Angeline grew impatient on the surface. Her blood was part of him, but he
didn’t have the mindless compulsion he knew he was supposed to feel
toward her. So far, so good.
Hadrian ripped through the fabric and tunneled up through the dirt with a
strength and fluidity that surprised him. When he broke the surface
of the ground, and fresh, clean air filled his lungs, he coughed,
overwhelmed by how sharp and loud and crisp everything was. His
senses were so heightened, he wanted to go away and be in a simple
quiet room for a few days, just to get his bearings. But he couldn’t
afford to do that right now; his freedom was on the line.
Angeline had redressed him in his clerics, and he couldn’t decide how he
felt about that. Was she mocking him? Why would she dress him in
this? To rub in his face what she’d so callously taken from him?
What’s that smell?
It was like the Heaven he hadn’t been allowed into,
a smell as pure and clean as the light he’d spent three days in. He
felt crushed suddenly by that thought. The light had been more
brilliant than the sun; it had teased him with something he couldn’t
have. Darkness had been given as his companion instead.
If this works, you can make a choice. You can go back there.
He
was unsure if the mental voice was his human side or his demon side.
His eyes darted to the source of the delicious scent. His nostrils flared
when he saw an attractive blonde in a white dress. She’d been bound
and gagged. Strange. He couldn’t read her mind. Shouldn’t he be
able to do that? Even without that skill, he sensed she was an
innocent, and something in him rebelled against the notion of hurting
her.
“There you are, my dear. I was worried you’d overslept,” Angeline cooed
at him. “She’s a witch, so you won’t be able to read her. Many
of them are naturally well-shielded from that sort of intrusion. Try
not to let it trouble you.”
Angeline’s voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Not nearly the seductive
purr that had fooled him before. Her human face was pretty, but it
wasn’t the level of perfection he’d seen as a human. It wouldn’t
have been enough to cause him to break his vow of chastity.
As her fangs descended, he saw the demon ripple over her image, not just
the small bits he’d seen before as a human with glowing eyes and
fangs, but the full demon smiling out at him. A moment later, the
ripple was gone and she looked as she had before as her eyes changed
back to normal and her fangs went back to their hiding place inside
her gums.
His gaze went back to the hand-delivered meal. He was like a captive
tiger being fed a prey animal in an enclosed space. He should feel
the thrill of the hunt as he stalked his prey. But this one was
already complacent, already enthralled and willing to offer her vein.
She watched him without a trace of fear—more curious than anything.
Before Hadrian could think about what didn’t line up, Angeline’s voice
screeched at him again. “Feed,” she ordered.
Even under normal circumstances as a human, Hadrian hadn’t been the kind
of man who took orders well. Perhaps it was why he’d courted a
position of authority himself. But if his human side didn’t like to
be commanded like a misbehaving puppy, his demon side definitely did
not. Oh, she did not know the Pandora’s box she’d just opened.
She will rue the day she ever set foot inside my church.
He was thankful she could only control him—or so she thought—and not
read his mind. He appreciated the element of surprise.
His meal was pretty, with delicate pixie features. Her hair came to just
her shoulders, and she appeared wise beyond her years.
“She’s young, but she feels very powerful to me,” he said to no one in
particular.
There was no fear coming from her, but there also was no anger or duplicity
or anything extreme at all. Maybe hope? Hope for what?
The puzzle piece that wouldn’t line up only a moment before clicked
into space. If she were enthralled, she shouldn’t have any feelings
at all. She should be blank, save for whatever suggestion or desire
had been put in her head.
He allowed his fangs to drop for the girl’s benefit, just so she was
clear about which side of the good/evil fence he was technically on
now. But nothing changed in her gaze. For some bizarre reason she
seemed to want this. He wondered again if she was enthralled.
“Why is she bound and gagged?”
“You can never be too careful with witches. This one is strong. I’m
surprised she hasn’t broken the thrall. If she does, we wouldn’t
want her to have access to her magic. Now feed. You’ll feel
better.”
