Page 56 of Vanquished Gods
“Someone in my castle is trying to have you killed. It would seem as if we have another traitor in our midst, don’t you think?”
Another knock sounded on the door, and I raised my eyebrows. “So…am I supposed to not answer it?”
“Who’s there?” Sion barked through the door.
A high-pitched voice called back, “I brought the food to feed the human.”
On the one hand, I was a little disturbed by the degree to which that statement made me sound like a pet that needed feeding, but those reservations were overruled by the rumblingin my stomach. On the other hand, after our aborted dinner, I really did need feeding.
Sion unbolted the door and opened it cautiously, then a little wider. A platinum-haired, red-lipped vampire sauntered inside, carrying a domed tray. She set it on my table by the window and removed the cloche. Immediately, the scent of venison filled the room. It was pure decadence.
The servant smiled at me. “We finished roasting the stag you killed today.”
I sat at the table, my gaze roaming over the meat, which was seasoned with rosemary-infused butter and accompanied by a berry sauce that smelled like blackberries, maybe with a dash of honey. Caramelized onions and wild sorrels sautéed in herb butter lay on the side, and a small glass pot of spiced cream with wild berries drizzled with honey completed the meal.
As the servant left, Sion closed and bolted the door behind her, then returned to the table and poured me a glass of wine. Apart from the fangs in my throat earlier, he really was the perfect host.
“Thank you for this, Sion.”
My mouth watered as I cut into the meat, savoring the rich, succulent flavors. The world seemed to fade away as I ate, dipping the meat in the berry sauce, tasting the buttery sorrels.
When I finally looked up from my food, I noticed Sion staring out the window, his muscles tense. Shadows flickered around him, and the candles in my room guttered in their sconces. His tension was palpable.
“Are you worried about Maelor?” I asked quietly. “You keep saying that you’re not, but I’m not sure I believe you.”
He kept staring out at the sea. “He never accepted becoming a vampire. And when we transitioned, he lost his wits. It was even harder for him than it was for me when we crawled from the soil.”
“After you were abandoned by the man who sired you?”
His eyes seemed locked on the waves outside. “Yes. The hunger was agonizing. It was all we knew—but we didn’t know what we were hungryfor. At least, not at first. The Mormaer, our sire, only told us one thing: stay out of the sun. And that was all we knew, but it was very hard to stay out of the sun when we no longer had anywhere to live.”
“What happened to Maelor’s home? He was nobility.” I took another bite of venison.
He turned back to the table and poured himself a glass of wine, and his gaze met mine. “First, we were buried. By the time we crawled from the dirt, undead, the Tyrenians had taken over every notable building in Lirion. Maelor’s was probably one of the first they commandeered, draping his stone walls with their golden banners. They festooned his home with the symbols of their Archon.”
“Then where did you go?”
“We spent few wordless days, more dead than alive, in a cave we found, instinctively hiding from the sun. The transition isn’t complete until you drink blood, but we didn’t know that was what we needed. I think the transition was worse for us than it is for most simply because we had no idea what was happening to us, or what a vampire even was. I had a vague sense of being dead, that my heart wasn’t beating. The shock of it made me forget who I was.”
I swallowed hard. “That sounds horrible.”
“In the first few days, before we knew to drink, our bodies were clumsy and stiff, and I felt like an abomination. We hid in the dark, rotting and confused, like walking corpses. The hunger was maddening, but we couldn’t imagine what it was we were hungering for. It didn’t seem to be food. It was a slow, torturous death. I remember once or twice I tried to walk out into the sun, but my skin started to burn immediately—smoldering, smoking,the flames rising. I dove right back into that damp cave. I remember thinking I was living in the world of eternal torment the Tyrenians had told us about. The place for the wicked. For the rotten. My memories came and went, sometimes empty, sometimes flooding me. I kept thinking that I wished I’d had the chance to take my mother’s bones out of the mass grave and bring them to the Archonium to free her from torment.”
“I’m sorry.”
His dark expression cleared. “But that was before I knew that the Archon wasn’t real.”
I stared at him, entranced, no longer even thinking about the food. “Which of you fed first?”
“Maelor. I’d gone into a sort of trance state in the cave that night, but then I smelled something that called to me, a hunger that lured me in. At first, I didn’t recognize what it was—I only knew that I needed to find it, consume it. I followed the scent to the city, and as I got closer, I heard the sound of screaming. When I crossed into the city, I saw the crumpled bodies of mortals drained of blood, lying lifeless on the cobblestones and in dark alleyways. It hit me then—what I was, what I needed. I still couldn’t put it into words, but I felt it. The need for blood. I turned into something predatory, something feral, and I could hear the heartbeats of those in the city.”
“You remember it all so clearly.”
“Like it was yesterday. I started to walk back toward my home, Maelor’s palace. And that’s when I ran into a Tyrenian soldier. That was my first kill, and I didn’t feel one bit sorry for him. I didn’t wonder what I was doing. I just leapt for him, my fangs sinking deep into his throat, his blood filling me like the finest wine. I’d never tasted anything like it—the sweetness, the magic in that blood as I drained his life, the strength that coursed through my veins. His strangled cries called more soldiers to us, but I tore through each of them. And when I’dfinished drinking them dry, my gaze flicked up to the stars. I no longer felt dead. I felt more alive than ever. The brightness of the stars pierced the sky with an otherworldly brilliance, like jeweled gods that hung above us. The night wrapped around me.”
“And that’s when you started to enjoy being a vampire?”
“I felt like I was drowning in ecstasy, in beauty and power. All my worst fears about beingrotten to the corewere washed away because I felt at one with the glory of the world around me. There was no Archon, there was only the sky and the soil and the breath of wind through the leaves. My senses were as sharp as my fangs, and every flicker of those stars above seemed to pulse within my body. Although my heart was still, the stars beat for me. I remember licking the blood off my lips and then smelling Maelor. His scent was so familiar to me that I could follow him around the city, and I tracked him back to his castle. That’s when I found him, with his fangs buried deep in Epona’s neck.”