Gilded Destiny (Vesper)

by Nola Sarina

  One pain I knew for a fact was from Nycholas: the ache in my lower belly, pressing downward as I stood, and the tenderness of swelling where my thighs met my pelvis. It hurt to walk, and every step I took shot a new pain through me, but each pain was a reminder of who had been there, what we’d done, and I loved it.

  I loved pain when he delivered it, solid steel penetrating my most sensitive places, and I loved the pain when he was done. Normal. Yep, totally normal. I rolled my eyes at myself as I walked to the kitchen, where Nycholas stood in his shirtless, satisfied perfection, leaning on one elbow on the counter, watching me limp with a grin on his face.

  “I’m sure it’s very funny,” I teased him.

  Nycholas shook his head. “I want to see you naked.”

  Holy crap! Yes, he really just said that. Would I ever tire of the way he surprised me with his words? My knees tried to melt, but I drew a sharp breath and forced my feet to support my weight. “Um, I seriously need a shower before we get… back to it,” I said.

  Nycholas’ eyebrows raised and he straightened. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I just… don’t feel clean.” I rumpled my hair with my good hand and frowned when a piece of grass fell out and drifted to the floor.

  Nycholas’ enthusiasm dwindled to concern. “I didn’t think first. I would have taken you in the shower, had I known you felt I was unclean.”

  Unclean? It sounded like a Biblical term when he said it, and I remembered his words about apples and the Garden. I stepped closer to him, threaded my fingers through his, bent a little to reach the well-carved planes of his stomach with my mouth, and dragged my tongue from his navel to his throat, delighting in the velvety taste. He sucked in a gasp as I stretched up to kiss his chin. “You misunderstand me. I don’t find you unclean. I’m covered in grass and mud and lake water. I want to be clean for you.”

  Nycholas’ hands wandered from my wrists to my neck and then he cupped me on either side of my throat. He tilted down, his golden cords sweeping across his shoulders and brushing mine, and he kissed me with a reserved mouth, his lips closed, just touching mine in little, delicate grazes, over and over. I closed my eyes, and I couldn’t help but moan.

  And then he let go of me and I panted with shock at the vacancy of my skin without his. I blinked at him, and he smiled.

  “Apparently, I did misunderstand you.”

  I cleared my throat. “I thought you didn’t know how to worry,” I said, breathless.

  “You’re teaching me a few things.” Nycholas turned and threw open a cupboard, and then another, and then another. “What do you like to eat, lately?”

  Lately? I shook my head, trying to clear the fog of arousal and focus on food. My stomach growled at the thought, and I stepped forward to look inside the cupboards. I found a box of crackers and checked the expiration date, and when Nycholas reached for the handle of the fridge, I jumped to stop him.

  “No! Leave it closed.” I showed him the box. “This food is all old, and it will smell bad.”

  Nycholas glanced about for a moment. “We will go get some elsewhere,” he said. “Would you shower with me first?”

  I shook my head. “I want to, Nycholas, but I need hot water, not cold.” I sounded like a prissy little bitch when I said it, but the fact was I’d probably been dangerously close to hypothermia paddling a boat with numb fingers yesterday, so if I wanted to make it through tonight and two more nights with ice-cold Nycholas, a frigid shower wasn’t the smartest of survival tactics.

  But he only smiled, no matter how wimpy I sounded. “I forgot that.”

  Nycholas grabbed his brown leather coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. He took my hand and drew me out of the trailer without a second glance.

  On the porch, he stopped and pointed to the little porch light. “Explain this,” he said, cocking his head to the side with curiosity, the music of the crickets playing in the background.

  I glanced at the light and then back to Nycholas. “It’s… a light?”

  “No lights in the house work. I tried the switches. Why the one outside?”

  Oh. I reached up to tap the small, silver square on the top of the fixture. “Solar. It charges in the sun. Not many people have them, but look…” I pointed down the dark street in front of us, where a half a block away, more identical lights were lit on the front steps of better houses than this one. “The neighborhood probably provides them.”

