Chapter Twenty
CASIMIR
“Please… Please stop!” the werewolf cries as it wallows around on the floor. “I… I don’t think I can do even one more painting of Gustov.”
“When did you become so weak?” I ask as I look down at him and then over at my stack of paintings. “Did you forget I wanted two per room?”
“Then maybe you need a smaller house,” he says as he crawls toward me while holding his hand up. “My hand is cramping. My eyes are strained.”
“What the fuck is going on in here?” Ezio asks as he peeks into the room before gasping. “Oh my heavens above and hell down below, Casimir! What did you do to that sweet wolf? What were you making his hand do for it to be cramping ?”
“Sweet wolf? Wasn’t it just like a week ago you refused to shake my hand?” Julian asks. “And don’t make it sound like I was jerking him off until my hand cramped. I’m much better than that. I’d have him coming before my hand even gets tired. Trust me.”
“He is,” I concur.
“I was helping you ,” Ezio growls.
That dawns on Julian. “Oh, right. Ezio! Please! Save me!”
Ezio scoops Julian up in his arms before giving me an incredulous look. “What did you do to him? Were you hurting him?”
“I was having him paint Gustov,” I say as I proudly hold up the paintings. “Look! They might have taken tears, sweat, and blood, but none of it was mine, so it’s fine.”
Ezio dumps Julian on the bed and hurries over to the paintings. “Oh my.”
“Right?” I ask, beaming at them. They’re fantastic. I don’t even know why Julian needs to work as a professor; he could dedicate his life to paintings of Gustov because they’re phenomenal.
“These are amazing!” Ezio says before his attention snaps to Julian.
“You must paint me, and I will gift it to Cyrus!” And then he tears his pants and shirt off like they’re Velcro clothes, which they most certainly are not.
He doesn’t have underwear on underneath so there he stands, his torn clothes fluttering to the ground as he strikes a pose. “Cyrus will be thrilled!”
I take one look at Julian’s scrunched-up face of disgust and I can’t help but smile.
“And that is my cue to leave,” I say as I head out of the room.
How foolish of me to even think I should care about Julian painting a naked Ezio!
The look of horror on his face is enough to assure me that all is fine.
Not that… I care . But I just… I mean, I don’t want him to paint Ezio… or enjoy painting him.
Just as I reach the door, Julian comes racing after me. “Ha ha. I know you said you had some work to do, but I would like to go with you. You can pretend I’m a dog. I can sit on your feet and keep them warm. Please. Anything to keep me from having to be alone with that man. Please.”
I unbutton my shirt about three buttons and Julian’s eyes drop down to my bare chest. There is clear interest dancing across his expression.
Ohhhhh, I definitely didn’t need to fret about him being alone with a naked Ezio.
Why does this please me so much?
“You stay here and maybe talk to Ezio about how Cyrus would be a Cry- us if Ezio delivered him a portrait of himself.”
The look on Julian’s face is suddenly much like the one he’d given Ezio. Did my joke plummet his sex drive that significantly? It was supposed to be witty! And funny! And now… now the look he’s giving me makes me feel like I’m as low as Ezio. As Ezio!
“I… I hope you’re taking some comedy classes as well,” he whispers.
“I would never have to pay someone to make me funny. I simply tell them that if they don’t laugh, I will eat them.”
“Ha ha ha. Cry us! That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Although… maybe I want you to eat me…”
The tone he uses makes me realize that maybe I could throw Ezio out and devour this fine man. Fuck. Nope. I have to kill Yorick, and then I can come back to him. “It wasn’t… just stay here with naked Ezio and shield Gustov’s eyes.”
“But there’s no one to shield my eyes.”
“I will shield them!” Ezio says as he appears—quite naked—behind Julian and covers his eyes.
Julian’s entire body stiffens, likely from disgust. “Casimir, please… please don’t leave me. I’m a good boy. I will quietly sit in the corner. I will let your coworkers pet my tummy while I wag my tail. Please…”
“Julian, just stare out the window and wag your tail as you watch every car that passes, hoping it’s me.”
“Ha, funny.”
“Come on, Julian, we have things to do!” Ezio says, and him dragging Julian off is the last thing I get to see before Ezio slams the door shut. I head out to the car, but before I can start it, Ezio appears outside my window. Still naked.
“Don’t you think that someone should go with you?” he asks.
“No.”
“Why?”
“No.”
“You can’t answer no to everything.”
“I can.”
“Casimir, you are the most stubborn man I’ve ever met, but we are like brothers. I would miss you so much if you died.” He hesitates before going, “I wonder if Cyrus would comfort me…”
“Now you’re thinking that maybe I should get murdered. Your face tells me you’re tempted by the idea.”
“No, no, no. Listen here. So say you take five evil people and make them fight one good person. Would that one, lonely, single person fare as well as five evil people against like ten vampires and twenty wolves?”
“Yes.”
He looks at me in disbelief. “They would not!”
“Then maybe you need to learn some better math,” I growl.
“My math is phenomenal.”
“You told me you ate your math teacher.”
“Yes, maybe he was confusing as fuck, but he tasted divine and my math never suffered because of his loss.”
I sigh, wondering how this is doing anything but delaying me. “Go in the house. I have this handled.”
“Fine, but don’t be all mangled and dead the next time I see you or I’ll have to treat Julian to a real man.”
“Now I know you’re not talking about yourself,” I say.
“Ezio, what the fuck?” Julian yells as he comes rushing out. “The neighbor is staring at you.”
