Chapter 28
ALEXANDER
Alexander’s fangs pierced Tobias’ skin, a complete and total joining of his body and soul with the man he so badly desired. The first rush of blood from Tobias’ veins into Alexander’s mouth was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted, and he drank until he thought he’d be sick from it.
There was no control, only bloodlust. Vladimir had drained Alexander more than he ever had before, leaving him a husk of flesh and desire. Alexander thought he could control himself, but he was wrong. As the crimson crept into the corners of his vision, he lost himself to Tobias.
But it wasn’t only sustenance he took from Tobias, it was his memories too. So when Alexander started to slow down, the visions came flooding in.
At first, it was a trickle. Alexander was normally adept at blocking out the memories of the humans he drank from – he had little interest in knowing all the sordid details of the people he fed on, as much as a human would want to know the life story and deepest secrets of every chicken they ate.
But this was Tobias. He wanted to know every corner of Tobias’ mind, and he was half-feral with bloodlust. Even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to sate his curiosity.
There were flashes of fear, first. Scenes from Oxford, meeting Alexander, their date at Quod.
Tobias watching him, Tobias on the computer applying for jobs, Tobias touching a finger to something that looked like an ash-wood stake nestled in a drawer full of clothing.
Sex in Alexander’s bed – and then a leap in time, to kneeling for a man whom Alexander didn’t know.
He felt his hand tighten on the back of Tobias’ neck, a chorus of mine mine mine ringing through his head.
Of course Tobias had been with others before, but now that he was Alexander’s, that was over.
Flashes of blood and pain and Tobias averting his eyes over and over again from other people, like he didn’t want to look at them as they lay slumped like they were dead in back alleys and against stone walls covered in ivy.
More visions of himself, but not in Oxford – at St Andrew’s this time. Alexander’s stomach twisted. He hadn’t been in Scotland in decades, but here Tobias was watching him through a classroom window, Alexander’s hair and clothes from a different era.
Alexander saw a train leaving St Pancras station and felt the rib-crushing despair that went with its departure. Tobias had cared for someone on that train, and the memory was vivid enough that Alexander let himself get lost in it.
But something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
The people milling around the station were wearing clothes that looked like they were from the 1940s.
And many of them were hugging young men wearing uniforms, the sight gut-wrenchingly familiar to Alexander, because he’d stalked the battlefields of the Second World War, watching humans destroy each other and the entire world around him.
The memory dissolved, Alexander pulled back in time to what he knew deep down was the night prior, feeling Tobias’ shoulders shaking with sobs as he made love to a man whom his mind called George.
A soldier who held him close and comforted him and promised him that he’d return, if only Tobias waited for him.
Waited for him in 1940. Eighty fucking years ago.
Time was moving backwards faster in Tobias’ memory, his mind an open book.
He wanted Alexander to see, wanted him to know.
The landscape in this memory was wild and free, the trees heavy with moss, the ground shrouded in mist. He was in a small village, nothing more than huts clustered together in the space between two hills, sheep grazing in the open lands beyond.
Everyone was gaunt and pale, starved and dressed in ragged clothes and furs, bundled up against how frigid the temperature was.
The cottage he stood on the threshold of was some distance away from the rest, enough that he could see others but not hear them speak.
He turned to look around through Tobias’ eyes.
He was sitting by a fire inside the cottage, a woman stirring a pot of meagre soup over the fire, a man who must be his father mending the thatch of the hut outside.
There was a little girl, bright-eyed and happy, smiling at Tobias’ feet as he talked, telling her a story.
She alone of all of them looked decently fed.
Alexander watched them go about their evening, watched them all lie down to sleep, felt Tobias mumble through his dreams like he still did all these hundreds of years later.
Then the vision shifted to something destructive and evil.
Smoke curled up from the village. Ash fell from the sky like snow.
The memory of blood and fangs tearing into flesh was so vivid that it could have been from yesterday, which was how Alexander knew that Tobias played this day over and over in his memory.
Tobias got up from bed, dressed only in a ragged nightgown, then walked out of the cottage to look at the burning village.
