2. Asher
Two
Asher
The Past
20 years ago…
Springfield
The steady thrum of my captive’s heartbeat throbs in my ears as I lie back on my bed. The harmonic drip, drip, drip of her blood into my mouth feeling utterly decadent.
I’ll catch hell with Gregory in the morning when he discovers how much work he’ll have to do to clean my bedroom, but it’s worth it.
I could have done what most of my kind do and gone with a female ghoul to serve my daily needs, such as cleaning, but they’ve always seemed ghastly to me. That, and the last time I was at Raph’s house he had a ghoul strip dancing in the corner of his living room. I won’t soon forget her twirling around a pole and her hand disconnecting from her arm.
She fell yet the hand remained on the pole, just hanging on like nothing had happened.
I slowly tilt my head side to side, letting the blood drip onto my cheeks.
Smiling up at the young woman spinning above my head, I peer into her eyes.
Those eyes are losing all that fight that’s so fierce and futile. She’s still trying to plead with me, but the ball gag I have crammed in her mouth keeps her quiet, allowing me to enjoy my meal.
Her heartbeat is slowing though, and the blood that remains in her body isn’t going to last forever.
That saddens me.
All too often they just bleed out and I’m left with a throbbing erection. Feeding does that, and it’s infinitely frustrating. I could fuck her even though she’s human, and I do that frequently, but it doesn’t quite scratch the itch .
After sighing, I fully open my mouth, letting the blood do its job. It gives me another night or two to skulk around this shitty city I’m in. I hate little cities like this. The atmosphere here is far too small town for me. I was once a human living in a small village, it sucked.
The door opens to my room, and I hear the heavy thuds of motorcycle boots clomping across the bedroom carpeting.
Raphael sighs. “Asher.”
Licking my lips to clear the blood off them, I say, “I’m eating.”
“You’re playing with your food.”
“Not true.” I lift my hand up to increase the spin of the woman’s body.
Raphael growls. “The Order took a coven out.”
“Where?”
“Boston,” he says angrily.
“Jeremiah’s Coven?”
“Yes.”
It doesn’t come as a surprise. Jeremiah’s coven has been in Boston for over ten years. They’re staunch supporters of Malice’s. Well, I should say were , I guess.
Malice, the problem child of the undead world. He wants to go back to the way things were before the Order gained a tight hold on the various churches around the world. He wants strongholds in every country. He wants us to proudly stand up to all who want to destroy us.
Yet the fucker lives in hiding. Somewhere in Africa, if reports are right. He’s pissed off too many of our kind.
“And you’d like for me to send a retaliatory strike against the Order, further inciting the war?” I say as I spin the body suspended above me in the opposite direction.
“I’d like you to do something beyond lying there, feeding like a fat fucking lion in some zoo,” Raphael shouts at me.
I wince at the volume of his voice, the anger of his words practically burning my skin.
He’s right, of course, but I’m getting tired of all the bloodshed caused by fighting these fucking parasitical fanatics. There are just too many of them. Humans breed like fucking bunnies while vampires can take centuries before we find our soulmarked, if we ever find them.
Reaching up to stop the girl from spinning, I snap her neck. “Send a strike team to Corpus Christi, remove three priests and bring them back.”
“What will that do for us?” he asks.
I sit up from the bed, shouting at him. “It will do what I fucking want!”
The force in my words causes him to take a step back. As his fucking sire he should know to watch his tone. Perhaps he’s forgotten not to poke the fucking bear.
Standing up from the bed, I yell, “Bring me three priests and three nuns. I don’t give a fuck if they’re Order of Saint Benedict or not. We’ll make the nuns ghouls and unleash them on their Sunday fucking Mass.”
Shaking his head, Raphael starts to laugh. “What do you really want to do?”
“Exactly as I just—”
Head swimming with disorientation, the entire right side of my body goes numb and weak, as if I’m having some sort of aneurysm.
“Raph?” I look at him in confusion.
Raphael rushes over to me as I feel myself falling to the floor. “Asher!”
* * *
Looking up into a bright light, I’m momentarily blinded by the painful sting of illumination. It physically hurts to look upon it, yet I’m unable to turn away or close my eyes.
I want to turn my head so badly from the pain, but I have no control over my body. I can’t move. I can’t fucking blink.
I can do nothing but writhe mentally, stuck inside a prison of some sorts.
A crying scream that’s not my own suddenly erupts from my throat, and a face covered in a medical mask comes into view.
She’s here.
My soulmarked.
I sense it instantly, the connection crashing into me like two worlds colliding together.
I’m inside her somehow, I quickly realize.
Seeing the world through her newborn eyes.
My thoughts surge through a rush of emotions. Fear, anger, desire, and loathing. Wonderment, joy, and sadness. Each one slams into my consciousness before it’s rapidly replaced by the next.
In the end I have to settle for being restlessly tense.
If I could move, I’d feel much better about things, but I can do nothing it seems but bear witness.
The face above me shifts to another. It takes a moment for my fated’s eyes to adjust to the movement, but I can make out the smile of a lightly-freckled woman.
I can’t feel my own body, and I can’t feel the tiny being I’m trapped inside of, but I still have access to my mind and senses.