  Nycholas watched me talk, his eyes still locked on my lips. “You’re not making any sense,” he said, “but keep speaking.”

  I laughed and kissed him on the cheek, stretched up on my toes. God, he’s tall.

  I remembered that taller Vesper from the night before with the long, black hair, and shivered, wondering how high he’d loom over my head if I stood next to him.

  “It just means the light is powered by the energy it soaks up in the sun all day. The sun is…” I grasped for words. He understood trains. “It’s like fuel. Fuel for the lights, stored inside of them so we can see at night.”

  Nycholas’ eyes grew distant. “The sun is strong. But I can’t imagine the sun being so thoughtful, and helping you like that.” There was anger in his tone, or resentment.

  “You said you’re not allowed to experience sunlight. What happens if the sunlight touches you?” I asked.

  Nycholas focused on me again and sighed. “I burn. Like when you sunburn, but faster.” He said it as though he’d seen me sunburned before, and I squirmed with the forbidden erotic thoughts that rose in my mind as I imagined Nycholas watching me in secret.

  “Will sunlight kill you?”

  Nycholas cracked a grin and tugged lightly on my hand to pull me forward. “Yes. Now, quiet. I’m not used to sneaking with someone who talks so much.”

  Sneaking. It seemed like a dramatic understatement for the way Nycholas found every shadow and simply blended into it as we slipped along the street. I shut up and let him lead me ahead, though I nearly had to jog to keep up with him, squeezing his cold fingers and using my splinted hand to clutch closed the leather trench coat. I was quite certain I looked completely ridiculous, darting in and out of the shadows with Nycholas, but to anyone watching us, they would have only seen me. Nycholas literally disappeared into the shadows, his form masked by the darkness, as though night wanted to shield him from sight.

  We crept along in silence, and Nycholas moved with such swiftness and stealth that had I not been clutching his fingers like life itself, I would have altogether lost track of him in the dark. We stopped along the side of a house – a much nicer one than the trailer on the corner – and Nycholas brought me down to a crouch in the shadows behind a thick, prickly bush.

  “Be quiet,” he whispered, the sound more of a hiss than anything else that pricked goosebumps up along the back of my neck. “Wait here. I will be back for you.”

  “No!” I grabbed his bare forearm. “There are people in there. Don’t you hear the TV?”

  Nycholas puzzled at me. “Yes. One is near your size and will have clothes.”

  I shook my head furiously. “Nycholas, don’t!”

  He silenced me with a kiss, and I shivered harder, afraid, mortified at what he was about to do, and lost in that soft caress of his closed lips along mine. I didn’t dare try to speak while he kissed me, afraid of those toxic fangs behind the silken doors to his beautiful speech. When he broke away from me, I wanted to cry again, for so many reasons, half of which I could not name.

  He whispered again. “I am going inside. I will come back for you, and we will get you clean and warm and ready again. That is my only concern.”

  I didn’t want to let go of his hand, but he slipped out of my grasp and moved swiftly up the back stairs of the house, taking them five at a time. Two massive steps and Nycholas disappeared into the house, and I cringed and bit my lip to keep quiet.

  It was only seconds and Nycholas was back, completely unmarred, and the house was still silent save for the televis
ion glowing through the windows. He helped me up by both of my armpits, and I apologized softly when I realized how hard I was shaking. He took me up the back stairs and at the door, paused.

  “Eyes down,” he ordered me. “Don’t look.”

  Don’t look?! I wanted to shout at him and shove him and demand that he tell me what I might see if I looked. But my voice was nowhere to be found, and I knew, somehow, that all I’d see was death.

  My stomach clenched and I was glad I hadn’t eaten. I squeezed my eyes shut and grabbed Nycholas’ hand with both of my fists as he pulled me into the house.

  Inside, it didn’t smell like the digestive mist of a human body dissolved, as I remembered from Freddy’s ghastly death, so I dared to peek my eyes open. Relief washed through me when I saw no blood on the floor by my feet. Of course not! I’d allowed my imagination to run wild and conjure up horror stories from movies and books. I glanced to my left, and the sight beside the couch shook my reality down to the bones, and I shrieked.

