by Tijan
It hurt to breathe. The knives pierced my throat. I drew in a breath, and they slid deeper.
Then, nothing. Everything stopped.
I gasped and shot upright. There was no one in the room with me. My cage was still in the center, encased in darkness. There was no light anywhere.
The door opened and Lucan strolled inside, a satisfied smirk on his face. Blood was on his hands, but he made no move to wipe them clean.
“What new game was that?” I rasped out.
“What game?” He lifted his head and inhaled deeply.
I caught a whiff of the blood, and my stomach knotted. That was Kates’s blood. I didn’t want to know how that had happened, what sick game they played with each other, or even how I knew it was hers.
“What game?” he repeated and came closer to my cage.
I glanced at the door. “Do you have a new witch on your staff? One that can do that?”
I expected them to come in. They usually traipsed behind him, ready with chanting spells. The door stayed closed today.
Lucan frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Though my Immortal powers had been stripped away, my empathic abilities were still a part of me. I felt into him and read his confusion. A dark suspicion was starting to form in him and an ugly smirk appeared again. I wanted to jerk out, but I didn’t. I needed to know whatever he thought, though painful and disgusting it would be.
“It’s working. The thread is starting to unravel. She’s starting to inflict her own pain, delusions, too. Sarach never told me this would be the first step. It has to be the beginning.”
“You will never get the thread. The sooner you realize that, maybe you can figure out a way to kill me.”
His smirk vanished. “You are a mere thread-holder. It will work. I’ve forced the thread out of others, I can do it again.”
“They were thread-holders. I am not. I am The Immortal.”
His hands curled around my cage bars and he leaned forward. His face pressed between two bars and his smile was blinding. He looked so much like Lucas at that moment, handsome with sparkling eyes alive with life. My heart skipped a beat, and pain of a different sort speared through me. It hurt to breathe again.
Lucan reveled, “If you were The Immortal, my witches couldn’t touch you. You are not The Immortal. You cannot be because there is no Immortal. No human can handle that amount of power. Your body cannot endure it. You are more powerful than the others. I will give you that, but don’t think that it’s not because Lucas’s blood is in you. You drank from him. It’s the only reason you have more power than the others do. That is all.”
How did he know that?
He laughed. “It was written all over your face.” His voice became husky, intimate. “I know my own brother. He’s always shared blood with his lovers. It gives him a connection that humans could never experience, not without vampire blood.”
I swallowed back the pain. I wasn’t just some lover to Roane. I knew I wasn’t. “The Immortal thread has only been in humans, it has only ever been in humans. No vampire-wannabe is going to get it. And that won’t be you. You’re not good enough. The thread picks the person it goes to. If, by some miracle, you do get the thread out of me, it won’t go to you.”
“I’m the only human here.”
“Besides Kates.”
He moved back and raised a hand to the side of his cheek. Her blood trailed across his lips, and his tongue swept out to lick her blood from the rest of his hand. “That’ll be remedied soon enough. Thanks for pointing that out, Kates’s best friend.”
My stomach dropped again. “What a nice boyfriend you are. You get her to betray her best friend and then you kill her. No matter what she’s told you, I know her. She doesn’t want to be a vampire. She’s a slayer. Everything inside of her wants to kill your kind. That’s what she was built for.”
A dark hint of amusement filled his eyes, and he turned to stroll out. “Who said she was going to become a vampire?”
I rushed forward, smashing against the cage. I needed to get out. Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes and concentrated. I needed to be free. Free. Be free. The cage never gave way. Lucan’s laugh raised a notch, and the door slammed shut behind him. I could still hear him as he went down the hallway. The laughter faded, but my chest still rose up and down sharply. No matter what she’d done, Kates didn’t deserve to be killed at his hands. By my hands, but not his.
Gavin resisted the urge to break through the bars. He could hear her screams. Every day, every night, every hour. He heard them, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
“You can’t help her.” Gregory sat forward on the bunk bed. He watched his cellmate pacing. “And get away from those bars. I don’t want a repeat of the last time.”
Wren laughed huskily from across the hall. “Oh, come now. Burning vampire flesh. What’s a better smell than that? I know it helps me meditate. What about you, Trace?”
The tall blonde vampire glanced from her leaning stance, but didn’t respond. She crossed her arms and looked back through the small window again. A bored look was on her face, but her eyes were sharp. From their basement position, their windows allowed them to see foot level of the ground above. It seemed like millions and millions of Mori moved past their dungeon.
Wren sighed and stood to stretch. Her black leather stretched with her. As she arched her back with her breasts pointed in the air, she glanced backwards.
Tracey never looked away from the window.
Wren sighed again, but this time in disgust. “Give it up, Gavin. You can’t help Davy. None of us can, and unless you have magic in that tight ass of yours, there’s no way we’re breaking out of here.”
“Why do the Mori have magic? Why can’t we?”
Gregory’s bunk groaned in protest when he pushed down to stand, but when he stepped forward, a deep thud came from the ground.
“Stop.” Tracey looked now. “The Mori didn’t build this place for vampires of your size. They’re light footed and slender in build.”
“Yeah,” Wren bit out. “You could help us escape, make the bars crumble. Let’s not do that.”
