The Vampire Kiss Page 5

  “Don’t kill me,” she pleaded now. “Please. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill Marcus.”

  “No, but you’re the reason my brother is dead.” Her wrists were held above her head with just one of those powerful hands. The other was planted firmly on her chest. She gagged with revulsion as those fingers started to rip away at her buttons. “And for that, I have to make him suffer. What better way than to defile his prize?”

  No!

  But there was nothing she could do. She kept struggling but she didn’t stand a chance, and Desmond wasn’t coming because she meant nothing to him. She was the result of a show of strength, nothing more.

  The first of her buttons gave way and Viktoria shut her eyes tightly. Just then, the pressure on her body decreased slightly and the vampire on top of her seemed to hesitate. “I should have known,” he said. “You wouldn’t leave your prize unattended.”

  A second voice spoke in the darkness. Desmond!

  “You will regret this,” Desmond said. His voice was almost eerily calm, but Viktoria could sense the pure, thunderous rage brewing just beneath the surface. It was terrifying. “Get away from Viktoria.”

  “Just like you got away from Marcus?” the vampire on top of her snapped. “This is only fair! I’ll hurt you just like you hurt me!”

  “You haven’t felt hurt yet,” Desmond growled deeply. “Viktoria, brace yourself.”

  Not knowing why, or what was about to happen, she braced herself as best as she could.

  A deep, animalistic growl split the darkened bedroom, and then it felt like a truck slammed into her and the vampire pinning her down. The ground slammed against her side, making her gasp with pain, and then suddenly she was free. Screeches and terrible growling met her ears, and something very heavy collapsed to the floor. She heard heavy, fleshy thuds. Without being able to see, she had no idea what was going on or who was winning.

  There were no thoughts in her head, and no way for the other vampire to read her mind and know where she was going –especially when she herself didn’t know. Viktoria leapt to her feet and started running with her hands out in front of her.

  Before she had gone very far, she felt her palms crash into the wall. Reversing direction, she ran again.

  Nothing had ever been more terrifying than running blind through the darkness, having no idea what was directly in front of her.

  Hitting the wall again, she began to feel her way along it until she reached a gaping open space that had to be the tunnel. The bedroom behind her was still full of shouting and fighting, echoing along down the tunnel as she tried to make her escape. Reaching and turning and finding walls no matter where she went, she was so confused and lost that she wondered if she was even still in Desmond’s chambers.

  Then, suddenly, she saw light.

  It wasn’t much, just the pale silver of the moon, but now she knew where she was!

  She ran to the edge of the cliff and looked around. The mountainside was utterly still and silent, silver trickling like water across the shadows below.

  This is my chance!

  Grabbing onto the edge of the cliff, she lowered herself down and struggled to find purchase for her feet. Eventually, she lodged one foot into a gap in the cliff-side, and the other soon followed. Fear pulsed through her body, knowing that one wrong move would send her plunging to her death, but she shoved it away and let go of the edge to find a grip for her hand. Then, the other hand followed.

  She hung from the side of the cliff, dangling, her arms already starting to burn with the strain.

  I have to do this.

  It wasn’t too late yet to turn back but she knew she couldn’t.

  Slowly, she began the long process of lowering her other foot to the next spot. It was easier that time to find a gap, and she moved the other foot down as well. Slowly, one by one, she started to work her way down. Her fingers were quickly scraped and bleeding, making her grip slippery, and her arms were really hurting, but she just kept going.

  Silver moonlight surrounded her. She was aware of nothing but her body and the cliff, and the strain. Aching and shivering with the pain of it, she reached for her next foothold and found it after a bit of kicking around. There was hardly enough room for her toes but she braced her foot against it and moved her other leg.

  The stone beneath her foot shifted.

  Viktoria froze.

  Nothing else happened for a moment, during which she struggled to calm herself down, and then the stones crumbled away. Shrieking, she clung on to the cliff with her fingers dug into the rocks while the loose stones she’d knocked away clattered on a long, long journey downward.

  Her shoulders ached, screaming with tension.

  “Have to hold on,” she gasped, scrabbling with her feet for another place that could hold her weight, but there was nothing. There was nothing at all, which meant she would have to go back up, or sideways, or… something.

  Then, a shadow passed over her.

  Craning her head back, dizzy and sick, she looked way up and saw a vampire looking down at her. In the dim light, all she saw was darkness and blood.

  “Desmond?” she called weakly.

  The vampire didn’t move, but just kept looking down.

  Viktoria was about to call again when her fingers slipped. There was the sound of ripping flesh as the stones she clung to tore away her skin, but she hardly even felt the pain through the sudden rush of warm blood covering her hand. Her body jerked as she slipped, and for a moment she pushed her feet hard against the mountain, hoping against hope that she had caught herself.

  Then, she fell.

  There was no time to cry out or beg for help, or even try to catch herself again. One moment she was there and then the next she was watching pebbles fall after her down through the air. They were like feathers compared to her, drifting as she plummeted.

  The world rushed past. The fortress rushed by. Towers and arched blinked by, there and then gone. The cold air was like knives, stabbing her from beneath.

