Chapter Three ~Serenity~

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.