Seventeen
Kaius
I let the stake stay in my chest for a while. She barely missed my heart, and a part of me wishes she didn’t. An even larger and more selfish part of me hopes she’s just on the other side of that door, waiting for me to come to her.
But I know I will have no such luck. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve her. With the truth laid bare, she got to see what a monster I truly am, and how her intuition was right all along.
I grab the end of the stake and yell out in pain as I tug it free from my chest. Blood drips from the point, and I let it drop to the floor before I stand. The wound begins to heal, and I walk out of the room.
At this stage in my immortal life, very little shocks me. I’ve studied magic for centuries, and thought I was a master in it, even if I didn’t quite possess the power it takes to use it to its full potential.
I’ve always been certain of one thing, and that is that there is no magic that can raise the dead. Vampires are a special sort of magical being, and while we are considered undead, the process of raising a vampire begins in their human lives, so it’s not affected by the natural limitations of magic.
If you stake a vampire in the heart, they’re dead, and their body quickly decays to match their age, so many of us are left as nothing but bones or even dust when we die.
I certainly remember Dravon decaying into dust last night, so when I round the corner and see him standing before me, chest-to-chest, Adelasia momentarily leaves the forefront of my mind, and she’s replaced with fear.
Something is not right, and I have a feeling he has Nine Priestesses to thank for his resurrection.
“You have guests,”
he hisses, and both of us have the same thought–only he beats me to it.
We both conjure stakes in our hands, but Dravon is just a bit faster than me, plunging his into my stomach, clean through to the other side.
I crumble to the ground with an incredibly painful groan, still recovering from Adelasia’s stake.
“Play nice,”
Dravon warns. And there’s nothing I can do as he grabs me by my arms and drags me through the halls, leaving a blood trail as he goes. He deposits me in the throne room.
I brace myself before I begin to tug the stake from my abdomen. Every minuscule movement feels like I’m being ripped open. The jagged edges of the stake leave micro-tears in their wake. Just as the stake is nearly out of my body, Dravon uses his boot to press it back down. I have no choice but to let him. I’m too weak to fight it.
I wince as I feel it tearing through me like razors.
“How are you alive?”
I grunt. The pain is overwhelming, but I have too many unanswered questions to succumb completely to it.
“Enemy of my enemy and all that,”
he murmurs.
“Since when am I your enemy? You’ve been loyal for over nine hundred years! What changed?”
“The times, Lord Kaius. Someone has to take over when you’re no longer King of the Damned.”
Even through the pain, I can’t help but roll my eyes. “That’s what this is about? A throne?”
Dravon kneels and grabs me by the throat, lifting me slightly so we’re face-to-face. “I knew you were a goner the moment I laid eyes on her. You’re besotted. Infatuated. You’ve betrayed the vampire race at the very height of our power! I can’t allow that. Not when your life is tied to the rest of us. With you out of the picture, I can usher us into a new age, a new millennium, where it is the vampires that rule this land, not the Coven.”
“You imbecile! You think taking me out of the picture will make the Priestesses stand down from their absolute rule?”
“It was promised.”
“Then you’re a fool for trusting them. They will betray you the moment your usefulness has run its course! They will never give you what you want–it doesn’t matter if it is your immortality or my throne. You cannot have it.”
“If I hand you and the girl over, I get to keep my immortality, and sit upon that throne and command a race you never cared to rule,”
Dravon sneers, pulling up his sleeve to reveal a golden vow line. “It. Was. Promised.”
I grit my teeth and make sure he feels the fury in my stare. “Touch her again and it will be the last thing you do before you die for a third time.”
Dravon sneers and leans even closer to me. “You cannot save her. Not from them.”
For all the good it will do, I open my mouth to threaten him again, when the air turns putrid with the smell of the foul magic only the Nine Priestesses possess. It stinks of evil. Even the shadows seem to fear the shift in atmosphere.
Dravon lets me go, and I lie flat on my back, barely able to lift my head. The gem around my neck rumbles with the need to join its siblings in the hands of the Priestesses.
When I find the strength to lift my neck again, the Priestesses stand in a half-circle just a few steps away from my feet. Their long gray robes that cover them from head to toe float like a fog around their feet, billowing from the energy of magic. Their ornate headdresses glimmer with gems, precious metals, and other magical relics. Bones. Wilted flowers. Bloodstains.
Though they all look the same, it’s easy to tell who they are by the authority they command simply by existing. Amatisi became their leader after I killed Yekaterina, and she’s only grown more wicked as the centuries have passed without her sister. More wicked, and far less patient with me. We’ve never had a pleasant interaction, even when Yekaterina was alive. She always acted towards me as if she knew I’d be the downfall of their coven.
But Amatisi and the others don’t understand that I never wanted to be their enemy. I only retaliated against Yekaterina for cursing me, and then they retaliated against me by cursing me again. She is the sole reason for our enmity.
Until I met Adelasia, I would have done anything to give them what they wanted in exchange for my mortality back. I would have sacrificed anyone; done any atrocities they asked.
