Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1)
Page 15
“You’ve found my psychic snare! Congratulations,” she purred.
Misha’s hands turned claw-like. “You’re dabbling in things you don’t understand! There are natural laws that exist for a reason! If you infringe on those tethers, you destroy everything it means to be a vampire in—”
“Sit down,” she commanded. She could feel the cold weight of her power, thrumming with something otherworldly, and she reveled in the sensation. Her brother’s gifts did their work all too well.
Misha’s face turned into one of shock as he took a seat. A vein stood out on his forehead. A muscle in his neck spasmed. “If you do this—”
“Shut it and listen.” Lord Castello put out her hands in a placating gesture. “Misha, I don’t want to be nasty! I want the best for both our houses. We’re powerful women in need of powerful men, like yourself! I need my eldest back. His family misses him. I miss him. You’ll spoil him with your humanism. The world is changing and I need him by my side… It’s as simple as that.” She got to her feet and came close. She braced her hands on the arms of his chair and leaned down to face him. Blue irises met blue irises like in a bastardized mirror. She said, “That helplessness you’re feeling…” She put her face to his neck, relishing the heat of a well-fed vassal against her skin. “You want Deutran don’t you? You want her to swoop in and save you? You miss your lord. Vassals are all the same. They want to serve. It’s in their DNA. They’re programmed with those longings. You couldn’t get away from Deutran if you tried.”
Misha twisted his head to growl in her ear, “Mercenary ran from you.”
She slapped him hard enough that Techne took a step forward.
“Hostage,” the wrinkled rogue thought at her. “Ransom.”
Misha’s teeth ran pink as he looked up at her and smiled.
She hit him again. Techne came forward, but she barked, “Guardians!”
The two Cairn guards burst into the room and Techne’s watery black eyes locked onto the younger guard who immediately collapsed to the ground and fell onto his own drawn blade. The captain on the other hand shouted a curse at the top of his lungs and swung down at the cloaked vassal. Techne sidestepped him with unnatural grace and a long needle was left jutting out of the captain’s eye. Clutching at his face, Captain Wass took a knee and then collapsed, one of his hands reaching out as the last of his breath escaped him. Techne retrieved his needle and looked back toward his lord. “Done,” he thought succinctly.
Misha’s eyes were bulging out of his head as he strained against Lord Castello’s commands. “Kill me,” he sibilated. “See what happens.”
“Lord,” Techne said.
Lord Castello’s smile shrank. “You’ve been tempting me since the first moment I saw you, Misha of Cairn-over-Merda…” She reached into her corset and revealed a teardrop pendant on a chain. Suspended in clear resin, Conscript’s right eye peered out at the world, frozen in time. She crouched before him, still holding the necklace aloft. Misha’s gaze slipped from the golden eye to her sweet little smile. His expression was half-way between a grimace and a sneer. Jesus, she wanted to rip the skin off his skull and frame it. She wanted to truly immortalize that hate-filled look on his face. It was a face without fear. “Maybe I should keep you instead. I’ve got the stones to.”
“Lord,” Techne stated again, warning her. She was going to kick his shin in if he called for her again.
“Leave us,” she commanded her tattooist.
The old man hesitated before he finally made himself scarce.
Lord Castello put the eye away and said, “I felt Connie link with Lord Deutran. What did they discuss?”
“He asked her to help him.”
Lord Castello stood and walked toward the bodies of the Cairn guards. “Such a waste… I could’ve made them vassals.”
“Not without Aleef—”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”
Misha glared at her, his jaw twitching. Her stone’s snare was strong, but he was old. Her brother had mentioned as much. With age, the will grew. But if he didn’t get blood, his will would burn through his supply and then he’d be even more vulnerable to her suggestions. Maybe she really could reprogram him. Could it be so easy? It felt like it could be. She wondered how tightly woven the snare could be if she spent more time setting something up.
Oh, time… There was never enough of it, was there?
She pulled a black sheath from the belt of the younger guard. It had a hammer on the end of it. The hammer’s claw was shaped like a bird’s wing. What was with Deutran and her fucking birds? She hefted the hammer in her hands. “Why the hell doesn’t she just let her humans run around with guns like Tree-Pee’s musketeers? Why not go full SWAT? If she’s going to give them weapons, she should have trained them better.”
When Misha only followed her with his eyes, she asked, “Tell me, Misha… What is Deutran trying to prove?”
His answer was unbidden, but resolute. “She wants to stabilize the region so Aleef will make good on his promise to her. She only wants peace. She only wants harmony.”
