Chapter 31 | Lukain
Lukain
I cringe at the sound of the man’s screams echoing through the dingy holding cell.
Glintov, a weaselly man from Lord Ashfen’s court, has seen better days. He’s strung up in the room with his arms above his head, manacles rattling against his wrists as he writhes in pain.
My mother Alacine brought me here, to one of her many dungeons, presumably so she could show me what happens when someone fails her. I know I’m not at the same risk of sharing Glintov’s grim fate because I’m her son, and yet, the chances of her exacting vengeance upon me is never zero.
My dark-haired broodmother slides a silver tipped dagger against Glintov’s concave torso, gently rubbing the blade over his protruding ribcage. I have no idea where she obtained such a dangerous weapon. I doubt it’s the only one she possesses.
Shirtless, he’s gaunt, and clearly hasn’t fed in days, drawing out a maddened, ravenous hunger inside the vampire. One simple nick of his rubbery flesh will ignite him in fire from the silver blade.
But she doesn’t want that. Alacine Mortis wants Glintov to suffer for his failure. So she wrenches agonizing cries from him by merely touching the silver against his exposed skin.
Blisters form and pop wherever the blade touches, oozing out pus and blackened blood. “P-Please, Overlady, have mercy! I didn’t know!”
“You didn’t know your secrets were unsafe?
You didn’t know you were followed?” Alacine purrs to herself, her back to me as I stand in the doorway of the cell.
It takes everything inside me not to turn and leave the room, yet she hasn’t dismissed me to leave.
So I stay unmoving, watching and wincing.
I am only marginally bloodbonded to Alacine Mortis. Being her son, I was born half-vampire, half-man, and the mental and physical hold she has over me is tenuous at best. But she is still my mother, and I know how dangerous she is. I do what I’m told when in her vile presence.
I’m slightly ashamed at the opportunities Alacine has given me over the years.
Even when I was hidden away from the Five Ministries as a youngling, she saw that I wanted for nothing.
I was able to build a life in the Nuhavian underground, growing to be a formidable leader of a ragtag group of fighting humans.
My grimmers, my Grimsons. I was proud of what I accomplished with my gang, even if many of my favorite members died or were taken as broodstock while seeking their freedom.
When Skartovius Ashfen stuck me with the silver saber—smoking my body rather than blazing it, because of my weaker vampiric blood—it was Alacine who brought me back from the brink of death.
She stole me away into the night when Skar and his court believed I was dead, vanishing into the shadows as only the Spymistress could.
I was given a new chance at life as Overseer Verant in Sutlis Spire, where I lorded over some of the most dangerous prisoners of Olhav. Lukain Pierken was dead, and with my new identity I was safe from retribution from the Five Ministries.
Until Sephania Lock arrived and fucked everything up for me. I wish I could hate her. Even now, I’m too drawn to her to think of her with any malice. In fact, part of me is glad she escaped Sutlis Spire, against all odds. It’s given me new opportunities to see her and try to win her over.
It’s certainly an uphill climb, since we are on opposing sides of this conflict in Olhav. I hate her master Skartovius with every fiber of my being. All I can do is try to turn her against him; make her see the truth.
“Tell me who you spilled your skeletons to, dear Glintov,” Alacine says in her raspy voice, drawing me back to the grisly present.
The poor bastard is already missing all the fingers of his left hand.
The shackles hanging from the ceiling are merely holding a stump in the air.
I would like to draw my sword and plunge it through his dead heart, but I know Mother will never allow that.
Not until she sucks every bit of information out of him that she can.
“I-I already told you, Mistress . . . I d-don’t know,” Glintov croaks. “I swear I was silent and c-cautious as ever after leaving Lord Ashfen’s court to t-tell you of the impending meeting b-b-between Sephania Lock and Overlord B-Barnabac.”
“Overlord B-B-Barnabac,” Alacine teases before chuckling and drawing her silver dagger lightly against his chest, leaving puffy pink scars in its wake.
Her cruelty makes me frown. In a world of wickedness and evil, how is it I managed to have the vilest of them all as a mother? “Have you not gleaned enough from the poor wretch, Mother?” I ask. “Perhaps it’s time to—”
“You do not speak,” she rasps over her shoulder, her red eyes shimmering. “Your time will come shortly, little sapling.”
