Chapter 60 Kidan
KIDAN
We have to get her out of the house,” Susenyos was saying when Kidan regained consciousness.
She could feel his arms below the backs of her knees and at her back. He lifted her to his chest and breathed easier when he noticed her stir. “There you are.”
Kidan’s body was in deep aching numbness, the sort that came from staying in one position for a very long time.
Nothing could be moved. Not her fingers and certainly not her neck. Then a raging, unforgiving pain came from her right wrist. It was on fire. She tried to call for help, but her mouth wouldn’t part. Something was seriously wrong.
“I’m so sorry, Kidan. It’s the house law. I’m a vampire again. I did this to you.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t know anything but pain.
“Is that so?” A new voice cleaved the air like an axe, making Susenyos stiffen and tighten his hold on her.
Kidan forced her vision to clear. Samson was in the doorway. A figure of shadow and gold flashed before Susenyos and Kidan. Her panic faded when she recognized the golden headband.
“Taj,” Samson sneered. “June is downstairs. She wants to speak with you.”
Relief broke through her. June was back? Taj had gone still.
“Where was she—” Taj didn’t finish his question. A shadow lunged at him, hands grabbing for his neck. Susenyos yelled but it was too late.
A horrible crack sounded.
Taj’s neck swung sharply, like Etete’s had. His body dropped like a sack to the floor. Samson dusted off his hands, devil eyes latching on to them. Fear built in the back of Kidan’s throat, ensnaring her tongue.
“What a shame you’re a vampire again.” Samson stalked inside the room, metal hand flexing. “I liked having you under my command. Poor human prince. The things I had planned for you.”
“Hold on, Kidan.” Susenyos was shaking with rage, eyeing the door blocked by Samson and the window behind them.
“You remember this little creation, don’t you?” A silver ball lay in Samson’s hand, his eyes a brilliant red.
Kidan’s vision was coming in and out, making it difficult to focus. Somewhere, someone cursed softly.
“What did you call it? Ball of death?” Samson cut his palm and coated the entire silver sphere in blood. Flicked his gaze up and said, “Catch.”
Susenyos cursed in her ear and threw her away from him.
Kidan was airborne, crashing onto the bed as a ringing sound exploded.
The force of it left nothing but cracks along the roof and wall, a finality that ended before it began.
Spikes like shards of glass punctured the ceiling and the windows, even skewering the edge of the bed.
She didn’t understand what had happened until Susenyos’s body hit the floor.
A thousand tiny silver spikes punctured the front of his chest.
The shock of it made her concentrate.
Scream.
Kidan struggled to crawl to him but before she could reach his petrified form, someone pushed her back on the bed. Through her panic, Yos’s words came to her.
I’m a vampire again.
He wasn’t human anymore. He could heal from this as long as his heart was intact. As long as Samson’s blood didn’t reach his vital organs. A sob of relief escaped Kidan’s mouth. She turned her hateful gaze on Samson.
“It’s not so bad.” His gaze was on her rotting hand. “The pain will become a part of you. Would you like to see?”
Kidan tried to sit up on the bed but the spasm along her arm kept her spine locked.
She couldn’t move. Fear drowned her senses.
Samson towered over her by the bedside. Slowly, he unbuckled the buttons on his metal glove.
Kidan choked back a sound. His entire forearm was cloaked in black veins that moved like waves. Similar to the inky veins on her body.
“How…”
“I asked him to let me die.” Samson’s eyes were red fury themselves. “I wanted him to let me die with her. He refused. He made me into the second vampire of the Nefrasi. Now black rot remains trapped in my arm, never spreading but painful. Do you know how it feels to always be in pain?”
Kidan could merely stare in horror.
“Your sister,” Samson continued with an unreadable expression. “She makes a concoction with sauag leaves. Every other night, she drains my veins and lathers on a healing salve. She is the only one that gives me some relief.”
June… did what?
Gritting her teeth, Kidan traced her symbol for trust, let it melt his anger into something pliable.
It was difficult. Only panic filled her chest, but she forced herself to think of Susenyos, conjure a flicker of trust, then echo it throughout the room.
The golden wisps returned, crowding Samson like a halo.
When he looked at her again, his eyes were clouded, as if he couldn’t quite see who she was. Good. More.
Samson took her rotting hand in his own, and traced it, face vacant. “Only I will be unafraid to touch or hold you.”
She flinched when he reached for her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, frowning. “I’m here to comfort you.”
“You have done nothing but hurt me.” She tried to breathe, relax.
