96 Years Ago

Fall of The Izusan Outpost

Deusin Province

The intense emerald green of my killer’s eyes swirled with turmoil as my vision began to darken. Images blurred into black, creeping in from the corners of my eyes. They overwhelmed the colors of vibrant fire that danced off the mud-brick stronghold my army had invaded moments before. Every beat of my heart struggled against the blade this strange man had embedded in my chest, slowing the flow of blood. Every sense was numbed after the initial shock of pain when the small orange crystal dagger was plunged into my chest.

This wasn't right, this sensation. Vampires didn't die when the heart was pierced, they simply fell into an immobilized sleep until the object was removed, and blood was reintroduced so regeneration could begin. It had been done to me in the past for training purposes, or to please the sick twisted needs of my instructor. But I knew the feeling of falling into that induced slumber. The tingle of warmth that gripped onto everything as the body shut down, leaving us to look like death's victims but still very much alive. A useful tactic against the very uninformed mortals.

This time when the blade struck my heart it felt…Different.

The chill that snaked its way through my body was so much deeper than I had ever remembered, starting at my fingertips then draining into the dagger. The sensation of having every ounce of Vondorian's immortal blood being drawn out of my body into the weapon overtook me with a strange weakness.

Panic tightened in my chest. This was it... Death!

I could feel the reaper's kiss brush against my lips signaling the end when denial hit me. This isn't possible…There is no such weapon that can completely stop a vampiric heart.

Harsh reality crashed against my consciousness and the fragility of life suddenly became so clear. I had taken it for granted, allowed myself to fall into the false belief that death was beyond me. In desperation I screamed for the creature that lived inside me, my duality. The thing which awoke in my most dire moments to save us both.

Where are you... I don't want to die!

“Forgive me.” Warm breath brushed against my ear. “It is not coming. No one will save you,” my killer mocked. His body so close I could feel the sweltering taunt of life radiating off him, and a faint smell that gripped onto my dulling senses.

Damp earth greeted my body, he must have laid me down but it was so hard to tell with the world fading away. There was no more pain, only pressure that slowly drew back until it was gone. Still my heart continued to weaken and air caught in my throat... So hard to breathe.

“I'm here my raven beauty... I'm here,” he whispered again, the man with troubled green eyes whom appeared from shadows... My murderer. “Be still my little mystery, and go with the knowledge that with your life you take my soul.”

Warm soft lips pressed against my own, a heat sparked inside me despite the cold that marred my flesh. His scorching kiss and cryptic words the last sensations of my power driven existence sending me into death's uncertainty.

Present

Tentusa City Center

Vrasum Province

The once busy center of Tentusa had been transformed into a place of death, a stack of dead bodies burned against the lingering morning, and to my surprise a man was standing there. A stranger I had never seen before.

"What do you want boy?" I asked the person lingering in what was quickly becoming my master's city.

The stranger turned to face me, a slender form of a young man no older than his mid-twenties or even earlier, features masked by a bright red scarf leaving only his eyes visible. Maybe boy wasn't the right term for him, but compared to me everyone was just a child.

He stood there with a gaze of shock plastered on his face, his deep green eyes glued to my figure much like that letch Marcus when we first met, but what reflected in this boy's expression was not lust. It was disbelief.

"What do you want boy?" I said louder, annoyed that my question had not been answered the first time.

"I was summoned," the stranger answered with a confidence his awe struck appearance contradicted. "May I speak with Rhea? She is expecting me."

I knew my gaze faltered for a second and I had to look away at hearing that name again. "She is no longer with us."

It was the only formation of words I could manage to get out in response to his request. I couldn’t say she was murdered, killed, or even force the Opsona's name from my lips. There was no death from that night that struck me deeper than that of hers.

Even with the passing of a week, her death was still fresh. Everything from that night I was unleashed upon this city in all my lusty rage was fresh in my thoughts.

Forty-seven lives were taken in a matter of hours, snuffed out in a violent storm of chaos and left to rot in the streets. I had lost more control in that one episode than I ever had over my long life, including the first time the creature inside me woke. And unlike all those other rare moments when it raged free—the memories from that night were lucid. Burned with intricate detail into my every waking thought were the looks of horror on my victims faces, their fear imaged inside my mind. Each one a memorial to the persons last moments of life. My creature loved it. When my mind would flash through the series of victims from that night I could hear the soft pleasured purr deep within, but despite all of their faces hers haunted me the most.

The scent of her pure Opsona blood with its sweet rose fragrance lingered on my hands swirling around me like a death taunt, an awful reminder of what I was and what I was capable of. Those last words she spoke to me seared in tortuous repetition across my my mind, and each time I longed for sleep all I could see were those pale green eyes that pleaded in those final moments.

I always thought less of those who pleaded under my sword or claw, those who begged for their life—instead of accepting defeat with grace. Killing them was an act of kindness to this world, ridding this plane of their pathetic existence, but the plea in her eyes was for me.

She begged the awful thing I was to stop, remarking that I had a choice, that I had options, and then I killed her. She never fought nor drew her weapon, she just died…I killed her.

"In what context?" The boy asked, his emerald eyes expressing a knowing while his question suggested he lacked the intelligence to understand my statement.

Such an odd contradiction between his expressive eyes and awkward clumsy appearance, but even that was out of place in a world full of mortal normalcy. I couldn't tell much about him, just that his ash gray clothing was loose and ill fitting, not unlike a child that had stolen their father's clothing to play pretend. The red scarf wrapped around his face and head left only those haunting green eyes, pools of sparkling emeralds that danced with intensity. They appeared to look beyond me each time his gaze settled across the empty city center in my direction, as if studying something around me instead of the threat I posed right in front of him.

His were eyes set in a rich honey complexion that suggested he could be some simple farm boy who wandered into town, but even the richness of his skin was far deeper than any farmer in these mortal lands.

He wasn’t struggling with lack of intelligence and he completely understood my statement, I could tell by the age reflected in his gaze. This stranger had lived long enough to know more than a simple farmer, there was too much experience there. A look that only came with long years of tortured living. My first estimation about his age was clearly wrong, his youth screamed of someone no older than his twenties, but his eyes corrected me with their aged appearance. This stranger had secrets, ones he was guarding closely by the looks of his outward appearance, but he couldn't hide those tormented years in that gaze.

"Don't worry yourself boy," I said with a grin. A false outward gesture to stifle the ache that had settled in my chest and to lash out in my own grief over his friend's death. "She will return. Isn't that what you Opsona are known for?"

The Opsona were children of the Virtuous Gods where typical races found on the mortal planes were the product of both the Virtuous Gods and the Tainted Divinities, created out of subtle variations of both what mortals often called good and evil. The Opsona contain no essence from the Tainted Divinities, the evil in the world, but they were not the saints logic would suggest. They were crafted by the Deity of Justice to combat things like me, and ensure the mortal plane remained in neutral existence. The Virtues made them strong, granted them knowledge, but left out compassion and empathy. In some ways an Opsona could be more brutal than any dark thing lurking in the Underworld, and they saw the world in only black or white. You were either evil, created solely by the Tainted and needed to be eradicated from the mortal world, or a child of creation. A mix of virtue and impiety brought to life to be ignorant creatures that occupied this fruitful middle world.

They were also granted eternal life. It wasn't like my immortality, nor could I take advantage of it now that my soul had been tainted with Vondorian's blood. My eternal existence was linked to this body which was free of natural aliments. I would age slowly to a certain point then pause in time, and the only means that would ensure my destruction was decapitation.

Opsona had no such worries, their bodies were meaningless to them. They withered and died young and reckless despite the lengthened life spans the Virtues had granted them, but their souls carried on.

When someone of my former kin died their souls did not return to the massive pool of life from which all things were crafted, they were reborn. Placed into another body of the same lineage. When the child entered into adulthood the Opsona preformed a ritual to unlock the past memories, combining the experience and skills of generations into a single being. It was what made them such formidable opponents. Fighting one Opsona was no different than fighting generations.

I often wondered what it was like to have all that knowledge, and I would daydream about who I could have been in my past lives. It was something I would never know since I was stolen away before my memories could be restored.

He shot a cold glare in response to my comment. My words were meant as a reassurance to end the shame I felt in taking her life, and a twisted taunt to appease the darker side of me but also to draw some information out of him. No one ventured into the valley anymore, only a fool or another Opsona would. I had to find out which he was.

Silence became the stranger's new form of answer as he directed his gaze around the city center. I could no longer look at the scenery, I didn't want to see my infection, my sin that had seeped into every crack of the once glowing gem of a city. It was just too much. Instead I focused on this stranger who had so willingly entered into the valley.

Over the last week, since the night I ravaged Tentusa, my master had taken up a new method to his conquest. Using Ryder and her men he created a nightmarish fairytale of "The Beast". A creature which attacked every night both here within the city walls, and the outer villages that littered the rolling hills all in the hopes of luring out the king of this province. Something that was proving to be difficult since Marcus had escaped to the capital, no doubt running his mouth and telling of the awful things that had befallen Tentusa. That sandy-haired letch who was chasing after Lady Victoria while imaging me laid out upon his bed was nothing more than a lucky fool. I was sure Marcus didn’t fully understand what was happening, that vampires had taken control of the city, but more that something dark had gripped this place. Whatever he told the king it was enough to keep him away.

It brought me joy in some small regard to know that Vondorian's plans had stalled thanks to his most loyal subject, because it wasn't me that let Marcus slip through the boarders of the valley.

The day after my unrestrained feast I was being detained in some tomb under the city, locked away in raving insanity until my creature withdrew and my mortal self regained her loosened grip of control. It must have been then, while the others were busy keeping me confined, that Marcus slipped out of the city and headed toward the capital. It was a delightful fuck-up.

That was on Ryder's head, it was her men that guarded the area and her one goal to see to it no one that wasn't approved left or entered the valley. Her failings brought me a tickled feeling of delight in this otherwise death-riddled hell I had found myself in, and now this boy had managed to sneak past her men. I could not wait to see the punishment Master had in store for Ryder, but why did this boy come?

Surely he saw the black storm that hovered over the valley, and anyone that had heard the stories, heard the nightmares from the people whom Vondorian allowed to escape, would never come here willingly. Summoned or not this place had been marked as cursed, and for once the superstitious mortals were right. This place was cursed, so much blood had covered these hills in the last seven days I wondered how the grass remained so vibrant a green.