He turned to go back into the cottage, no doubt to wake his family, but he missed the figure hiding amidst the shadows.
“Will you not run for me?”
Alexander felt sick, because he would know that voice anywhere. He heard it in his nightmares. He just didn’t know that Tobias also heard it in his.
Vladimir Damianos lowered the hood from his head, his devilish face coated in blood.
The vision shifted again, quick and forced, as the real Tobias tried to control what Alexander was seeing.
It didn’t work. Instead, it skipped some time to when Vladimir lunged at Tobias, tearing into his throat.
Blood gushed freely, so freely that it seemed impossible that Tobias could have survived.
When Vladimir had had his fill, he dropped Tobias to the frozen ground like a dog discarding a bone and vanished into the night.
He was lying on the ground, staring up at the stars as he started to die, drowning in blood. But the panic that Alexander felt was more than just Tobias’, because his mind had finally worked through the shock of it all to puzzle the pieces together.
The memory shifted again. Tobias’ eyes flew open wider, his hand fluttering to his ruined throat as the skin knit back together. He drew in a massive gasp, shooting up from the ground, his eyes the dark red of bloodlust.
Alexander realised with horror that he hadn’t seen the true evil of this memory, not yet.
My family died in an accident. Alexander had been searching for that accident, and it hadn’t been in the news – of course, because this was hundreds of years ago in Wales and there was no one there to see Tobias in a mindless haze of bloodlust ripping into his parents and sister like they were meat, drinking them dry until their skin looked like nothing more than parchment.
Tobias collapsed onto the floor of the hut, deep in a dreamless sleep that Alexander himself knew well, since it was one he’d sunk into many a time when he was fully sated.
So now you see, Tobias whispered in his mind, what I’ve been hiding from you.
Alexander pulled back with a jerk, wrenching his teeth out of Tobias’ neck. Alexander snapped back into his mind, into his own body, although the horror of what he had uncovered still remained.
Tobias was pale enough that he must have been near to fainting, but his eyes were open as he collapsed forward onto Alexander’s chest, Alexander’s hand still gripping the back of his neck.
Tobias Osian wasn’t a mortal. He was a vampire, made by Alexander’s own father.
“I’m so – I’m so sorry,” Tobias gasped out, pressing a hand to his neck to staunch the flow of blood. “I didn’t know I’d come to feel this way.”
Alexander scrabbled backwards onto the floor, slipping in a pool of blood – his and Tobias’ intermingled. His wrist had scabbed over thanks to the infusion of power from Tobias, but Alexander was weak with betrayal all the same.
“You were using me?”
Because Tobias had been. Tobias had been the one to attack all those people at Oxford. Tobias had been the one to follow Alexander through the years, looking for a way to get close to him.
He’d nearly given Tobias his entire heart, but all this time Tobias had just been using him to get revenge on Vladimir. Tobias had just been using Alexander as a means to heal his own broken soul.
“I was.” Tobias’ eyes were desperately sad as he knelt on the stone, covered in blood. His chest was heaving and he looked like he might be sick. Alexander almost reached out to him to make sure that he was alright, but then he remembered that he wasn’t looking at his lover.
He was looking at a traitor.
“But I’m not anymore.” Tobias was reaching for him, shaking. “I swear, it all changed when I truly came to know you, Alexander. I’m not going to harm you, or your father, because I couldn’t possibly bear to lose another person I lo–”
“Don’t you dare,” Alexander hissed, staggering to his feet. “Don’t you dare say that again, not when the entire time I’ve known you has been based on nothing but lies.”
Tobias squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking down his cheeks. “Not the entire time, Alexander. From the moment I really got to know you, it was all true.”
“Oh,” Alexander said icily, “even the part where you acted terrified to come to Rothburn, despite me seeing this house a thousand times in your memories? Despite you having spent your whole life searching for a way in? Despite the fact that you didn’t say a word about you being the one to murder–”
Alexander thought he might be sick and swung his legs off the bed, panting. There was a hand on his back rubbing soothing circles, and he whirled around to grab Tobias’ wrist.
