Chapter 3 #2
I glanced out of the window at the moon.
I was old enough to have secrets that even my second didn’t know.
Against my will, my attention drifted back to Shane.
My eyes raked his body, my cock jumping in appreciation even though he was, in essence, one of the enemy.
Except, it was hard to see him like that.
Many Original vampires saw Mades as lesser, as the lowest of our kind.
Yet my own feelings on them were ambivalent.
Some Originals were bastards of the highest order and treated their Mades worse than the human blood slaves they collected.
It was understandable that many were angry enough for war.
But this virus wasn’t achieving anything other than carnage for everyone.
Each aristocratic Original family had their own collection of blood slaves and Mades to work for them or to feed from.
I did neither. Feeding was less of a necessity for someone as old as me, and there were plenty of people from any race who were more than willing to oblige, especially when the pleasure they received from it was incendiary.
And I didn’t need slaves of any kind. The number of Original vampires that worked for me made up a large army, one that was spread around the world.
Some were completely loyal, some were not.
But I owned them all. When I chose to use my thrall, none of them could resist my orders.
I could indeed command every vampire in this country.
They all knew it, too. I didn’t fuck about with my enemies.
I was too old for that shit. I’d learned over the years to deal out punishment quickly and harshly.
My enemies, and those guilty of treason to the king, died violently, or I stripped them of any power they held, making their punishment and humiliation painful both physically and emotionally.
It depended on their crime—and my mood. If I were feeling merciful enough to refrain from ripping them apart, they’d be compelled to serve those who frequented the Gambit.
Victims of their schemes often became regular customers.
I’d keep them imprisoned for a period of time that I felt befitted their crimes, deciding who was bought for the night and for what.
There was no guilt for their suffering, not when they had committed treason against the king—or me.
I served King Stefan Korolovski because that’s what I chose to do, and I would until the day he died, as I would his son and any others who were sired from that Original bloodline.
It had become my purpose in life many centuries ago.
I didn’t want the throne for myself; I never had.
My castle dungeon was reserved for those who earned my special brand of punishment.
They did not deserve mercy of any kind. Its cold, dreary walls had held many of my enemies over the years, though never for long.
However, the definition of ‘long’ was subjective to an immortal.
That rat currently rotting beneath the foundations of my castle was an exception.
It would be a very long time until I’d finished playing with that piece of shit.
The darkness that simmered in my soul stirred, its rage and need to make that vampire suffer, a clawing need.
He’d never see the outside of that dungeon again, and he’d be begging for death before I was done.
He was part of the faction of Mades who were trying to overthrow our king, and turn everyone against the vampire nation.
An evil bastard who would be given no quarter for his part in Shane’s torture.
My nostrils flared. I would repay that violation a thousandfold.
Why Shane’s suffering bothered me on such a visceral level, I didn’t know.
I’d rarely felt such a forceful desire for vengeance.
I shifted my position, acutely aware that Sorcha called to my soul as strongly as Shane did.
I sucked on one of my fangs, unwilling to admit, yet unable to ignore, why they both elicited such a strong reaction from me.
Instead, I allowed my gaze to run over the taut length of the fledgling’s body.
And as much as I wanted to see him as nothing other than a virus-ridden Made, I couldn’t, not when a deep ache bloomed in my chest. One that pointed towards a connection that could change everything, not just for him and me but for the world.
Shane moaned, his movements becoming more desperate.
Moonlight glimmered against his sweat-soaked body.
In truth, I was Shane’s sire. I should have left him to die, but I couldn’t.
Every cell in my body had called on me to save him, so I had.
Yet, if even my blood wasn’t enough, and Shane succumbed to his bloodlust, he could wreak destruction upon hundreds of people.
And, if he were a carrier of the virus, he’d infect dozens more.
I couldn’t allow that to happen. He’d lose all remnants of his humanity and kill indiscriminately until he was put down.
Regardless of the promise I’d made to Connor to keep him alive, or even the ache in my soul, I’d kill him.
I shook my head. He wasn’t Shane, he was just a Made—a fledgling.
I rubbed my chest. So why had I saved him?
Why was I planning a painful death for his captor?
And why was I giving him my blood and keeping him close, when one of my men could just as easily feed him, or even kill him?
Because, a voice growled in my head, they can’t.
He will die without your blood. You know that as surely as you know what he means to you.
“More,” he croaked, his eyelids fluttering open and his muscles tensing as he tried to move and found himself too weak. “Count?”
My dick pulsed, and heat fired through my veins.
I hadn’t reacted to anyone with such desire in so long; it was disturbing.
I didn’t like it; the lack of control over my responses, my emotions.
But my body did. Unable to resist, and for reasons I refused to think about, I pushed up and walked over to the bed.
My fists curled and released several times as he looked up at me through hooded eyes.
Unable to help myself, and hating my lack of control, I raked my eyes over his stretched out length, inhaling his deep musky scent.
Fuck, he smelled good. My attention lingered over the erect hardness that strained against the zipper of his trousers.
It took everything in me not to make use of that erection.
I frowned. He had no idea what was happening.
I hadn’t warned him. What would have been the point?
I wasn’t letting anyone else near enough to feed him, and, until I’d held him around his neck, and he’d fired up my desire by challenging me, I’d fully intended to let him suffer the lust side of his transition, accepting that if he went insane from it, I’d end him.
It had been a moment of weakness-my weakness, that had led us here.
I’d given him my blood. He couldn’t scent it or see it, but he carried my mark.
He was mine now. He belonged to my house, and, as such, was mine to protect, punish as I saw fit, or even leave to die.
It wasn’t the vampire who delivered the bite who was the victim’s Maker; it was the one who fed them enough blood to save their life.
It was ingesting the blood of a vampire that turned a human, or, in this case, a shifter, into a vampire.
By mixing vampire blood with the victim’s, it prevented death.
The virus had already been in Shane’s system when I saved him.
I shook my head. I had to stop using his name.
He was just a fledgling to me, a tool to use in my war against the Mades.
I was his Master, and he would soon learn what it meant to be a part of my dark world.
If he survived this, he would be immortal, not just long-lived, and the morals of his previous existence would no longer dictate his actions—only my orders would.
Unlike in fables and folklore, vampires weren’t dead creatures.
They had beating hearts, albeit very slow ones, and needed far less oxygen to survive than humans or even other supernaturals.
Garlic didn’t make a damned bit of difference to an ancient Original vampire, though younger ones and Mades could be poisoned by it.
Stakes through the heart could indeed kill us, just like they’d kill any other creature.
Sunlight didn’t affect an old Original in any way, though the younger they were, the less they could stand the burn of the sun’s rays.
We weren’t the creatures of legend that holy water and crosses could harm, or who were prevented from entering consecrated ground.
No, a vampire’s most dangerous enemy was silver, just as it was with many supernaturals; only the fae weren’t affected, their poison being iron.
“Please,” mumbled the fledgling, reaching for my wrist. I kept it from him, enjoying the rush of power and need that pulsed through my lower belly into my cock.