Page 49 of Cloak of the Vampire
My breathing was rough, especially when he flicked his tongue against my skin, the skin he’d bitten into not too long ago, and then when he spoke again, I felt like I couldn’t breathe at all.
“This is an order from your Lord.”
Then he was off me and striding down the aisle back to the front of the bus, leaving me breathless, flushed, scared, and utterly furious.
Because he wasn’t my Lord. I hadn’t seen him acting like he did with me with his other subjects, too, so he couldn’t possibly be my Lord.
He was simply the asshole I couldn’t get out of my head.
CHAPTER 18
The home of the Atalon League wasn’t as surreptitious as the Rayne League’s place. The entrance to the Atalon underground compound was placed in a skyscraper smack in the middle of downtown Rochester.
It was three o’clock in the morning by the time we arrived, and the area was quiet. Abe and Logan led us into the side entrance of the building, and we took the stairs down one floor. Ragnor acted as the rear guard and seemed to be on higher alert than usual. Bryce was walking next to him, looking pale and frightened, what with Ragnor keeping him close—and everyone knew what that meant.
We took a large, fancy elevator that brought us about half a mile underground, and when we exited, we were finally in the compound.
There were no major differences between the Rayne and Atalon compounds. Both had the same architectural style, with arches and escalators leading everywhere. But the colors were somewhat different; the Rayne compound was defined by its neutral colors, with black, white, and beige marble and some occasional wood. Here, everything was bright, full of all shades of red. I felt like we’d just stepped into a blood cell.
A welcome committee waited for us in the entrance hall. It consisted of three men—two of whom were identical twins, Black with curly hair and slightly slanted eyes, and the man between them looked the way fictional vampires have been portrayed in movies and books for ages: porcelain skin, a chiseled, clean-cut jaw, platinum hair, and apair of pitch-black eyes. He was almost as tall as Ragnor but more on the lean side.
My first impression of him was that I didn’t like the look in his eyes. There was something not quite right there. But it was hard to get a read on him since, much like Ragnor’s, his defenses seemed to be up.
Ragnor stepped from the back of our group and approached the black-eyed man. That man reached his hand out, and Ragnor shook it, then turned to us. “This is Lord Orion Atalon,” he said. “You will refer to him as Lord Atalon.”
When Atalon smiled, it was a chilling sight. “It’s good to have you fledglings here,” he said in a smooth, melodious voice that quite contrasted with his cold, snakelike looks. “Let’s show you around.”
He flicked his fingers, and the twins moved, heading toward Abe and Logan. They led us toward the downward escalator, and we all followed, most of my classmates seeming just as eager and curious as me.
As we walked, Atalon lingered back with Ragnor, the two of them speaking quietly. I slowed my pace, making sure I was near enough to the end of the group so I could try to hear what they were talking about.
Unfortunately, they were speaking too low for even dogs to hear. I could barely hear the murmur of their voices, but it was all unintelligible.
“Our first stop is the Atalon League’s pride and joy,” said one of the twins at the front as we came to a stop near a grand double door. “Our League has many artists, both Common and Gifted, and as big believers in nurturing said artists, we built the Atalon Gallery back in the 1800s.”
The other twin pushed the double door open, revealing a large, spacious chamber. It was filled with portraits and artworks hung on the light-red walls and a few immaculate sculptures scattered around the space. There was a thick column in the middle of the room, upon which a video art installation was screened, showing the evolution of column architecture through animation, starting with the Greek era and its different types of capital orders—Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian.
It was hypnotizing and utterly fascinating. I’d studied a bit about Greek architecture during one of those art courses I’d taken before.Seeing the video art showing it so vividly in a three-dimensional way was breathtaking.
Before I knew it, my legs took me to the column, and I stood there following the movement of the ridges in the video with my mesmerized eyes. Faintly, I heard Abe saying we had about half an hour to explore, but I didn’t care. I was too busy studying the column.
In another life, I might’ve been an art curator. Perhaps even an architect, though I doubted I was smart enough for that. But I could’ve tried. If I’d had a normal life, I might’ve been able to try.
But in this life that I had, before I even became a vampire, these kinds of thoughts were merely dreams, and since dreams had no place in reality, I’d crushed them before they could ever take root in my head.
Seeing this column, then moving toward the artworks on the walls, beautiful paintings of portraits, landscapes, and so much more, I was filled with heavy melancholy about what could’ve been.
I stopped before a certain painting that caught my eye. It was of a woman’s back, her fiery ginger hair down in waves on her back, and she was standing in what looked like the Garden of Eden as depicted in classical paintings.
The painting was relatively simple, but something about it called to me, and the longer I stared at it, the more I started to realize why. The woman was painted in the act of running. But it didn’t look like she was frozen in time; the artist managed to paint her in a way that made her seem to be in the midst of the motion, as if it was a frame in an aged movie reel.
The landscape beyond the woman had the same feeling to it. As though the waterfall was slowly flowing down and the clouds in the sunset sky were changing colors, like the sun was still setting, its rays reflecting differently.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I glanced to see Lord Atalon standing next to me, his contemplative eyes on the painting. I returned my gaze to the masterpiece and saw theinitials in the lower right corner. “You painted it, didn’t you?” I asked, considering the initials were O. A.
His lips twitched. “I did,” he said but not with pride; instead, he sounded somewhat wistful. “When my magic first developed, this was the first painting I created.”
