These eternal bones a da.., p.17
These Eternal Bones: A Dark Vampire Romance, page 17
“Do not cheapen yourself. You are my–”
“Your mate, yes, but what does that mean? Why are you always so…troubled? The veins on your neck, they reach your lips Elric, they don’t go away anymore. Is that normal for vampires? Where are the others?” He holds me tightly, letting the words and questions spill from my mouth without interruptions. He never attempts to slow or organize my thoughts. It’s another reason why I adore him so much.
“They are dead.”
My lips part. “All of them?”
“Yes.”
“My god, how? Why?”
“My children were slaughtered on these grounds, all of them. Those who did not scatter to the winds, those that did died off over the years.”
“You-you are a father…”
It’s an odd thing to get caught up on, a selfish, silly thing, but the idea of him–
“No and yes, my sweet Molly. I am The Father, although they took to calling me by a different name.”
My chest rises and falls, his fingers never stopping their striations as if to reassure himself I am fine, that I am here. His tendrils tighten on me almost painfully, literally binding me to my spot in front of the fire.
“I created them, all of them.”
“The only being capable of creating life is God.”
He laughs at that, but it’s a cold, bitter sound. “There are many gods, and humans have long overstated their purpose. I didn’t create life, Molly, I ended it. I took the beauty and sanctity of life and perverted it because I could not stand to be alone. I created many and set the scourge loose in the world without as much as a thought spared for them.”
“You-you’re a god?”
The expression that falls over him is best described as a grimace, one that bears his fangs, and with it, he snaps. “It did me little good when I could not save a single life! All my godly power and I could not prevent this fucking hell! You cannot understand because you can forget! You always forget, and I am cursed with the memories, the ghosts of you!”
“What do you mean?” I sniffle, tears streaming down my face. “What did I forget?”
A savage growl tears through his throat as he shifts away from my back, leaving me tied down by his tendrils. Mere seconds pass before his hands grasp my face, his forehead thudding against mine. “I will not spend what little time we have speaking about old pain. Even within an existence of agony, I have you! That is enough. Let it be enough. Every waking moment, I am ridden by this need, this sick fucking impulse, and I cannot stop it. I cannot stop myself from killing you!”
An ugly, ragged sob breaks free from my chest. “You would never hurt me, never. Please, please tell me so that I can help you.”
If it is possible for a heart to bleed, mine does. The moment that inky black substance that fills his being pools in his eyes, a single obsidian tear spills over as his lips capture mine in a kiss. It’s not the soft, adoring ones I’m used to, nor the heated ones that raze my soul. This kiss is desperation, longing unlike anything I felt before. “I have loved you in all of your lives.”
Péal’s words flood me, Tien’s odd comments rushing with them to the front of my mind. “Elric I–”
His lips silence me again. “I have kissed you more times than there are stars in the sky, and somehow each feels like the first. Molly, you said you had held onto your love because you were saving it for me. You have no idea how right you were, because for all my immortal life, you have been mine. One hundred and seventy-two years, I waited to see you again.”
I nearly choke on the sob that bubbles up my throat. “I am not–”
“But you are, my love. Your soul is tied to mine. It is why you feel incomplete. It is why you wander in every life until you find your way home to me.”
I shake my head, my heart bursting with grief for him. His mind is so riddled with grief and loss that it has fractured with time. Can a god go mad?
Surely not.
But he is…right?
“I am just Molly,” I breathe.
The smile he offers me is sad, my hands shaking as I wipe the inky tear from his cheek. “And you are perfect, wondrously beautiful. I wouldn’t want anyone else. I am sorry.”
“Whatever for?” I sniffle.
“Because you have paid the price for my crimes more times than I can bear, and you will again. There is nothing I can do to stop this. To stop from losing you. To stop this horrible grief. There is nothing I can do to make you remember me, but God, how I have loved you. There is no being or creature alive that could compare to the way my soul bleeds for you. I am an open wound until you come and balm the ache.” His words rush out, like he’d been holding them there on the tip of his tongue for a lifetime.