Forcing my power into my fated’s eyes, the world shifts from black and white to technicolor, making it much easier for me to see what’s going on.
The woman holding me has a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and dark blonde hair falls down her shoulders. Her strained smile is full of love, but her lips and damp skin are paler than they should be.
She’s bleeding from somewhere…
I can smell it.
A soft, feminine voice speaks from somewhere close by. “Marcy, do you remember what we talked about?”
The freckled woman glances up. “I… I don’t know.”
Voice becoming firm, the unseen woman asks, “Why not? You know the importance.”
The view through my dear fated’s eyes shifts as her mother clutches her tighter to her chest.
Able to look up now, I see a nurse peering down at us with a frown.
Hanging from the nurse’s neck is a silver chain with a pendant. Engraved into the pendant is a circle around a cross that bears a nail at each end. To the unknowing, the nails represent the three nails that were used to crucify Christ. The fourth nail being the one that held the announcement above his head.
To those who know better, it’s also how the Order prefers to murder my kind. A stake through each hand, one through the ankles, and one through the heart. Normally that alone wouldn’t kill us, if given enough time to heal.
It’s when they light us on fire and behead us that snuffs out our existence.
The nurse persists as she moves in to scoop the newborn baby up. “Marcy, you must understand… If she’s lucky, they will kill her if they catch her. If she’s not lucky, they will do much, much worse.”
If I could reach through the baby’s body and snap the frigid cunt’s neck, I’d do it. I’d fucking dine on the whore’s neck for an eternity. No, better yet, I’d force her to drink my blood and make her a ghoul. Then I’d set her loose inside a catholic school with instructions to murder as many as she could.
“But she’s all… she’s all I have left of Robert,” this woman who birthed my fated says.
“Yes, but your dear, departed husband would want you to do what’s best for her, wouldn’t he?” the nurse insists.
The woman holding my soulmarked begins to shake and tremble, clutching her as tightly as she can. But her grasp is weakening and the smell of blood in the room is growing stronger.
This Marcy is bleeding out!
Without help, she likely only has five to ten minutes to live.
“We’ll keep her safe, Marcy, and when it’s truly safe, you can come see her and reconnect. She’ll know all about you,” the nurse says as she starts to pull my fated from the woman’s arms.
The newborn looks up to her mother, and I can see tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Chloe Marie Bonham,” her mother whispers. “Her name is Chloe.”
“That is a good name, she’ll be strong,” the nurse says as she lifts the child up.
Being tucked into the nurse’s arms makes me want to vomit up everything I’ve ever drank.
We’re shifted to see the woman, whose body is growing paler by the second under the bright medical lights.
“Do you, Marcy Bonham, give Chloe Marie Bonham to the Order of Saint Benedict? Do you place your child under our protection?” the nurse asks.
Marcy’s answer comes out with a labored breath. “Yes.” Her arms raise towards the child, her chest heaving mightily to drag in air. “Hold… her…one…”
“We’re done here,” the nurse says coldly.
The nurse and whoever else is in the room step away from Marcy, allowing her to fully bleed out in her bed.
* * *
She’s here.
My fated has finally been found after so many lonely years… Nine hundred and eighty-seven years…
So many long nights spent wasting away as I hungered for my mate. So many years of walking alone…
“She’s here, Raphael,” I sputter out to my best friend.
“Who?” Raphael asks.
Turning to look into his eyes, I growl, “Chloe Marie Bonham, my soulmarked.”
“In the city?!” he practically yells as he yanks me to my feet.
“No. No, I can’t… If she’s that close, I’d be able to tell. But she’s in North America, I think.”
“I’ll send out word to our network,” he says as he pulls away from me.
“Try Canada. The nurse who helped her had a Canadian accent. But her mother had a southern accent, almost like she was from Texas…” I stop and think for a moment. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“I’ll make sure they know.” Raphael races from the room, the door practically flying off the hinges as he rushes out.
Getting my legs firmly under me, I move toward the door myself, but at a much slower pace.
The hunger is back now, stronger than ever before.
I can feel my stomach literally devouring itself.
I’ve been told this would happen. The linking of two can paralyze most vampires, even one as strong as I am.
My hands cradle my stomach as visions of Marcy bleeding out flood through my mind. Each drop of blood both nauseates me and drives my hunger even closer to the edge of bloodlusting insanity.
“Fuck!” I scream.
My fingernails rip out, turning into razor-sharp claws, and my fangs fully explode from my gums.
Blood dripping from my mouth, I slash out with my hand at the dim light in the hallway, causing showers of sparks to explode in my vision.
I reel in the inner demon that begs to lay waste to the city surrounding me. I know if I do not stop myself now, I’ll drain so many bodies it would be impossible to hide our presence.
We may be out in the world, but we don’t ever advertise our location.
“Gregory!” I bellow out to the house. “Bring me a body! Now!”
“Yes, my liege.” Gregory moves silently to my side, his arm wrapping around my waist. “Let’s get you to the study.”
“She’s alive, Gregory. She’s finally been born,” I whisper.
“Praise be to our Blood Fathers,” he says reverently, sitting me gently down on a thickly padded chair.
“Please be quick,” I growl. “I do not know how long I can contain this.”