“You stood in my way. And you mean something to him.”
She was careful with her words. “I mean something to him, so you’ll hurt me?”
Samson touched her cheek with his metal hand. Kidan steeled herself as his caress sent a shock of ice through her.
“You think you know who Susenyos is.” His mouth skewered. “I will show you.”
Samson rolled up her shirt, revealing her stomach, slick with sweat. Kidan tried to protest, arms swinging. A bite to the stomach revealed pain, and she wanted no more—his fangs sank into her side, right along her ribs.
Kidan cried out, and her vision whirled, turning back time against her will.
Samson was there, both human hands, working outside a castle’s gates.
Susenyos rushed at him, running free from the forest, shaking all over, covered in dirt.
“Alert the guards!” Samson ordered, grabbing a sword and hurrying toward the prince.
Samson grabbed him by the shoulders. “What happened?”
“A—a monster,” Susenyos stammered, cheeks slick with tears. “Death. God, Talaa.”
A thousand lightning bolts struck the earth. “Where is she?” Samson demanded.
Susenyos only shook his head. “I tried… I tried to save her.”
“You left her?” Samson barked.
“We cannot touch her. She is infected. It’s too late—”
Samson pulled back in disgust and tore into the woods, shouting her name until his vocal cords tore. He must have searched for nearly an hour, whirling around at the faintest shadow, seeing her dress and jewelry twinkle between the endless greenery.
He found the rotted ground before he laid eyes on her. Something was eating at the soles of his sandals like a bed of coals, but nothing mattered except her.
Talaa’s beautiful brown skin was webbed with black veins, her pink lips bruised as blueberries, eyes unseeing and white.
“No.” Samson dropped next to her, letting the black flames burn his knees and hands. “No.”
He drew her to his arms and shouted to the sky, a flock of birds taking flight.
The heartache was maddening, Kidan writhed and tried to break free of the memory but couldn’t.
Samson carried Talaa back to the castle, feet blistered and arms burning. Something was rotting but he didn’t care. He was stopped at the gates by a dozen guards.
Susenyos appeared, no tears this time, a crown fixed on his head. His father lingered at the back, watching.
“We have to burn the body,” Susenyos ordered.
“What?” Samson snarled. “We bury her.”
“It’s a plague. Everyone will die.”
Samson spat at Susenyos’s feet, and every sword whistled in the air as they were unsheathed. Susenyos held up a hand, and they stopped their thrust.
“Put her down.” Susenyos’s face was the terrifying mask of his father.
Samson refused to have anyone touch her. He gave the king and his son his back, waiting for five arrows to fall on him, and walked into the woods. No arrow was fired.
Samson buried Talaa himself. Hours later, he showed up at the gates again, his left hand and arm blackened with rot.
“You’ll have to kill me as well.” Samson panted and collapsed.
Susenyos gritted his teeth. “I told you it’s a plague.”
Samson lifted his hand, such acute pain. Was this what she felt all over her body? “I’ll be with her soon.”
“Bring him inside.” Three men held him up with makeshift gloves.
“No!” he shouted. “Let me die.”
They threw him into a cell. With a gloved hand, Susenyos grabbed Samson’s thrashing head, forcing it still. “I will not let you die.”
Imprisoned, Samson tried everything to stop the pain. He lifted his fist into the air and brought it down to the hard ground, to the sound of blinding agony. Again and again. But the pain never once relented, spreading up to his forearm, intent on consuming him entirely.
The next time Susenyos visited him, it’d been to turn him into a vampire.
Samson had been too weak to refuse, flickering in and out of life.
When Samson woke up, everything was stark.
And the court was filled with sleeping bodies, caught in transition between life and death.
The black rot had stopped spreading. Instead, it continuously fed off him, draining his energy so he would never have his full strength.
He looked up and saw Susenyos, newly transformed, ageless. And a dark-skinned girl with ancient, feline eyes, whom he’d soon know to be Arin Tawendyo.
Kidan screamed as her own hand burned along with his. The vision melted back into her room and her head fought gravity. Susenyos and Taj were still unconscious.
Please, wake up, she pleaded inside her mind.
Samson wiped his mouth of her blood. “Painful, isn’t it?”
She was still writhing, trying to erase what she felt.
“You’ve had your share of pain too,” he said, eyes creased in an unreadable emotion. “Killing your own mother… it’s a scar that will never heal. Then your sister’s betrayal. It destroyed a part of your soul. I can sense it now. You have lost too much to move on. You must bleed the world for it.”