Chapter 9
Kate lingered in the doorway of Sophia’s art studio.
Easels stood at various angles, canvases in different stages of completion, brushes soaking in glass jars filled with turpentine.
The scent of paint and linseed oil filled the air.
Smells that had once meant home to her, but now felt foreign and overwhelming.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said in a quiet voice.
Devon took her hand, their fingers intertwined.
‘You don’t have to paint anything specific.
Just try, see how it feels and get reacquainted with the medium.
’ This was his idea. The training was going well.
She could control her hunger, build mental shields, and even move with the preternatural speed that had once terrified her.
Still, something important felt missing.
Kate walked over to one of the easels, hesitantly and gently ran her fingers over the blank canvas stretched across the frame. Her senses picked up every texture of the fabric, every slight variation in the weave, and the tiny flaws in the gesso primer.
She noticed the faint smell of the wood from the stretcher bars underneath. The flood of information was almost overwhelming and dizzying.
“Everything’s so intense,” she said. “The colors, the textures. It’s like the world’s volume has been turned up.”
“So turn it down,” a voice said from the doorway. Kate turned to see Luc entering the studio with a tray of blood in glass tumblers.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Sophia asked me to bring refreshments.”
“You’re not interrupting,” Kate said, surprised by how glad she was to see him. Of all the vampires in Sophia’s compound, Luc was the one who felt most… normal. He was young by their standards, turned only fifty years ago, and he still retained a humanity that the others had long since shed.
“Actually,” Luc said, setting the tray on a nearby table, “I might be able to help. I faced a similar challenge with the guitar when I was turned. Playing music was… difficult at first.”
Kate looked at him with new interest. “How did you manage it?”
“Trial and error, mostly. But I learned that vampire senses aren’t a curse, they’re just a different set of tools. You have to learn to use them differently.”
Luc moved to a cabinet and pulled out a palette and several tubes of paint. “May I?”
Kate nodded, watching as Luc squeezed small amounts of paint onto the palette. But instead of the usual array of colors, he chose only three: ultramarine blue, burnt umber, and titanium white.
“Start simple,” he said. “Three colors at the most. Let your enhanced vision work for you instead of against you. You’ll see subtleties in these three colors that humans could not possibly perceive.”
Kate picked up a brush and tested its weight in her hand. The delicate wood felt fragile as a dried leaf, but her fingers remembered how to hold it, how to coax art from bristles without snapping the handle.
“What should I paint?” she asked.
“Whatever you see,” Devon said softly. “Whatever calls to you.”
Kate looked around the room, picking up details that would have been invisible to her human eyes. The way shadows fell across the floor in complex patterns, the subtle variations in the white walls. Not pure white at all, but a symphony of grays, blues and barely perceptible yellows.
She began to paint.
At first, her strokes were tentative and uncertain. But as she worked, something inside her began to shift. What had felt like sensory overload started to feel less like chaos and more like… possibility. She could see everything. Every nuance. Every shadow.
“That’s beautiful,” Luc said quietly, and Kate realized she’d been painting for over an hour. On the canvas, an abstract landscape had emerged, not the sunny meadows and bright skies, but something darker and more complex.
Moonlight on water, shadows that held depth and mystery, a world of subtle beauty that existed in the spaces between day and night.
“It’s different,” Kate said, studying her work. “It’s not… me.”
“It’s still you,” Devon said, moving to stand behind her. “It’s just a you that’s learned to see in the dark.”
Kate felt tears prick her eyes. “I thought I’d lost this. I thought Aleksander had taken my art away from me along with everything else.”
“He can’t take what makes you who you are,” Devon said, his hands resting gently on her shoulders.
“He can change the circumstances, alter the tools you have to work with, but he can’t touch the core of who you are. That belongs to you.”
“And to those who love you,” Luc added with a smile. “If you don’t mind me saying so.”
Kate looked at the painting again, seeing it with fresh eyes. It was very different from her human work, darker and more complex, shot through with the discovery of new kinds of light.
But it was still hers, still an expression of something essential that lived inside her, regardless of whether she was a vampire or human.
“I want to paint him,” she said suddenly.
Devon’s hands tightened slightly on her shoulders. “Kate—”
Not to honor him, but to exorcise him.’ Kate turned to face Devon, her eyes—impossibly bright, almost luminous—blazing with determination. ‘I want to paint what he did to me, what he took from me, what he tried to destroy.”
Luc nodded approvingly.
“Art as therapy. It’s an old tradition.”
“Art as warfare,” Kate corrected. “Every brushstroke rejects his power over me. Every color shows that I’m still me, and still capable of creating beauty despite what he did.”