"Where are you keeping her?" the boy demanded, a hint of anger in his muffled voice. "They wouldn't have allowed you to burn her. Where is Rhea's body?!"

The sting of her name hit me again and I turned away from the strange boy that concealed everything but his clear connection to this Opsona woman. I was done with him, I would let Ryder deal with him and all his silly demands when night fell.

I took a step back to leave when the scent of cloves and honey danced across my nose.

This is familiar. I halted my movements and took a moment to draw in more. I know this scent.

The familiarity clung to my mind as I searched for some memory of the strange aroma which had sparked this feeling. There was nothing, not a single moment I could recall to place this odd mix of cloves and honey, but I knew I had smelled it before and it was coming from the stranger.

Fine, I will play along for now. I relented to that persistent nagging voice in the back of my mind.

"This way." I motioned, turning and folding my arms across my chest. The gesture a silly outward attempt to block out the feelings and hopeless mental ramblings of the living that still lingered in the city.

Their minds were so full of despair, sorrow, and fear that it was affecting me. Aside from my own shame, their thoughts were becoming an insufferable itch inside my head, to the point of altering my state of mind.

That was what I told myself. That was how I explained my sudden intense feelings of tormented guilt which welcomed me out of my creature-driven madness. They were not my own, it was the people around me, the voices I couldn't block out, and the worst part was not even my creature tried to muffle them with its hungry growls.

It should have been rolling in delight from all the fear seeping out of these homes, purring with a deprived greed for more.

Instead it had curled up deep within me and slept in a gluttonous heap since its feast, unphased. Leaving the hardest part, the aftermath of all of this for me to deal with. Just like Vondorian.

Turning me into a murderous beast wasn't enough for his perverse needs, every morning after Ryder and her men played with the mortals I was sent to clean up the mess, acting as the false guardian to the masses. Stacking the dead to burn and assuring the survivors that I was handling the situation, lying to them. Repeating every solemn morning that their lives were the most important thing to me. I wanted to kill them all, to end their suffering but I couldn't even do that. Vondorian's mental chains were holding me at bay.

Damn Vondorian and his special punishments…Damn him…And me.

I couldn't give him all the blame. If I hadn't strayed from his orders—if I had just obeyed then none of this would be happening. Tentusa would have fallen by now, the whole northern half of this province would be overrun with the Vamdari Army and claimed for the Vampire Nation. They wouldn't be suffering like this.

It's all my fault. A thought which weighted heavier on me in the shadow of the temple. A grand polished marble structure that stood out as the last beacon of hope any of these people had. Erected in the lowest point of the valley, it was a most holy place where monks and priests came in pilgrimage to worship their gods and goddesses. There must have been some truth to its importance because it remained untouched by our evil. The darkened gloom that had overtaken the rest of the white stone city did not dirty these polished walls. It was here they housed the injured and her.

"The temple priests have been looking after the body. You will find your friend inside," I said looking over my shoulder at the stranger, surprised that he had followed so willingly. He must have known how much danger lingered around the city, the signs were too pronounced not to and still he followed.

This stranger was a mad man driven by his weak heartfelt emotions to do right by his friend, or maybe his intentions were less transparent. Either way I would have to inform Master like the good loyal servant I had surrendered myself to. I would do anything to avoid this special form of punishment ever again.

Eerie reverence echoed off the marble walls of the large community room inside this sacred temple. Distant chants of monks swept through the space and brought hope with their words and harmonic voices, raising up into the open vaulted ceiling. That haunting melody reflected off windows of thick colored glass displaying the stories of creation. Colorful murals of gods and goddesses covered polished marble walls and the large pillars that divided the massive space. The world felt right inside of this place, whole and pure, it was no wonder Serenity refused to enter with me. I didn't want her here anyways, this place was too holy for something like her.

The wounded filled every inch of the room, spilling over into the hallways that branched off into the various parts of the temple. So much pain and hurt in one place. The evil that gripped onto this valley was destructive, draining all the light and color from the mortal world. Yet despite the despair that lingered among the city walls this place was left untouched. Free of the fear and heartache, and the dark reaches of Serenity and her armies. None of it entered here, not in this holy place.

A shudder a discomfort ran down my back like it did every time I entered this temple, it was another warning. This one not from the evil that settled into Tentusa, but from the divine that guarded this place. The ground beneath my feet was holy, blessed by the highest of beings and the magic that lingered here could sense my muddled heritage. A stained mark on my otherwise pure Opsona blood. Even though my intentions were honorable, the higher powers which guarded this place still offered their warning.

One I acknowledged by bowing my head in respect as I approached the main altar which extended across the backside of the chamber. On it was an array of items: freshwater pearls from the lake of Rouren, meat freshly butchered, flowers from the rolling hills, and a few other oddities and luxuries all placed at the feet of the largest statue in the temple. A recreation of the Peace Goddess, a beauty with long flowing hair adorned with weeping vines from the Willioumos trees that grew in the cove to the south. They were a symbol of her virtue, her gift to the world, peace and harmony. She was no doubt the beacon of light that had wrapped this structure in its protective embrace. The offerings at her feet incentive to bring about the end of this dark ordeal these people had found themselves entangled in.

Serenity was here which only meant this place was marked for conquest. The vampires had been trying to overrun the mortal world for centuries like all the other dark creatures trapped in their own decaying realms. The last time I met Serenity, the Vampire Nation had lost all form of subtly and marched on the mortal provinces with their new powerful general at the head. She was unstoppable, unchallenged, until I dispatched her from this life.

We were approaching ninty-seven years since that day. Ninty-seven years since I plundged my dagger into Serenity's beating heart, and waited until it stalled. How did you survive? A troubling question to add to the mounting pile of worries that had flooded my mind. Among them was the vampires' new approach to their end goal. There had been no news of vampire or any other strange activity in the mortal world, which only meant the vampires' methods for conquest had shifted. They no longer marched in the open, or tried to overwhelm the mortal population with their growing numbers. In fact there had been no talk of vampires for decades, yet here they were. By the looks of it their plans to infect this world hadn't been diverted at all with Serenity's fall in battle.

But how did they go unnoticed?

The only way it was possible was if the neutral territories had been attacked first. The mortal world was divided among the seven siblings of the first royal family ever established in human history. Each one had a province with their own natural resources shared among the other six. It ensured cooperation between the different family branches through the generations. The lands that could not be settled upon in the division became their own free territories, often controlled by the lesser of proper society. Warlords, rouges, bandits, and other people that were less than honorable. It was in these strife riddled places the vampires could operate unnoticed, as long as they didn't stray outside of those areas.

Now it looked as though they had finished with the unclaimed lands and were moving into the provinced kingdoms. It was sly and lowly of them but I had to admire it. Out of all the creatures lurking in the Underworld realms, vampires were the most intelligent. Still with their attention moving to these more peaceful lands their presence would no longer go unnoticed. It was a thought that should have eased my troubled mind about the threat of vampire domination, but instead it worried me further because it meant they were ready to strike.

If Serenity was here in Tentusa then the Vamdari must have rebuilt their army, the most brutal and powerful of their kind. I had seen a fraction of their army overtake an entire race of warrior breed elves. They washed over them like an all consuming tsunami. No hesitation. No remorse. Just pure destruction driven forward by my mysterious raven beauty.

"The Shadowed Wanderer has returned to us." A large joyous voice boomed from beside me. I turned knowing it could only belong to one person. The only one that ever called me by that name.

"Magunis, a pleasure and honor like always." I greeted him with a low bow.

The old priest bounced his way toward me with his large stomach that protruded outward and often exaggerated his bouncy walk with a jiggle or two. Pure white hair surrounded the edge crown of his head, and traveled down along his face into a long braid which was decorated with shiny yellow beads to show his stature as High Priest. Robed in the same off-white garbs as all of the others, he embraced me in his large arms. The breath rushed right out of my slender frame as I was squeezed against that stomach of his.

"We have been saved," he exclaimed lifting me off the ground despite the fact I towered over him by half a foot. "I prayed to our Great Goddess to save us, and she sent you. Our hero!"

Cheers erupted from the wounded masses that had sought refuge in the temple, cries of joy and relief filling the room. Suddenly, the failed attempt at killing Serenity dragged my spirit down.

When I saw her there in the town I felt overjoyed. I knew what she was, I knew the darkness she harbored and the destruction she had once rained down on this world, and still I was joyed to see her. Selfishly delighted that I had failed and was now able to explore the strange attraction I had toward the vampire maiden, but my failed attempt now had me doubting my abilities. If I couldn't kill her what could I do to save these people?

And I had to save them, Rhea would have died trying to save her beloved Tentusa and I would do the same for her.

Magunis placed me back on my feet and I gasped for air, a lingering ache in my sides where his large arms had crushed me. "Please, I came to see her," I said, dropping the pleasured reunion with a solemn request.

I didn't have to say her name, nor did I want to. The thought of Rhea gone was not one I wanted to entertain. I couldn't. It would make it all to real, and it wasn't real until I saw the body.

Magunis nodded as his look of joy dropped with the sorrow of my request, and he motioned for me to follow him to the right of the altar. We made our way through a large wooden door that opened into a short hallway which narrowed into a staircase and then spiraled downward. Small candles placed in holes notched out of the old stone gave little light, because the dead didn't need it to find their way.

Below this whole valley was a massive network of chambers and tunnels that was all part of an ancient system carved out of the valley by a long lost Opsona Clan, the Fisargo. This portion, where the temple sat was the crypt, it was a place of peace for the dead and had been used over many generations. These stone chambers held the remains of nobility, a few royals, honored warriors who fell in battle, and anyone else whom earned a special place in these tombs.

The air grew thicker and chilled the farther we traveled down the darkened staircase, twisting around the worn brick walls until they turned into compacted dirt. Imprinted strokes from carving tools were still weathered into the dirt walls, little pieces of the past shining through to the present as we came to the bottom level. The stairs ended in a long tunnel which traveled to the left and right, narrowing into a faint glow at the end of each. It didn't matter which way you went, the harsh reality of mortality would be there to greet you.

That was not where Rhea was, Opsona were never buried in the ground nor held in some type of mausoleum. Our traditions called for ceremony and a fiery release from the physical form from which our souls would raise again to live on, but that would have to wait. I couldn't release Rhea until I avenged her untimely death, a promise that burned into my resolve as I watched a soft pulsing glow from a room just in front of us. She would be in there, the Dressing Chamber. It was where bodies were readied for their long sleep in the catacombs, adorned in the riches they couldn't take with them.