  Suddenly, everything stopped. Viktoria’s head snapped back and only now did she cry out, grabbing onto whatever it was that was clinging to her tightly.

  Desmond’s voice reached her ears, low and dangerous. “You are a Willow.”

  “Yes,” she gasped, realizing that she was clutching at him like a lover embracing another. She didn’t care. She was so dizzy. The world spun around her.

  “You weren’t charmed by him. You can resist it.”

  “Yes,” she said again, and it was practically a sob.

  A snarl edged his words. “No one must ever know this.”

  “Okay.”

  For a long, awful moment, she thought that he might drop her, but that never happened. Instead, his arm around her tightened until she almost couldn’t breathe. She saw through vague, spinning images that he clutched at the side of the mountain with his other hand, almost casually. He had leapt down to save her, caught her, and was now holding her and himself as though it was nothing.

  For the second time, Desmond dropped. Viktoria couldn’t help but scream, though this fall was much shorter. Desmond let her go and she spilled out of his arms onto the grass. They were all the way back at the base of the mountain. If he hadn’t caught her…

  She looked up at him as he stood over her, face shadowed. He leaned down over her, and she reacted on instinct, jabbing her fingers up into the tender space between his neck and his chin. It was like trying to knock the breath out of a boulder, and she yanked her throbbing fingers back. He hadn’t moved, just staring at her in silence.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked quietly, breathlessly.

  She thought he might have shaken his head, but right at that moment the world became too much for her to handle and she passed out.

  Chapter 6

  Her second awakening was much calmer than the last, without the pounding heart and pulsing fear. She sat up in the darkness, thinking that maybe s
he could see somehow, but sitting up was a mistake. Her body ached terribly, and her fingers would hardly move.

  “Ouch,” she said quietly, and then everything that happened before she passed out came rushing back in. “Desmond?” she called out softly into the darkness, wondering if he was nearby. She realized now that she didn’t even know whose colony this was. All vampire colonies had a name that identified them and she didn’t even know the name of where she was. Then again, there were so many things she didn’t know yet.

  “I’m here,” a low voice murmured from just inches away. Viktoria flinched a little as flames flickered into existence. Desmond stood at her bedside, looking at her with a charming expression. His eyes seemed warm, dancing with reflections of fire, but it was probably her imagination. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Viktoria took a moment to look around, and then she sat up even straighter because this wasn’t part of his chambers. She was on a flat, thin bed which was one of many in several rows, inside a circular room full of what could only be medical equipment. There was nothing electronic of course, but she saw first aid kits, boxes of bandages and staples, and several cabinets full of salvaged medicines.

  “Where am I?” she asked quietly.

  Desmond crossed his arms and looked down at her. “The human infirmary.”

  “Human…” Viktoria struggled to make any sense of that at all. “Why do you have a human infirmary in a vampire fortress?”

  He gave her no answer, however. Frustration rose up in her throat, and she would have pressed him, if she hadn’t had other questions that were more important.

  “What happened, Desmond?”

  “Marcus’s brother Samuel tried to hurt you.” The vampire prince, sitting on the edge of her bed, bared his teeth with anger. “He didn’t. Did he? You did all this damage to yourself.”

  It was partly a question, and partly not. She decided to give Desmond a bit of his own medicine and ignored him. There was no one else present in the infirmary except for them, so she took her time and examined herself.

  Her hands were wrapped up in thick swathes of bandages, which explained why she could hardly move them. Someone had removed her clothes and dressed her in a hospital gown, baring her muscular arms to the cold interior of the fortress. Dark bruises mottled her skin, either from when she’d been knocked off the bed, or from Desmond catching her.

  “I think so,” she finally said.

  The powerful vampire took a long time to say anything, but when he did it came out as a sigh. “I told you that you would be safe from harm, but I didn’t count on you being a danger to yourself. I should kill you.”

  “But you won’t,” she fired back, startling herself with her own bravado. Obviously, she had been given some sort of pain medication and it was screwing with her brain.

  “No,” Desmond growled, “I won’t. But we need to get something straightened out right here and now.” He turned and planted his hands firmly on her bed, glaring at her with his eyes dark. “How are you a Willow? You look nothing like them, and your fighting is terrible.”

  “Hey!” she said, unhappily. He just glared even more, making her drop her gaze down to her bandaged hands. “Okay. I was adopted. I’m not a Willow by blood.”

  “And your terrible fighting?”

  “I hadn’t finished my training.”

  Somehow, she thought she saw a bit of tension ease out of the vampire’s shoulders. “So, you are a borderline useless hunter as you are.”

  She didn’t answer, because admitting that was true would hurt her pride, but denying it would mean he considered her dangerous. That was almost laughable, that this vampire could think she was dangerous.

  “I am not going to kill you,” Desmond said, “because to do so would undermine my authority as prince. I have killed not one but two of my own kind for you. To go back on those decisions would be disastrous.”

  “So, what are you going to do to me?” she whispered.