  On the floor lay a man and a woman, crumped together in a heap, gasping and dehydrated, crinkled up like rotted corpses. Their eyes gaped as widely as their slack mouths as they watched me, alert and coherent but helpless and doomed.

  Nycholas’ massive arm crushed me by the waist as he scooped me up and swept me down the hallway. A shriek ripped through the walls of the house, and I grabbed fistfuls of the skin of his shoulders at the intensity of the sound.

  Then, I realized the shriek was coming from me.

  “Ssh!” Nycholas insisted, setting me on a bed. I ran out of air to scream and I sucked in a breath, the air scraping my throat like blades, and Nycholas climbed onto the bed and knelt before me, smothering me in his embrace. All I could do was sob.

  “I said not to look! Do you forget how to listen, too?” His tone was angry, and I cried harder, disappointed in myself and overwhelmed at the horror of two lives ended so abruptly by the monster I cherished, the Vesper who cradled and scolded me like a child.

  He sighed harshly into my hair. “How will she love me again if she hates what I am?”

  I froze. Did he mean to say that? Love?

  To a Vesper, love might mean something different than to a human, and he was probably only referring to sex rather than true love. Old-fashioned-style. But the words distracted me from my meltdown of fear, and I let him just rock me for a moment, apologizing softly.

  When I was calm, he pushed me back to look into my eyes. “When I tell you not to look,” he said, “do not look. If I tell you to run, run. And when I tell you it’s time for you to let go of me, you do it, without question. Is that understood?”

  I nodded. I had no will to argue with him. These things were bigger than me… Vespers and masters and murder and apples… I didn’t know what else to say.

  Nycholas sighed. “Now, stay here. Find clothes, but don’t change into them. Do not open that door until I open it for you, do you understand?”

  I swallowed, shivering. “I thought I was a friend, not a prisoner.”

  Nycholas’ expression battled between frustration, adoration, and… pain? Shit. I regretted my words as he stared at me, offended once more by my careless tongue.

  “Friends protect their friends,” he finally said, “inside and out, no matter how much they protest. Stay here.”

  He didn’t argue any more. He slipped out the door and closed it behind him.

  I took a huge, shaky breath, and pressed on my eyelids with my fingertips. Nycholas was going to eat that poor couple in the living room, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Did I want to do anything about it? I understood he needed to eat. What I didn’t understand was why this strange, adorable man, this stunning Vesper, gave a shit about keeping me warm and healthy, and why he cradled me so close and spoke about love.

  I shook my head and opened the closet door, still a bit unsteady on my feet. Sure enough, the clothing inside was my size and close to my style, though I chose sweatpants over jeans. I tried not to admit to myself how much I chose them because they would be easier for Nycholas to remove, as he’d requested I wear.

  Nycholas opened the door as I grabbed a hoodie from the top shelf to layer over the sleeveless black top I chose. He stepped inside the room with humility in his solemn gaze, like he was haunted by his existence and frightened of my reaction, the mist of his digestion still clinging to his hair like sweat.

  I faced him and felt my shoulders slump. “I’m sorry. I was shocked, that’s all. This is… a lot to take in.”

  “I knew this was a mistake,” Nycholas said. “You’ve only just gotten healthy. And now I’m making you ill again.”

  Healthy? “What do you know about my health?”

  Nycholas’ eyes widened, and he looked startled. “You said you had an accident. I don’t… want to interfere with your mind.”

  “Yet you drugged my memories away.”

  His jaw quivered, and he boomed at me with such force that I flinched. “To protect you! To protect your mind, to make you forget me! To ensure you didn’t know anything dangerous…” He snarled and paced from side to side, raking his fingers through his hair, agitated.

  I stepped back, my heart pounding with a remorseful ache that I didn’t want to feel for another moment if I could help it. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue with you. I didn’t mean to pick a fight.”

  Nycholas held out his palms to me. “Can you set aside how bad I am for two more nights, to be with me? If you find it eats at you, I can blank it from you when we’re finished.”