I felt Magunis' hand on my shoulder as he spoke breaking the deafening silence of the corpses. "I'll let you go first." I nodded without looking at him and headed for the small arch that led into the room only to halt at the threshold.

I needed to see for myself that she was gone, but I couldn't bring myself to cross into the chamber. I didn't want to know. If I didn't see her body, if I didn't touch her and know that Rhea was truly gone then it was like she was still out there. Rhea, the Great Elder gathering her scrolls and secrets, passing her knowledge on to those who would honor it. I could imagine her off to the far west, deep in the serene mounds of rolling sand that filled the wastelands. Searching for her next big secret, the proof to her wild theories and ideas… The eternal scholar.

Finally prepared I stepped into the room and the sight strangled every bit of life I had left me in. There she was, lifeless laying out on a stone slab. Candles placed all around her body in a shield of light, their wax running down onto the stone and pooling off onto the floor. I had never seen anything so startlingly beautiful with all its grim truths. Rhea was dead. My teacher…My master…My guide through the worlds cruelty. Gone from this existence so swift I couldn't even catch my breath at the thought.

I approached with uncertainty. They had clothed her in white, she would have hated that, and bowls of sweet rose water were placed near the candles to mask the scent of decay. This had to be some twisted nightmare I was being punished with. I reached out to touch her hand and I knew as a whisper of cold greeted my warm touch. It was confirmed now more definitively then before, she was gone. The mother I wished for was gone.

"How did this happen?" I asked choking back the tears that burned in the back of my throat. "How did all of this happen?"

I needed to know. Standing there in the city center and looking at the bonfire of corpses I didn't care about the details of the situation. I didn't care what was happening or what had gripped onto Rhea's beloved city. My only thought was getting to her. I knew once Rhea explained it, once I was in her council the world would be fine. We would face this danger together like we always had in the past, but now she was gone and I was alone with the demons of this world.

"She doesn't need your sorrow or rage Cret," Magunis consoled me from the entrance. "She needs an angel to help her home."

"No," I growled clenching Rhea's dead hand. "She needs this righted, and I will see it done."

Even if I need my whole-self to do it… My soul be damned!

Sickness and the haunting sense of oncoming death filled the large front chamber of the temple. Masses of mortals from the outer villages and the city itself filled the space making it seem smaller than I remembered. I had been here once before as a child with my father, an Elder in our Opsona village. It was such an honor to travel with my father, and to be taken to the most sacred temple our clan was responsible for guarding had me in an excited state. My hand in his I remember how overwhelming this place was to a small child, the endless ceilings and polished floors that reflected colorful wall designs like a mirror. Inspiring nothing less then a heavenly awe, but now as I took a step onto that same polished marble my stomach tightened with discomfort.

I had waited outside of this place as the stranger entered. I would have done anything to avoid entering here, even looking at the temple made me feel a deep unyielding shame fueled by the broken promises of my past, but Master commanded me to retrieve the boy. He had seemed less interested in Ryder's failings to contain the valley, and more thrilled to know this person had arrived. It wasn't his words, which had turned cold to me over the last week, that gave him away, but the faint feeling of excitement that seeped through our bond. His strange delight in hearing about this new arrival had more than sparked my interest, but I would have liked to collect the stranger outside the temple. In these holy walls the shame I felt turned into gut-wrenching pain, one that stilled me for a second causing the manor guards that followed behind to halt.

I wanted to double over in pain. Clench at my knotting stomach and rush from this place, but I couldn't. Master would not approve. Weakness was not something he tolerated and I would do anything to prove I could endure the most agonizing trauma, just to see delight in his crimson gaze.

The glamoured magic that concealed my true nature of scarlet inhuman eyes, the unnatural deepness of my complexion, and the odd rounded point to my ears that was the last characteristic of my Opsona life threatened to give way in this place. Closing my eyes and forcing the scarlet away that had started to trickle through the more mortal hue of blue, I breathed in the hopelessness of the room. Drawing out the beast inside me with the promise of a mortal feast, using the strength of the waking creature but still subduing it. With my newfound strength overtaking the pain, I pressed forward, the sooner we found the boy I could rid myself of this holy annoyance.

Whispers started to murmur among the people. Priests of the temple eyed us with suspicion as they should. I focused my view straight ahead, but I couldn't block out the sight of suffering people. Ryder and her men didn't kill everyone on their nightly ventures. They had to play with their food, leaving so many wounded to prolong the agony, it was unnecessary and disgusting. Cruel, my mortal compassion added.

Some part of me deep down wanted to speak out about what was happening, to put an end to Ryder's fun, as she called it. This wasn't right. This wasn't how the Vamdari worked.

We were swift, accurate and while our brutality, when it came to conquest, was well known, we never tortured by these methods. This is wrong.

I couldn't be bothered with that now, I had to collect the boy and return to the manor. Master Vondorian would not approve of prolonged waiting, and if he heard the sympathies I felt for these people their unpleasantness would only increase. I knew he was allowing Ryder to do this just to watch how it affected me. This whole ordeal had been a lesson to me, and I had learned.

That first morning when I woke from my creature's influence I knew I could never allow this to happen again. Haunted by all those faces, I wreaked of blood and sin. In that moment I gave myself over to the oath I took on my initiation day. The pledge I made to serve my vampire lords without question or fail, and honor my word to always be faithful to Vondorian above all others.

I had not strayed an inch since that day, and I had hoped Master was watching. I knew he had to be—with the disobedience I had shown he should have been watching me at all times, and he had a right to. There were moments I even questioned my strength to fulfill my declaration of loyalty. Each day as I walked through the ravaged Tentusa I felt the pull of my mortal self begging me to save these people. To end all this suffering, and every day I battled to keep my promise.

At times the draw became so intense I had to steal a second away in the open fields of the valley, far from all the mortal voices crying for help, and Vondorian's never-ending sadistic games.

"You are not welcome here!" A loud booming voice echoed off the stone walls silencing the soft mummers that started when we entered. "This is a place of peace. A Holy place you are unfit to enter!"

The owner of the voice stepped forward, a large but short man with a long white beard and very round stomach. The High Priest. He was more aware than the others about us and our purpose here. Though he cowered in his temple there was fire in his eyes, and the divine will of the gods on his side.

I took another step toward the man, I would deal with him swiftly and then locate the stranger. The second my foot touched the ground before me my body started to shake. A tremble started in my hands and at my knee that I couldn't explain. Drawing my arms across my chest I folded them there to hide the weakness showing through as I pulled my leg back. Pain twisted in my stomach once again and threatened to make my magic glamour falter, revealing my true nature before it was time.

This was the line, whatever was protecting this temple didn't want me to venture any closer. My attention focused on the statue behind the priest of the goddess. She must have been protecting this place, only divine will could keep us… me at bay.

I played off the pain and the shaking in my body with a cool exterior, even as sweat started to form on my brow and the tremors became more evident. "We want the stranger," I replied back to his objection. "My Lord wishes a word with him."

"There is no stranger here, only the wounded and dead."

"Don't toy with me, priest. I saw him enter and I have yet to see him leave," I growled as the guards behind me inched forward.

I put out my hand to stop their advances and they obeyed. It felt good to have men under my command again, to have the power to control the masses. Granted they were only mortals under my master's spell, but it was still an alluring power to wield. To have control over a thing, its fate. The depraved part of me loved that power. It craved it.

"Like I said, there's no stranger here." The man defied me again which pushed my worn patience to its limit.

I was already on edge due to this unforgiving pain twisting inside me, shorting my temperament and pressing my strength to its boundaries. I couldn't move any farther, and I dare not send my puppets either. If this entity was attacking me with such intensity, the spell that controlled my men would shatter. I couldn't risk sending them forward to search the temple or even punish the priest I so longed to lash out at, but I would show him. Looking around to the various other inhabitants within reach my lips twisted into the most pleasured smirk.

"These people look well enough to me," I said setting my devious gaze on the High Priest. "Arm the men. We need more watchers at night, and send the woman to aid the outer villages."

As I commanded, my guards fanned out, pulling the wounded to their feet and dragging them toward the entrance. People were screaming, crying, begging to not be taken out of the safety the walls provided. Their pleas filled me with a sick sense of delight as I turned to leave, very content with my forced compromise between me and the priest.

"I'm here," I heard the muffled voice of the stranger yell from behind me. "Just leave them. I'll go willingly."

Turning at the sound of his voice I watched as he approached from a doorway just off the altar.

“Very well.” I nodded to the guards to halt in their actions. Those that had been pulled nearer the exit now scrambled back to the safety of the altar. Out there was horror, in here was false comfort. A safety that would be destroyed once the army arrived.

The room was full of hysteria and my creature loved it, purring beneath the pain and dulling it into a more erotic sensation. The darkness of my own depraved soul fluttered outward and tingled over my body. Being this creature. Giving into its obscure sense of pleasure was so seductive.

"Leave the women, take the men," I ordered my puppets.

I wanted to repay this place, repay whatever force was causing me this sickening pain and also make a statement. I wasn't to be fooled with. Master might order me about, even degrade me, but I would not allow it in front of people that were lesser than me, and the cruelty that was rooted deep in my being was rising to the surface. Especially with my body wrecked in pain and the waking will of my darkness.

I turned to leave the temple, arms crossed over my chest but not to dull the pain, more in victory and pride for my twisted deeds. I was sending these men to their death.

A hand gripped my shoulder causing me to stop. My body tensed. My first reaction was to turn and strike the person, but the ease and comfort that followed pushed it out of my mind. The exotic scent of honeyed-clove wrapped around me and the alluring need for cruelty melted away.

“This isn't necessary,” the strange boy whispered, and to my surprise I could feel his breath at my ear. “Look at these people. They fear you, they know Serenity... They know.”

Frozen by his words the need to prove myself eased out of me and I nodded in a daze. Flicking my hand toward the guards, it was the order to leave, to withdraw and they did so without the men I had just sentenced to death. Suddenly none of that mattered, just this stranger and the mysterious way he settled the waking creature inside me.

I watched as he walked on ahead of me unaccompanied with confidence in his stride. A man walking toward his fate without even a flicker of hesitation. It struck a cord in me. I could admire that even if he was foolish enough to willingly enter my master's presence. He had to know the danger ahead of him if he knew my name, and still he walked with reckless determination.

