TrinityThere was no way out. I couldn’t outrun him. I pressed myself against the wall, waiting for the moment that he would attack and kill me. His eyes were blood-red as he approached, looming over me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. The fear was making me dizzy, but slowly, I started to accept that I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt oddly calm, almost hysterically calm like I’d taken Valium in the middle of a gunfight or something. I felt on edge and oddly too calm. My hands were shaking. My heart was racing and my mind was so clear that I could almost see my memories glittering like little stars in my mind.“Food has no right to run away,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “You’re asking for your death.”My heart lurched as I stared at him. “You kidnapped me.”His eyes narrowed at me as if he didn’t expect me to speak. It made me angry in a way that I couldn’t suppress.“You’ve kidnapped and tortured me! You’ve done terrible things to me. What ma
LucianusI returned her to the dungeon, dragging her naked through the hallways and strung her up so her toes barely grazed the floor. She didn’t wake up then, letting out a soft groan and turning her head. The light caught her face, and I thought of my wife’s face in the cool light of torches at night. My blood boiled as I pushed that thought and lifted my hand so the long, cursed whip appeared in my hand and spiraled into a pool on the floor. My mouth watered. The fury in me was itching to get out, even as I just wanted to drain her dry and ravish her. She woke up with a screech of pain when I swung the black whip, and it cut across her chest, turning the skin red. It would take almost nothing to break her skin. The cry infuriated me. I struck her again and again until the welts turned bloody, and she was screaming in agony. The scent of blood made my mouth water even as I couldn’t seem to pull back on my fury. I saw her eyes looking at me from within her dead face and imagined w
TrinityThe woman scoffed at me. She stood and struck me across the face. My face stung, but I didn’t cry out. Was she allowed to do that? How hard had she hit me? My ears were ringing like a bell, and my jaw throbbed. I tasted blood in my mouth as if I had cut my cheek on a tooth. I was more surprised there was any blood left.“You’re an idiot if you think you have the right to call our master by his name just because you have the late lady’s face,” she hissed. “Do your best to learn your place and await the day that the master will release you into death. Do not speak any further. You will only irritate me.”She left then and closed the door behind her with a loud, metallic groan, yet I didn’t hear a lock click. Was that the castle’s doing or her doing? I didn’t know, and I couldn’t bother to focus on it. Until I was down from this position, until my hands were free, trying to run away again would be impossible. Besides my hands, I couldn’t even imagine being able to walk. Somethi
Lucianus When my servants arrived with the news, I was irritated, but I was also oddly impressed. She must have been conserving her energy, her strength, to be able to take the blade and do so much damage so quickly. That or the woman there had simply underestimated her. It didn’t matter. The issue was whether or not I was going to allow her to get away with this. She was a blood slave as far as I was concerned, a prisoner of mine. Never have any of my prisoners been allowed to decide on their own freedom, least of all human ones. I drifted through the hallways as little more than a shadow until I reached the dungeon cell where they had left her. Her arm had been bandaged tightly, but my servants knew nothing of human medicine. No more than me, anyway. I pulled the vial of elixir from my pocket. Once when humanity and vampires had not been at war, we had had something like a peace treaty. They offered us a steady supply of humans in exchange for magic. Humans had always been greed
TrinityI woke up slowly. I couldn’t say where I was, but I knew I wasn’t where I had been before I’d cut myself. Had they thrown me somewhere else? Was I dead? My lips twitched, and I moved my hand. I felt no pain and frowned as I sat up and looked at my arm. There wasn’t even a scar. How was that possible?I had to be dead. It was almost a relief. “You’re smart… for a human.” I looked over at the man who had been in charge of my torture. I didn’t flinch, but I met his gaze evenly. He looked less derisive of me as he stared back at me.His lips twitched, and he turned his head. “She’s awake.”A woman came in that I didn’t recognize. She wasn’t one of the servants who had been in charge of taking my blood. She wasn’t the vicious one that seemed to enjoy cutting me, but I couldn’t remember her clearly if she had been a nice one either. The man stood. “Strong-willed too,” he chuckled. “You certainly got the master’s attention with that little stunt. Ira will get you cleaned up and tak
TrinityI didn’t see him again after that meeting, but the servants who came to take my blood also came with food. Even the few who didn’t come with food weren’t cruel about taking my blood. In place of their daggers, they’d brought needles. That made me pause. It seemed that vampires spent enough time in the human world to get human medical supplies. That meant they had a way of getting there quickly and without being noticed. He’d flown away on great black wings with me, but there was no way he and the rest of them just flew into the human world whenever they pleased. They’d be caught. They had to have some other way to get there. I had to find it and use it as soon as possible. But how was I going to get there? Was it in the castle or outside?Ira drew my blood gently as if I was just getting blood drawn at the doctor’s office. The other woman was silent and standoffish, but I didn’t see the man again. It was a start. A few days in, the man showed up again and told me that I wo
LucianusI felt the slightest disturbance at the edge of my territory, or maybe it was somewhere in the castle, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. Whatever it was would have to wait, and it was likely just the girl trying to find a portal to the human world. I was tempted to have the castle drop her back into the dungeons just to teach her a lesson. My gaze traced the familiar planes of my wife’s face in the portrait that had returned to my desk. For years, it had been too painful to look upon her face, yet it seemed that I could not go a day without seeing her in her portraits or walking around in her old gowns that still had the faintest trace of her perfume lingering on them. My wife had been so beautiful and bright. Her name felt lost to time and too sacred to be uttered, yet I felt it trembling on my lips. Her presence was long gone, yet my heart ached as I stared at the small portrait of her. I remembered when she sat for it. I could almost hear her complaining about it, a
TrinityThe man didn’t look quite human or even like the vampires at the castle. He was almost skeletal, frail-looking, but there was nothing in the way he spoke that told me he wouldn’t snap my neck in an instant, given half a chance. “What have we here?” He hissed as I reared back. “A human.”“A human?” I screamed as another one appeared in front of me. His eyes were dark as the night. He was pale and drawn as if he was starving. “It’s been centuries since I’ve tasted human blood. How could a human have stumbled into our little prison?”“A gift?” Another one said. “A sign?”“What does it matter? Let’s just—”“Out of the way,” another one hissed. “I get the first bite.”They hissed at each other, and as they squabbled, I turned and ran back through the red-lit path. I didn’t know if I was heading back the same way or just away from them, but it almost didn’t matter. At least in the castle, I knew he wasn’t going to kill me. There was hopeHere, I was just prey without a hope of su