Tracey shot her a look. “He could bring the entire building down, and who knows who he might kill in the process.”
The dark-haired dominatrix bared her fangs at her cellmate.
“You are being immature, Arwena.”
“Shut up, you two,” Gavin snapped and started to pace again. “It’s been three months, and you two have been at each other’s throat the whole time. I thought you were lovers, you used to love each other.”
“‘Used to’ is the operative phrase.” Wren sat on her bunk bed. Her shoulders slumped forward. All fight seemed to have left her in that moment.
A strand of golden hair fell over her shoulder and as she moved it back in place, Tracey flashed her deep blue eyes at her lover. A small frown appeared, but she didn’t allow it to last long. Wren seemed to be losing her fight every day they remained in captivity. And the regal Roane warrior knew one thing; they would all need to keep their rest for when they would fight free. They would get free. They had to. She glanced back out the window. If anything, she’d get free to find Talia’s daughter. She knew Lucan had taken her a year ago. She would have to be there, somewhere. She would find her sister’s child and take back what was left of her family.
Gavin had been watching the blonde. He saw the thoughts fly through her head, and then he saw when she dismissed Wren’s emotions. His own eyes hardened. He growled, “It doesn’t matter, Wren. Maybe you’re better off.”
Tracey’s chin tightened, but she never looked away from the window.
Gregory’s jaw clenched as well and he sat back down. His bunk shifted underneath his weight once more.
Gavin turned back and saw how his friend’s shoulders drooped. A sad expression came over him, and he knew the blonde Viking was missing the scatter-brained witch, for not the first time.
He stopped pacing and stood ther
e, in front of the bars. They hummed with magic, and though his fingers itched to tear them apart, he knew he couldn’t.
Then he heard her scream again, and he gritted his teeth. One of these days he would find a way. He would help Davy. He had to.
DAVY
When the last scream left me, my body collapsed on the ground. The witches had been chanting again. This time, with each of their chants, my body lifted off the floor and rose in the air. I had fought it at first, rallying The Immortal inside of me to fight back. Nothing worked. No magic could leave my body. So now I let them try. I let them fling my body back and forth, up and down, upside down at times. I no longer cared.
It never worked. They never won.
They left again, quieted and confused.
I rolled over and tried to lift myself up. My arms fell underneath my weight and my face slammed back down. My nose hit the bottom cage with force and I groaned, but the pain was almost welcoming. It was nothing compared to what I’d endured. When I pushed myself to a sitting position, I felt the blood that came from my nose. I touched it with gentle fingers and found that it still remained intact. I hadn’t broken my own face, yet.
A soft laugh escaped at that thought, but I groaned instantly from the pain.
“You have hurt yourself.”
My head whipped up, but no one was there. There was no Lucan to taunt me.
“What is this?” I asked. It’d been a long time since I had a voice speak to me in my own head.
He laughed. “I am not The Immortal speaking to you.”
My shoulders sagged forward. “That’d be more helpful.”
He laughed again, softly. “They have been trying hard, have they not? The thread must be buried deep inside of you.”
“Can you help me?”
There was silence.
I heard my own breathing. In and out. Inhale, exhale. They were shallow breaths. They grew shallower by the second.
Then I heard his response. “I cannot.”
“You’re powerful enough to speak to me, to see what they are doing, but not enough to free me? What kind of a sorcerer are you?” My tone was loathsome.
There was a sharp intake of air and a powerful explosion immediately after. The force of it threw me against the far wall of my cage. For the first time, I didn’t feel the impact. As soon as my body fell down to the metal bars, I lifted my head once more and gazed around. He had gone. I knew that, but my eyes quickly searched for anything. And then I saw it. A small amount of smoke still floated in the air, near the top corner of the room. He had been watching from there and the next time he came, and I knew he would.
The door crashed open, and Lucan raced inside. “What was that?”
I frowned. I would’ve expected him to be angry, but as I searched his face, there was no rage. When I felt into him, there was concern, but no anger. I murmured softly, “It was nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me!” He grabbed the cage and lifted it, shaking it.
My eyes grew wide. My cage was big enough to encase an entire bedroom and he lifted it without breaking a sweat. There was no resistance, as if he lifted a bag of books.
Lucan set my cage back down immediately and backed away. His eyes caught and held onto mine.
“You are not a normal human.” I rushed to the end of the cage beside him. “What are you? What have you done?”
He was quiet, staring back at me. Then he left, just as quietly.
When the door closed behind him, I sat back. He wasn’t human. He was more. I didn’t know what that meant, but it meant something. I felt it in my bones. I could use that to help me escape. I just had to figure out how first.
The voice never came back. It seemed like a month had passed. And Lucan stopped taunting me. He stopped coming to sit by me. I didn’t know if they corresponded, but something had happened. Perhaps his magical palace wasn’t so magical after all. Perhaps the enchanted Mori weren’t so impervious. I didn’t know, but after that day, things weren’t the same. Lucan wasn’t so mad crazy. He had stopped enjoying my pain.
The witches continued their chanting spells, and he still insisted the thread could be pulled out of me, but I caught his stares a few times. He was scared, but he wasn’t scared of me. It had to be whatever had happened to me, whoever that voice had been.