I hardly remembered the manor in its current state, the once bright stones that amassed the grand place looked so dulled, chipped, and weathered on the edges. Large wood beams made out of the mighty ash oaks from the Naxus Highlands supporting this once beautiful manor and running along the ceiling, now looked rotten and splintered. They gave off a warning creak under the harsh winds that had blown in when the rain started again. I feared this whole structure might collapse far before its time.

It had only been a decade or so since I last walked these halls and it was nothing like it was or should have been. Stone and wood didn't age this quickly without something aiding the decay. It had to be this awful presence, the same one that welcomed me into the valley, causing this level of rot. It was so strong here in the manor that it was causing my breath to catch in my throat, and with each step toward meeting the mysterious lord I felt the unmistakable pull of darkness.

When Serenity came to collect me at the temple I knew the lord she was referring to wasn't Davros, from what Magunis said Davros' death was the source of all this misfortune. At least that was the superstitious tale that people in the valley were telling, and by now the stories had reached all of the northern region of the Vrasum Province. I was fortunate enough to know better than to believe such fairytales. The reality of what was happening was far worse. Still people gave an air of fiction to the real events happening here with all the flare of a storyteller, full of exaggeration and dramatic ramblings to distance these very undeniable events from reality. Playing them out as some type of a fantasy.

Magunis, in the most dramatic voice he could muster, spoke of an unseasonable storm that entered the valley off the lake front and settled just overhead. Storms were nothing new but they rarely approached from the lake, and at this time of year it was unheard of. The most disturbing element of this strange storm was it had yet to pass. The clouds looming above Tentusa were the same from that day over a week ago. After that Lady Victoria had been kidnapped, and then returned the next morning in a strange series of events, but it wasn't until Lord Davros was murdered that terror took root in the city.

From what Magunis said many of the people believed Lord Davros' murder cursed this land, and the storm was a warning. They were right in some regard, the storm clouds were a warning. Lands with holy beacons like the temple in Tentusa often had a natural defense against things like vampires or any other creature that slithered their way out of the Underworld. The divine that protected this place were still trying to wash away the vampires tainted presence from the land and that was the reason the storm clouds remained.

Magunis said the storm raged like it never had before, reports of whole structures being washed away or blown over came flooding in from the outer rim of the valley, but the city had its own problems. A beast was ravaging the streets. Everyone that came in contact with the thing had perished, including Rhea. The next morning Marcus vanished and Lady Victoria fell ill—no one had seen her since. Giving this new lord a chance to take the seat of power. I could understand how people were speaking of curses and the gods’ wrath. These events were strange even for vampires.

What do you have planed Serenity?

Death and destruction always followed her, as did the Vamdari. This man…This lord she was taking me to see had to be a vampire lord. One of four most powerful beings in all the Vampire Nation. They would be the only ones Serenity would take orders from or even regard with the title of 'lord'. The question still remained, which lord was it?

Lord Mathus ruled at the top of the Vampire Nation as overlord, rumors were he had the very first vampire overlord killed by his own daughter. His powers of manipulation and constant scheming were how he kept his throne, a lowly gift but one that served him well.

Next in rank was Mistress Valorize, a beauty that worried constantly about the awful physical effects of being an immortal vampire. Her specialties laid in magical growth, expanding the nation through increased knowledge of the darker arts. Paired with her brother's, Delvorias, immeasurable strength, they were undefeatable. The one making up for the shortcomings of the other. These two were loyal to their overlord and served him well.

The final lord that made up the top of the vampire's food chain was someone no one knew. Male, female, powerful, magical, there was no knowing what or who they were. The only thing years of research and generations of searching had yielded for the Opsona on this mysterious ruler was that they commanded the Vamdari. Their hidden ruler always in the shadows, but more focused and determined than any of the other three lords.

The Opsona had been trying for centuries to learn the identity of this person without success, even Rhea lended herself over to the impossible task. It was her life's mission aside from protecting Tentusa. She even recruited the Bouchari to aid her. Small sneaky devilish little creatures with spotted fur and large pointed ears that looked too big for their small heads and tiny bodies. Their eyes were always wide open, watching everything around them like a keen owl. They were known for making trouble around the borders between the planes, but their knowledge and fact gathering skills were astonishing. These creatures knew anything that happened, from the most current Underworld leaders in all thirty realms, to why a small child in a random mortal village was crying. Despite all this ability not even they were able to tell us one detail about this mysterious lord.

What are they hiding?

Anticipation tickled down my spine as I followed the guards. In these next few seconds I might discover the most closely guarded secret in all of the Underworld. The idea filled me with pride. I would do what no other Opsona could, and with that my place within their clans would have to be acknowledged.

But at what price? I reminded myself.

Yes I would discover something but to ignore the warning signs, the awful feeling that had settled in my gut would be dangerous. I would pay for walking so willingly into this place, but I didn't see any other way. I needed answers and I was never mistaken for the subtle type.

We came to a large wooden door stained in a deep ash finish and carved in intricate detail with birds, hills, and a few smaller land creatures that were native to this area. The two guards in front of me placed their hands upon the beautiful piece of artwork ready to push them open. Excitement swelled in my chest.

I took a deep breath as the door inched open at a torturous pace. Serenity's sage lavender scent filled my already fully aware body adding to the thrillingly tense moments. I suddenly became aware of how closely she was following behind me, and having her so close was distracting me from the danger I was about to face. I couldn't be distracted. I had to focus if I wanted to survive in this manor.

Cold air rushed past as the door opened. Never ending blackness laid before me. Was it because no candles had been lit due to the early time of day, or from what resided just inside?

Caution took hold of my mind, stifling the over stimulated glee that came from the unknown before me. I wanted to rush in like a child awaiting some grand surprise, but I needed to be careful. Any faltered expression or movement. Any lie that was not told with complete confidence could give me away.

“After you, boy.” Serenity mocked, her playful way of belittling me was starting to wear on my not-so-patient side.

I'm so far from a boy. I'll have to educate you… Later. A thought which brought an inappropriate smirk to my covered face.

This room had been made to receive guests, villagers, or the casual traveler that was special enough to stand before Lord Davros. Without responding I entered the room, fully expecting to see some large brooding figure standing at the far end where chairs, like thrones, had been arranged. Instead the only thing that greeted me was nothing. Just an empty hall full of shadows, or it would appear that way.

I couldn't make out a figure with the shadows in the room, but I could see the truth of it now. The blackness of this room was not due to lack of light. The windows that lined the right side of the hall sat at an angle, allowing for the most light to filter in without the need of fire or candles. Even with the clouded sky above, illumining rays still streamed into the hall, but they did little to penetrate the darkness.

It was dense and thick, like a heavy fog that often covered the lake in the early morning hours just before sunrise. It blocked out every fraction of light that tried to fight against it, gathering in density toward the area behind the chairs. This was where the lord was. Hiding in the shadows like they always did.

To mortals and any other thing that would look upon this room their vision would be much different. They would no doubt see a room full of sunlight and a person standing in the weak dull shadow of the mock thrones, unable to see the intensity of the true darkness. The only hint they would have to the true nature of this person would be the odd feeling of unease. For those whom were sensitive to supernatural creatures, the feeling would be more intense, but no one outside of my father's lineage could see what I saw.

There was a veil, a thick wall between the planes. A voided space where nothing and noone could live aside from shadows. It was a place where reality became distorted but truth could never hide. It hugged around every living thing on every plane and I could see it all, a gift and curse. I need only look closely at someone or something, read the shadowed presences of its voided self and I could tell everything. From emotions to intentions, I read the darkness like mystics read auras, like seers pulled fortunes from their rippled reflections in looking pools. This shadow had nothing to give. Nothing but a warning of power.

It didn't just surround the person hiding away just before me, but swallowed the whole room with its presence. I was sure it could even extend beyond this room, that was the overwhelming force I glimpsed from this thing. I narrowed my eyes onto the focal point of the shadow, but even then the dark mass of black and blues twisted and distorted in ways to avoid analysis. This lord was clever. A puzzle that needed to be solved, much like my mysterious raven beauty.

A thought jumped into my mind when Serenity crossed into my thoughts. An itch to turn and witness how this black entity responded to her pulled at my will, but I refused myself that knowledge. It was better if I didn't know the connection between Serenity and the lord. I had an nagging suspicion they were bonded, linked by a sire and underling relationship, and seeing this intimidating mass of evil snaking through her would send me over the edge. I couldn't take that. It would only serve to draw out my odd possessive nature when it came to Serenity.

But if I did look, just gave a casual glance, I could solve yet another troubling mystery of the vampire world.

Who sired Serenity?

There had been documents upon documents of speculation, all in an effort to find out how Serenity gained her unusually powerful abilities and strength. The only thing the Opsona could conclude was it had to be one of the four lords. Powers from sires sometimes passed to the underling. It was rare since most vampires developed their own traits and skills over time, and the only thing similar between sire and underling was eye color. A mark of ownership, but Serenity was different. At least that was what many Opsona Elders thought.

The only way she could be so strong was if a lord's pure blood had sired her. That would allow for her increased amount of skill. Still there must have been something about Serenity before that to draw the attention of a lord. Being sired by one of the four was unheard of, a mark of honor only a very select few had ever had. Most initiates were granted immortal life by the highest rank just beneath the lords. So what was it about her that singled her out among all the rest?

I ventured another step forward into the room before taking a low bow. I couldn't see the person but I knew they were there. Showing respect might be the only way to prolong my death.

"What business do you have here, child?" The deep sharp male voice filled the room echoing out of the nothingness before me.

Without raising my head I answered in the most timid voice I could—it wasn't hard with this overwhelming thing lurking about. "My teacher summoned me to complete my training."

It was a lie and Serenity knew it. I could feel those questioning eyes burning into my back, those awful bright blue ones she so often wore in mortal company. It was disgraceful to see her hiding that pure beauty I had come to long for, but I was doing the very same thing. Not with magic but with all this clothing hiding the marks of my legacy, concealing the truth of whom I was.

"Rhea is dead boy," the voice said again as a pale hand slithered out of the shadows and into a beam of stray light. Long slender fingers of perfection extended in my direction. "As my servant has no doubt already informed you."

On mark Serenity appeared from the corner of my vision as I straightened from my bow, making her way to the man reaching out. Her small hand slid into his, the sweet olive hue of her skin a hard contrast against the pale complexion of the other. A growl rumbled deep inside of me as that possessive nature of mine stirred. I could never understand my actions when it came to Serenity. She drew something out in me that had a will of its own. I had no claim to her, but still the idea of him, this person touching her sent jealousy boiling through my body.

