The man pulled a face. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“And I don’t want you to die,” the woman said quietly. “And yet it will come. I will manage. I will take care of our child and protect it. And one day we will be together again. Maybe not in this world and maybe not right after. But one day…”
He lightly stroked her stomach and his eyes followed his own gentle touches. “Is it worth it?”
“This child is the future, my love. He is worth more than our lives. He will save the world and finally put a stop to this madness. He will be successful where you failed.”
He grinned slightly. “Charming, darling.”
She nudged him lightly in the side. “You know what I mean. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, they will accept the changes. You were their King, their leader, and they chose to overthrow you rather than take heed of your warnings. They will not give in until they are forced to. You know this. We will save many lives when we sacrifice ourselves.” She laughed suddenly. “And now let’s not talk of it anymore. Let’s enjoy the present.”
The man laughed too. “I will always love you.”
“And I will always search for you when you no longer exist.”
The voices faded and for a moment Elizabeth felt like she was being pulled back into her agonised body. But then the image before her cleared again and she saw men. Many men, hundreds of them. They were attacking a house with torches. Their faces were filled with hate and anger. More and more men stormed the large lawn in front of the house, aggressively baring their fangs.
“Die, traitor!” one of them roared and threw the first blazing torch.
Elizabeth turned her gaze away slightly from the sudden brightness and realised the woman was there again. She was standing right next to her in the darkness between the old trees, looking on with tear-filled eyes as the first torches broke through the windows and set the curtains on fire. Fascinated, Elizabeth looked at this strangely familiar woman. She looked like her. Perhaps a few years older, but otherwise it was eerily like looking in a mirror.
An unsettling feeling overcame her. In the bedroom in front of the hearth, too, she had seen the similarities, though through the bad light she had discarded the thought. While the flames burnt higher and higher, she looked into the woman’s beautiful, older face. Perhaps there were five years between them, no more. Tears gleamed on the faint red glow on her cheeks while she looked on at the burning house. Her lips were shaking slightly as she breathed deeply. She pressed a bundle closer to her breast and closed her eyes. The next time she looked, Elizabeth saw that chaos had broken out amongst the men, amongst the vampires, on the lawn. Someone was being hauled from the house that had quickly become ablaze.
The woman next to her cramped up as this person was thrown onto the ground. He didn’t try to resist as the vampires beat his body. Again and again she heard bones breaking, heard his fading screams, his gurgles as he choked up blood.
“Stop!” a female voice suddenly called.
The vampires paused for a moment and pulled their victim up by the hair until he was kneeling gasping in the dirt. His hands were bound. Elizabeth felt nauseous as she recognised the man from the bedroom. She threw a look to the woman in the darkness next to her. Her face was pale and her lips completely drained of blood. Yet she still held the bundle lovingly to her breast and slowly swayed it back and forth.
The female voice rang out again and Elizabeth looked back to the battle field. “Where is the child?” the woman hissed at the victim kneeling in dirt. “Where is it?”
The man lifted his shattered chin. Instead of answering her, he smiled at her triumphantly. Blood welled between his teeth and dripped onto his chest.
The female vampire who had just spoken turned to her companion. The sharp movement made her jet-black hair whip through the air. “Make him talk.”
Elizabeth looked back at the woman again, who was shakingly caressing her bundle. Her gaze was still directed at the torturers who were slowly taking her lover apart. She could hear it; heard his joints crunching as blood ran from his wounds. Suddenly she realised she was crying. She looked at the agonised expression on the woman’s face, saw too that her lips were open in a silent scream. A shrill scream. Shivers broke out on Elizabeth’s skin and her stomach contracted in anger and grief. She could taste blood on her lips. This time it was her own. The screams slowly faded out. The commands of the female vampire were becoming quieter. They became blurry, overlapped, as though a long time was passing in only a few seconds. She looked at the woman’s face while time ran off and the fire slowly transformed the house into ashes. Then the sounds became clear again, more pronounced. She heard a gasping rattling.
“It was just a distraction!” yelled the female vampire suddenly. “He doesn’t even know where the child is! He just distracted us so that they had time to disappear!”
The man at her feet was little more than a lump of bloody flesh. Still a smile spread across his lips.
The female vampire leaned down towards him. “It’s true isn’t it?” she asked with a deceptively gentle voice. “You really have no idea where they are, do you?”
The man laughed at her.
“Then it’s good that my guards are searching the whole country. We will find your wife and your beloved child,” the woman laughed scornfully.
The man’s smile abruptly faded. His beaten face was suddenly shadowed in panic and fear. Still, he made no sound.
“Yes, my brother has probably already found them. And this whole carnage was unnecessary. You played the martyr for nothing so that your beloved could disappear. You served yourself on a silver platter for nothing when you entered this house. Stupid boy…” she laughed at him.
