Chapter 18 | Vallan
Vallan
“Tell me about this . . . Loreblood,” Master Barnabac orders from his sturdy chair, waving a hand loosely in the air around his face.
The overlord has been calling me more often lately, invading my mind with his incessant words. Belittling me, calling me unworthy of the Craxon crest and the ancient blood that runs through my veins thanks to him.
This stocky vampire lord—a nobleblood by all accounts, though he prefers the life of a soldier—took everything from me. With no children of his own, he created a legion blessed by the Damned, and continues to conscript champions into his flock with every soul he turns.
I have thirty-five “brothers” and “sisters” at last count.
Could be more these days, I don’t know. All of us are Barnabac’s bloody kin, his Red Spawn, though I don’t know my “kin” well.
I haven’t even bothered to learn some of their names.
On my way into the Red Butcher’s fortress, three of them training in the courtyard sneered at me, spitting on the ground as I passed.
I am not beloved here because I hardly show my face. I don’t worship the ground Master Barnabac walks on, unlike most the others, which hasn’t gained me many allies in the Military Ward. I’m too busy scheming with Skartovius behind everyone’s back.
Yet when Barnabac’s call pulls my mind, I am obliged to answer.
I hate the control he has over me. There’s nothing I can do to defend myself from it, short of draining all of Sephania’s blood. Perhaps then, with only Loreblood pumping through me, my connection with my tyrannical master would be severed completely, at last.
I pray to the Damned for the day.
Barnabac scowls at me from his chair. “Speak, my son. You’ve been quiet for too long. I don’t like when you use your brain. It’s unbecoming of a soldier.”
From my chair, sitting across from him in the sparse tower room, I say, “Overlady Alacine is after the blood because it is a great weapon, Master.”
He quirks a bushy brow, pulling at the sagging skin of his neck. “The Mistress of Webs wants this girl for her own, does she?”
I nod, my beard brushing my chest. I’ve piqued his interest. Even though the Five Ministers are allegedly allies, no vampire is ever an ally for long.
“What kind of weapon, my son? How can you verify the veracity of the Loreblood’s potency?”
“Because I have tasted it, Master. It . . . awoke powers inside me.”
He leans forward, fully absorbed. “Such as?”
“My bloodrage became stronger, more virile.” I spill Sephania’s secrets like they’re common news. “My urges abated some, after meeting her.”
Barnabac lets out a snort of a laugh. “You always were one of my more lustful broods. What else?”
“That . . . is all,” I say, clearing my throat.
The overlord stands from his chair and stamps toward me.
His red-veined armor clanks as he walks, and once he stands over me he frowns.
When his eyes squint, studying my face for signs of deceit, pressure builds behind my eyes.
The pressure becomes agonizing, making me clench my teeth until the force of his compulsion has me sure my teeth will break if my mind doesn’t first.
“Don’t lie to me, Vallan Stellos,” he snarls. The pale affect of his face hardens, green veins pulsing on his neck through his alabaster skin. “I have other ways of making you talk.”
The pressure loosens and I sag in the chair, breathing heavily.
Blinking up at my master, I croak, “I can sense when Sephania Lock is in danger, with appalling accuracy. It’s a curse, Master, not a blessing.
I wish for it to go away. The bloodsight haunts me, makes me jittery when I was stoic and assured before. ”
Barnabac tilts his head slightly, brushing a musing palm over his beard braid. “My poor boy. Thieved of your confidence, forced to care for this witch, are you?”
“Yes, Master.”
He nods and reaches out to run a hand through my mop of straggly hair. The Red Butcher surprises me with the tenderness of his touch, bringing his knuckles down my cheek in a light caress. “Do you recall your life before me, Vallan?” Something menacing colors his eyes.
“That was a long time ago, Master Barnabac.” I want to pull away from his lurid touch, but I can’t. His voice has gone softer, raspy, choked with something I don’t want to think about.
“That’s not an answer.”
“No, sire. I don’t remember.”
His shoulders stiffen when he nods, and then he loosens his body. I’m tempted to squirm where I sit, his fingers moving down to my beard, but I don’t. I force my gaze to meet his, craning my neck.