“I swear,” Tobias whispered, blinking tear-laden lashes.
“I’ve lived hundreds and hundreds of years just to kill the vampire who turned me, and I swear, Alexander, I’d given it all up for you.
Because I knew what would happen if I killed Vladimir, and I couldn’t think of a world without you in it.
I gave up my reason for living for you, Alexander, because I’d found something so much better.
And I just regret all the lies it took to get here.
” He swallowed, his voice thick. “I would take it all back if I could. I would be honest from the start. I would let you get to know all of me, the way you’ve let me get to know all of you. Don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me.”
They were close enough that if Alexander leaned forward an inch, their lips would have met in a blood-stained kiss. But Alexander’s heart was hurting, and while he could read the sincerity in Tobias’ face, while he knew that his regret was honest, he also knew that he needed a minute to breathe.
“Vladimir deserves to die for what he did to me, but also what he does to you.”
Alexander clapped a blood-slick hand over Tobias’ mouth.
“The walls and floors are listening, little deer. You can – you can obviously defend yourself, but not against the entire Damianos clan.” He didn’t bother to weave compulsion into the command, since Tobias was clearly immune to his magic as a vampire not born, but made, of his father’s line.
“I need a second to breathe. That – it’s a lot, Tobias. ”
“Maria knows,” Tobias whispered, tears leaking down his pale face. “She’s going to help us.”
The betrayal stung. Alexander racked his brain to determine which of the sweet smiles and sultry looks had been true, and which had been for the charade of securing this invitation to Rothburn.
Tobias gave him an utterly devastated look before nodding once and turning to gather up his clothes from where they were lying on the bedroom floor.
“I just need a minute. Please.” Alexander was moments from breaking. Everything he’d learned had the power to shatter his reality. “Go wait in my office. I’ll fetch my sister and we will discuss this in private… as it should’ve always been.”
Tobias hesitated for a moment. Alexander thought he would refuse, but when Tobias stood, put on his trousers, and turned to leave, Alexander found himself longing to call out.
He had to bite down on his tongue to stop himself, all the while the taste of Tobias and his haunting memories clung to him.
He’d forgive Tobias. He’d go to him and ask him to explain everything and then he’d forgive Tobias and they could continue on the way they’d been, but real this time. He just needed space. He just needed a moment to breathe.
Away from Tobias, it was easier for him to think. How could Tobias not want revenge for what Vladimir had done to him? Unlike Tobias, who clearly regretted killing and didn’t know that he’d made new vampires, Alexander could see it being a game to his father.
Kill one human, resurrect them. Make them kill their family and then live the rest of their life in horror, at least until they were killed by other vampires for falling victim to insatiable bloodlust.
If Tobias knew his actions caused the very thing he longed to kill Vladimir for, it would destroy him. And even if some dark part of Alexander longed to punish Tobias for his deceit, he didn’t wish for it to ruin him.
He pulled out a cigarette from the pack he kept in his bedside table and lit it, the smoke scorching his lungs.
Alexander couldn’t fathom anyone thinking that Tobias was just a plaything. Tobias was glorious. He deserved the world, and Alexander wanted to give it to him.
Alexander loved him.
It stung to realise that he’d literally felt all of Tobias’ regret, sincerity, pain, and terror, and sent him away anyway, even for a moment.
He should have been gathering Tobias close, comforting him, because if anyone knew exactly what a monster Vladimir was, it was the son whom he fed on to keep his power.
He knew just how much fear could twist a mind, and what people did to survive despite having everything taken from them.
How it felt to be living in a cage made out of the past.
And that more than anything made shame heat his skin.
Tobias had finally been completely vulnerable – he must have known what he was doing, letting Alexander feed from him instead of any of the others in the house, unveiling all his secrets, baring his entire past for Alexander to rifle through.
He must have seen it as a way to confess, and Alexander found he couldn’t blame the other man for not knowing how to share his hidden past sooner.
He got up out of bed and went to go find Tobias so they could make this right.
But when he went into his study, Tobias wasn’t there.
Fuck. Not again.