I lean forward to see that the neighbor is getting a good eyeful of Ezio’s naked ass as he leans down to speak to me. He’s got his legs spread enough that I’m sure he’s getting a decent eyeful of his balls as well.
“And do they like what they see?” Ezio asks, not finding any issue with this.
“Casimir, please take me,” Julian whines, but in response, I simply back out of the driveway and leave them to it. Julian is staring at me much like Gustov does when I leave him for the day, and Ezio is trying to figure out which neighbor got a good look at him.
I head for my home and park out front before stepping inside the empty house. It’s strange without Gustov here to prance after me. He’ll have more fun waiting with Julian than staring out the window wondering when I’ll get home.
I hurry into one of my spare bedrooms. Pulling my keys out, I unlock the door that always remains locked up tight and step inside.
There’s nothing in the room but a chest and a weapons stand that holds a katana and a wakizashi.
My hand hovers over the chest as turmoil roils inside me, but I shove it down and grab the two sheathed blades, one longer and one short.
With my vampire strength and speed, my hands alone work phenomenally, but the reach of a weapon gives me an advantage.
Standing up, I look down at the chest that’s taunting me.
Even staring at it makes the world close in around me, like the walls are caving in and spinning.
Uncontrollable rage boils up inside me as I fixate on it, wishing more than anything I could fucking destroy it.
I kick the chest hard and it skids across the floor before slamming into the wall. It punches a hole in the drywall, but the chest remains perfectly intact. I want to tear it apart but there’s a part of me inside that chest. A part of me that I’m not ready to face. Not yet, anyway.
The weapons are like weights in my hand as I carry them out the door before locking it. The idea of someone else facing that chest is almost worse than me having to do it.
Once I’m down the stairs, I hurry out to my car and toss the blades into the passenger seat.
They clatter into each other from the rough treatment, and I find myself immediately grabbing them and pulling them back to my lap.
With the hilts in one hand and sheaths in the other, I sit in the driveway for a long moment before I take a deep breath and separate them.
The curved blades of both the katana, a long sword, and the wakizashi, a short sword, are both still perfectly pristine, resulting from the rigorous care they’ve received, as I had treated every blade that’d been gifted to me all those years ago. I close them and start the car.
Hopefully this Yorick man has decided to stay in tonight since I don’t have the desire to hunt him down. Hell, I’ll just wait for him to come back if he’s left, like he did to Julian. But I won’t taunt and terrorize him, I will slaughter him.
The drive isn’t long, about thirty minutes, but it’s outside my territory and into an area that is unclaimed. It means they are technically free to stay there without permission, but what they aren’t free to do is come onto my land and hunt my wolf.
I park my car about a mile from the location Ezio’s key ring showed before getting out and grabbing my swords. I leave their sheaths behind—I have no interest in sheathing them until I’m done with my task for the night.
I move toward an old school that closed down years ago.
There are only fields on all sides of it, and a patch of trees across from it, so the closest house is about a quarter of a mile away.
Seeing that there isn’t much activity in the area, the vampires probably find it to be a safe home base when they aren’t busy fucking with my territory.
Just as I’m passing through the trees that are across the road from the school, I hear someone above me and step back as they drop down where I’d stood.
“Oh, the king himself stepped down from his throne to come say hi,” a familiar woman says with a snide smile.
“Of course you’re here, Nikki. You’ve made a mistake associating yourself with those who think it’s their right to let themselves onto my land and harass my people.
I thought you were upset over Geo’s death, but instead you’re joining the ones who killed him.
” Was it all a show as she’d cried over her maker when Ezio and I had tried to figure out who had killed the two vampires in the woods?
“It’s not a mistake,” a man says from behind me. “You’ll understand once you meet him .”
“ If you meet him,” Nikki adds with a giggle as the two circle me. They want to toy with me, harass me, and then be the ones to announce that they’ve killed me. They would love those bragging rights… too bad they’re not going to live long enough to even tell anyone they faced me.
Nikki rushes forward, but I know the man will be the first to attack. He wants my focus on her before he strikes, but I turn fast, driving the wakizashi deep into his chest with my left hand and cutting his head clean off with the katana in my right.
A noise escapes Nikki, like she’s shocked she came to this fight only to find death at the end of it. She roars out as she lunges forward, prepared to strike, but the only thing that will welcome her is death if she chooses to get in my way.
Without hesitation, I turn as she comes at me. She seems to think better of it as she tries to pull back, but it’s too late.
I let her body drop to the ground before moving toward the school.
They will all die. Every last one of them will be slaughtered by my hands. They can beg, they can run, or they can fight. It will all end the same way.
With them dead.
And Julian safe.
No… my territory safe. I’m not doing this just for Julian. It’s for my territory… for the people in it…
I push those thoughts back and continue forward, moving at a quicker pace as I reach the door and kick it in.
A man tries to stop me the moment I enter, but the effort is futile.
I flick his blood off my sword as I keep walking forward, down the long hallway where I kill two more before I find Yorick standing at the very end.
“Well… this wasn’t exactly what I had planned for the evening,” he says as he cocks his head. “Hold on… did you actually come alone? How foolish can you be? But don’t worry, I’ll take care of your wolf when you’re gone.”
He seems so fucking cocky and irritating. Does he really not understand what he’s done?
“You will not touch him,” I say, voice quiet as I walk toward him. The only noise in the hallway is the sound of his shoes echoing off the walls as he walks toward me while the world around me caves in until all I can see is the enemy standing before me.
The man who needs to die.