“Good. I intended to marry your sister last night and I hope to spend the rest of my life making her happy.” Bastian motioned for Tula. “You are to remain here. I need you and the rest to clean up the island, get rid of the bodies of the vampires. Burn them. Bury the slaves.”
“And you expect us to do what you say after what we’ve seen? Now that we know who you are?”
“For your freedom, yes.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
“What I am giving to everyone on this island who is still alive,” Bastian said. “Carry out my last orders and you and all the rest are free to leave. I will even give orders for whatever money I have in the main house to be handed out equally amongst you.”
Bastian turned for the trees, but Liam reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Why are you doing this?”
Bastian struggled to keep his emotions in check, thinking of Catherine dead or dying, thinking of Victoria torturing her for sport. Of losing Catherine forever. The darkness in him spread and he saw the glow of his own eyes reflected on Liam’s pale face. “Because all I care about is your sister.”
Liam’s face turned grim. “You get her back, Bastian. I will see that the plantation is taken care of.”
“If your sister is harmed in any way,” Bastian said, “if she is dying when I find her, I will do whatever I have to do to keep her alive.”
The young man’s face paled even more as he frowned, but he didn’t argue as Bastian assumed he would. Instead, he nodded again then started directing the slaves around him to clean up bodies. Bastian left orders with the vampires still alive to aid Liam and follow through with all he promised.
“And me, Bastian?” Tula asked.
“You, my friend, are coming hunting with me,” Bastian growled.
“Very good; I was not going to let you go alone either way.”
Bastian shed his jacket and vest, rolling up his bloodied sleeves as he and Tula made for the jungle around the slaves’ shacks. Tula stayed by his side, holding a silver dagger in either hand. Bastian didn’t need a weapon, not with the rage running through his body. Whoever got in his way, he would tear them apart, drain them dry, and litter the Caribbean with their bodies until he tracked down Victoria and his love.
He finally found the woman he wanted to be with for his immortal life. He was not about to lose her this easily to a woman he should have killed a long time ago.
***
Catherine had given up screaming halfway from the main island to the smaller one with the slaves used for blood supplies. Charlotte had slapped her hard enough to bruise her face and her ears were still ringing. Victoria had only put a stop to it when Catherine blacked out for a few minutes and came to…listening to the older vampire threaten to kill Charlotte if she couldn’t control her anger.
Charlotte glared at her instead, her red eyes flaring each time she caught sight of Catherine again.
“We’re here. Bring her,” Victoria said.
Anton moved over and hefted Catherine up over his shoulder. She hit him with her bound fists, struggling to get free, but his grip was hard as iron. He would crush her in a second if Victoria let him. She kicked her legs out, landing a foot to his gut, but he snarled and wrenched her face around to glare at her.
“Another hit like that and I’ll find out why Bastian finds you so irresistible,” he snarled.
Catherine stilled, the promise in his eyes of following through making her skin crawl. He winked and she shuddered, but didn’t struggle again. He stepped off the small boat and onto the rocky shore following behind Victoria, the older vampire, Charlotte and the man. Catherine wasn’t sure of their names and she really didn’t want to know them. All she wanted was to get away from them and find Bastian. She knew he’d come for her. He had to. Otherwise she was dead.
“Do you hear that?” Victoria said as they neared the path leading up into the jungle. Catherine tried to lift her head to see and spotted a few buildings farther up.
“I hear nothing,” Haddie said, sounding bored beside her. “Nothing except dozens of beating hearts.” The grin that cracked her face made Catherine’s whole body freeze up in terror.
“The entire island is ours,” Victoria said. “We will remain here before we continue on to our destination. Time is of the essence, however, being sated now will prevent us from feeding on the way to him. Never pass up a free meal.”
Catherine frowned. To him? Where are we going? She’d thought Victoria had simply taken her out of revenge, but now there was someone else involved. She had to warn Bastian! The man she had smacked during their last time together. Guilt wracked her body, followed quickly by anger. He should have turned her. Then she might’ve had a fighting chance.
Either way, she would make it out of this alive…simply so she could tell him how wrong he had been to doubt her strength.
Charlotte shot a look to Catherine over her shoulder as they strolled up the path as if sensing her desperation. They met more of Victoria’s vampires along the way. All of them were drenched in blood, so much blood thatCatherine wondered how anyone was still alive. Then her thoughts turned to Michael and her heart skipped in her chest. He was here somewhere. Was he dead? She wanted to get down and walk, but didn’t want Anton to try anything if she made him mad again.
“When are you going to kill her?” Charlotte asked loudly and Catherine glanced at Victoria, wondering the same thing.
Victoria snarled as she met Catherine’s eyes. “Not yet. Not until I wring every last delicious scream from her body and I have Bastian by my side once more, willingly or not.” She told Anton to stop and he dropped Catherine to the ground. Victoria squeezed her chin and dragged her painfully to her feet. “I want her to suffer for stealing Bastian from me. And once he finds her broken and lifeless body, he’ll finally fall over that edge into the darkness he so feared, just as my new master hoped.”
