Page 14 of King of the Damned
She gasps and looks up at me. I can see the fear still in her eyes. There’s a red scratch on her neck from where my fangs dug into the skin, though not deep enough to draw blood.
“Be careful the next time you run. There are worse monsters than me lurking in the shadows,” I warn.
I move my foot, and she shuts the door in my face. I can hear her collapse to her knees just inside. Her erratic heartbeat and uneven breathing tell me she’s in a panic.
I’d offer her no comfort, so I leave her alone with her distress.
I need to feed before I break down her door. I was feral in that cave. I haven’t been so blind with bloodlust in centuries. I was in such a craze I was truly considering ruining my first and possiblyonlychance at a mortal life.
I’m not a man who worries about many things, but that is concerning on a level I can’t even begin to describe.
I run into one of the human servants in the hallway outside my bed chamber, carrying an armful of fresh linens. A male. Tall. Strong. His blood will be good.
I shove him against the nearest wall. For the first time in centuries, I completely lose myself in the bloodlust and feed until I feel him go limp and lifeless in my arms.
But I don’t stop there. I feed and feed and feed until the palace is littered with bloodless human bodies.
Dravon finds me at the end of my bloodletting, hunched in a corner attempting to regain control of my own body, nearly in tears at how badly I want to stop but can’t.
Dravon has witnessed this many times in our years as vampires, but he is not one for sympathy. In fact, I think he finds it borderline pathetic how hard I fight against my supernatural instincts.
However, when he finds me in my craze, he simply approaches me in silence and hands me a cloth from his jacket to wipe my face.
I take it, and then I hear him snicker, but it doesn’t quite sound like him. There’s something too eerie about his voice. Something off. I look at him with suspicion, but he continues to give me a knowing grin.
“Why fight it, my Lord?”
My hand is still shaking with the bloodlust, but I meet my friend’s eyes and give him a stern warning with nothing but my expression, before shoving his handkerchief into his chest and entering my bedchamber.
I conjure myself a bath, and while I sit in the hot water and remember the ghostly feeling of warm blood in my veins, I listen for Adelasia’s heartbeat.
I tap the edge of the marble tub to the same rhythm with my index finger.
Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap.
Nine
Adelasia
I have not seen Kaius in five days. Not since he nearly fed on me in the cave and one of his vampire advisors stopped him. I can’t tell if he’s staying away from me because he’s still ready to sink his teeth into me, or because a part of him feels bad for what he did. I fear it's the former.
For humans, it’s a horrific violation to be fed on involuntarily. It’s why we consider vampires such savages and why we fear them so wholly—women especially. The more uncivilized vampires in the world will raid cities and towns, feeding on the women while violating their bodies. We’re nothing but vessels for food and pleasure for them.
I’ve never understood why some humans choose that life. They offer themselves to the vampires, and they get nothing in return. Kaius told me they’re called cattle, and it’s just another sickening way they dehumanize us.
Though I haven’t seen Kaius in days, I have explored the palace a bit more. I found an empty, unused room of mirrors on the second floor covered in cobwebs, and with the limited magic Kaius gifted me, I was able to turn it into a dance studio, and that’s where I spend most of my time if not in my room for sleep or meals.
No one ever bothers me here–not even the servants. It’s just me, and the enchanted instruments I conjured to play music for me while I dance.
They’ve become somewhat friends, in a very sad, lonely sort of way. They seem to be in tune with my emotions and always play the perfect accompanying music to my moods. Lately, I’ve been nothing but melancholy. I miss the sun. I miss my bed. I miss my friends at the company.
Most of all, I miss my mother.
My heart aches every time I think about her, worried sick about me. She has no idea if I’m alive or dead. The last memory she’ll have of me is the way I screamed when I was kidnapped right in front of her eyes. I imagine that’s a parent’s worst nightmare–to have your only living child go missing without a trace.
The instruments stop their tune and tears prick in my eyes as I land a leap in the silence of the room. My shoes echo loudly off the cold floors, and I pinch the bridge of my nose to keep myself from sobbing. I hear the door open behind me, and I huff in frustration, expecting it to be Kaius.
I turn to find a small woman standing in the doorway with a silver tray in her hand, and a ceramic bowl no bigger than my palm in the center. Steam rises from the bowl, and the woman’s face grows rosy from the heat.A human!