When those long fingers clasped around her hand I had to draw my view away to keep the jealous growl from raising to the surface.

“So I have come to understand,” I replied, glad my voice was muffled by the scarf wrapped around my face so they couldn't hear the anger building in my voice. “Might I inquire about the manner of her death?"

"First you will answer one of my questions," the mysterious lord countered. "What is your name? I would like to know whom I am addressing."

I answered without thinking. My real name rushed from my lips in a mad fury to get this line of questioning over with, "Cret Rebryn, and yours?"

"The beast took her."

The tone in his voice made it clear this introduction would be one sided, I would have to learn his name through other means.

I looked back in his direction. I wanted to know about this beast. If it took Rhea's life then I would take its. The second I saw the two pairs of bright blue eyes beaming out of the shadows rage over took my need for information.

Serenity was standing there beside this man, their actions hidden in the dark. He could be touching her. Feeling her like I so wanted to. That bastard!

“She died begging the thing for her life. Ripped limb from limb and left to rot in the streets. That is what happened to your teacher.” The lord's words were cruel and unnecessary. My hate was already focused on him, he didn't have to say anything.

My father's heritage rippled deep inside me, my vision faded to something that could best be described as the color of insane rage. I would make this man pay for what happened to Rhea, even if it wasn't under his orders. I would kill him to avenge my teacher, and then I would rip him apart for touching what was mine.

I could feel my fanged teeth drip with saliva aching to taste this man's blood, my muscles pulsed with extra adrenaline as my rage forced itself outward into my body. Bulking my slender build into something that was far stronger and more menacing in appearance. They could see none of it from the clothes I wore, but I knew Serenity could sense it. She could feel my body change and the murderous intentions I had by the way she took a step forward, putting her half in the light and shadow. She was ready to attack as much as I was.

The thought of battle. No. The thought of battling her was twistedly arousing. My body itched to test my skills against Serenity's. Our heated passions displayed in a series of adrenaline fueled attacks had me growing erect.

"Stay the night," the lord in the shadows commanded. His booming voice refocusing me and stilling the rage, but it did little to stop the throb in my pants. "Tend to your teacher in the morning. It's far too dangerous to wander in the valley this late in the afternoon. Night comes swift."

There was a slight chuckle in his last words that brought bile up into my throat, but I nodded my head in agreement. I still have things to do here. I tried to justify it to my head. Really, my reasoning was far less rational. I would kill this man and show Serenity who her real lord was.

This boy was capturing my interest more by the second. What was the presence I sensed from him, that growing unease of danger that had poured from his body?

It was like nothing I had ever perceived before, so strong and alluring. It thrilled me to my core, and instead of filling me with fear driven awareness I was excited. The prospect of oncoming battle so enticing I felt my breath grow heavy, and my cheeks warmed with a strange fluster I didn't understand. A flare of something had danced between us in those quick seconds, and I ached to see the conclusion.

Master's words faded into the background as I stared at the stranger, no. At Cret. I now had a name to go with this complex and fascinating stranger. Those eyes of his narrowed on me and flashed something dark and promising, it made my creature flex and stretch with delight and my mortal self fluster in foolish embarrassment.

The sound of the door opening to my right hardly broke my concentration on Cret, but the scent of stale death granted my full awareness.

Ryder!

Her hips swayed far too much as she entered the room, my life long rival in all her lanky beauty. Tall, much taller than me and strong, though with her slender frame you would never know it. Skin pale like fresh snow, hair of charcoal black, and those calculating eyes of hers. The ideal appearance of our kind in all her supernatural beauty, and just as ferocious. There wasn't a single thing about her I didn't dislike. From the elegant wind swept motion of her long hair, to that scent of dead bodies all around her. I took every chance I got to engage her in battle, and I the victor every time. Still it wasn't enough. I wanted to see her destroyed. Ryder's annoyance wiped from existence. I was the higher rank but that didn't matter to Ryder, she still thought me less then her.

"Ryder, show our guest to a room," Master commanded and I couldn't help the words that flew out of my mouth.

"I can take him, My Lord."

I don't know what came over me, but the thought of her alone with Cret angered me. I wouldn't allow her that, even if I was being insubordinate. In horror at my misspeak I looked back to Master.

Vondorian's cold glare focused on me, disapproval flexing in his eyes and I knew I had more than overstepped my limit. I was disobeying again, but something nagged inside me to get this stranger alone—to question him before Ryder or Master could have their way with him. I silenced myself. Folding my hands in front of me and taking a step back into the shadows I directed my gaze downward.

Cret's gaze burned against my flesh. I couldn't look at him, it only made the protest inside me louder. I bit down on my tongue to keep from yelling out, clenching it between my fangs to keep from screaming. I watched in agonizing conflict as Ryder, with all her smug expressions led Cret out of the room without a word, and he willingly followed.

Fool.

The unforgiving sound of the door closing made me tense, and I was right to. Master gripped at my hair, pulling back as a pressure pushed at my knees sending me down to the floor. I stayed there, head jerked back with my raven strands clinging to my scalp in tingling pain, kneeling for him.

I instinctually reached a hand back to tug in defense of the tortured strands, but Master grabbed my wrist and twisted it behind my back. Pain pinched at the twisted point of my wrist. Just a little more pressure it would shatter against his assault.

"Do not undermine my orders again!" Master growled, venom dripping off his every word.

Master had become increasingly short tempered over the last week, in the past he would have overlooked my outburst and given me a simple verbal warning, or maybe even a seductive tease before leaving me to deal with my heated desires. Now he was more on edge, making his reactions to any subtle deviation in orders swift and violent. It was to be expected. I watched as the days passed and the expression on Vondorian's flawless face became more and more stressed. This place was proving to be difficult and challenging. Every last thing that could possibly delay us had already transpired, and now this stranger arrived right when everything had finally fallen into a set rhythm of ruin.

"I don't trust her," I groaned out in defense, a partial lie leaving my lips so swiftly.

There was no lying to Master. Maybe before when his keen eyes were not always upon me, but now it was a silly effort and I braced for the pain. He would punish me for speaking so blatant a lie. Would it be my wrist to fall to his violent rage, or maybe he would rip my hair out this time? Either way I was ready, and in all its depraved truth I wanted to feel it.

I fell forward on my hands, the cool stone of the floor greeting me. He let go. The sting in my scalp dissipated and my wrist was left intact. I didn't understand it. I didn't understand him at all lately. These mood swings of his were confusing. Even his silence was strange. Master no longer challenged me like before, and when he looked in my direction his glare was cold and distant, not wild or hungry as it always had been before.

"First she let Marcus get away, and now this boy," I pointed out, directing the attention to Ryder's misdeeds. Trying to regain my master's interest. "That is one too many to be a mistake."

"Worry about your own duties," he growled behind me.

"Have I not proved myself enough this last week?"

Silence hung around my question. Tension built in the air. I wasn't sure what he was doing or where he was. Vondorian was capable of that. Despite all my training he could still hide from me, quieting his whole body until it melted into the surroundings. Moving without a flicker of wind to give away his position, it was at that point not even our bonded sensation could aid me in finding him. I admired the skill it took, the mental focus to do such a thing, but I hated it all the same. It only served to remind me the distance between our skill levels and how I was always at his mercy.

Pushing myself to a stand, I combed my fingers through my tangled hair smoothing the torment Vondorian had just unleashed upon them before turning. I wanted to face him, if I couldn't hear him I wanted to see those crimson eyes. I wanted to read what I couldn't from his troubling behaviors.

"Haven't I been punished enough?" I asked again with an edge of defiance. "Or do you wish me to beg for your forgiveness?"

I could make out the light glow of anger in those crimson pools of his. He was standing only a few feet away, studying me. His gaze never left my eyes but I could tell he was reading every part of my body. Every micro flinch of flesh he would pick up on and read into it some kind of deception. He was temping me to be disloyal.

A whisper of a word too low for even me to hear crossed his lips and then it disappeared, his gaze pulling away from me. Master was doing this often, not able to look in my direction longer then a few swift moments before his eyes wandered off elsewhere. It made me feel ashamed. I had disgusted him with my disobedience and for once I longed for his seductive torment.

I wanted to feel his hands wandering my body, claiming me inch by inch as I gave into his will. I longed for those sensual images he implanted in my mind and the deep struggle I felt between my two selves as he seduced them both. Anything was better than this obscure nature of his.

"The ships will arrive tomorrow night, and then we can be finished with this place." His words held such disdain, but the spark I caught in the corner of his eye said he was enjoying it.

"I will board at the cliffs and prepare the army," I replied bowing my head and turning to leave in disappointment.

Our army, the Vamdari Army was arriving by ship and had been lingering outside the long canal that empties the lake of Rouren into the sea. Master had kept the ships there in hopes he could still lure King Thyaon to Tentusa, but it did not go as planed. Now we would take this valley and then the capital in a swarm of fire and blood, swift and quick without all this prolonged suffering. That was how it should be. How it always used to be until arriving here.

"Ryder will be meeting the ships, don’t worry yourself."

His words burned into me in a white hot eruption of bitterness and fury. Vondorian had taken so much from me, my mortality, my heritage, my dignity as a vampire, and my control. He wanted to rip the last thing I had from my grasp, the only power I had left. The army was the one shining thing in my life.

When surrounded in battle with the hordes of Vamdari obeying my every will, the ache settled inside me. The dull pull that had been growing ever since we entered this cursed valley would be silenced. For a brief moment in time I could revel in the feeling of being a creature of violence and death without guilt. I felt alive and at peace with what I was, and he was taking that from me.

All reason fled from my senses, the creature inside me roared to life with the sting of Vondorian's words, and for once my mortal self aligned with its desires. I felt powerful.

"Those are my men," I hissed clenching my hands into bloody fists. Skin stretched across whitened knuckles until I was sure it would split. "I command the army. It has been that way for two and half centuries."

"You are no longer worthy of that position."

My vision went white, solid white. I drew my sword and whipped around charging the man I swore to protect with my life, a thought that made me chuckle with insanity. Swiping my weapon at his neck I went for the sure kill, I didn't want him to suffer nor did I want to return the pain he had dealt me. I just wanted him dead.

The sword stilled in mid stroke, bitter vanilla filled the air with the unmistakable metallic scent of blood. Vondorian's bare hand clenched at my steel blade, thick scarlet liquid running along the sharpened edge. He stopped my attack, thwarted it with one hand that was still staving me off as I pushed into the weapon. I felt it dig deeper into the meat of his flesh, but he didn't falter.

