Chapter 14 #2
He beams at me once only the two of us remain standing here.
“Good luck,” I say before I toss the keys to his shackles out into the brush and walk away.
Yorick gasps, like he’s even remotely surprised that the man he stole from would refuse to aid him. I smile, pleased it’ll take him a while to find the keys.
“You’re so evil. I kind of love it,” he calls after me as I hear him shuffle toward the brush.
The sun is close to rising so I head off, deciding that if he’s still there come night, I might release him, though it’s what he deserves for fucking with me.
Thrilled by the peaceful silence, I return to the empty hunting cabin and enter the one room with no windows—I’d covered the others just in case—then shut the door, prepared to sleep soundly…
Or so I thought.
“This place is bit dusty. I feel like I can’t breathe,” Yorick announces as he barges into the cabin. “Where should your new servant sleep?”
My eyes snap open, convinced this is a nightmare.
“Helllllo? You still sleeping?”
Irritation gets me out of bed and up to my feet to yank open the door and grab him by the throat. “I will pop your useless head off your body.”
“Well, that’s no fun,” he says as I notice he’s adorned with necklaces and rings.
He’s also dressed significantly nicer than the rags I’d last seen him in, but they do little to hide the wounds on his wrists or that his feet are raw and bloody.
And when he turns a little in my grasp, I can see the way the cloth sticks to the welts on his back.
He pats my hand, pushes me off, and then plops down at the table and begins digging into some dried deer meat he pulls out of a rather fancy satchel that I’m sure he didn’t have on him earlier.
I don’t dare venture out any farther. Even though I’d covered the windows, the fact remains that a single misstep could lead to my death… but does he know that? He knows I’m a vampire, but he hasn’t clarified how much he knows about vampires.
“My name’s Yorick, but you can rename me if you want. What’s your name?”
“Get out.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Get Out.”
I’ve surely killed men for less, right? If I just… eliminate him here, I will never have to worry about running across him again. No, I’ll never get my money back that he stole, but is it really worth that much? The jewels he wears probably cost more than what was in my coin purse.
“What would you like your new servant to do? I brought you a horse and even procured you a coach.”
I stare at him in disbelief before deciding that if he remains silent, it wouldn’t be all that bad to have a servant. “I will allow you to live for as long as you are quiet.”
“That’s going to be tough, but I’ll try my hand at it,” he says as I watch him go right into the room I’d left and flop down on my bed.
“Get out of my bed. Find somewhere else to sleep.”
“But this is the only place with a blanket.”
“Yes. My blanket.”
“How stingy! Why is my new master so stingy? I thought you’d be a gracious master who would always put his servants first.”
“You do realize I could eat you, right? I’m quite close to doing so at this very second.”
“I doubt I’d taste good. And then I think you’d feel really guilty and have to live with that guilt for the rest of your life. I just don’t think guilt would look good on your handsome face.”
I grab his leg and drag him off the bed, tossing him onto the cold hard floor before lying back down.
He crawls back to me. “Do vampires even feel the cold? You surely don’t need this blanket. I’ve been forced to sleep in the cold for weeks, and all I’ve ever wanted is a—”
“The only way I would give you this blanket is if I was wrapping your dead body into it to toss out.”
“So feisty all the time.”
Yorick finally falls silent, just lying on the wooden floor while desperately staring at me. I think the young man believes I have a heart in here somewhere that will make me hand over the blanket out of mere guilt. Instead, I put my hand on his face and try to shove him back out the door.
He’s annoyingly resilient and just gives up on the floor right there.
I try to go back to sleep, but I’m left in a half-awake state because my trust in this human is well into the negatives. But my belongings are on me, and there’s no way he’s going to try his hand at—
I snap awake when he tries to scurry under the blanket I’m using. I grab him by the throat, digging my nails into his skin.
“What are you doing?” I snarl at the weak creature.
“I’m cold and you look so warm. I thought that if you didn’t want to give me the blanket, you would surely have it in your heart to share.”
“You thought wrong.”
Yorick sighs and lies still in defeat. He even starts shivering, but I’m well aware it’s all a show to cause me more irritation.
When night comes, I find him cuddling the tail end of the blanket. At some point, my half-asleep mind must have believed that it would be fine to treat him like a dog and allow him to curl up at my feet.
I get up, inadvertently kicking him as I do so, and decide I’ll leave him here, but the moment I’m on my feet, his hand wraps around my ankle.
“I am here to do your bidding,” he says. “Do you need help dressing?”
“Does it look like I need help dressing? You’re the one still wallowing on the ground.”
“You could carry me. I’ll be your bride.”
I ignore the young man, and he eventually gets up and staggers out to harness the horse he stole from the slavers. But where the hell did he get the coach?
He whistles a tune while he secures the harness and attaches the mare to the coach before waving me in. “Off we go, Your Majesty. I don’t actually know where we’re going, but you may whisper it in my ear.”
Am I really going to be able to handle this?
I slide into the coach, tell him where we’re heading, and pull out a book. From this distance, he has to shout to be heard, so it ends up rather peaceful as we make the final leg to my home.
The instant he sees it, he pops his head through a window into the coach, his eyes wide.
“This place is amazing,” he says before he jumps out of the driver’s seat and just leaves me and the horse behind.
I sigh and get out, tying the horse to the post outside before walking over to where Yorick is gaping at my home.
“You have this much money and wouldn’t even share your blanket?” he asks.
I grab him by the hair and jerk his head back. “I want you to understand that you are not a servant. I own you until you work enough to pay back all of the money you stole. You will do whatever menial task I put you to. Do you understand?”