My Master

by Aleera Anaya Ceres

  He was standing over her, a blade of bone in his hand. Esmeralda wanted to wake up, to wake up and scream, but she was too exhausted, too tired to do anything but lay there and await her doom. She waited for the silhouetted figure to attack, but all she saw him do was reach out a hand and caress her hair through his fingers. And then, he was gone.

  It had only been a dream.

  She awoke seconds later and realized that she was alone, lying on the couch with all the lights off. She sat straight up, a strange feeling tugging at her heart and in her mind. She felt as though something was out of place but she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  Ignoring the feeling, Ezzy stood up and walked upstairs to the bedroom. The air around her was chilly, cold, and she could feel it even through her turtleneck and pants. She opened the door slowly and walked in, only to see that Antonio wasn’t there. The bed was made perfectly, just the way she had left it before she left to go to the movies. Everything was in perfect order, she noted. But where was Antonio?

  A thought hit her and she gasped then ran into the bathroom. Nothing seemed disturbed in there but she had to make sure. She bent down and opened the cabinet, only to find that her pregnancy test was exactly where she had last left it, undisturbed.

  Where could he be? She wondered to herself as she straightened up and walked out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her. He hadn’t been downstairs with her, as far as she could tell.

  She stared at the room at the end of the hall. The room that used to be hers as a child, now bare of decorations. She swallowed and walked over to it. Reaching for the knob, she took a deep breath, and opened the door, expecting to find Antonio lying on the floor. She could only imagine him thinking about his future kids, the family that they would one day have.

  But the room was empty.

  Esmeralda called his name. There was no answer. After searching around the rest of the house, she mechanically walked back up to their room and threw herself on the mattress, hugging a pillow to her face. Antonio had left her. He had never left her before, not like this, not after they fought. He was always the one to come after her and talk. It was his way. And for him to do this, well, it made Ezzy wonder exactly what happened to him to cause all of this pain.

  Antonio prowled the streets with his hands in his pockets, letting the breeze ruffle his already untidy hair. It was a nice night, not too warm and not too cold but just right. Not that the weather mattered to him too much, he could barely feel it. He was too focused on other things at the moment. Things like Esmeralda and the look on her face before he walked away from her, leaving her to cry on the couch alone. If it had been during any other time, he would have never walked away. He would have stayed to comfort her, let her cry on his shoulder.

  But this time, he couldn’t.

  He could offer no condolences, no sort of comfort when he was a monster and that’s not what monsters did. Monsters couldn’t love, couldn’t care for someone. He had killed his twin brother; a brother that he had once felt so close to but in the end even that couldn’t save Damien. He sure as Hell didn’t deserve Esmeralda’s comfort. He sure as Hell didn’t deserve her.

  And she had thanked him time and time again for saving her life and she had told him that it didn’t bother her. She hadn’t looked at him any different but that didn’t mean she didn’t think about it often. The few times he had dropped into her mind he heard her thinking about that night, the night when he had taken Damien’s life, about how scared she had been, about how scary he had looked.

  It was enough to kill Antonio slowly.

  And now she was talking about starting a family with him! That was the last thing on his mind at the moment. He didn’t want a child to come out like him. If anything, he’d want a girl just so she could be like Esmeralda. Small, red hair and blue eyes; cute and soft, fun and stubborn. Everything he loved about Esmeralda packed into a little baby…

  Antonio groaned and tugged at his hair. He could tell the sun was about to come up, he felt that same sensation prickling at the back of his eyelids, drifting him off into a deep sleep. He had to get home soon, had to get back to Esmeralda before he passed out in the middle of the street only to burn with the rising sun.

  With a heavy sigh weighing at his shoulders, he walked back up the street to his house; that’s when he noticed the scent. It was all over the front door, the scent of a stranger, of a predator, of another vampire. Antonio’s nostrils flared as he opened the door and barged through his home. A male vampire, his scent was strong, overpowering almost every other odor in the house, which meant it had been recent.

  Antonio sniffed through the scent; it led to the couch, the foul smell mixing in with Esmeralda’s. His mind filled with images, terrible images of things that could have happened to her. He had last left her on the couch and she wasn’t there! He cursed himself for leaving her alone while thoughts of Damien filled his mind again. If his own brother had been capable of such atrocities towards Ezzy then what about a stranger? A sudden rage shook him to the core as his instincts kicked in. He would do whatever it took to protect the woman he loved. Whatever it took.

  He followed the smell upstairs, where it was just as strong, and where it led into his bedroom. He braced himself for some sort of an attack then kicked the door open. The wood splintered and the door cracked in half inwards, falling out of its hinges and revealing the inside of the bedroom.

  Esmeralda was sitting on the bed but jumped up when he came in, fangs flashing. Her blue eyes widened in shock at the sight of him and the broken door. She opened her mouth to speak but before she could say anything he let loose a low, predatory growl and she clamped her mouth shut. The smell was all over her. He reached the bed and moved and moved towards her, she leaned back, wide eyed and scared. He sniffed her hair, where the smell of foreign fingertips was most potent.