The stern look plastered on his face only enraged me more and I threw my weight into the weapon again. Driving the sword to the side to free it from his grasp to no success. "Then what am I to do?" I growled at him. All sense of who I was, gone, stripped away with but a few words. "Am I just your faithful pet? Your little dog that follows you around. A servant that cleans up the trail of corpses that follow in your wake?" My rant became hysterical, tears of hate and anger burning in the corners of my now scarlet eyes. "What am I?" I screamed in confused hysteria.

The weapon vanished from my grasp. I didn't see it move, nor my master flex a muscle. He was just before me one second and gone the next. I slammed against something hard and cold, though I had no memory of moving. The blow rushed the breath out of my body. I knew my head would suffer the same fate but the impact of hard surface never came, instead it was cradled away from the wall I had found myself up against. Vondorian stood before me, his arm outstretched cushioning me from any further damage. It was a gesture of kindness he had never shown before, and after I had so blindly attacked him.

A softness reflected in his eyes I couldn’t understand. I had never seen that expression on him before. It flashed for a second and was gone. Drawing his hand from the back of my head he trailed it along my jaw, using his thumb to wipe a tear from my cheek and smearing blood in its place. His scent slowly quelled the sting of his betraying words inside me and I leaned into his hand for a caress only to have it vanish.

"Clean yourself up," he ordered in that cold distant tone. Turning his back on me he added, "you smell like burnt corpses." 

Every scroll, book, or paper that once resided on the bookcases that were built out from every wall in Rhea's former room now littered the floor. Two hours had passed since I was locked in this room by that Ryder woman, whom I suspected and confirmed to be a vampire. Their shadows so easy to tell apart from those of mortals. A vampire's shadow was muted and shallow with a slight red tint to the black, they almost appeared transparent except for Serenity's and this lord of hers.

Since being detained I had studied every bit of information stored within this room, and all I had to show for the last few hours was a mess. I had yet to find anything that could be of any use to me. No information about this mysterious person, the vampires’ operations, or how Serenity survived all those years ago.

This wasn't like Rhea. The moment she had identified Serenity she would have plunged herself into the stacks of research. Pulling on any bit of information possible to come up with her coveted answers. Instead of finding text about vampires, regeneration, strange reports from the neutral territories on her desk, all I found was books upon books about creation. Everything from the abstract belief that we all spawned from flowers the Sakaineses believed, to the myth of lava giants being our creators. It was pure insanity—was Rhea losing her mind toward the end?

Why would she be looking into kids’ stories? I tossed another book into the growing pile of clutter.

Pulling book after book from the endless shelves I also had yet to find her legacy. Rhea's special and most treasured item. A simple brown leather book. Every theory, thought, or idea that Rhea had was contained within its pages, but it had more than just one lifetime of secrets contained within. This one small book was something she hid and handed down through her many generations of life. That one book contained more information than any other item, race, or scholar ever could. It wasn't here. It was nowhere to be found.

This brought about a troubling thought. Recalling back to the interactions with the mysterious shadowed lord, I was drawn to his swift change in demeanor toward me. It was such a change, from mocking to accommodating. If you could call being a prisoner much of a difference. Still the way he acted after learning my name troubled me.

Did he know?

Tugging the scarf from around my head I let the uncoiled end fall around my neck freeing my messy hair. I tussled it more with my fingers then combed it back in troubled realization things were far more than what they appeared, and me without a single clue.

There was nothing here. Not a damn thing I could use, but there was one more place I had yet to look. The book could be there, the problem was getting out of this room.

Rhea's room was windowless with a thick wooden door with the hinges on the outside, and a small fireplace with a blazing fire. This room proved to be a most effective cell. I could break through the door, it wasn't a challenge with my unnatural strength, but it would bring masses of brainwashed humans in the manor as well as the vampires. I still had no idea how many were here.

It's too risky.

I would have to think of another way out of this place, even then I knew my time was limited. These people suspected me, it was clear by the lord's behavior. He wanted me here, this shadowed lord that I was more than convinced was the Lord of the Vamdari by the way Serenity acted toward him.

The image of her hand sliding so willingly into his, her figure drawn into the shadows enraged me even now. The smell of her still lingered all around me in a faint taunt. It was so damn distracting.

No, its stronger now.

That sage scent was much stronger than the faded memory I had been wallowing in. She was coming. A smirk spread across my lips at her curiosity and the victory I felt in knowing she would come.

I had studied Serenity for decades, watched her every move from my shadows. I could predict everything about her, except that she would live. I was still conflicted about that.

The second I was locked away in this cell I called my voided servants, little shadow puppets that took on any form I wished them, another skill my father unwillingly passed on to me. Sending them out to the Opsona clans I gave them all the information I had learned so far, but I left out Serenity. If they found out my raven beauty was alive it could be the end of me. They would surely take my life in place of her as part of our contract, and while that instilled a nervous fear within my mind I didn't care.

I would be lying if I didn't admit I felt relief in knowing she was still alive. The moment I saw her life returned to me, an energy and passion for a world that had become so meaningless in her absence. She was no longer a specter from my wildest fantasies sent to remind me of a bargain I so foolishly entered into.

You can't let her live, that mental pest of mine reminded as the sound of the lock turning drew my attention.

It was right—I couldn't let her live. Serenity was an unnatural force fueled by her need to satisfy the desire of the vampire overlord, and that powerful master of hers. Vampires were loyal creatures, driven by lust of vanity and blood but loyal all the same. That was Serenity's only flaw, nothing shook her faith in those in command. She even expressed a type of pleasure in furthering their cause, driven forward by an unquenchable thirst for more power, more control. Yes, I would have to kill her, but later.

The door opened with caution as she slid into the room on complete guard, she knew I was a threat and I would expect no less from someone like Serenity. There was no getting the jump on her, that was why the Opsona had created me. They wanted a weapon that could combat her unique abilities to sense danger, and put an end to the murderous Vamdari general whom none of them could get close to. She was far too skilled and the Opsona blood that mingled with the vampire inside her was that of the formidable Fisargo Clan. A bloodline that had long since been lost to us, their abilities were unique and they outranked any other in the Opsona world. They had the unique talent of sensory precognition.

This branch of Opsona were able to sense un-foretold events from birth, as they grew and regained their past memories they were able to adopt their special abilities to predict an enemies moves in combat. Some were even so skilled that the sense of future events could be focused into a refined image much like a seer could witness with enough herbal help. Even then a seer's premonitions were fuzzy and distorted by the mortal mind. Opsona Elders of the Fisargo clan had no such distortion and it was a gift that all the clans mourned the loss of.

Serenity was the last of that clan. The only one left carrying those special prosperities, and while the others should have been reborn into new bodies the Vamdari had found away to see to their definite end. Mingling the blood of demonic familiars in the vampire ranks with that of the Fisargo captives, they ensured the race could never be reborn. They were tainted.

Once an Opsona soul was tainted they lost their ability to reincarnate. Their souls and generations of experience died with them and faded into the stream of life where it was broken down over and over. Becoming part of a larger whole before pieces were extracted and formed into a new life along with millions of other small pieces of life energy from all over the different planes.

It happened to the best of the clans and now only a few remained, it was the raid on Serenity's village and people that forced the rest of us to become nomadic. If we didn't settle then we couldn't be hunted down and killed off. That night was a dark mark in our history, one I wish had never taken place like many others, but it happened all the same and now we needed to move on. To live on and go forward with what was left...Serenity.

Thunderous beats from my rapid moving heart flooded my ears when I took full sight of her, waves of raven hair dancing behind those elegantly cautioned movements of hers. Perfect round curves swaying just enough to draw my full attention as my lips spread into a wider smile taking in that intoxicating mix of saged-lavender. I can't do this.

My resolve to end her was crumbling with each passing moment, just thinking about what I had decided only moments ago brought a sickness into my stomach. I could never strike her again. I knew the door had closed but it took the clicking of the lock to make me realize I was staring, and even then I didn't care.

The stern look on her face and slightly creased brows said she was here for a reason. It was the same look she had every time something interested or troubled her, and it was the most attractive look I had ever seen on a female anywhere.

“Why are you playing this game?” Serenity was so blunt it should have shocked me but instead it only made me more attracted to her.

“I like playing games,” I purred back. “This one just happens to be quite challenging, and I enjoy a good challenge.”

What was wrong with me? Was I flirting?

I told myself the second I was locked away in here I would not be toyed with, I would not allow myself to fall into the temptation that was Serenity. There was no helping it, there was something about her and I think Rhea knew it was there even before she revealed my purpose in life. The day she explained to me that the Opsona clans wished my death but were willing to allow me to live in exchange for Serenity's life, I jumped at the chance. The thought of dying was not something I could entertain at that young age.

Even then with all my willingness to kill a stranger, Rhea kept me away from Serenity. I watched her from a distance, studying her every move like Rhea had instructed me, and when the day came I followed my teacher's orders without falter. Even with the pull I had been feeling toward Serenity, the emotions and desires that had grown inside of me just from watching her.

On that day I spent hours trying to quell the turmoil over what was to come, and when the moment presented itself I plunged my dagger into Serenity's chest without a thought. It was me or her, and I wasn't ready to die.

It all happened so fast I didn't need to worry about those troublesome feelings, but as the speed of battle slowed into a frozen point in time I realized why I was told to stay away from her. Regret took the place of the fiery desire to live, and as she faded in my arms I even tried to save her. I pulled the dagger out before her immortality completely drained from her body, but it wasn't enough. In my arms among the rain…Fire…Death, she slipped away from me. I won't relive that hell!

I could see it now, this stranger was something not of this mortal world not with his midnight-colored hair that spiked out into floppy points of frosted white, and his sharply pointed ears that extended farther back then was normal for an Opsona. The scarf now removed from his head and tugged away from his eyes, I could make out a lot more details that set him apart from the rest of the mortals on this plane. Such as the sharp claw-like lines on his left cheek that disappeared into the mass of scarf still wrapped around his neck. Three deep red lines that followed along the contour of his face from a narrowed point at their start and widened the farther down they traveled. Once they reached his jaw it looked as though a fourth line started but I couldn't be sure.

Those were markings I had only seen on more demonic creatures or those chosen for some kind of sacrifice. There was also a race I wiped from this world that used the marks such as those to display magical ranking, but they also were pale beasts with two heads. Opsona also used a number of decorative tattoos to both display their heritage and specialized disciplines, but theirs were intricate and detailed. Not solid and sharp like these ones, nor were they ever any color other then white or black.