His back was to Angeline, still trying to figure out his meal. The
self-control he’d practiced as a human would become very useful to
him, he had no doubt. But right now he had to give the impression
Angeline was the one in control.
Hadrian held the girl in an embrace as he turned to face his sire. No way was
he turning his back on that nut for long. He sank his fangs into the
girl’s delicate throat and drank. Her whimper caused his grip to
tighten involuntarily on her arm. If Angeline hadn’t been there, he
would have thrown her down on the grass and done more than just drink
her blood.
Nothing was this good. He tasted relief as he drank her. This girl had a
death wish. In another time and place he would have tried to help
her, but that was a different Father Hadrian. This one was happy
their desires meshed so well. She wanted to die, and he wanted to
kill her. She wanted to lose herself in oblivion, and he wanted to
lose himself in the power of her blood.
Such power for someone so young. His demon instincts told him it was the
kind of strength he should only expect to find in a very old vampire.
Not a human. Not even a witch. And certainly not a witch no older
than this one. For the second time, the thought,
something
is wrong
, drifted through his
mind. He only hoped it was wrong in a way that wouldn’t bite him in
the end.
“Drain the bitch dry.”
Jealous?
Hadrian licked and sealed the witch’s wound, then spun her to face him. He
removed the gag, his mouth capturing hers in a kiss. She was too weak
from blood loss to protest, and he had no interest in doing anything
more than screw with his sire. Let her see how fickle his attentions
would be after being brought into this life unwillingly. The gasp of
dismay that came from Angeline served to take the edge off his anger.
He went back to feeding.
“Drain her, then I can fuck my new plaything.”
Hadrian struggled to keep the grimace off his face. Most newly risen vampires
would have been so under the power of their sire that the idea would
have sounded wonderful. Either way, she didn’t have to tell him
twice. As curious as he was about the witch in his arms, and as much
as he knew the girl probably didn’t deserve a death like this, his
survival—and freedom—came first. Where before his mercy had
overridden his pragmatism, now it was the opposite, courtesy of the
demon side.
When the last of the life slipped from the girl, Hadrian dropped her on
the ground. The power surged through him, and he looked up at his
sire, revealing bloody fangs.
Angeline, misreading the meaning of his smile, returned one of her own. “Come
here. I can take my time with you, now.” She crooked a finger, a
seductive glint in her eyes.
Hadrian very much doubted she’d ever turned a vampire before. If she had,
she might have known that though there was a connection of power
between them, it did not flow in the direction she thought it did.
“No,” he said.
Angeline’s eyes widened, then her mouth turned down in the pout he’d once
found attractive but now could see as nothing more than childish
nonsense she should have outgrown long before now.
“What did you say to me?” she demanded, her voice going shrill. Without
any real power over him, it seemed her only weapon was the tried and
true temper tantrum.
“I
said, NO. Have you never heard that word before? Or was it so long
ago you can no longer recall its meaning? You
come
here
.” He
pointed at the upturned clumps of dirt in front of him where he
intended her to stand.
Her face went more white than usual as she found her feet moving against
her will to obey his order. “How? This can’t happen. I-I’m your
maker. I’m the boss. What I say goes. This isn’t fair!” With
each clipped statement from her mouth, her voice became more
panicked.
“Life isn’t fair, sweetheart. The Latin I spoke to you wasn’t sweet
nothings. It was the Church’s exorcism ritual. I used it while you
were performing your own ritual to bind us together. It reversed
which one of us had control over which demon. It was an experiment,
I’ll admit. I wasn’t sure it would work, but my intention must
have been very strong. It might not have been wise to let someone
chant a language you couldn’t decipher while your own magic was
going.”
She was crying now.
Crying.
What right did she have to cry after
what she’d done? She’d desecrated his church, used her dark,
vampiric magic against him, and in a sense had raped him. It wasn’t
an idea he was comfortable thinking for too long. He’d wanted her,
and even without the thrall he may have wanted her still, but his vow
had meant something, and he’d always respected it. If she’d been
human, he would have turned her down.
