investigated whether garlic is any worse. Some of these things are, well, taken to ridiculous extremes. But to respect the creatures who once ruled this castle, perhaps we should observe these things.’ He gestures to the food. ‘Please, eat.’
The meal is incredibly good. Merle wonders who cooked it. Perhaps Darius had it brought from a restaurant.
She watches him take a small sip from his glass and then says, ‘So why am I here? What do you have to tell me?’
He swallows. ‘Merle, when you think about everything you know about me. What you have been told and what you have learnt since coming here, can you think of anything that doesn’t make sense?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I find it hard to believe that you are the mons
ter I used to think you were.’
‘Well, yes. And thank you. But try and think of something more specific.’
‘More specific?’
‘Merle, you know about Magdalena, don’t you? You know that it was through her that they finally managed to subdue me.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know she was a human.’
‘Yes.’
‘You know I had a human lover.’
‘Yes. And I suppose that doesn’t fit with what Kristina told me. That vampires can’t perform Blood Rites with a human. But you said that isn’t true. Or isn’t true for you.’
‘Yes. That’s right, but that’s not it. Something else, Merle. Doesn’t something else strike you about the fact I had a human lover?’
She’s holding her fork. When the next thought takes shape in her mind she is so surprised that she drops it, letting it clatter onto her plate. ‘You hate humans. You believe in Righteous Power. That’s all about killing and enslaving humanity. But why would you want to do that if you were in love with a human?’
His eyes are wild, shining black, reflecting the firelight. ‘Which means?’
‘I guess, that you never believed in Righteous Power at all. That, that …’ her voice swoops from excited whoop to soft realisation. ‘That they made it up. That you were framed. Why?’
‘Tell me why, Merle?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What was I doing, Merle? What do I do that the Vampire Clan Council don’t like?’
She knows the answer at once, but she still gives a tiny breathless pause before saying so. ‘You perform Blood Rites with humans.’
He nods.
‘The Vampire Clan Council just said you were advocating Righteous Power because that was so scary to the human government. They just wanted you caught. They offered to fund Cobalt to do it and it looked like they were doing the government a favour. Not only identifying a potential problem but offering an easy way of dealing with it. A cost effective way of dealing with it.’ She pauses and looks down at her plate for a moment. She’s not really hungry, suddenly. ‘But why didn’t my parents see through it? Once they knew about Magdalena. How come they didn’t see that it didn’t make sense?’
‘Perhaps they didn’t want to. The Vampire Clan Council were paying them very nicely for destroying me. Perhaps they chose not to look too closely at what they were being told.’ He stops and looks right at her, burning her up with the fire reflected in his eyes. She feels the blood rushing; rushing under her skin. He’s so beautiful. She’d give him anything at this moment. Even that. More than that. If he asked right now she’d let him slide his fangs into her. Drink her. Drink her to death. ‘No one knows who I am, Merle,’ he says in a slow cracked voice. ‘Or where I came from. Not even me. All I know is that I’m a vampire. According to the Council no vampire siring has been permitted for over a hundred years. But I’m less than forty. These things can be assessed, you know, by tissue analysis. Oberon is hundreds of years old. That’s why he smells so sour to you. Vampires are immortal, but nothing truly lasts forever. The decay is just very slow.
‘All I can remember waking up in a hospital with no idea who I was. I had been burnt by the sun. I don’t know how that happened. The name, Darius Cole, was invented for me. Cole is, I assume, some reference to my burns.’
‘Ew, vamps are so gross.’ She feels like an idiot as soon as she says that. It’s nerves. She catches Darius’s eye. ‘God, sorry.’
‘It’s OK. I know who you are. And, in a way, you’re right. It is gross. The Clan Council chose a name that amused them when they came for me. I believe they have people who alert them to such things.’ He takes another drink and continues. ‘With no knowledge of who I was other than the fact that my siring was clearly illegal the Council were unsure what to do with me. I had no line. To a vampire line is everything: it’s your status; it’s where you live; it’s who you love. Without a line I was nothing. It’s amazing they didn’t stake me on the spot.
‘Instead they handed me over to the Red Daggers. That’s another of the clans. As vicious and brutal as the Black Emeralds but far less influential. That’s probably why they got stuck with me. They didn’t explain much to me about what I was and what that meant. I ran away a lot. I met Magdalena in the nearest town.’ He pauses and takes another small sip from his glass.
When he sets the glass down, he has blood on his teeth. ‘I didn’t have much awareness of my psych-powers when I first went to live with the Red Daggers, but as I got more control I realised they were much stronger than anything the vampires around me had. Telepathy is a rare gift and it is very unusual for a vampire to be able to be conscious of another’s thoughts for very long. I can stay in a person’s head for days. I can read you any time I want if you’re somewhere in the castle. I can listen in on Kristina or Oberon at the same time. But, in fact, although my telepathic powers are unprecedented, when I took over the Red Daggers it was mostly through persuasion. I am, it would seem, also very good at persuasion.
