Lazarus
She’s… Angry.
It’s… Distracting. Unnerving. Catastrophic.
I was sure that she would find happiness here with me instead of Soren. But she smells of rancid anger that bleeds through the windowed partition and wafts to me.
That room is air-locked. There’s no way her anger is that great she is breaking through the air lock.
I attempt to go back to my work brushing a small bit of debris off a glyph because I’m not quite convinced it belongs there when I feel her anger hit me all over again and my brush slips from my fingertips.
It’s distracting. And it’s only been an hour.
Once again I catch her, not looking at me, no she’s glaring at me.
For the first time in a long, long time, I feel… I feel like I’ve done something wrong. But I don’t make mistakes. Ever.
What mistake did I make with Calliope Cantemir?
I grip the brush in my hand again but it’s pointless. I can’t work. I simply cannot work with her anger.
“Fuck.” I set my tools down and take a deep breath. My heart does this odd little twitch, which I’m sure Soren and Vex will give me a hard time over later. It does it a lot around Calliope.
Giving in to temptation, her, I leave the isolation room and enter the observation room. She’s sitting in the chair, the stack of papers blank, eating a—
“Where did you find a Snickers?” She’s going to get chocolate over everything. I cannot have chocolate over everything. I don’t like sticky.
It’s… triggering.
Her toes do a little wiggle, and I only know because they’re propped on the table beside the stack of papers she had an hour to work on. And chose a Snickers to eat.
“Locker.” She smacks her lips and glares at me. “You can find a lot of things in those lockers.” She blinks at me innocently.
She is far from innocent.
Soren and I know in vivid detail what she and Vex did this morning.
So no she is not innocent.
But she’s playing at it so well that she catches me off guard. She might be the bride from hell. And yet, the thought of pitching her to another coven may very well drive me into a rage.
No, she is ours. But she pushes every one of my buttons. And Vex wants me to… grovel.
“And the paperwork?” I swallow my rage because if I allow it to reign, I’ll have two very irritated coven members. And Soren already believes I cannot be trusted with her. Which is ridiculous. Vex is the fledgling.
“Right there.” She points at it with the stub of her candy bar.
“Did you fill it out?”
“No.” She gently shakes her head and wiggles her pink-tipped toes.
I take one long inhale and exhale through my mouth. “Why.”
“That wasn’t a question.” She squints at me. “See normal people phrase why like, why?” She dips her head and raises a brow. It’s very condescending. “See, you hear the difference.”
“Why?” I ask again.
“Yeah, like that.”
“Ms.” I cut her off from continuing. “Cantemir.”
“Yes, Mr. Dagon.”
It’s when she does this that my body does this weird thing where it fills with rage and desire. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt. A part of me wants to bend her over my knee and spank her ass until she sees reason.
And another part? The darker one I keep on a tight leash.
Oh it wants to continue that verbal sparring just to see how far I can push her anger until it breaks. And then spank her.
Both end in me spanking her and I cannot.
I close my eyes. Ten, nine, eight…
“Is that your constipated face?”
“Did I do something to anger you, Ms. Cantemir?”
“Yes.”
When she doesn’t elaborate I give in. I never give in. “What may that be?”
“Paperwork?” she scoffs. “You could have had me do that over lunch. Maybe at home. On the drive back where one of your minions drives me home. But no. You Mr. Dagon have me filling out paperwork while I watch you do my job.” She shoves the last of her candy in her mouth.
Probably to keep her from talking anymore. I can’t place which it is.
I well and truly don’t understand her anger. “I’ve given you everything you wanted.”
She tilts her pretty little head, her hair swings over one shoulder. Then her bare feet drop to the floor. Then the little spitfire stands before me all spite and rage and impossibly attractive.
“You gave me a cage with a view.” Then she walks past me, leaving the paperwork.
“Where are you going?” I grab the paperwork and follow her.
“To have lunch with Soren.” She tosses her candy bar wrapper in the trash can.
“Stop.”
She doesn’t stop at all. Not until she reaches the lockers and tosses her gown in the trash.
“Calliope.”
“Lazarus.”
“Will you look at me when I’m talking to you.”
“Do you deserve it?”
I… don’t actually. “You’re angry I’m making you fill out paperwork while watching me work.”
She claps slowly and finally turns to me. “Why give me the NDA, then show me your illegal activities.” She runs her tongue over her teeth as her anger flares again. “I mean isn’t that what the NDA is for. Why enforce the paperwork.”
“It’s just paperwork.”