  “Do to you? Nothing. We are going to continue on. I see now that you were clever enough to tell just enough of the truth so that it would not be a lie. Saying those few things you did about your…family. You have been very clever, but that cleverness will get you killed here. You must act as though you are only an ordinary human. I don’t care if you pretend you’re charmed anymore. Anyone who questions you will not live to see tomorrow.”

  Viktoria clutched tightly at the bedsheets covering her legs. “Why do that? Why not just kill me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said shortly, and that was all. Desmond stood, and Viktoria also tried to stand up, but the big vampire put his hands on her shoulders and forced her back down. “You are staying here for now. You will be safe here.”

  “But… you’re leaving? But…”

  “You will be safe,” he repeated. “And I will return shortly.”

  Viktoria knew it was useless to question him, so she just watched him walk away with a saunter to his steps. He slid through a doorway across the room and then was gone.

  I really don’t know what to do now, she thought quietly to herself. This seemed like it would be a good time to wallow in self-pity, but her reverie was broken by someone reentering the infirmary.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said. She looked terribly old, in her sixties at least, with pasty-white skin and ragged grey hair. She was dressed in a doctor’s shirt but the rest of her clothing was a mismatched jumble. “Viktoria?”

  “Yeah?” Viktoria said warily, especially when she noticed that the woman’s neck had a distinctive scar on it. Two puncture wounds, showing that she had been bitten and claimed as a slave. Because of her age, it probably happened many years ago. If she had come to the vampires while being that old, they would have given her a mercy killing. “Who are you? Exactly where am I?”

  The woman smiled a little. “My name is Hannah. You’re in our infirmary. You have to know that, because Desmond said as.”

  “Well… yeah,” she said reluctantly. “But I don’t understand anything that’s been going on! No one is explaining anything to me.”

  “What would you like to know?” Hannah asked. She didn’t come directly over to Viktoria yet, but instead went over to one of the many jumbled piles of medical instruments to pull out a stethoscope.

  “Why do vampires have a place like this?”

  Hannah came back and placed the cold metal of the stethoscope against her chest, listening intently for a few seconds before straightening up again. “They didn’t always, but once they started keeping humans here instead of immediately killing them, they realized they needed a way to keep us alive. You’re in a very small, low portion of the fortress. The rest of us come here to eat and take care of our health, and anything else humans need that vampires don’t.”

  “And you’re a doctor? For humans?”

  Hannah chuckled a little, now slowly peeling away her old bandages to get a look at the scrapes. “I am not. I was studying to be a nurse when I was taken, but I am the closest thing we have to a doctor.”

  That didn’t make Viktoria feel any better, so she looked down to at her hands. The scrapes were scabbing over, but the ragged nature of them made her shudder a little.

  “You know,” Hannah continued on, as she started to slowly clean the scabs, “there are forty-six of us now, counting you, and I never thought we would see the day when Desmond there got his own slave.”

  That piqued her interest. “He’s never had one before?”

  “Indeed not. We think he prefers to be dark and mysterious, and having a companion who knew all his secrets would tear that image away from him.”

  “Knew all his secrets?” Her head was starting to spin. “But vampires only keep humans to feed on. Why would they tell their slaves anything?”

  “Why would two people who spend a great amount of time around each other, somehow not learn about the other?” Hannah put aside her disinfectant and began to re-wrap
Viktoria’s hands, less tightly than before. “I would think that before too long, you’ll learn quite a bit about Desmond. Even if he didn’t really bite you.”

  A shot of fear went through her body as she realized that this woman had probably been the one to undress her. “I mean…”

  Hannah held up one hand. “That’s your business, not mine. Now, Desmond told me to take care of you while he went to do something business-like. I don’t know what it was because he didn’t tell me, so don’t bother asking. But, I’m going to guess you haven’t eaten in quite a while have you?”

  Viktoria nodded, although her stomach was churning with fear and she didn’t know how she would be able to keep anything down.

  “Well, we can take care of that. I can help you dress, and introduce you around. You’ve caused quite a stir, getting two vampires killed without even being here for a whole day. Everyone is eager to meet you.”

  She looked down and nodded, letting the old woman help her to her feet. I need to be quiet and pay attention to everything that everyone says, she told herself.

  Hannah held out a dress in her direction, and her mouth fell open. The garment was obviously high-quality, midnight blue with a slim bodice and no frills. “That’s for me?”

  “Desmond said he brought it for you, yes. I imagine he wants you dressed as befits his status, you know.” Hannah laughed a little. “My Cory, he’s not a very strong vampire at all. Not like Desmond. That’s why I dress like this. But, I don’t mind.”

  The way the other woman talked about the vampire enslaving her, as if she was fond of him, made Viktoria shudder. She would never ever feel that way about Desmond!

  When she was dressed, she felt completely unlike herself. The dress was too beautiful and feminine for a hunter, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  “So, are you ready?”

  Viktoria nodded, and Hannah took one of the torches from its wall sconce to guide them down the dark tunnel just outside the doorway. Somehow, walking free with someone who wasn’t a vampire made her feel weird.

  “Hannah?”