Then one day, Lucan sat beside me again.
I tensed and waited as the witches left again. Was this the day he started taunting again?
“I can see why my brother loves you.”
I laughed. “Really?”
He didn’t look at me, but sat beside and stared at the wall ahead of us. It was bleak, made of cement, and the night had fallen. The room had grown dark; soon the cold would come.
“You’re beautiful. You don’t know it so you’re not a high maintenance girl.”
“You can tell that here?”
“I could tell before, and you were Kates’s friend. They both love you—”
I gritted my teeth. My fingernails pressed into the palm of my hand. It wouldn’t be long before blood would start to drip down.
He continued, “—He loves you because you love him. Even now, you see his face every day, but you don’t flinch. You hate me with passion. You should’ve broken by now. You should be pleading with me, begging for your life. You haven’t done any of it.”
I clenched my jaw. Blood splattered onto my legs now. It made its way slowly down to the floor.
“Lucas was the quiet one when we grew up. Did he tell you that? Mmmm. I suppose not. I was the outspoken one, the leader. We had a group of friends and they did whatever I told them to do. Lucas didn’t like it. He said that I didn’t think ahead at times. He might’ve been right. I know he thought he was, but I never cared. I could’ve thought ahead, but there was no fun with that. There was no adventure. We weren’t tested then. We couldn’t rally and see who we could really be.” He laughed softly. “Our friends were weak. I never cared about them, but I loved watching my brother. Every time we’d get in trouble, Lucas would make everything okay. He always stepped in and got us out of trouble. He grew and grew every day. He became who he is today because of me. I made him. I created him.”
“A Roane vampire sired him.”
He sighed and stretched out his legs. “He has their blood. He became a vampire because of them, but he’s the man he is because of me.”
“Because he fixed your problems?”
“Because I tested him. Every time he didn’t think we could come back from whatever trouble we were in, but we did. He always found a way. I did that. I raised him.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I love my brother. He’s the only one I love.”
“And he’s going to kill you.” I looked over.
He did, too. Our gazes met.
I finished on a harsh note, “Because he loves me. He doesn’t love you.”
I waited. He’d become the enraged vampire again, but it never came. Instead, he smiled at me. “I would be honored if he was the one to kill me, but it won’t happen. He’s not coming, Davy.”
I looked away.
He leaned closer. His voice whispered to me, it teased over my skin. “He would’ve been here by now if he was coming. On the night I came for you, the Roane Army was at Benshire. They attacked the town when we were leaving. My brother is dead.”
This was a new torture. It had to be. “What are you doing?”
He stood and looked down at me.
I couldn’t look away. He wasn’t telling the truth. He couldn’t have been. Roane was alive . . . I felt it. I felt him.
Lucan smirked. “You can be with him. Just give me the thread.” He squatted at my head. “You see, I’ve started to think that maybe you’re the one holding onto the thread. I thought before that it was attached to you, but it’s the other way around. Isn’t it? You won’t let go of it, because of my brother. You think he only loves you because of the thread, don’t you?”
Shame filled me, but I couldn’t lo
ok away, not even when a tear came to my eye.
His voice grew soft again. “He loved Talia. She had the thread. He loved you. You had the thread. But you see that now it doesn’t matter. You don’t need the thread. And if you give it up, you can be with him again. He’s waiting for you, Davy. He’s been watching the whole time, waiting for you. He wants to be with you again.”
My stomach dropped. I’d been dormant for so long. My empathic abilities had died two weeks ago. I’d grown numb, but something sparked again. It was as if a hibernating monster had been poked too many times. It was starting to stir again. The Immortal was still inside of me. She was unable to get out, but she was there. She was angry again.
My body started to shake.
He didn’t notice. “I know my brother. He’ll still love you. If he had been alive, it might’ve been a problem. You know, if you hadn’t had the thread in you. Then again, he wouldn’t have even noticed you. There’s really nothing breathtaking about you. You’re beautiful, or you were before, but I think it was the thread that made you beautiful. I saw you before, too, when you went onto that roof with Talia. There wasn’t anything special about you. Meek. Dull. Your body is boring, but the thread makes you shine. Even now, you still shine.”
My hands started to jerk. My arms were starting to flail out. She was coming. She was rising.
“He will love you in the afterlife. If you die now, you’ll have his love forever. But if you don’t, it’s a matter of time. The thread will leave you anyway. I will get it one of these days. I can feel how close I am. Give it up, Davy. Let it go. Let go and you can have my brother again. You can be in his arms again.”
I was rising. My feet lifted off the floor, the toes barely touched. I stared at him. Waiting.
Lucan smirked to himself and lifted a hand to push through his hair. Silk strands of black hair slid against his fingers. They fell back in place, slightly ruffled. The bottoms touched underneath his ears. “I never told you before. I thought you’d die too soon and I had to get myself ready, but I’m ready now. I’ve been ready. It seems you aren’t. You can’t let go so I’m giving you that last push. It’s time to let go, Davy. My brother will love you in the afterlife, thread or no thread. He won’t care anymore. He’s dead.”