  When he had seen no sign of struggle in the house or on her, his thoughts took a different toll. Someone had been in his house. Someone had touched Esmeralda. Someone had stroked her hair the way he had thousands of times. An animal rage took hold of him.

  “Antonio?” Esmeralda placed her hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on? What happened? Where were you?”

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  He had held back his urge to do it for so long, but he could no longer. Not when he knew that someone had been there with her, touching his Soul Mate. He wound his hand around her hair, as if he could somehow dispel the stench of a stranger.

  “Antonio…” she pushed him lightly away, a questioning, worried look in her eyes.

  He pushed her back against the pillows of the bed and laid over her. “You’re mine, Esmeralda; I won’t let anyone else have you.”

  “What are you talking about?” She tried to sit up but his weight on her prevented this from happening.

  She was so soft underneath him, just like she always was. Like a puzzle piece, they fit perfectly together, and he couldn’t stand the thought of Ezzy in someone else’s embrace, of her not being his. It’d be his fault if she left him. No, he decided. He wouldn’t let her go, he’d change whatever she wanted if that only meant she’d stay by him.

  “I need you, querida,” he whispered almost desperately. “I need you like I’ve never needed anything—anyone—before. I need your body, your soul. I need to know you still love me.”

  Something softened then in her gaze and she reached her palm up to caress his cheek. His heart nearly shattered when she whispered the one word he needed, the one word he longed to hear.

  “Always.”

  Then, slowly and deliberately he peeled off his leather jacket and tossed it to the floor. He ruffled out his curly hair and leaned down to take her mouth with his. He trailed his tongue along the familiar path in her mouth, tracing the pattern of her teeth and touched their tongues together in that oh-so-familiar way that excited him to no end.

  He pinned her hands above her head with one hand and with the other pulled down at the waistband of her sw
eatpants. She gasped against the bruising pressure of his mouth and automatically leaned her hips upwards in an arc, towards him, inviting him on. He pushed her sweatpants past her knees then moved to her panties, pushing them down as well. He couldn’t get out of his pants fast enough; he didn’t even have time to pull them all the way off before he pushed his way inside of her, desperate and hungry.

  Her body instantly warmed to his touch as he let go of her hands and gripped her hips, pulling them closer to his in a pleasurable joining that made their insides tighten up before turning into water. He swelled inside of her, pushing deeper and deeper until she clawed at his back, pulling at the bottom of his shirt, muttering phrases of nothingness into his ear. In his desperation, he pushed harder against her, faster. There was nothing gentle about his touch, only a rough possessiveness that rocked the headboard of the bed into the wall in violent movements.

  He could only think about how much he wanted her, about fixing their relationship before it fell apart, unraveled like a ball of yarn before his eyes. If this was his form of fixing it, then so be it. He had to try, had to make her love him, so he decided to do so in the only way he knew how, in the only way that she would understand and accept.

  He opened part of his mind to her by entering hers first. He projected all of his want, all of his need and all of his love for her with one big push into her brain, hoping she would understand. The way she moaned and gasped in pleasure told him that she did. He felt the touch of her thoughts, as soft as a butterfly wing, inside of his mind, holding him with pale fingertips.

  Her fingers slipped into the inside of his shirt, scraping his back and edging him on. Their brief mind connection only made it all the more torturous, it only made them all the more anxious; it made them reach out for more. He penetrated deeper, both mind and body, and felt her gasp mentally and physically. She returned the feeling to him by pushing past his barriers and touching the inside of his mind, not just with her fingertips but with her palms.

  She felt the love he had for her, the memories they shared; of their good times, of their first time, of everything they’d been through. When she reached the memories, the painful part of him that he had stored away, she pulled harder, invading him in a way she had never attempted to do before. She tugged out the memory of Damien, and she could see every dream of pain ever since the night he killed his brother playing across her mind like a movie screen.

  She felt his guilt, his betrayal, his sorrow, the inevitable way he felt like a monster, and lastly, she saw the memory, the Otherworld experience he had felt when he had seen his mother. He threw his head back and screamed as he exploded inside of her, then broke their mental connection so that she would see nothing further.

  He rolled away from her, breathing heavily, and turned his back to her. His blood pounded in his ears. He couldn’t believe he had risked that connection, couldn’t believe how much of him she had seen. Feeling worn out, he pulled himself together, clothes and all, and sat down at the edge of the bed.

  Her breathing was heavy.

  He fought to ignore it, but somehow couldn’t. Was she breathing that way because of what she had seen in his mind? He couldn’t be sure, and didn’t feel like asking her.

  “Antonio,” she began. “Your mom…”

  “Don’t…” His voice cracked. He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear about how he felt as though everything that had happened to him when he had the ‘Otherworld’ experience was a lie. That he had only imagined his mother coming to him and telling him to stop his brother, to save his brother. It all had to be a lie, somehow. It was a truth he couldn’t deal with. It had been only a dream, a hallucination, and based on that, he had ended his brother’s life.

  “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.”

  “Please, don’t.” His voice cracked and he felt his eyes begin to prickle with tears. He put his face into his hands and swallowed the lump in his throat. A second later, he felt Ezzy’s hand on his shoulder. He wanted to shake her off, but couldn’t find the strength to do so.