“Fucking men.” She pushes past me.
Something inside of me snaps at her walking away. I don’t know why I do it. And I damn well know it’ll keep me up all fucking night long.
I grab her. I’m not proud of it. But the thought of her walking away from me right now right this minute while angry wakes something hot and desperate inside of me.
I don’t slam her. I move her. From one space to another, against the wall. One hand at the back of her head, the other at her throat.
We’re both surprised. Neither of us moves.
I look for something in those hidden depths of hers. Something buried so deep inside of her she doesn’t even know it’s there. That connection, that otherness that all brides have. The one that looks at a predator and screams into the void, I want to play with the cursed ones.
I find it in the smallest of twitches of her lips. In the way she exhales just a fraction, her body releases the tension and the anger finally fucking fades from this room.
This is why brides are dangerous. Human women? They feel who we are under the skin. Brides? Feel that energy and want more of it.
“Paperwork you may finish at home.” I accidentally look at her lips. Lips that Vex didn’t kiss. I’m still not sure how. Likely because he’s an unhinged fledgling with control issues that are somehow controlled.
“I appreciate that,” she says in that formal voice of hers.
Still, neither of us moves. It’s the same play Vex used earlier. The one where he needed to know how she’d react to his proximity. Whether his touch would excite her.
I warned him not to do it. He did it anyway.
My concerns were justified, he cannot bite her. Not yet at least. We just found her and I wanted to take this slow. Do it the right way. Ease her into things.
“After lunch would you like to work on transcriptions?” There, that should please her.
“No.”
“What do you mean no?” I’ve given my bride what she wants. What does she mean, no?
“No,” she says again with more sass.
I step closer, as though the string between us pulls a fraction tighter. “Why?”
“I don’t want to work with you.” She juts her chin up a fraction higher.
I need to salvage this. The tablet I want her to translate was the only plan I came up with for her to learn about us.
It explains what a bride is.
Did I translate the tablet decades ago? Yes. But if she reads it as history, as a known thing then maybe she will digest the information easier.
It was my grand plan. Give her the tablet, have her transcribe it, learn about our race, learn who she is to me and then…
Fall into my arms.
It sounds grandiose when I roll it back in my head like that.
No wonder Soren laughed at me when I pitched it to him. He said, and I quote, “Let me know how that goes.” Then he patted me on the back.
It is not going well.
“Are you finished here?” I swear she sees through me.
This is going horribly wrong. I don’t want to let go. I don’t want her to leave me.
“Yes.” I take a step back and away from her and watch as she silently just walks out of the room. Likely to have lunch with Soren.
Fucking Soren.
I call him immediately.
“Blew up in your face, didn’t it?” He’s chewing on the other line. He’s always chewing, something. Always eating something. He can’t seem to help himself, when the world produces something new and tasty he eats it for a solid month straight.
He doesn’t even need to eat. He enjoys it.
I’m not so sure I was born with the ability. There were always so many, many other ways to enjoy life.
“Yes.” I rip off my gown and stuff it into the trash can. “Then she declined to do the paperwork.”
He lets out a singular bark of laughter.
“You’re helpful.”
“Listen, something’s come up.” He smacks his gums.
If it weren’t the middle of the day and the sun wasn’t up, I’d phase to his office. Just like Vex who shouldn’t be able to phase. It’s a born trait and I’ll eventually need to come clean about it. As it is it’s nearly noon and there are people here.
Hundreds of people.
“Where are you?” I enter the hall, the slight buzzing of the fluorescent lights above grating on my nerves.
“Down the hall.”
“On which floor.” I sniff the air and close my eyes. With a tilt of my head I follow the traces of Callie and the way she went. It’s like seeing with your eyes closed.
She glows golden.
There are a few ways a vampire in a coven can find a bride. This is one of them. I have only ever seen one other bride before and that was Soren’s Cassandra. Just like this. Golden behind the eyes.
Our sun.
“Fourth floor.” He covers the receiver this time as I head for the elevators. He mumbles, “Yeah he’s coming up go ahead and have a seat.”
“Who,” I demand.
He ignores me as I press the button to the elevator. Calliope came this way as well. Her finger pressing the button so fucking delicately. Then falling to her side. Even just all golden with barely any details, she’s beautiful.
And that’s why I need to figure her out. Because she is beautiful in a way that holds sadness. A broken piece of her soul on display for all as a warning sign.
A beautiful, broken, twisted doll.
I don’t want to fix her, and that’s what leaves me reeling as I step into the elevator.