“You're such a fool,” I growled turning the leave the room. As much as he interested me I wasn't going to allow him to get the upper hand.

Yes, I wanted to know everything about him, I wanted to know what it was that made me so aroused about the thought of battle. There was something there when my master questioned him, standing there in the chamber I knew it. I could feel the wrongness and danger that built and flowed off Cret but I couldn't keep myself away. A chill still lingered in my body from our brief interactions. He was new, interesting, exciting, and my creature loved it.

“Leaving without your answers, Serenity?” The sound of my name passing his lips made me shudder for some reason and I stopped. “That isn't like you.”

“You know nothing about me, boy!” I tried to sound degrading and confident in my response but even I knew I had failed. The word 'boy' left my mouth without that same mocking tone that said he was beneath me.

“I know everything about you, Serenity.” The smug tone in his voice made my blood rage to strike at him, but if I played along he might give something away. “Just like I know the Vamdari are here on this mortal plane, in Tentusa. How many are there?”

I didn't turn to address him, it was better to keep my face from his view with all its rebellious falters. I wanted to read him, I didn't want him reading me or gaining any information that may put more strain on my master.

I let out a chuckle to his question, “Vamdari? Never heard of them.”

While my responses and questions distracted him I tried to look into his mind. I had tried before when I felt that ominous feeling that rolled off him but there was nothing. Something was blocking me, pushing back like when I tried to read my master's thoughts. I knew he was too powerful just on that fact alone, because I had never met anyone other then Vondorian who could defend against my mental prying.

I closed my eyes waiting for his response but more to focus, it was easier here to do without any mental chatter from the mortals in the city. There were no voices, no background noise to distract me but even then I couldn't break through. A blank nothing greeted my invasions and a light feeling, a distant echo of some surface emotion. It felt like intense struggle, a deep torturous conflict. I pushed farther to read more but the strain was starting to effect me physically, beginning as a light throb in my head and then rushing into my temples like a hot knife.

“Careful,” his haunting voice broke my concentration, I had nearly forgot he was in the room.

You're going to hurt yourself.

The sound of his voice inside my head caused me to gasp in disbelief, and yet I longed to hear it again. The smooth haunting sound of each word whispering against my mind, it was seductive in a way Vondorian's could never be.

I turned to face him and was met with a smug look, he knew I was surprised, rattled by what I just heard. A foreign voice that was so rich, a gentle whisper of dark allure floating around inside me.

I could think of nothing to say, no words formed inside my mind, just a desperate need to learn more about him and these abilities of his. I was already certain he wasn't an Opsona, but then what was he? “Who are you?”

It was a stupid question compared to the many others that he brought to mind, but it was the only one that I could focus on.

“I'll tell you, if you answer my question first.” He was toying with me, playing around and I liked it despite the aggravation. “How many Vamdari are there?”

His question snapped me back into reality, did he honestly think I would give away secrets? And if I did answer him how could he know it was the truth? I could tell him the whole army was here to scare him instead of the reality that Master only traveled with but a few of us. I grinned ready to give my dishonest reply, he would never know.

“About seven or ten, that is a manageable number,” he said before I could.

I froze. How is this possible?

“The Vamdari are a myth,” I tried to play it off, fighting to regain my cool exterior but I was shaken by the information he just pulled out of me. "A legend that people use to scare children.”

Cret narrowed his gaze in my direction, a sly knowing laced those amazing emerald pools. I could deny the Vamdari all I wanted to, but it didn’t matter because he was inside my mind. The thought of him there among my darkest thoughts and secrets made me shiver as thoughts of him and me in heated battle turned to images of salacious interactions.

“Now who's playing games?” The words left his lips and he was on me. I didn't have time to register the movement. I didn't see him move at all.

Cret pinned my hands on either side of my head and pressed his body against mine, my creature purred at the dominance being displayed and growled to entice more sensual play out of him. I tried to hold it at bay, but the hint of lightly defined lean muscle under that thick gray clothing made it hard. I wanted him just as much as the creature.

The bare skin of his fingers trailed against my right wrist and instead of taking the opportunity to free myself I reveled in the heat that ignited from such a simple touch, which turned in a light caress as he ran his fingers along my skin. Lingering his tracing motion for a moment before tugging the cloth of my shirt sleeve down, exposing the flowing marks carved into my wrist. The lines twisted and weaved out into a symbol reflecting what we both knew.

“Vamdari,” he whispered locking me into his intense gaze, a strange hunger focused right at me with so many unspoken intentions. “You can't win at this game, Serenity.”

“That's because you're not playing fair.”

“What's wrong,” he asked moving closer, closing the distance between our faces to only a fraction of an inch. That hot honeyed breath of his scorching my lips with all their pleasured promises. “Can't handle the challenge?”

The sweet tease he offered aroused not only my sexual desires but the need to prove myself. The need to play back in the only way my creature knew how. Smirking I kneed him in the gut swiping my right hand toward his face to draw blood. Cret stumbled back and out of the way of my attack, I only caught the cloth of his scarf which ripped easily.

His face now more exposed increased the already growing number of questions trapped inside my mind. The long red lines on his face traveled down past his jaw and wrapped under continuing down his neck before disappearing under gray clothing. What did they mean?

“Very good, but before we get to that I still have more questions,” he said with a chuckle rubbing his stomach where my knee had made impact.

“I am not going to answer your questions. You are in no position to be asking anything,” I reminded him.

“That man, is he the lord of the Vamdari?”

The arrogance, my reply to is blantant disregard for his position. I wasn't going to answer. He wouldn't get anything out of me. I couldn't betray Vondorian again.

“Vondorian, is that his name?” he asked with a cocky smirk. The bastard was still reading my thoughts.

“Is he your sire Serenity? Did he do this to you?” His questions suddenly sounded more pointed and angry.

The distant echo of a feeling I had sensed inside his mind became stronger, more refined till I could see the cause. He was sorry and agonized over my predicament. Anger and pity mixed in his eyes and it made me sick to look at him. Flooding my mind with pointless, meaningless thoughts I turned to leave before I gave anything else away.

I was jerked back, my arms drawn behind me by the bicep and locked into place. I was restrained without even sensing any movement. He was good.

He didn't say a word, nor ask me another question. Instead I felt his hand snake its way against my neck and to the front of my shirt. I should have felt alarmed, and though I jerked a little in protest my skin shivered under the anticipation of what he was going to do.

“Shhhhh... I have to know,” he whispered into my ear as he undid the top buttons of my shirt down to where my corset started.

The warmth of his body behind me drew back for a second and he tugged at my clothing, nearly ripping it to expose my left shoulder. I knew what he was looking for and what he would find. Shame washed over me as the chill of the room met my exposed flesh marred with the brand of Vondorian. I was the only one that carried his symbol on my body. The only one that had ever been branded with his crest, and I would wear it for life. It had been seared into my body with an enchanted flame. Back then I considered it a mark of honor, now it was just a reminder of what and who I was.

Cret went silent but I could feel his fingers gently trace over the curved V on my back, the flesh so sensitive in that area even after all this time.

“I'm sorry.” His words shocked me. He acted like he knew me from long ago but I had no memory of him. “If I could do anything about this I would, my raven beauty.”

Raven beauty?

I had heard those words before, I couldn't place them just like his scent but they sparked anger deep within me. My creature growled in rage and I repelled my head back into his face, a crack filled the room and the warmth of his body left me.

In a rage I turned on him before he could recover. I slammed his face into the ground. I drew his arms back and embedded my knee between his shoulder blades.

I wanted to rip him apart, my creature wanted to destroy him but some form of reason still grasped onto my mind. Enough that I could think in some rational way.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” I growled down at him. “And stay out of my thoughts.”

He only laughed even with his face forced into the stone. “If that is what you wish. You needed only to ask.”

I gave his arms one last tug sending my knee deeper into his back before I left him. Locking the door behind me I fled to sort out the jumbled mess of emotions that were waking inside.

The last hour had passed in the most unrelenting pace it had nearly driven me to madness. A tingle of pain still pulsed from where Serenity had dug her knee into my back and the ache from my broken nose was finally starting to dull, puffy tender flesh now surrounded the area. I had forgotten how violent and persuasive she could be. She left so swiftly after, rushed out and disappeared before I could talk her into staying, but I still had the link to her mind.

She hadn't closed me off and I doubted she knew how. That was my own special trick, once Serenity opened the door by trying to peer into my thoughts it was easy to work my way back into her mind along that same path, and I couldn't stop looking into her thoughts. The need to shift through the confusion rattling her mind was too overpowering, or maybe it was my hope to stumble upon those erotic thoughts of hers.

I grinned at the memory of those fantasies she so unwillingly shared with me. Ones that involved me and inflated my ego, but my mind was no better. I couldn't remember the number of times I fantasized about her. Everything about Serenity enticed me and for the first time I was able to look through the fractured torment of her mental state.

Through the years I stalked Serenity I often wondered what she was thinking or what she felt, but I was unable to. Even though I studied her in length there were moments where her actions held to no form of natural logic to the patterns of her behavior I had studied.

Once I watched her in a small village. It was an insignificant place, just another meaningless stop to rest for the Vamdari as they continued on their path of conquest. They rushed upon it like wildfire and used the villagers to feed for strength for their next battle.

A little child, a boy was left in the wooded area just beyond the village and when one of her men went to feed on the child she stopped him. Of course the man complied and left her to feed on the child as she willed, but Serenity refused to drain him. Instead she calmed the child and waited until her men had retired for the day. Then, with boy in hand, she traveled far out of the path of the Vamdari's set course. Entrusting the boy to the next village, and leaving.

That act of compassion should not have been possible with the powerlust she displayed, her taste for complete suffering and destruction. It didn't happen once but on many occasions, while other moments when in the heat of battle, she preformed unspeakable acts that boiled rage deep within me. But it was those moments, those rare moments of compassion that made me want to understand her. I wanted to know the thoughts racing through that mind of hers as she looked upon the few people she spared.

Now I had that access.

Even with the distance between us I could sense her, read her emotions as easily as I could read shadows, and they were as confusing as my own.

