Page 54 of Dark Souls

But that hollowness felt so much more… vast now. It had been so long since anything had broken through the anger. But without my permission, I felt something more than rage when I was in the presence of my soulmate. Desire, longing, passion, and even a flicker of potential happiness - I’d felt it all. I felt alive. I felt seen. And I’d fucked it up because I had no other choice. I was the reason my family was gone. My sister was alone and unsafe in the world because of me. I wouldn’t be the reason to destroy Ilaria’s life either.

A slow clap echoed around the damp walls, and my spine stiffened as I clenched my teeth together. I turned to face him when I heard his polished shoes hitting the grimy ground with each provoking step. It was never wise to have The Devil at your back.

“That was quite a show. Feeling some kind of way today, Dealer?” The Devil smirked, his blue eyes twinkling as the skin around them crinkled at the sides.

I didn’t bother to answer him and instead flung the severed head towards him. He caught it in his hands, irritation appearing on his face when blood splattered on his designer suit before he dropped it to the ground and hissed through his own fangs.

I made my way over to the arched cove in the corner of the candlelit cellar and slumped down, leaning my back against the wall while I lit a joint between my lips. Taking a slow inhale, I watched him pull a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe the blood from his hands before he finally gave in to his vampire needs and licked one finger clean.

“After all that, you’re going to let him go to waste?” he asked, pointing at the pool of blood forming around the victim’s torn neck. I shrugged my shoulders in answer. Starving myself of blood could be seen as self-inflicted torture for a vampire. I saw it as a deserving punishment for treating my soulmate like shit.

“And here I was thinking you insisted on taking on Heathen’s role because you craved a feeding frenzy. Clearly, that is not the case. So, why?”

His frown deepened, not knowing how to handle my silence. He was used to my hatred. My anger or defiance. My sarcasm even. But never my silence. It bothered him, which only made me want to sew my lips together, so I could never speak again just to piss him off more.

“When was the last time you fed?” He eyed me suspiciously, his annoyance growing more and more irate as I continued to smoke. My soulless red eyes held his gaze through the fog as I tested his patience a little more. “I need you strong for tomorrow’s event. Not like this. You look like shit.”

That was putting it mildly. I had nearly black bags under my eyes from the lack of sleep, my cheeks were slightly sunken from starvation and my body had inherited many new self-inflicted scars. I was a fucking mess.

He narrowed his calculating eyes, the only aspect of his appearance that wasn’t part of the disguise spell his witch mate used to protect his identity. He clasped his hands behind his back as he took slow, echoing steps towards the cove opposite me. The cove that was a shrine to the skeleton of the woman who’d given me life. Every muscle in my body tensed when he stopped before it and stared down at her skull on a bed of dried flowers.

“I still don’t understand why you choose to stay down here,” he continued. The moment he turned his back on her and focused his attention on the makeshift bed of blankets and pillows I had on the floor next to me, the tension in my body eased. But only a little. “When I rescued you from your dire fate, I not only handed you the lives of the monsters who killed your family on a silver plate but allowed you to keep the manor they inhabited as your own. Yet, you still choose to sleep below it in the filth. In the place that holds so many horrendous memories for you. You really are a sadist, aren’t you?”

I scoffed, stubbing out the joint on the stone wall. I couldn’t hold my tongue a moment longer.

“Firstly, rescue me? That’s laughable. You think just because you gave me permission to roam further than the cellars, I should be grateful to you? You are just as bad as they were. If not worse. Because you dangle the illusion of freedom in front of my face, only to remind me at every chance you get that I am your puppet. Your prisoner. You may have given me a roof to sleep under. Silk sheets on a four-poster bed that I have no interest in. Forced me to work for you. Kill for you. But you know, the only reason you are still breathing is because you ‘rescued’ my sister too, and you are the only person in this world that knows where she is. You use her life to control me. And because that sigil around your neck keeps you safe and protected, you think you’re invincible. But mark my words, one day the hell you have created will freeze over. And when that day comes, you will have nowhere left to hide where I won’t find you. I’ll happily tear you apart, piece by piece.”

A flicker of fear cast over his face before he masked it with an aggressive scowl.

“You really are in a bad mood, Dealer. I suggest you take some time off. A little reflection is clearly needed. I can summon Heathen to cover tomorrow’s event.”

He moved towards the stone stairs that led up to the castle hallway.

“No,” I gritted through my teeth. I pushed down the rage and self-loathing as I forced myself to meet his curious gaze. “I’m fine. You’re right. I just need to feed. I’ll be fine for tomorrow’s event.”

He ground his jaw as he studied me, making a clicking noise that went straight to my bones as I fisted my hands at my sides. He nodded once.

“See to it that you do. I have a lot of money riding on your win.” He kicked the corpse at his feet. “And get rid of this mess discreetly once you’re done with him. Are this month’s profits in the safe?” he asked, knowing full well they would be. They always were. The millions the club makes in cash each month is blood money. Money that I must earn to keep my sister breathing and unharmed.

I nodded, and he made his way towards the stairs without looking back.

“Aren’t you forgetting something? The picture?”

He only came once a month to take his money and, in return, I’d be given a picture. Proof she was alive and well in exchange for my loyalty to The Devil. It was all I lived for.

He paused, glancing over his shoulder at me with cold amusement. “Win the tournament tomorrow and you’ll get it.”

“That isn’t the deal we agreed to!” I hissed, my nails extending and fangs snapping down in fury. Every cell in my body was itching to attack. To rip his throat out. Tear him from limb to limb. It was his face I imagined on every man I killed. One day… one day it will be.

“That’s the thing about making deals with The Devil, Lukas. He can change the rules whenever he likes.” He turned to head upstairs, slamming the cellar door behind him.

The moment he was gone, I looked down at my hands, seeing them coated with that vampire’s blood and wishing it was his instead. Or mine. Because it didn’t give me the pain that I so desperately craved. That I deserved. It didn’t make me feel anything at all.

My hand moved to my side, lifting the loosened rock in the wall to find the only belongings that meant anything to me. A pile of photographs of Hana, alive and healthy but never smiling. And my handmade dagger of charred, splintered wood. I picked it up, squeezing the leather handle as warmth spread through my chest. The raw ache to feel something real, to punish myself for my failures, pulled beneath my skin, demanding to be heard. It consumed me like an incurable disease.

I thought of my father and brother. I looked across at my mother’s bones. I peered down at the pictures of my little sister that I hadn’t seen in person for years. I closed my eyes and thought of Ilaria, of how she must have felt waking up to find me gone. But I still felt nothing but rage at it all.

I lifted the sharp wood that was stained with my dried blood to my arm and ran it across my skin slowly. I watched with fascination as my skin sizzled and burned. Blood seeped out of the fresh cut the harder I pressed, ensuring it would scar. I hissed and dropped my head back against the wall when the relief hit at the self-inflicted torture. Pain washed over me, replacing the rage. The proof that blood still flowed through my veins, that my heart still beat, felt like a cruel joke, a stark reminder of a life barely clinging to existence. It may only last for a few seconds, but it was enough to feel something other than fury or numbness. It was the only way I could escape the feeling of being a monster and rediscover the boy I kept locked away.

---