She bared her fangs, licking the tips of them as Catherine swallowed hard and tried to pull away.
“He will become the monster we need him to be.”
Catherine didn’t even have a chance to brace before Victoria’s mouth yawned open and she bit down on Catherine’s neck. She screamed behind the gag as pain shot through her body. Each pull of Victoria’s mouth had her weakening, but the vicious vampire kept her standing, her grip bruising Catherine’s shoulders. When she was finished and ripped her fangs out, Catherine fell forward into the dirt, her body shuddering from the blood loss.
“Bring her,” Victoria said calmly, wiping her mouth with her thumb. “I will have need of her soon enough.”
Catherine could barely keep her eyes open to see where they were going, but Anton flung her back over his shoulder once more and they walked deeper down the path. She heard screams now, whimpering, crying and when she was tossed to the ground, landing hard her hip, she forced her eyes open to see the slaves and overseers, even Bastian’s vampires here, lined up on their knees. Victoria’s vampires stood in front and behind them, stopping them from escaping.
She wanted to fall asleep, but made herself stay upright the best she could, hands bound before her and mouth still gagged. Her eyes searched the line and landed on the many dead bodies littering the ground around them. Bastian and Tula had strengthened the island, that was what Ivette said, and yet here they all were, captives.
“Ridley,” Victoria called out. “Please, you look famished. Help yourself. Haddie, Anton you as well.”
Charlotte stepped forward with them, but Victoria pulled her back. “No, not yet my child.”
The newly turned vampire hissed, but didn’t argue and stayed by Victoria’s side.
“Feed! Take your fill as reward!”
Catherine struggled weakly against her bonds as the slaves screamed, but the vampires, those on their knees, didn’t react at all. She frowned, trying to understand, but it was no use.
“Catherine!”
That voice! Her eyes searched for the face to go with
it as the voice continued to yell her name, cursing and threatening until she saw the man dragged from the line of slaves and shoved to his knees before Victoria.
Michael! She wanted to wrap her arms around him, but when she tried to move, Charlotte yanked her back.
“Let her go!”
“My, my, you do feel passion for this one,” Victoria mused as she circled around Michael.
“She was his betrothed,” Charlotte said and suddenly Catherine hated how much she’d told her friend about her life before the island.
“Is that so? And how would he react to knowing she was marrying their master?”
Michael frowned as he looked to Catherine. “Is that…is that true? He’s a monster! They all are!”
Tears slipped down Catherine’s cheek, but there was nothing she could say to explain who Bastian was and what she felt for him. He wasn’t a monster, but Michael would never understand that. The gag kept her from saying anything at all, to even try.
“Charlotte,” Victoria said and Catherine heard the evil intent in her voice.
Catherine yelled, struggling once again to get free, but it was too late. Charlotte moved before Michael, her mouth yawning open before she clamped down on his neck. He yelled, fighting to get her off, but she was too strong and pressed him into the dirt. Her body held his as she fed and all Catherine could do was watch. His feet twitched until finally his whole body stilled.
Michael was dead and it was all Catherine’s fault. She screamed against her gag, falling forward as despair consumed her. They were all going to die. Victoria would see to that and there was nothing Bastian could do to save them.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and darkness took her in its arms.
***
Victoria heard Catherine’s heart slow and glanced back, smirking to see her unconscious. That was good. The young girl needed to be terrified, needed to feel helpless.
“I am afraid we cannot stay here,” Haddie said appearing at Victoria’s side.
She flinched. That vampire had saved her life and brought Victoria to her new master, but Haddie had a way of unnerving even Victoria with her words and movements. She was the oldest Victoria had ever come across. There was no reason for the old vampire to be here and yet she was. “Yes we can, this island will hold us ‘til night falls once again. The sun will rise in less than two hours.”
“And who will protect us during the day?”
“We have enough vampires to sit in shifts to watch. Bastian cannot move in daylight without getting burned just as badly.”
“With what vampires do you plan to keep watch?”
Victoria snarled, ready to yell at the woman when she heard the first groans of pain issuing from the line of vampires feeding. Anton dropped the old man in his hands and held his gut as his face contorted in pain. Many more followed, their eyes glazing over grey, blocking out the red. They staggered back from the feast before them and those vampires still alive under Bastian’s guard made a run for it, taking off for the coast.
“No,” she whispered, watching her soldiers granted to her fall one by one. Anton dragged himself across the ground, holding out his hand for aid, but she lifted her skirts and backed quickly away. “He poisoned his own slaves,” she hissed in disbelief.
Haddie nodded once. “Most of them it seems.”
“How did he know?”
“Because he knows you,” Haddie said, once again sounding bored. “He found out about the army you brought to his doorstep and he took precautions that any smart general would in a fight. He cut off your supplies.”
If it wasn’t an army gifted to her by her new master, a man who trusted her to bring him Bastian, she would have admired Bastian for his dark brilliance with his plan. Those on the island were already sick, dying, and old. Their lives were not worth much to him or them and it appeared many had taken the poison he offered if it would kill those who sought to slaughter them in the end. Anton’s breath rasped as he choked and gagged on blood spilling form his mouth and Victoria took another hurried step away from him.