“I think it’s high time you remember, boy.” Abruptly, Barnabac seizes my beard. His voice becomes a growl, losing its softness in an instant. He wrenches my neck further back, pulling up on my beard.
My hands bunch into fists at my sides. The pressure of his call forces them down—forces me to obey.
With his free hand, Barnabac reaches down past the iron faulds of his armor, disappearing into the flap of his waistcoat. He comes out holding his thick cock, which I recall much more keenly than I do my past life.
I don’t react when Barnabac shoves his cock against my face, pressing hard against my lips.
“Open,” he orders.
Fighting down the bile from the smell of him, I do as I’m told. My master spears past my parted lips and grows larger in my mouth. He holds my beard and head steady until he’s fed himself inside my maw.
“Look at me,” he demands, and I do, my eyes leaking as he begins to thrust his hips, pushing his cock deeper into my throat.
I don’t gag, I don’t cough, and I don’t react.
I simply stare through blurry red eyes into his, doing as commanded, watching his face contort as he bucks his hips.
My mind drifts off—as it often does when Barnabac Craxon takes what he wants from me.
The vexing rustling and creaking of his armor signals me back to the present.
“You gifted me a silver sword after years of absence. Did you forget I use an axe?” At the word “axe,” he slams his cock deep into my gullet and I finally let out a cough as he fills me. “Or was the sword meant as a purposeful insult, hmm?”
He laughs at my despair and the sound ripped from the bowels of my lungs. His thick hand releases my beard so he can hold my head at both sides and violate me more efficiently. My chair begins to creak in rhythm with his armor.
Grunting, Master Barnabac releases himself down my throat, less than five minutes after beginning. His green veins protrude along his neck and temple. He pulls back, his essence dripping from my mouth, and stuffs himself away with a sigh.
“Swallow, boy,” he demands, and I do. Then he frowns and takes a seat across from me again, flapping an annoyed hand. “There was a time you were much more fervent when I took you.”
“I don’t remember such a time, sire.” My voice is thick now, the salty scent and taste of him lingering on my tongue like an illness I can’t wash off. I’ve managed to keep my rage down, but only just.
There’s no point summoning my anger in my master’s presence. I could do nothing with it against Master Barnabac, and he knows that.
The overlord leans back in his chair with another heavy sigh, shaking his head as he stares at me. There’s a note of pity in his eyes now, the suspicious bent to his gaze vanishing as he reads my stoicism. “No, I don’t suppose you do remember, my son. It’s why I’ve always enjoyed you.”
One reason of many, I think.
“You will keep me apprised of Overlady Mortis’ plans involving this Sephania Lock, this Hellwhore.”
When he calls my silverblood that ugly title, it takes everything not to betray a hint of rage, the pulsing vein near my forehead.
I can’t let him know how much she truly means to me or he will deign to take her from me.
And if that were to happen, I would not know what to do with myself.
Perhaps I would march into the sunlight.
“Do you understand?” he growls, flaring his nostrils. “You will come to me on a weekly basis. Satisfy me. And when I’ve whipped you into shape, you will fight by my side if it comes to that.”
“You plan to battle Overlady Mortis, my lord?”
He waves a hand. “My plans are of no concern to you.”
“Yes, Master.” I stand. I can still taste him but I try not to think of it. “Am I dismissed, my lord?”
“For now.”
I leave the room feeling disgusted, used, and weak. One bright spot: I was not forced to tell him of Skar’s planned “meeting” between him and Sephania. The phantom meeting in two weeks’ time . . . that will never happen.
I may be a traitor to my allies, but I don’t have to answer questions Master Barnabac doesn’t ask.
After descending the narrow, spiraling stairs to the courtyard, I walk out into the muddy bailey and eye the trio of vampire brothers smacking their swords around.
The three spawn of Barnabac turn to me as one, feeling my eyes when I stop ten feet from them. They advance, one of them growling, “What are you looking at, swamp-spawn? Come to dine on Master’s cum and leave with your tail between your legs, you big brute?”
Big brute, I think. One of Sephania’s pet names for me. An endearing title . . . before it was spoken by this creature.
I tilt my head, staying silent. The man is tall, like all of Barnabac’s Red Spawn, men and women alike. Barnabac has a type. This one is lankier than me, chiseled with decades of muscular upkeep.