The confidence left her face, her lip visibly trembled, and a surge of
excitement went through Hadrian.
“Are you scared because you must now take responsibility for your
actions?”
Her lip still trembled, but her glare came back in full force. “You’re
like me. Why can’t you see you’re like me?”
Hadrian crossed his arms over his chest. This should be good. “In what way
am I possibly like you?”
“You were a priest. I was training to become a nun. I thought you’d
understand me. We could be together and… and somebody would
understand me…”
“Stop.”
She wanted to keep talking, he could tell, but her mouth shut
automatically at his command. If she’d been a prospective nun—a
sweet innocent—and had transformed into the manipulative beast in
front of him, her sire must have been truly horrible. He’d made her
this way.
Part of Hadrian wanted to keep her with him and fix her. But how did one
fix a vampire with centuries of emotional damage and moral decay?
Besides, his right-and-wrong compass was no longer sound. It wasn’t
the solid thing that had always pointed him to true north. There was
enough darkness that had come to him through her blood that it would
be the blind helping the blind. After all, he’d killed an innocent
woman for the sake of pragmatism only a few minutes ago. He wasn’t
confident in his ability to help someone such as Angeline navigate
good and evil.
No, in the morning she would meet her real maker. But that was hours off,
still.
“Pick up the witch and bring her inside,” he said. He couldn’t very
well leave a corpse out in the cemetery. Although there was a gate
and trees that shielded the place, you never knew who might wander
through.
They could have just dropped the girl in the hole Hadrian had crawled out
of and put the dirt on top of her, but he couldn’t bring himself to
do it yet.
“Are you going to hurt me?” Angeline asked as she hefted the witch’s
body in her arms.
“Do you deserve it?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Once they were inside the church, he directed Angeline to lay the witch on
the altar. He’d have to do something with her later. For now, he
unbound her wrists and smoothed her dress. It wasn’t as if she was
going anywhere. He hoped she’d found whatever peace she’d seemed
to be looking for.
Hadrian brushed blonde strands of hair away from the woman’s face and
traced the smile lines around her mouth, then he took the ropes that
had bound the witch and coiled and uncoiled them in his hands.
“Is this the life you’ve enjoyed?” he asked his sire.
“What?”
He waved an arm at the evidence of her most recent train wreck. “This.
Controlling everyone and everything. Having pet zombies. That’s
what I was the other night to you. It’s what you are with me right
now.”
Angeline stared at the witch on the altar, looking back every few moments with
trepidation at the ropes in Hadrian’s hands. “You’re a vampire,
too, now. Don’t act like you’re too good for it. Your line to God
has been shut off. You’ll do the same things. You’ll control
people. Some day you’ll get lonely, and you’ll make a vampire.
You’ll want someone you can shape and mold to your liking. You have
it in you. I saw it. Why do you think I turned you? I watched you
long enough to know.” She sounded desperate with the need for him
to hear her, understand her.
Father Hadrian nodded. “Oh, I believe you. But that doesn’t make it a
good way to live. I think the only way I can help you now is to let
you go.”
Her eyes widened at the implication. “No!”
“Oh, you know the word and its meaning. Excellent. I had thought perhaps
no
wasn’t a part of your vocabulary.”
Tears welled in her eyes again. “You’re a monster. I’m centuries
older than you. You can’t keep this hold on me. I will kill you. Do
you hear me, you bastard? I will kill you! Whatever magic you did
will wear off soon enough. Nothing can break or twist the bond
between a sire and her creation, not even your cheap exorcism
ritual.”
“Be wise, Angeline. Your theories, though quaint, may not play out as
you’d like. In which case, you’ll still be at my mercy.”
The wind seemed to go out of her sails. Hadrian took her by the arm and
led her outside to a covered stone porch. There was an old rocking
chair he’d enjoyed sitting in to read his Bible. The morning
sunlight had always been on his face while he prayed. He gritted his
teeth, trying to hold back the anger that he’d never sit in that
rocking chair in the bright morning again. She’d stolen that from
him.