  When we’re finished… when he was dead. My stomach rolled again and dizziness swept through me, so I started to lower myself into a crouch on the floor, but Nycholas moved me to the bed before I touched down. I breathed slowly, heat washing over me, fear and conflict prying at my heart. I didn’t want him to die, but what say did I have? I was nothing more than a final request, to him.

  I wanted to tell him to fight this fate, to run away again, to live, because he was so damn gorgeous and unique.

  But that wasn’t what he wanted.

  For reasons I didn’t understand, reasons I might never understand, I was what he wanted, and then he wanted to die.

  I threw myself onto him where he crouched by the bed, climbed onto his lap and kissed him, feeling the smoothness of his skin against me, his hands sliding up beneath my shirt again. I couldn’t stop my frantic mouth, and he groaned against me, so I slipped my tongue out from between my lips and swept it across his lower lip. I did it again… and then I fucked it all up, because I pushed beyond the border of his lips, tasted the electric tang of his citrus poison, and blackness swirled in around the edges of my vision.

  “Calli!” Nycholas gasped, and I slept.

  Levi

  Levi waited just outside the swampy entrance to the Pit, not wanting to alert Levitiqas of his return home until Festus was back, as well, to cushion the blow of Nycholas’ challenge. Who’s castrated now? Levi scowled at his own cowardice. He didn’t dare enter the chilly muskeg outside the resurrected train graveyard that was the Vespers’ home until his big brother was home, to take some of the heat off himself for delivering the news.

  He didn’t wait long. Festus materialized out of the surrounding trees like a ghost, and approached Levi with a fist extended. “We good, brother?”

  Levi nodded sharply and met Festus’ knuckles with his own. “We’re good.” Much as he wasn’t willing to indulge the same appetite as his older brother, he wasn’t about to pass judgement upon Festus for his preferences. Not his place to do so.

  Festus blew out through pursed lips as the brothers regarded the train graveyard: shabbily stitched-together train cars composed something of a loop of connected hallways and dormitories, leaving Levitiqas with one totally refurbished cabin car as his own quarters, and each of his servants with a tiny bunk cabin in a passenger car. The lobby – the entrance to the Pit – was the finest of the spaces the lesser Vespers were permitted to occupy, for only the ancient, da
rk, and favored Manaen – Levitiqas’ personal companion – was allowed to enjoy the more spacious quarters with the Vesper master.

  Not that I’d wanna spend any time in close quarters with him, anyway.

  “Alright,” Festus said, “let’s do this.”

  Levi sighed and nodded, and they strode into the chilly swamp with speed in their heels, gracing the surface of the almost-frozen moss with enough stealth that the slue didn’t dare try to suck them under the muck.

  The door clanged open, announcing their tardy return. Levitiqas waited inside the lobby, his indigo cloak drifting around his ankles in the breeze. Levi ducked inside and Festus followed, and the door closed with an echo that sounded like the silence of death.

  “Late,” Levitiqas’ rasp of a voice cut into Levi’s heart. His master and namesake, his ancient ancestor half-responsible for the theft in the Garden that cursed the Vespers to nighttime, turned slowly to regard his servants, and Levi and Festus bowed their heads once with apology.

  “What antics have you peons been brewing in your absence?” His voice demanded truth, and Levi was powerless but to obey.

  “Nycholas, Master,” Levi whispered, knowing he’d save himself some torture by immediate admission of the truth.

  Levitiqas’ cloak swirled in the darkness as he turned to regard Levi, his silver-streaked black hair nearly a perfect match to that of his own, only the gray of age to set them apart. His eyes glowed with the silver twinkle of experience in the pupil, even brighter than Festus’, for he was the Original immortal, damned to darkness by the ancient snake for a theft so long ago. Levi shivered as the silence dragged on between them, the dark of night even thicker and laced with hatred while Levitiqas considered Levi’s words.

  “What of him?” Levitiqas didn’t need to raise his voice to convey his disdain and the pain that lurked on the horizon for the informants.