“Victoria, my love, please…help me…”Anton whispered.
She shot him a disgusted look. “Love? You are not my love. You are nothing to me.”
His eyes flared in pain, but his whole body convulsed, curling in on itself as the poison worked through his system. It was silver. She could smell it now as it seeped from him, mingled with the blood he drank.
“Those other vampires will return to the plantation,” Haddie said calmly. “If your men could not hold it, they will return here.”
“There is not enough time,” she snapped. “The sun will be rising soon enough.”
“My dear, you are so young in the ways of the world,” Haddie said. “You have stolen away the one thing your dear lover cares for. Do you think he will let the sun stop him? This was the plan to draw him out, but I am afraid it might work too well. We must move, quickly.”
Victoria had planned to be on the run, but not like this. She had underestimated Bastian’s anger towards her, his need to destroy her as desperately as she wanted him back in her life. It was the girl’s fault. She had changed him. If she hadn’t come into his life, Bastian would have been over the edge by now, swimming in that sea of darkness. He would have come with Victoria willingly to meet her new master and his, to become what they were meant to be together. Now she would have to do things the hard way.
“Then we move. There is another island not far from here It will keep us hidden while the sun is up,” she said. “We have three days to reach him; we only have to keep Bastian away from us for three days. Then my master will take care of the rest. Charlotte, carry your friend.” She called out to the others who had not been poisoned from their choice of person to feed, not even ten, and she led the way towards the other side of the island.
Daylight would be upon them. She would rest, feed again on that wretched girl, and make a new plan. One to ensure Bastian came back to her. She knew he would. All she had to do was break him and then be the balm to save him in the end.
Chapter 5
Bastian felt the sun beginning to rise, but he didn’t stop. Tula and he had just made it to the other island after running into the vampires placed there to guard the slaves. Bastian had sent them back to the plantation, but only after they told him what happened.
“Your plan worked,” Tula said as they reached the path and ran up it in a blur to the stone cells that used to hold the slaves.
“Yes, but not well enough,” Bastian growled.
His face was set in a angry grimace as he stared at the dead and dying all around them, the slaves had been drained of blood and lying next to them were the vampires foolish enough to take their necks without question. Bastian and Tula had approached many the day before with the poison. Many had taken it and his plan proved to work well enough to knock Victoria’s forces down. His eyes wandered across the dead until they found a young man he recognized.
Michael, the one Catherine had asked him to spare. He was dead on the ground, his body pale, blood trailing from the wounds at his neck. There was no breath of life within him or Bastian would have turned him.
He sniffed the air, breathing deep to track Victoria when another scent reached his nose and he snarled. Blood, Catherine’s blood. It was close by and he followed the scent to a place nearby where it had pooled in the dirt. Not enough to kill her, but it was there all the same and it tore at him to think of her wounded.
To think of Victoria feeding on her.
Bastian growled in rage until a cackling met his ears and he whipped around to see Anton. He had lost so much blood and his death was not far behind. Bastian stalked to his side and pressed his booted foot against the man’s chest, pressing him down into the dirt.
“Why do you laugh, Anton? You are nearly spent.”
“You…will not succeed,” Anton gasped, more blood bubbling up into his mouth, but still he grinned. “She will destroy your Catherine.”
“Why? That
would only lead to her certain death,” Bastian said.
“She wants you…to be like her…broken, shattered. He needs you broken.”
Bastian’s hands closed around his throat and yanked him toward his face. “I will never be like her and who is this he? Victoria has no master.”
Anton spat in Bastian’s face. “You already are. You destroyed your own slaves…to try and stop her…you are a monster, Bastian.”
“Answer my question, Anton and I will ease your passing. Who does she answer to?”
Anton grinned through the blood, choking on the poison, refusing to answer.
In a moment of rage, Bastian twisted and ripped Anton’s still laughing head from his corpse and threw it aside. It bounced and rolled away into the trees sending birds scattering into the air. Tula did not say anything, but his glanced skyward told Bastian one thing.
The sun was rising and they needed to seek shelter.
Bastian kicked the rest of Anton’s body aside as he followed Tula to the cells they had spent so many years holding slaves for their blood. Now, it would give them sanctuary until the sun set below the horizon.
“Who would drive Victoria to attack the island?” Bastian asked quietly, feeling the heat of the sun press against the stone walls surrounding him. “This army…it came to destroy everything I had built. To drive me from the island.”
“You said you never met any other vampires on your travels,” Tula said. “Except the one who nearly killed Victoria.”
“And the one who turned me,” he added with a hiss.
Tula frowned. “You said that vampire was more beast than man. You think he has formed an army? For what purpose?”
Bastian didn’t have an answer and for the second time he regretted his lack of curiosity over their kind and the world they inhabited. He knew nothing of the politics of vampires. Had steered clear of them on his islands, but after all these years, it seemed to have been the worst possible move.
“I fear we are entering into a world we are not prepared for,” he whispered.
Tula shrugged and closed his eyes. “Would not be the first time.”
SV02-06. Slave to a Vampire Page 13