  “Antonio—” she began, but never finished, because her phone rang. She sighed loudly and pulled it off the bedside table. She glanced down at the caller I.D. and answered it. “Yes?” she sounded annoyed.

  Antonio vaguely heard the voice on the other end of the line; it was a female that much he knew for sure. Probably Maria or Isis, it’s not like Ezzy had any other friends to talk to. He thought of the foreign smell, which was still on Ezzy, but only a small trace of it, and then shook away his thoughts. She’d probably just grazed across someone outside and brought the scent home with her. It was the only explanation he could think of.

  “Isis, slow down.” Ezzy pressed the phone tighter to her ear. “Why don’t you come over tomorrow night and we can talk?” She paused, her eyebrows scrunching up together as she listened to Isis’s reply. “Well, why not?” she asked. “Oh, hold on for a second.” Ezzy pressed a button and then, Isis was on speaker phone.

  “Talk to me again, Isis. Are you okay?” Ezzy asked. Antonio listened.

  “Yes, I’m fine, God will you stop it for a second and just listen?” Isis’s voice wafted through the room.

  “Okay.”

  “The thing is, I have a lot of work to do and I won’t be able to hang out with you…” She paused. “For a while.”

  “Isis, you sound weird. Are you crying?” Ezzy asked.

  Antonio agreed. Her voice wavered the whole time she had talked to them. He waited for her to reply but it never came. The line went dead, a buzzing sound filling the place of Isis’s voice. Esmeralda pressed the red end button and scratched her forehead.

  “That was weird,” she decided.

  Antonio knew something was up, he had heard Isis before, he had heard her exasperated, annoyed, and as always, pissed off, but he had never heard her that way before. She had sounded, in a way, scared. Terrified, actually, and he wanted to know why.

  5

  “Why the hell did you do that?” Isis snatched back her phone and stared at the ‘call ended’ in anger. She had wanted to say goodbye to Esmeralda before she left with Caesareon but he had taken the phone from her before she could and hung up.

  Caesareon twirled the phone in his hands briefly before he squeezed it. It crumbled into nothing but broken bits and little wiring. He dusted it off his hands and onto the floor then smiled at Isis. “You were about to give away information,” he said. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “No, I wasn’t!” Isis argued. But she knew she was lying. She had seriously contemplated telling Antonio and Ezzy that she was being held captive, to get out and hide, because she knew Caesareon wouldn’t just kill her for her insolence. First, he’d torture her by torturing them, and then he’d kill her in ways that’d make her wish she’d never been born. She had thought better of it.

  “Never the matter.” He waved off her look and plopped himself down on his chair. Well, chair wasn’t the appropriate word for it. It looked more like a throne, made of gold and stacked with velvet red pillows. “Now that your pathetic mortal feelings are out of the way, we must start making plans.”

  “Making plans?” she asked, staring at him. He had changed his clothes and was now wearing nothing but black pants. His feet and chest were bare. His body was pale under the light, a sign he needed feeding; she noted the black spidery veins making their way across his neck and eyes.

  Caesareon wasn’t ugly; Isis had admitted that to herself a while back, and even now. His chest was rippled in tight muscles and big arms that one never would have imagined him to have if they saw him fully clothed. Dark black hair curled around his navel and trailed a path down further into his black pants. She avoided looking further.

  He would have seemed perfect, exotic, to any stranger catching a glimpse of him. But Isis saw his imperfections, stared them straight in the face just like she was doing now. Just below his heart, was a scar, much like Antonio’s, jagged and angry and silvery-white.

  She kne
w how he had received that scar. Knew who had given it to him. Isis knew what the intent was behind the blade that stabbed him through the chest. It had been her doing. And if she could reverse time, she’d go back and make sure she had finished the job.

  “I thought the plan was ‘get Isis, threaten her, bring her back and make her my queen.’ Or did you have something more diabolically evil in mind?” she said sarcastically and smiled at him.

  “Do not be foolish, Isis. I did not bring you here to make you my queen. I have no need for useless things like that.”

  “Then what the hell do you want from me?” Isis demanded.

  “You tried to kill me.” He leaned back in his throne, crossing his hands over his scar, hiding it.

  “A task at which I, sadly, failed.”

  He frowned. “And you would fail again, if ever given that opportunity once more. You see, I recovered easily after that unfortunate…” He paused, searching for the appropriate word to use. “…incident. Nevertheless, I couldn’t have a mutiny on my hands, so I had to find you, show you reason and most importantly,” he smiled, “show you your place.”

  “So, you only brought me back here to show your troops that you’re not weak? Is that what this is about? Because if it is, I think a simple coffee invitation would have sufficed.”

  “But in the end, you were the one who sent the coffee invitation to me if I recall correctly.”

  Isis began to grow annoyed with his games. “So is this about control? You know, you don’t make any sense. Just come right out and say what you have to say, Caesareon!” She spit his name as if it were acid on her tongue.

  “You want simplicities?” he asked. “Fine, I’ll give you simplicities. I am going to create an army, Isis, an army of our kind. Of vampires, werewolves, demons, et cetera.”