I’ve always been desperate for freedom from my immortal prison, and the Priestesses know that better than anyone. They’ve used it to their advantage at every opportunity, but no longer.
I see Amatisi’s head tilt downward to look at me sprawled out and injured on the floor. She snickers. “I do love it when a man greets me on his back.”
Her voice sends shivers up the spines of even the most fearless men. It’s feminine, but echoes with a demonic whisper that injects fear into the bravest of hearts. Her sisters say nothing. They stand there, unnaturally still and watch as Amatisi takes a step closer to me, close enough that I don’t have to exert the energy to hold my neck up to see her.
“It’s been too long, Lord Kaius. Three centuries, I think. Or has it been four? One tends to lose track.”
“Not long enough,” I mutter.
Amatisi begins to walk in a circle around my body. She makes a full rotation and then steps on my chest with her bare foot, adorned with golden chains and red paint.
“Where’s the sacrifice?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Suddenly, I’m levitating in the air, face-to-face with Amatisi. My feet hover above the floor as she wraps her bony fingers with unnaturally long nails around the stake in my stomach. She rips it out, and I feel instant relief. She allows me one single moment of painless existence before she shoves the stake back into my stomach and lets me drop to the floor. I groan when my knees hit the cold marble and I hunch over, gripping the stake.
I pull it out again and brace my bloody hands against the floor, trying to hold myself up against the pain. Amatisi begins circling me again.
“Where’s the sacrifice?”
she repeats. I keep my mouth shut, grunting as I look up at the witch. She tilts her veiled head to the side, and though I can’t see it, I can hear the smile in her voice.
“Oh, Kaius, you simply never learn, do you?”
She takes a step towards me, her hand outstretched. From her fingers, dark magic begins to spread and swirl around me. “How many more centuries will it take for you to realize–”
The magic solidifies into a collar of wooden spikes around my neck with a long chain attached. From behind me, sitting on my throne, Dravon pulls the chain, embedding the spikes in my throat. “–that it never pays to make an enemy out of me?”
Dravon snickers and pulls the chain again, embedding the spikes even deeper into my throat. The pain is almost unbearable. Amatisi uses her dark magic to put splintered wooden cuffs around my wrists, effectively rendering me useless.
Amatisi stops directly in front of me, tilting my head backward by my hair and then placing her thumbs on my temples. Her long, claw-like fingernails dig into my scalp.
“If you won’t tell me what I want to know from your bleeding throat willingly, I shall take the knowledge from your weak mind by force,”
Amatisi purrs.
I know what’s coming, so I use every last remaining shred of my focus and willpower to solidify a shield across my mind. If I let Amatisi invade my thoughts, it’s over. Everything I have tried to protect Adelasia from will be out in the open.
My skull feels like it’s being crushed when the magic enters my consciousness. Its sharp talons dig and scratch and scrape along the mental barriers I’ve put up. I can feel pain snake along my thoughts. Dravon must be pulling the chain, trying to get me to break my focus, but I will not. I’ve been alive far too long and endured far too much over the centuries to be so easily taken down by splinters.
I can hear Amatisi’s voice in my head. She laughs. “What is it you’re trying so hard to protect, Kaius? Is the sacrifice truly worth all this trouble?”
I grit my teeth and roar with frustration when I manage to push Amatisi completely out of my head. She tilts her head to the side, impressed by my fortitude. But she knows I’m breaking. If she tries to enter my head again, it’s over. She’ll know exactly where to find Adelasia and I’ll have no way to protect her myself.
When Amatisi grabs my temples and invades the sanctity of my most private thoughts, I scream in agony. She can see it all. Every single moment I’ve spent with Adelasia and every conflicting emotion that came with them.
Most importantly though, Amatisi sees that I have no intentions of killing Adelasia, because her heart was always destined to belong to me.
Amatisi lets me go and begins to laugh uncontrollably.
“Oh, what a beautiful circumstance be this!”
she purrs before turning to face her sisters. “Our noble King of the Damned has gone and fallen in love with the human sacrifice!”
The rest of the Priestesses and Dravon begin snickering. Amatisi turns her attention to me once more, gripping me with her long nails by the jaw. “Your wayward heart is the reason you’re in this situation in the first place, but I am done giving you time to fix your mistake.”
Amatisi lets me go, and then from the ground, plumes of black fog begin to rise. My heart sinks and I’m suddenly filled with the worst kind of dread imaginable.
“No!” I growl.
From the fog, three of the most wretched abominations the Priestesses have ever created rise. Griefclaws. They stand even taller than I, their limbs unnaturally proportioned, with claws protruding from their fingertips that are so long they scrape across the ground when they move. Their eyes are nothing but depthless voids and their mouths are nothing but rows and rows of sharp teeth and the rotting remnants of the flesh of their last meals. Their skin is brownish gray and stretched tightly across their bony frames.
They make unnerving chittering noises as they await instructions. They are the Priestesses' most loyal, unquestioning servants, designed only to bring grief as their names suggest. They are lethal. So dangerous that even I know better than to foolishly say I’m not afraid of them.
Amatisi approaches her pets and strokes their chests as if in comfort. “Bring her to me, my children. Alive.”