Page 5 of The Vampire's Lament
With him?
Bollocks. Here we go.
I folded my hands over my crotch, pressing down on my dick. It’d only just started to deflate, and then he had to go and look all yummy by the fire.
“Do you want to talk things through?” he asked.
I wanted to shake my head, but what if he needed to vent?
Wait. I wanted to listen to his problems? Really? Wow. Let the weirdness run free.
“Okay, let’s talk,” I said, throwing my arm over the back of the sofa. “Where do you want to start?”
It seemed like an easy thing to say, but there were many entry points to come at this bullshit from.
Long beats of silence followed, the only sounds the crackle of the fire along with the wind and ocean outside.
“I loved him,” Silvanus finally spoke, leaning back. “Aidan. I really loved him.”
They’d become lovers after Aidan arrived in Selene Haven. And it soon went to shit, Aidan killing Lucius Clarence—Silvanus’s brother and the previous vampire king. After that, Silvanus came to Quintrealm with the vampires, which he still couldn’t remember doing.
He would, in time, seeing as his memories were returning to him after my singing helped restore them. A talent I wasn’t supposed to have, but was given to me by the creature inside me. Caer, deity of the elves, who’d exchanged curses with Aidan before she ‘died,’ bringing us to this point. He’d killed her, but she’d managed to languish in some kind of limbo until she woke up inside the body of a baby boy. Me. Set up shop inside me, and was now using me as a conduit for her magic. She liked to call me ‘precious one.’ Wanted to get to a place called the Carving Glade to use elvish magic through me.
From there we’d find a new weapon to kill Aidan with and save the world from his rot.
The world’s hope and her hope, she’d also called me.
No pressure, huh?
I was now waiting on her to rest up and give the go ahead on the next stage of the plan.
“Through you, I have restored some memories,”she’d said.“Through you, I can use my power and grow. Together, we can defeat him. My essence is inside you, your body adapted to carry me. Now you see, now we can begin.”
Only by freeing Aidan from his prison in that tower could the fight against him begin, which served to piss me off with its whole must-be-consequences type of bullshit.
“The kind of love that consumes you,” Silvanus continued, breaking my thinking loop. “I believed my dreams had been answered, this golden-haired beauty dropped in my lap to fill my life with wonder.” He turned his scarlet peepers to me. “What a fool.”
My breath caught in my throat, no response available. What could I say? I’m sorry you were tricked? Aidan’s a lying scumbag? We’ve all made googly eyes at the wrong guys?
The vampire king carried on. “I wish… I wish I…” His eyes narrowed, still fixed on me. “I wish I could see what he did. How he killed my brother, and what happened to my realm to make me come here.”
These broken memories were a big problem. Caer said the song was spent for the time being, and that we’d learn more moving forward. That was frustrating as hell, but what could I do other than wait for her to speak to me again?
What was she doing there inside me? Sleeping? Plotting? All of the above? She had the gift of foresight, but she also needed me to sing and channel her special voice to help.
Ugh. It all made my skull throb.
Silvanus sighed, his hands clasped together. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear me complaining.”
“Complain away. This whole thing is super annoying.” I plucked my battered pack of mistrock cigs from my pocket and lit up, taking a deep drag on the vanilla-scented stick, the heady rush of the magical nicotine substitute a blissful relief.
He watched me like he was searching for something. I squirmed and took another drag, butterflies fluttering in my chest.
“Thank you,” he said, voice sounding like a purr.
Whoa. I pressed down harder on my dick. “No problem.”
I could still feel the dying echoes of the thrall bond inside me. It’d mostly broken when he’d killed me, yet there it was, a thrumming kernel in the deepest core of my being.