I recoil, unaware she saw me in the same light as this double-edged traitor. Why is she angry at me? All I did was fight on her behalf during the ambush at Trithea Plaza!
A cold chill inches up my spine. Perhaps she didn’t simply bring me here to watch the unpleasant festivities . . . but brought me here to partake. The thought frightens me and makes my body go taut.
Glintov has been Alacine’s spy in Skartovius’ court for years. Something went awry over the past few weeks—or longer, perhaps—and it’s obvious what happened.
Fearing retribution, I say as much despite the danger.
“Glintov clearly was discovered as a spy and given false information to relay to you, Mother. Thus, the ambush at Trithea Plaza, where we were stationed to ambush Sephania’s traveling entourage.
We were outsmarted. There. Is that what you need to hear? ”
With a frustrated growl, Alacine throws down her silver dagger with a clang and lifts her shoulders. “You take all the fun out of it!”
“This is fun for no one but you, Mother.”
“Exactly.” She spins on me, then thinks better of it and draws a separate dagger from the folds of her black robe. This one is rusted, tinged copper and green, and it makes my nose wrinkle at the sight of it. “Fine,” she complains, and then turns to Glintov.
I look away as Alacine begins stabbing into the vampire over and over again, the sounds of wet flesh and fresh blood spilling onto the cold stone floor. Glintov doesn’t howl at his treatment this time—he simply grunts and sobs as my mother rapidly puts twenty new holes in his torso.
At the end of it, she cracks his chest cavity open with the force of her angry strikes, howling, “Perhaps you’ve learned your lesson now, Glintov!”
Her final plunge spears through Glintov’s heart, with her hand wrist-deep in a cavernous hole in the center of his chest.
Glintov’s eyes light up briefly, a look of acceptance and, dare I say, relief on his face, and then his body sags as he dies. His coagulated blood oozes onto the floor for a few seconds, and he stops twitching.
Now covered up to her elbows in blood, Mother turns to me. “It’s your turn.”
I backpedal out of the doorway of the cell. “What?” I breathe. “What is my punishment? What have I done?”
“Before meeting his justified end, Glintov told me of a separate story, sapling. A bathhouse, where he spied you meeting in secret with the thorn in my ass, this girl Sephania.” She advances a step, shaking the red-drenched rusty dagger at me.
“Yet you did not bring her to me, as ordered. You left her safe and hale.”
I pump my hands. Fear ripples through every inch of me as the shorter, elder vampiress advances on me into the hallway. “Glintov lies. You can’t trust a word he says.”
“So you did not meet with Sephania Lock?”
“No.” I try to force confidence in my lie, though I know it fails. Even with our weak bloodbond, there’s still a familial bond there. She can read my face just as easily as she can read my mind.
Alacine smiles. “You’re a good liar, son.
I’ve taught you well.” Nodding to herself, she tosses the rusty dagger onto the floor next to the silver one.
“However, you must be disciplined for your misjudged dalliance. I don’t know what you see in the foolish girl.
Perhaps this will make you understand: If you take something from me, I take something from you. Follow me.”
Alacine glides through the hallway and I’m forced to obey. My heart is in my neck and my stomach is in my boots. I’m ready for her to spin around with a new dagger to try and slash me across the throat, so I keep a fair distance.
We come to a new prison cell, this one larger and more ostentatious, with various torture instruments and devices set along the sides of the carved stone walls.
A slight figure, hooded, is at the back of the dungeon in a similar state as Glintov: drooping but standing, arms raised and shackled from the ceiling; legs spread wide, manacled at the base. This figure is much smaller, skinnier, racked to an X-shaped post, ready to be tortured.
My brow furrows, wondering who it could be.
With great flourish, Alacine yanks the hood off the person’s head to reveal them.
I gasp at the short, yellow-haired figure. Memories of the Firehold and Grimsons come roaring back to me—painful, intense memories of losing the only people I’ve ever cared about.
“You recognize her, I see,” Alacine mutters.
The interfolk girl is dressed in tatters.
My mother glances down at the obvious mound between her legs and rips the rest of her cloth scraps from her waist to reveal an oversized cock flopping heavily between those narrow, parted thighs. “Or should I say him, perhaps?”