This was news to her. “Oooo—What did Aleef promise her?”
Misha strained against the compulsion. He bit his lip. He clamped down on his tongue. Blood pooled in his mouth until he coughed. Then he whispered, “Deutran… lei vuole viaggiare attraverso… le stelle.”
“In fucking English, you pissant!” She swung the hammer down onto one of his hands and he let out a biting curse, spraying blood across her shirtfront. She gripped his chin and forced his face up. She pressed the claw of the hammer into the corner of one of his eyes.
He shouted, “Wait! Wait!”
She waited.
He wet his lips and said, “There’s a launcher… in orbit… He gives her the last key if she succeeds. That’s it, I swear!”
Lord Castello let him go for a second. She waited until he looked away from her, down to his mangled left hand and that was when she took a couple languid steps back and swung the hammer sideways. It hit him in the side of the head, in front of his ear. She felt a psychic reverberation at the edges of her senses. She didn’t know if it was her stone quaking or her own mind’s perimeter being touched. In any case, she didn’t care. Misha hit the ground and she whispered emotionlessly, “Crawl, you tempter. Crawl back to your whore…”
His hands slowly gripped and pulled at the carpet. Blood poured out of the hole in the side of his skull like a crimson spigot. She stepped around him slowly, letting the hammer hang at her side.
She hadn’t gotten what she wanted. Conscript was still at the Cairn. She had heard rumors that he would be sent to represent Deutran at the Summit, but that had been a lie. Why did they insist on teasing her? Instead, Deutran sent her only vassal to act in her stead. Didn’t she think the world of Misha? Wasn’t Misha her general and lover? What good would he be to her now? What good was he to Lord Castello? He’d given Deutran up, hadn’t he? And he thought the world of her. What would he do to Castello the moment he could act on his own?
“You burned all my letters—All my demands. We could’ve resolved this peacefully.” She pressed a heel into his back and he froze in place, a sound like a whimper bubbling out of him as he turned to look at her. The far eye was swollen shot, cut through, but the closer was wide, terrified. It didn’t suit him. She brought the hammer down on that eye with a swing born out of falling momentum. It was like playing croquet in a way.
The peen of the hammer got stuck. She pressed a shoe against his face to wrench it free. She felt bored. She thought she would feel different, somehow. She was expecting passion, but all she felt was failing adrenaline and frustration. She wiped at her forehead, smearing blood across it and thought about the last time she’d felt real passion.
Conscript was so angry. She loved that look, really lived for it. She pushed him off the balcony. He broke his back on a lawn chair of all things and rolled off of it, screaming. Then he crawled. Jesus, how pathetic he’d looked. She was wet before
she passed the second floor. By the time she reached him, she could have taken him on the lawn right then and there. But she didn’t. She grinned when his golden eyes met her lapis lazulis.
“You’re nothing like him, you know,” she said as she bent down next to Misha’s body. “He fought. He fought so hard every single day. Before he saw you fucks, he was perfect. He was so responsive! Every bit of him was like starlight trapped in flesh. Do you understand? Of course you do. You’ve seen him. You’ve touched him, I don’t doubt… I bet that’s the real reason you two wanted him so fucking badly. You wanted to covet him. You wanted to own him. But he can’t be owned by you. I’m the only one who can handle him. I’m the only one who understands his pain.”
She stood up and sent out a psychic summons. Butcher appeared in the doorway. His expression went from bored to surprised to awed. She slammed the hammer once more into the back of the vassal before her, making sure to sever his spine, and said, “Butcher, baby, I need you to listen very carefully to me. There’s a certain way we need to go about this, otherwise all of us could be on the chopping block for murder. Do you understand?”
Butcher gave her one quick nod.
“Good boy… Now go get an axe.”
To Be Continued
Acknowledgements
This story has been on my project board for almost two years now, and I’m glad it’s finally seeing the dark of night. Of course, there are several people to thank for that. A huge thank you goes out to those eyes on the prize: DeeCee Daniels, Nathaniel Makiewicz, and Raven Samson. Without them, Merc and Deuty’s story would have never hit my shelf in any official capacity. (Although, I’m still working out that box set…)
A big thank you is also due to my inner circle of idea-generators: Jason and Halen DuBois, Casey Kirkland, and Kiera for your boundless support and unending wells of patience. You guys have put up with so much pointless ranting by this point that I cannot fathom how you’ve stuck around all this time. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
And thank you! It’s because of readers like you that indie authors like me can share their stories freely without fear of censorship or reprisal.