‘Once I realised that what I was doing with Magdalena was wrong in the eyes of the Council I started to see how fiercely they controlled everything. I started to question it all. The rigid structure of the clans, the way who had sired you and when determined every aspect of your life, no matter what your skills might be or who you were before. The way the Council ruled on every aspect of vampire law. The way contact with humans was utterly suppressed. When all of us were human. Once. I might not know who I am but I do know that I was someone human just over forty years ago.
‘It was almost too easy to show the downtrodden Red Daggers just how the council was oppressing them and ruling their lives. And we took control of two other clans within a month. We decided to hit the Black Emerald next. I was so enamoured of my powers I thought I could even talk the Clan with the most to lose into joining our cause. I thought it was all a matter of persuasion. I was wrong. That ambition lost me everything when I could have just slipped away and made a life with Magdalena. I’m sure that has happened before between a human and a vampire. It must have. They just don’t speak of it.’ He stops and takes another drink.
‘What happened to Magdalena? In the end? Do you know?’
Darius nods.
‘Then why don’t you go to her? Even if she is old now. I mean, why don’t you get her back?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to do right now.’
‘Right now?’
‘Yes.’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘This is the thing you were going to tell me about, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do my parents have her? Is she somewhere at Cobalt? Is that what you want me for? Some kind of trade?’
‘I would rather take this slowly.’
‘Or is she here? Somewhere in the castle?’
With his glass halfway to his lips, Darius pauses and then throws it across the room. It lands in the fire. Blood splatters in all directions, covering the white hearthrug, the marble fire-surround, the pristine wallpaper. Merle shrinks back. Shocked. But Darius speaks very slowly and calmly, ‘I can’t tell you. You have to go now, Merle. It is very hard for me to talk to you about this and you’re not ready to know everything yet. Please. Another day.’
‘But why? What has it got to do with me?’
‘Another day. Please.’
Day 21
The next afternoon Merle thinks of the one place where some more of the truth might lie. She didn’t finish reading the file she brought from Cobalt. Perhaps it’s still in the library.
In fact, the file turns out to be still open on the table where she left it. She picks up the next set of papers. More minutes. Every detail documented in the same dry emotionless style as before. Every devastating fact simply recorded without comment.
After Darius’s army was killed and Darius himself handed over to the Black Emerald Clan, Cobalt asked what they should do with Magdalena. Initially, the stone-hearted documents say, Cobalt had thou
gh that Magdalena would have to be killed. The knowledge she had of Darius Cole was too dangerous for her to be allowed to live. But then the Black Emerald Clan leader Lord Oberon came to visit Cobalt.
Oberon? Merle checks the papers she’s already read. Is this the first time Oberon has been mentioned by name. Further back, amongst the early documents she finds a reference to the Lord of the Black Emerald Clan as the main contact point between Cobalt and the vampires. So Oberon really was Darius’s jailer, too.
‘And you know just how he likes to treat his prisoners,’ says a soft voice behind her.
She turns to see Darius standing in the open doorway. ‘Did you …? Did you see into my head just then?’
‘I can see a lot of what’s in your head, Merle.’
‘Did you kill the rest of the Black Emerald Clan?’
He nods.
‘Why not Oberon?’
‘Same reason he didn’t kill me. Too good for him.’
‘Why didn’t you kill Kristina?’
He smiles again, this time more warmly and with a shrug. ‘Nothing so sinister there, I just like Kristina. She didn’t deserve to die either – but in the opposite way. Besides I needed someone for, well, you know. Blood Rites. And the idea of it just being me and Oberon.’ He shudders. It’s almost comic.
Merle wonders for a moment. ‘Not because she’s really Magdalena? Did you somehow turn Magdalena into a vampire and now she’s Kristina?’
‘Read the paper you’re holding, Merle.’
Lord Oberon told Cobalt about the exact nature of Darius’s punishment. How he was sentenced to live. According to him, if Magdalena was killed there was a chance her soul would find it’s way into another human being. That Darius might one day track her down. That fact would give him hope. He wasn’t, Oberon explained, to have any hope of future happiness. The only thing he ought to hope for was death. A death he would never be granted.
As she sets the paper down, tears are pricking at her eyes. ‘What did they do to her then?’
Darius just points at the rest of the papers on the table.
Long laborious paragraphs tell her in detail how witches were brought in. Oberon paid them a staggering amount of money for a very complex piece of magic. She struggles to comprehend what she’s reading. It seems that Magdalena was killed. Shot by a Cobalt operative. But her soul wasn’t allowed to be released into the ether. It was magically stored in a specially constructed glass prism.
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