Devon looked at her face and felt a strong sense of pride.
“Then paint him. Paint it all. When you’re finished, we’ll burn the canvas and scatter the ashes.”
Kate felt a smile at the corners of her mouth, the first real smile she had worn since her transformation.
“I’d like that.”
She turned back to the easel, already imagining her next painting.
She began to paint, her strokes confident and purposeful.
On the canvas, dark shapes started to emerge; they weren’t the subtle beauty of her first painting but something rawer and more visceral.
Jagged lines cut across the canvas, making a chaotic under drawing of fury.
She added thick, angry strokes of burnt umber and a deep, violent purple that she had mixed herself, creating a vortex of darkness.
It represented trauma and change, violation and the refusal to be broken.
Devon and Luc watched in fascination as the painting took shape. It was disturbing and beautiful in equal measure, a work that spoke of pain but also of incredible strength.
“He’s going to regret what he did to you,” Luc said quietly over her shoulder.
Kate didn’t look up from her work.
“Yes,” she said, her voice steady and confident. “He is.”
Outside the studio windows, the Paris night called to them with its thousands of lights and countless shadows.
But in this room, a woman was reclaiming her power one brushstroke at a time.
And when she was finished, she would be ready to paint her revenge in blood.
* * *
Kate’s fingers danced lightly along the spines of a few books in Sophia’s elegant library.
She slid one out of its place and traced the elegant script in the ancient book, her brow furrowed.
“It says here that killing one’s maker is the ultimate taboo.
That the bond is sacred, and to break it is to invite madness. ”
“That is the prevailing wisdom,” Sophia mused, not looking up from her own text. “The maker bond is a fundamental part of our existence. To sever it through violence is considered an act of profound self-mutilation.”
“Has it ever happened?” Kate asked, her mind immediately going to Aleksander.
Sophia finally looked up, her gaze sharp and knowing. “You’re thinking of him, aren’t you? You’re wondering how a creature so consumed by hatred and resentment for his ‘vampire mother,’ Elisabeta, could function at all.”
Kate nodded. “He seems to hate her as much as he hates Devon. But the bond…”
“The bond is with the one who turned you,” Sophia explained. “His hatred for Elisabeta is psychological. He was bonded to Radu, the gutter-king who made him.”
“Was?” Kate noticed the use of the past tense.
“Radu is dead. He died about a century after he turned Aleksander.” Sophia leaned back in her chair, looking thoughtful. “Under mysterious circumstances.”
“Meaning?” Kate asked, sensing more to the story.
“Well, Radu was a brute, but he was also a survivor,” Sophia said. “He ruled his part of the underworld for centuries using fear and cleverness. Then one night, he was found in his cellar, turned to ash.”
“And Aleksander?”
“Aleksander was his most powerful progeny, his enforcer. By rights, he should have been the first to call for vengeance. Instead, he was the first to claim what was left of Radu’s meager empire.”
Sophia’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
“He took over Radu’s network, his territories, what little wealth he had.
Including a crumbling castle in the Romanian mountains that had been in Radu’s line for centuries.
The official Council ruling was that Radu was killed by a rival. But there have always been whispers…”
“Whispers about what?”
Sophia looked into Kate’s eyes. “Radu was a cruel maker. He didn’t nurture his children; he mistreated them.
He saw them as tools, weapons to use and discard.
People say Aleksander endured this cruelty for a century, learning everything he could from his harsh master.
He learned how to fight, how to rule through fear, and how to be more ruthless than any of his rivals.
Once he had learned all he could, he applied that knowledge. ”
Kate’s blood ran cold through her veins. “You think he killed his own maker.”
“I think,” Sophia said carefully, “that it is a remarkable coincidence that Radu died just as Aleksander’s own power was beginning to eclipse his.
And that it is even more remarkable that Aleksander, who was subjected to a century of cruelty, was the one who benefited most from his maker’s demise.
The Council could never prove anything, of course.
No one wanted to believe a vampire could do such a thing, but those of us who have watched Aleksander over the centuries… we have our suspicions.”
Sophia leaned forward, looking serious. “I’m telling you this for a reason, Kate.
Don’t underestimate him; he is not just a man filled with resentment.
He may have committed the ultimate sin of our kind to gain power.
He is patient and ruthless. He has learned that the best way to defeat a monster is to become a more cunning one. ”
Kate looked down at the book. The words about the sacred bond now taking on a haunting undertone.
She was battling a killer who had clawed his way to power after destroying his own creator. He didn’t just want to possess her; he wanted to shape her, and leave his mark on her very soul, just as he had rewritten his own by murdering his past.
And he was her maker now.