Page 64 of Sleeping With the Vampire

It appeared deserted. I couldn’t help noticing that it seemed no one had been tidying inside or cleaning up.

Ragnar said most of the staff was at Fort Ferney, helping the refugees. He was trying to take stock of what was happening at the blood banks, get supply out to those who needed it. There was a big demand and Jock had gotten some refugees to makedonations, but a proper station needed to be set up as well as mobile clinics for processing and packaging.

I waited for him to go see his father first, to talk about a few things. After he came down, I slowly made my way up the stairs. Lucca was in his rooms, in his favorite corner in the Eyrie. He seemed very alone and at the sight of him, I felt my heart constrict. He was deep in thought and didn’t notice my arrival.

I walked up to him, put my arms around him and felt him startle.

“Izzy! When did you get here?” His joy at seeing me was real.

I smiled, “Ragnar gave me a ride,” I said.

He leaned down to kiss me, a long, tender kiss that I didn’t want to end.

“I tried calling you a few times but couldn’t get a connection,” he said.

“I know,” I said, “after the first attack, all mobile networks went down for hours.”

“Then, things went to shit around here,” he said, his voice low and sad.

“I heard,” I said. His arms pulled me back in for an embrace.

“I’m not sure how to go on,” he finally admitted.

I pulled back a bit, looked up into his handsome face.

“I’ve got some ideas,” I said, and was pleased to see interest pique in his eyes.

The king was not dead, yet.

Chapter 22

Lucca

I think back to how I met Layrr, so many years ago. It was right after the end of the Great War, when the world was still trying to rebuild and recover. There was so much destruction and devastation and I had been tasked with helping the Western Territories to get back on their feet.

This also meant dealing with violent groups that occasionally surfaced and who were in breach of the peace agreement. Out west, in the high mountains, there were enclaves where vampires had gone into hiding and sometimes we received word that a group was tormenting a village. I had gone out with a few men to investigate one such complaint and found a small settlement up in the mountains that had been completely vandalized. Women and children had been attacked in their homes, drained of their blood. The men were cut down in battle, most of them were dead.

But I found one young man, Layrr, still breathing. As I walked past, he called out to me, begged me to let him live, to help me. I took whatever pity I had left and gave him some of my blood, turning him into one of us. He was keen to leave the village, to seek revenge for those that had murdered his kind. He became a strong fighter and in time, I adopted him as my son.

Layrr was quiet and tough, unlike Ragnar who liked to fool around. He was not like Sunil, who had early on showed interests in the parties and socializing, like Simonis. Layrr was more like me, perhaps I was flattered by his love for me, hiswanting to accompany me everywhere, learning the ropes and what it meant to run a kingdom.

Once we became responsible for the blood banks in the west, he took over command for them and the business grew and expanded. Apart from the Capital, our blood banks were the biggest and the most productive, we paid the best and our product was held to a high standard. We became even wealthier and the family grew in power.

“I don’t know where it started to go wrong,” I admitted to Izzy. “I became aware of his anger at some point, the way he was clashing with Ragnar and others. I thought it was normal sibling rivalry. But he was experimenting with the drug blood on the side. He knew I wouldn’t approve of it.”

Izzy was quiet, letting me work through everything on my own. I appreciated that. I was so happy to have her there, a part of me had thought it was over between us, that she would never accept who I was. I knew we had to address what had happened between us, the fight at her house a few weeks back, but I sensed that it wasn’t the time now.

She seemed a bit subdued, less prickly somehow. It could have been the death of her mother or the stomach wound that had nearly been the death of her. I could see it still bothered her in the way she walked.

“Then Marlon came to talk to me this morning, told me about the women.”

I sighed. “I’d always wondered why Layrr didn’t take a partner, why he didn’t find someone. Ragnar had friends, if you want to call it that, even Sunil was never alone, but Layrr was always on his own.”

I told her how Marlon had found me in the Eyrie, looking very uncomfortable. I told him to spit it out.

“I should have come to you, Sire,” he had said. “But I had no proof and I knew how much you loved that kid.”

“But?”

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