The vampire next to him, a bearded brother of mine, crows with a laugh. “Silent as ever, the fucking dunce.”
The first vampire turns to his brother and smiles deviously, opening his jaw—
For my fist to crash into a split second later. My bloodrage bubbles with a swiftness I’m unused to, my anger at what was just done to me itching through my veins.
My meaty first shatters bones and sends teeth flying from my brother’s face, yet he’s a strong-born vampire and only staggers.
His two brethren lunge at me fast as he stumbles to the side. The first man on my left grabs my arm before I can lower it. The man on the right snags my other bicep and holds me back.
I careen forward, headbutting the man on the left, flexing and breaking out of the hold of the rightmost vampire, and send a knee into his balls.
Vampire or human, all men have a similar weakness to be exploited. He doubles over, face sinking. Blood spurts from the man’s nose on the left. The one whose teeth I just showered across the mud comes at me, drawing his sword.
I sidestep, too slow, and he pierces through my tunic, into my gut. Growling, I step forward into the blade, letting two inches of it sink deeper inside me—getting close enough so I can wrap my hand around the muscled column of his neck.
His eyes widen, sword dropping from his hand and out of my body so he can clutch all ten fingers to his throat against my single hand.
My bloodrage cuts off any notion of pain. His brothers beat on me from both sides. The one on the left shouts, “Kamlirn!” in a nasally voice.
My fingers dig into his flesh. Crush the cartilage. Turn his face from a pale sheen of white into a purple, bruised eggplant. Veins protrude from his face, ready to pop.
Kamlirn’s right eye goes from red to black—
And pops out of its socket from the incredible force of my chokehold. He wheezes, unable to breathe and losing consciousness.
The brothers on my left and right draw their swords with a shout.
Other soldiers and guards show themselves in the window of the gatehouse, drawing bows and arrows.
I spot a few of my Red Spawn sisters rounding the corner of the keep, coming from the stables.
They hiss at the sight of me lifting Kamlirn off his feet. They come running.
Kamlirn’s brothers—my brothers, I suppose—reel their weapons back to skewer me.
“Hold!” shouts a voice from the balcony of the central keep.
Everyone’s eyes lift to the night sky to see Barnabac Craxon leaning over a rail, watching the goings-on.
Everyone looks at our master . . . except me.
I keep my eyes on Kamlirn, watching until I crush his neck and it shatters like thin bark in my iron grip.
I drop the vampire into an unmoving heap at my feet.
“He killed Kamlirn, Master!” shouts the man whose nose I broke. He sounds ridiculous, like he’s trying to talk underwater from all the blood bubbling into his nasal cavity.
Barnabac sighs loud enough for us to hear thirty feet below him. “Your brother isn’t dead, you dolt. He’s a fucking vampire. He’ll recover.”
“His eye!” the man whines, nudging his sword down to the eyeball hanging from Kamlirn’s socket, down toward his nose.
“‘Spose that won’t heal,” the overlord says, sounding disappointed. “What are my sons and daughters if not soldiers of the Red Butcher? You let a single man harm your brother in such a way? It will take weeks for the bones and cartilage in his neck to heal!”
“I . . .” The vampire hangs his head. Anger is there, under the ridge of his brow, staring up at me.
I say nothing and start to walk away. My bloodrage pumps in my veins at a lesser level. I’ve gotten the violence out of me, yet I’ll need more if I stay here any longer.
I hear the rasp of at least three swords behind me, the croaking of bowstrings snapping back from above me on the ramparts.
“Let him go,” Barnabac orders. “We do not punish the strongest among us, children. Even if they destroy one of our own, it only shows their prowess—prowess you should have as well, fucking cretins!”
The voices of my “brothers” and “sisters,” half a dozen of my master’s legendary legion, voice their complaint in unison, until he silences them with an angry shout.
“If Kamlirn dies, he deserves it,” Barnabac says as I walk under the raised portcullis and make my way into Olhav. I touch a hand to my bloody side and wince, hearing him yell one last thing to his spawn before I’m out of earshot. “Besides, my children . . . I can always make more of you.”