“Your Majesty?” a young vampire interrupted her who had just reached the scene of the carnage, the torture.
“What?” she hissed, angry that her new, psychological torture had been interrupted.
“We’ve found the woman and the child. They were hiding in a house not far from here.”
The woman nodded with a laugh. Then she turned back to the man. “For nothing,” she whispered. She rose up and pointed disgustedly to the man at her feet. “Kill the traitor. We know everything that we need.” Laughing eagerly, the woman stepped back and watched as her companion lifted a knife and grabbed the man by his hair. He put the knife to his throat and swiftly cut through it. For a moment the head of the victim swayed in the air before it fell into the ashes. His body too. The vampire queen stopped laughing and disappointment filled her face. She turned to her companion and shooed him away with a hand motion. “It’s over.” She still sounded disappointed. “Just like that. For three hundred long years we’ve suffered under his rule and his death … we should have let him live for another month to take joy from his suffering. We should have made him watch as we tortured his beloved. We should have made him suffer more.”
Her companion nodded. “Yes, but this way is good too. We are the new leaders. We will change everything. The world will shake beneath our feet.”
The vampire laughed a little. “Yes, but not until we’ve had a few years of fun with his wife and child.”
The two monsters disappeared from the front garden. The woman next to Elizabeth simply stayed standing while the sun rose and lit up her face. Slowly, she unfolded the small bundle in her arms that was kicking restlessly. A small baby appeared and opened his mouth. The woman undid her blouse and put the hungry child to her breast. She continued to sway with the child while she spoke to him quietly: “My son, you are the future of the world. You are the cornerstone. In you, my powers and the vampire blood of your father are unified. You will have three daughters. They will live for a long time, but that’s just the beginning. Our family will be put through much angst before a girl of our bloodline will be born. She will die twice. In her second life she will save the world from these monsters. The royal family will fall. My boy, everything begins with you.” She threw a last look to the smoking remains
of the house before disappearing with the child slowly between the trees. Her last look was filled with grief yet triumphant.
Only Elizabeth remained. She stood there and tried to understand what she had just heard. What she had seen. An odd truth flowed through her as it became clear that she had just heard the words of her ancestor. She was this girl. She had to save the world. Panic clutched her throat. She didn’t know anything of these monsters. But somehow she knew that they weren’t all monsters. Some were simply vampires, as good and as evil as any human. With the conscience of a human. And others…
She looked at the rest of the charred rubble of the house. Others had deserved their death. She heard the furious scream of the vampire queen from several miles away as she realised they had killed the wrong woman and child. Elizabeth could hear her rage from here.
This would not be the last time that her bloodline would ruin her plans. She didn’t know how or when, but the queen’s blood would be on her hands. One day.
Suddenly the image blurred in front of her and transformed into colourful blurs. It changed again, and then again. And again. She saw hundreds of scenes, as though the lives of people over three hundred years were playing out before her in minutes. Snippets of discussions reached her brain, yet she couldn’t understand everything so quickly. A new image brought clarity, the light roared. Another puzzle… Slowly, she began to make out faces.
~
When Elizabeth opened her eyes it was night. She lay still in the cold bed. There was no warmth in the sheets, yet the ice cold inside her had subsided. She felt a little unreal, she realised, irritated. Not like with the first bite. Then, she had enjoyed her body in wonderment. But now she didn’t only feel beauty, she felt …strength. Not physical strength, but deep from inside her the first strands of magical power were growing. The heritage of her ancestors. A witch and a vampire, united in love, separated by hate. She was the fateful result of this union.
Next to her her lover moved. She stretched out her hand towards him and put it on his cool, naked chest. Alexander opened his eyes sluggishly. The fire had long since gone out and the room was like ice in the winter temperatures. He put his warm fingers on the cool skin of her forehead. He brushed a strand of hair from her face and gave her a small smile.
She could hear the snowflakes outside as though they were huge rocks gathering higher on the ground. Her eyes saw every pigment in his dark eyes while they looked at each other in silence. She put her stiff, new fingers on his cheek and was surprised at how precisely she could feel the silky, intense feeling of his skin on her fingertips. She felt strong and unbreakable, powerful, invulnerable. She could feel each individual hair on his temples as though it were a thick wire. It felt soft and supple. Somehow both cool and warm.
He took in a deep breath. “I’m Alex. Alexander,” he said quietly.
He had never introduced himself. Had never asked her name, although he knew it. Even from before she’d stolen his watch and he’d begun to hunt her.
She stroked the hair on his temples. “You were sent to kill me.”
He closed his eyes for a moment before looking at her again. The darkness in his expression had become more intense. “Yes.”