In those heated moments we’d just shared I nearly gave myself over to her, I would give her anything she asked for. My dark-self would have bowed before her, and worshiped the raven goddess in any way she would allow. Her dark allure too strong for my reason to pull me though, I found myself needing to attract her to me. To prove my worth and dominance. I felt more alive in those troubled moments than I had for the last ninety-seven years thinking she was dead. The blood inside me was still warmed and racing, and my heart had fallen into a steady rapid pace anytime I drew my attention to the fingers that caressed that perfect olive flesh.

I need her, a voice growled inside of me.

I couldn't let this happen, not now that the Opsona were on their way. My shadowed messengers had returned bringing news that all of the clans were marching on Tentusa. We would meet in the capital in three days. That gave me limited time to get what information I could from Serenity and then I would need to kill her. If they found her, if they saw I had failed then my life would be in danger. Both of us would be in danger, and by her living the world was in danger.

Tossing one of Rhea's many books onto the fire I watched as it burned, the pages curling back as they submitted to the flames. Transforming from pages of parchment scribbled with ink into dark colored ash, sealing Rhea's secrets away. I would have to hurry and destroy all this information because they were coming for me.

I was being kept alive for a reason, a purpose and I would have to be ready when they came. I would fight and if I survived… Then we will say a real good-bye Serenity.

My hands trembled as I reached my master's chambers, the quaking was becoming unbearable. This was nothing new, over the last week I had found a strange tremble in my hands every time I tried to suppress the pull of my disobedient voice. Something that had been happening more and more frequent, along with the thirsty feeling. A need for blood I had never had before. In the past the only reason I drank blood was for the sweet release it brought me, the thrilling taste that made me feel free. Now my fangs burned for it. I couldn't retract them under my gums anymore, they were permanent, a fixture causing my lips to bulge slightly with the appearance of a full mouth.

I drew my hand back from the knob I had rested it on. I can't do this.

I couldn't face my master with this weakness showing. Crossing my arms over my chest I held myself tight, the sweat creating rivers down the sides of my face. This problem had been minor over the last week, just withdrawals from my feast, but ever since I left that boy... Cret. I couldn't get control of myself.

Something about his words brought a defensiveness out of me, a need to take his life but I couldn't harm him. Not because it had been Master's wishes but because the thought of him dying made me feel ill. These emotions, this conflict was exhausting.

I clenched my eyes shut and doubled over to contain myself. Master had been calling me for nearly an hour now. The anger in his voice stuck in my mind, the longer I delayed the more brutal his reprimand would be.

“This is not me... This is not me,” I repeated over and over to assure these strange conflicting feelings were just a weakness. Some lingering thing that I had been exposed to.

This is not me.

I was strong, well trained, brutal, murderous, and trivial things like mortal affections didn't affect me. I am beyond them. With that declaration the ache in my gut stopped and I stood tall wiping the sweat from my face. Even though the shake in my hands still persisted, and my fangs refused to retract I puffed out my chest in confidence. I couldn't show this to Master, he couldn't see or know. He wouldn't break me.

Opening the door with my new false facade I braced for an attack. Vondorian loved to surprise me, lash out and stifle his rage with violence, especially when I made him wait. I was ready for it, even thrilled at seeing him angered by my blatant disregard for his orders.

I entered his chambers lit by a countless number of candles, each one dripping streams of wax onto the wood polished floor of the refined room. His balcony was open for a change, and the curtains pulled back allowing the fading rays of light to enter. Tinted orange colors filtered in from the rain clouds that had lingered all this time over the city. The storm that once welcomed us had yet to leave, it paused from time to time only presenting the looming threat of rain with large dark clouds.

The breeze swept in through the window and for once it didn't bring the scent of death, just the smell of fresh lake air. Something I had not smelled since we arrived. A subtle breeze moved across the room to the curtained bed that was still made, ruffling the silk sheets before dancing off to the desk where my master sat.

He had been busying himself lately with maps I had never seen before. I was able to get a glance once or twice when I was allowed to enter his chambers. I could make out vague references to different cities in different provinces of the mortal plane, but they all had strange lines on them. Intersections highlighted in different colors and marked with strange symbols I had never seen before.

“You called for me?” I asked against the silence. I closed the door behind me.

He sat leafing through pages and scribbling notes. His lack of attention or interest hit me deep. I used to long for these moments when he was busy and left me to my own will. Free of his advances and attention, and now that I didn't have his twisted affections it made me want it all the more.

His altered behavior. This game of cold icy distance was worse than all the emotional repercussions of what he was doing to Tentusa. I could handle those mortals and all their silly needs. I could handle the guilt, but being ignored by him was too much. It left me empty, like a part of me had slipped away and the world seemed so lonely in that moment.

“Master,” I spoke again taking another few steps toward him. “Was there something you needed?”

I felt like an unsure child as I approached him. I just wanted him to look at me, to give me that delighted look when I did something right. I wanted his approval and admiration like I used to.

You don't need it, that rational voice of mine assured but I didn't want to hear her.

Again he didn't pause in what he was doing so I approached from behind. He always wanted me, desired me. I knew that was real no matter how angry he was. I could feel his rage seeping through our bond. Master could try and hide from me all he wanted but with our link I would always be able to feel him, and he me.

Coming up behind him I glided my hands onto his shoulders kneading them, trying to ease the tension that had built there in the last few days. Massaging gently as I leaned down to his ear to whisper, “Vondorian forgive me.”

That did make him stop writing and flipping. I never used his name. No one did. He was a lord, a master of his craft and no one regarded him as anything else but those of higher rank. It was a bold move but I got what I wanted. He stopped paying attention to those meaningless papers and was now drawn to me.

I snaked one hand along his neck and onto his bare chest between the folds of his slightly open shirt, teasing the flesh against the sharpness of my pointed nail. The feeling of those muscles under my touch made me groan remembering all those times he pushed up against my body. The feeling of firm unforgiving strength entrapping me in every way caused a moan to flee my lips.

“I wanted to ready myself for you, properly, Master,” I purred out his title leaning close to his ear and nipping my burning fangs at the side of his neck. I wanted a rise out of him, some acknowledgement that he still desired me.

His iron grip clasped onto my wrist as I explored his chest and stilled my movement, “I don't want to hear your excuses,” he growled pulling my hand from under his shirt. “When I call, you come. Am I understood?”

His tone wasn't happy or pleased, cold or distant, but the truth would be in his eyes. He couldn't hide his desire in those eyes and I wanted to see it. My wrist still in his grasp I walked around to face him, untangling my arm from around his shoulder and it was there. Dancing in those frosted blue eyes, the need he couldn't keep from me. Pride swelled in my stomach at those sparks of lust deep within him. Despite this cold demeanor he was still attracted to me.

Sliding onto his lap I purred my reply with a playful roll of my tongue, “Yes Master.”

Using my other hand I traced a path down the front of his neck and onto that bare chest, the pale complexion of his mortal disguise vanished to his natural deep tan making my mouth water. I had him now.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” My tone deep and suggestive as I pressed against the bulge in his pants which had formed beneath me, smirking at how it pulsed under my seduction, and the way his breath moaned past his lips at my advances.

Still that stern cold look remained on his face, but his subtle reactions were giving him away, my creature was no longer growling in demand for the Cret's destruction. Instead it was urging me forward, rolling in the feeling of complete sexual power over the man I called Master. I had never noticed how weak I could make him, nor the power I could hold over him. I loved it.

I flooded my mind with all those memories, every time he made advances toward me. Every time he brought me to the edge of breaking under his command, the mix of pleasured torment that brought my arousal to its peak and pressed out my mortal protests. His growling voice broke through my replay of our hotter interactions as he squeezed my wrist even more.

I looked at his face that seemed drawn into a serious dark expression, but his eyes showed a primal need to devour me like my thoughts had suggested. He was reading my mind, which made me grin as I let my imagination run wild with the things my creature wanted to do to him.

His nails pierced the skin at my wrist filling the room already heavy with our arousal with the intoxicating scent of blood. I let out a moan at the pain which warmed over into pleasure. His free hand reached behind me to the desk and drew a cup into view. “I want you to drink this,” he ordered.

“What is it?”

As the words left my lips his other hand left my bleeding wrist and gripped at the back of my neck causing me to comply. The painful feeling and dominance made me gasp in sexual awaking, wanting more. Wanting to be tortured with all his sensually twisted promises.

“Don't question me,” he growled sending another shudder through my body. “Just drink.”

Taking the cup into my hand I did as he commanded, bringing it to my lips, his grip at my neck eased and worked into my hair. Warm sweet liquid filled my mouth as I drank from the cup he gave me. Master's hand that once held the cup drew my bleeding wrist to his lips and I felt his tongue lap at my flesh. Closing his mouth around the wound he drank from me as I drank what was offered.

Vondorian's fangs sank into my wrist with a thrilling sensation that sent me into complete submission. I would give him anything he wanted so long as he kept me here in this ecstasy. Finishing the last of the drink I discarded the cup and moaned at Master's needy attention. The hand in my hair traced down the curvature of my back forcing me into him. My chest met with his hungry lips that had abandoned my wrist and found new flesh to suckle between my breasts.

Finally he sees me.

In one fluid motion we were standing, Vondorian's arms supporting my small figure as he closed the distance to the bed. Silk sheets greeted my back as I grasped into his shoulder, delighting in the feel of their rippling power. His hungry assault between my breasts traveled up to my neck, I opened my eyes to look at him longing to see the expression of uncontrollable lust on his face. Instead I was met with a spinning room.

Suddenly the feeling of heat wasn't just from our desire driven bodies, it was more and my body was boiling from the inside. Sweat started to form on my brow like it had before and my fangs ached for blood like I had never felt in the past. I tried to lift my head but the images of the room only moved more, and I had to close my eyes to keep from being overwhelmed.

“Rest my dear,” I felt Vondorian's breath against my lips. “I just gave you a little something to ensure you wouldn't be a problem.”

I wanted to protest but his lips pressed against mine, my words lost in a needy kiss as he devoured me in my weakening state. When the kiss broke all I could feel was heavy ragged breath crashing into my lips. He took a deep breath as his hand traveled along the outline of my breast in my thick cotton shirt.

“You have no idea how long I have waited to have you like this, but I must see to our guest first. Rest my Goddess. This serum will lead you into the most restful sleep.”

Why is he doing this? Why is he trying to keep me from Cret?

Betrayal stung in my chest as my thoughts flashed to Cret. I reached for Vondorian in an attempt to stop him but he was already gone. The spin of the room increased as I lay helpless with only the confusion of emotions and the day’s events to comfort me.