“Mother!” I cut in at the sight of her cruelty. The interfolk girl I once knew from the Firehold is somehow half my size yet likely bigger than me at the same time. I would be impressed if the situation wasn’t so dismaying.
Palacia lifts her head, lolling and quite lost on a rubbery neck. She looks as though she’s been drugged, perhaps pumped full of redcloud, and doesn’t even realize my mother has so callously and embarrassingly disrobed.
Alacine rubs a hand over Palacia’s endowment and smiles to herself when the large pink cock twitches. “Before I flay her skin from her body, you will watch as I take something from you, as punishment for failing me, sapling.”
“I will do no such thing,” I eke out. “Don’t do this, Mother.
” I’m disgusted and wish to turn away, but I simply can’t.
My heart hurts for this girl, at the mercy of my wicked kin, without any respite in sight.
If I could, I’d help her. I know I can’t—I’m weak when it comes to opposing Alacine Mortis.
My mother slips her black robe and bares pale, bony shoulder blades.
I want to turn away, to retreat. “What will this teach me, Mother? I don’t understand!” I yell into the room.
“That loss is inevitable, and you will do my bidding or you will lose more!” she shouts.
Then she smiles to herself. “Such enticing things shouldn’t go to waste, either.
” She looks down at the cock thickening and stiffening in her hand from her lazy strokes, rising from Palacia’s bony pelvis without any say-so from the poor lass.
Alacine drops her robe completely in a heap at her feet, revealing her lithe pale frame and all her slight curves and angles from the back.
I shake my head, aghast, and backpedal. “I’ll take no part in this.”
“Then you’d best leave fast,” she answers. Over her shoulder, she smirks. “Don’t go far, little sapling.”
I hurry out of the room and slam the door shut.
Bowing my head in shame, I stand against the far wall and clench my hands into fists at my sides, feeling weak and useless.
The awful, humiliating sounds and moans emanate from the room, softly at first. Palacia’s whimpers join my mother’s ecstatic cries, and I realize she must have become cognizant once my mother roused her lust involuntarily.
It fills me with shame and hate I don’t know what to do with.
It’s true, I once cared for Palacia like I cared for all of my Grimsons and Grimdaughters. She was one of the few interfolk, the transitioned outcasts, whom I gladly accepted in my ranks.
And now this. I’ve failed her . . . and perhaps that is the lesson. By “failing” my mother and not bringing her Sephania when I had the chance, Alacine is pointing out other failures of mine and drawing distinctions to them in disgusting, ruinous ways.
Twenty minutes pass, the dismal silence in the cold hallway contrasted by the loud rape in Alacine’s dungeon.
Finally, the fleshy, heated sounds stop. Alacine yells, “You’d best enter, child.”
I tentatively open the door and poke my head in, expecting the worst—
Wholly unprepared for the true awfulness of it.
Alacine is drawing her robe up as I enter. Palacia sags in the X-frame, her milky white essence spent across the floor in a great pool between her legs. Worst of all, and most alarming, is the blanket of bright red blood spilling down her neck, down her flat chest, as she twitches in her shackles.
I inhale a sharp breath, hurrying in. “Mother, what have you done?!”
Palacia is dying. Alacine drops a dagger onto the floor and waltzes past me to the door. “I figured you’d be hungry, son. You’d best feed before her blood spoils. Then you’ll take care of her and toss her to the wolves.”
My mother leaves me in the room with the dying interfolk girl.
A million things race through me, but only two options I see. Neither of them are to feed on Palacia’s blood, as enticing as it sounds.
It’s my fault Palacia is here. Alacine did not bring the girl because she knows Sephania Lock cares about her, as a strategy to draw her into the Spymistress’ web. No, she brought Palacia because she knows I care about her due to my weak half-human heart.
I rush forward, lifting the girl’s small head on her thin neck. The tear through her tendons and veins is surgical, and she only has seconds left alive.
Rather than finishing her off and “taking care of her” as Alacine demanded, I take care of her in a different way.
I bite my fangs into my gums, resisting the urge to drink her spilling blood.
Then I chew into my wrist, bare it to her pale lips, and force my blood on her.
“Stay with me, lass . . . and fucking drink!”
I’ll deal with the repercussions of keeping Palacia alive later, if my mother cares enough to discover it.
First, I have to make sure she stays alive.