“Because I’m the last descendent of the traitor. Because with me, my bloodline will finally die.”
“Yes.”
“They threatened you and promised you huge amounts of money. You owe a lot to the higher circles. Even to the council,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows, before nodding. “I needed the money,” he said quietly.
She looked at him for a long time before continuing to speak. She knew how it all went together now. She didn’t know why, but it was so.
“It seems like a big coincidence that all of your investors suddenly came after your debts at the same time, doesn’t it? Or could it not also be that all the money, all the gifts they showered on you over the last few centuries, were just little manipulations? You’re the best vampire warrior. Silent and deadly. Your reputation reaches as far as Asia. And you are independent and free, always completely free of all obligations. Suddenly and completely coincidently they all want you to pay them back for their gifts …and then the royal family told you about me. And so you gave your life as a guarantee and promised my death in return. Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you kill me?”
Hundreds of emotions ran over Alexander’s face. The sudden understanding of how it had all happened, anger at the manipulation, hate for the royal family, pain at the betrayal, guilt. That he had just been a victim in this wild game.
“But why did it have to be me?”
“Your death wouldn’t have mattered. You have no friends, no confidants. No-one would miss you if you died. And they had to test how much power I had. They needed the best to be my murderer and that was you. Why didn’t you do it?”
He was silent for a long time before answering. “Because I couldn’t.”
“Why?” Elizabeth asked as she ran her fingernails slowly over his soft scalp. Warmth flooded through her senses as she saw in his eyes that he liked it. For a moment he closed his eyes before the lids opened again and he looked at her seriously.
“I was all ready to do it, but then you changed everything. You were so brave, so strong. You refused to submit. And yet you came so unresistingly in my arms. You… were a light.” He softly stroked her cheek and neck. The punctures from his bites glowed under his fingers.
“A light, the warmth in the cold of my life. You trusted me unconditionally and gave yourself to me. There was no shameful hesitation, as though you saw something in me that I didn’t know myself.”
He hesitated slightly and bent down to her to kiss her eyebrows. His feathery lips were like a summer day on her skin. “And then you, just a small girl, told me that you would save me. Save.” He took a shaky breath and kissed her temple. She welcomed his touch. “Me, a useless demon from Hell. You offered me more than I could have ever believed. How could I decline such a gift? How could I kill the source of my happiness? Never, I simply couldn’t do it. I would rather pull you into the darkness with me than lose you.” His kiss flurried over her cheek. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t do anything else.”
She smiled at him and pulled him to her lips. “It was your destiny to transform me. We belong together.”
His gaze dove unreservedly into hers. “They will hunt us.”
She smiled at him calmly. “That’s our destiny too.” The voices of the past in her head mixed with his. His breath filled her head exquisitely and made her feel dizzy. “And it’s my destiny to end their rule.”
A smile flitted over his face. An indulgent smile. “You’re crazy.”
“No, I know it. I’m the descendant of the traitor. He was the King of the vampires, my foremother was the last witch. I have accepted my destiny and will fulfil it.”
His expression turned softer. He bent down and kissed her mouth. Heat spread over her face and began to rise in her body. She realised she was aroused again. “How else would I know about the royal family?” she asked, confused about his scepticism. “How else would I know about your debts?” How could I have known about your plan to kill me?”
He didn’t believe her, but it was good that way. She herself wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t experienced it. His expression changed, became hotter. His desire for conversation was replaced by a different desire and he lowered his lips to join hers. Exquisite feelings rushed through Elizabeth’s head at the touch. Her fingers buried themselves in his silky hair as she returned his kiss. A moan shook through her body as their tongues met. Flowing arousal surged through her body as she ran her fingers through his hair. Their tongues embraced each other passionately. His taste became hers. Her fingernails left scratches on his neck as he released his mouth from hers and dotted individual kisses on her face.
His lips began wandering further down, breathed her name against her neck. He murmured in awe and arousal as he nuzzled her neck and made her body shudde
r. His mouth wandered deeper, drew an invisible line of kisses down to her clavicles. His tongue drew a hot, wet circle that flit downwards. All of a sudden his mouth was on her soft nipple. A flick of his tongue sent an electric jolt of heat through her stomach, down to her pussy. A liquid glow seeped from her insides and made her ready for him. She opened her thighs and again her hungry, wet opening met his hot cock. He lifted his pelvis and moved his head to take her other nipple in his mouth. Shudders of lust flowed through her like jolts of electricity.
“Please!” she gasped and wrapped her legs more tightly around him, longing to be filled by him again. “Please fuck me. Fill me up. I want to feel you inside me…please!” she begged him breathlessly. His torture of her nipples stopped. Each movement of his tongue sent another arousing message to her centre. She felt dizzy.
Salvation - an erotic vampire romance Page 5