Page 24 of Paying The Vampire
Willow had given me something that I had not experienced in years. Sleep… a deep, dreamless sleep where my body was at rest and my mind was silent. I was liberated from the grim thoughts and the dark nightmares that howled at me like baying wolves. I was at rest, given respite from the torments of my memories and the regrets that clung to me like dead spiders.
But she had also given rise to something else; anger.
It flared within me like a blazing fire and it rose angrily, spreading through my body, giving me life and like the phoenix itself I rose. My fangs were bared, my eyes glowering as I lurched to my feet, hissing after the attack. Somehow she knew. I should never have believed her. How tricky she was, playing with my mind, playing on my desires. She may have been young and I had underestimated her. Oh Willow… oh yes she was indeed a wily girl, smart as a whip, and she had bested me. But why would she listen to Clea? Why would she allow herself to fall into the same trap that Clea had? I had been so sure Willow was different, yet now it seemed as though she was the same, and I had no choice but to bring it to the same conclusion. My hopes for her to be better were dashed. My judgment had failed me again.
The king had lost his power.
I growled and snarled like some savage beast as I clenched my jaw together. I could still taste the sweetness of her kiss, but that now seemed bitterer than before. There was no doubt in my mind where she would go. The instinct of any cornered animal was to run, but she would not leave. She was mine, and she belonged here!
I rushed up the stairs, too angry to even bother changing into my other form. My feet crashed against the hard stones and my anger was such that I felt the very castle crumble beneath me. I strode forward, eating up the distance between my feet, and as I grew closer I could smell her scent in the air. It was like a trail that had been painted in a vivid color. There was no mistaking it, and I hated how it still played with my mind so wildly, like a song that I could not forget.
When I entered the room I found her beside the pool, looking desperately into it. She flicked through a tome in the hope of finding the right path away, but I rushed up to her and knocked it away from her. The book fluttered and crashed to the floor, and she screamed, cowering below me with her hands pinned to her head. The pool was still, while I glared at her.
“What have you done Willow? Why would you betray me like this? Why would you trick me?” I hissed.
She stared back at me, showing the inner strength of a wolf. She may not have been able to bring that beast out, but it was most certainly within her. It should have made me recoil, but I found it strangely alluring. These sensations and emotions crashing through me in a wild cacophony, and it was as though I did not know my own mind.
“You were the one who tricked me first! You lied to me. You lied about everything! I know why Clea left, because she discovered it too. She knew the truth and now I know the truth as well. Let me go Cassius. Let me free because I don’t want to be here any longer. I don’t want to be with you.”
“Why… why would you say this? What poison did Clea whisper to you?”
“There was no poison, there is nothing but the truth. I read it all Cassius. I saw it in Amara’s diary. I’m no fool. I can piece together what happened. You are here, alone, with all the vampires gone. I know the stories. I know that vampires are hard to kill, but who would know that better than one of their own? You did this, didn’t you? You massacred your own people? You went to war with them and somehow you won, and now you stand here alone, king of the ash, and I will not have any part of that.”
Her words traveled on a river of emotion. Her face twisted and her eyes were animated. But as she spoke the anger within me faded. It turned to disappointment as the shadow of the past fell over me. Even now Amara got the better of me. She always did like to boast that she was one step ahead, that she would end up having the last laugh. I sighed and clasped my hands behind my back. I bowed my head and looked towards the floor.
“So you thought you would come here and find a way to leave me, to leave without even saying goodbye. You kissed me to betray me, and then you were going to abandon me,” I said, wondering if I should be concerned at the parallels between how she and Amara treated me.
“I needed to find a way to the truth. If you hadn’t lied to me then I wouldn’t have had to go to these lengths. You can’t blame me for this,” she spat.
“No, I suppose I can’t, but then can anyone be blamed for what they do out of fear?”
“Are you trying to tell me that you were afraid?”
“I’m trying to tell you that I had my reasons.”
“I don’t care about your reasons. I’ve seen the truth Cassius. I want to leave. Let me go. Let me go like you did with Clea.”
“It’s funny, when Clea left I had no idea why. I remember her being scared. But she ran and escaped before I could talk to her about what she had discovered.”
“So you didn’t really let her go? Is that something else you lied about?”
I leveled my gaze towards her. “Of course I let her go. I could have hunted her down. Do you think finding her again was beyond me? But I respected her wishes. Despite what you may think of me I am not a monster.”
“Just a liar, then,” she spoke with anger, but her breath had calmed and her fear had turned cold. Her eyes lacked the warmth that I had seen in them before. Had it all been a mistake, or…
A thought occurred to me.
“Then that is something we have in common.”
“I am not a liar,” she insisted.
I arched an eyebrow. “Says the woman who took my hand, who sang with me, who cooed and smiled and winked, says the woman who kissed me.”
“It was just a kiss.”
“A kiss is never just a kiss,” I countered. She visibly flinched.
A moment of silence passed between us. “Unless you’re going to tell me that there is something between us?”