My mind races wildly, thoughts battering the walls of my brain like wasps. “Then why are you so sad?”
“Because I will lose you again, and it is my fault.”
The sounds that leave me next are guttural at best, because despite all his madness, his weaning mind…his words feel right. My soul seems to throb and pulse with the weight of them. For a moment, I can understand how he’s gotten to this point. I can understand the blank, lifeless stares, the weeks without sleep, pacing, and agonizing. If one moment sends me tendering over the edge, I cannot fathom an–
How long, god, how long has he suffered this?
It is fantastical and heartbreaking when my disbelief leaves me.
My mate.
A god.
“How long?” I sob as he gathers me to his chest. “How many times have I died?”
He doesn’t answer with anything except that song, the eerie soft humming battling with my sobs as he blurs to his bedroom and settles us on the bed. Not a word is traded between us as I cry, as I grieve a part of myself that I can barely wrap my head around, let alone recognize. His comfort comes in his closeness, a shared pain that lurked between the cracks of my very being, one I had no name for until now. There are no sweet mumblings that can fix an ache like this, so he holds me, I suspect, long past the point that the sobs stop and my body gives in to exhaustion.
26
Syringa
Péal 172 years ago
My hands shake as I knot my apron, bunching up the lace trimmed fabric before letting it fall and smoothing it again. Gathering and falling, gathering and falling. Strands of pale gray hair fall free from the braid that worked loose as my head snaps down to the article, noting all the new wrinkles that must be ironed out. My chest aches like a chasm because although master’s screaming is terrible, his silence is worse. Blinking my eyes free from their tears, I pass the Nephilim in the wood line. For once, his lack of teasing is sorely missed. His more play than work attitude annoys me to the high realms and back, but to see him without it feels like another notch in my composure. His golden eyes are red and overflowing with tears.
It is his first time.
But it won’t be the last. My mistress is stubborn, you see. Her soul simply refuses to stay away for long. How could she? A love like theirs is special. Curse or not, she would return to him. Return to us all.
My bare feet crunch on the frosted grass as the sound of master’s humming fills the clearing of her cottage. For all my years, I find it hard to maintain myself and the task of simply looking upon them impossible. “M-master…”
The humming, that pretty song seems…tortured as it cuts off, his voice a deadly growl when it takes its place. “What is it, selkie?”
“I–” Realms help me; my voice breaks as my eyes find the loosened laces of her boots. The desire to right them, to bind them, for her sickens my stomach as I finally force my eyes upward. Echoing through the woods, cries of pain only serve to compound the sight before me. The fox somewhere nearby, sharing in the…wrongness of the scene.
The agony of it.
My mistress’s hair slips free from her scalp under the gentle petting of master. I shift my feet, his dark eyes zeroing in on the frosted grass crunching beneath my boots. “Shhhh, my sweetest love. It’s gotten cold. Selkie, fetch my mate a blanket so that I may warm her.”
A wretched sound works up my throat before I choke it back. Her short black hair, nearly the same shade as his, has lost its shine, her limbs locked up from days of being curled in his arms.
Days my Master has refused to let her go, days since his bellows rocked the ocean, days since his mind escaped him, days…or perhaps it’s been a week now. I doubt even Tien knows at this point. Master’s skin is networked with his dark veins. His soul matches her body, rotting from the inside out. My apron knots in my hands again as he resumes his rocking, his loving murmurs and promises he’ll never keep. It takes a long moment for me to put substance into my voice. “Master, perhaps allow me to take the mistress inside and get her cleaned up, yes? She has been in those clothes for much too long. Her skin will chafe.”
The mighty, terrifying Vampire of Port Clyde makes an odd, strangled sound as he takes her in. “Yes, my apologies, syringa. It seems I have lost track of time.” His voice breaks as he slowly, gently presses a lingering kiss to her stiffened lips. “I–” another choked sound. “I will see you after your bath, yes?” My tears spill over as his forehead meets hers. “Please. Please, my love. Please.”
Elric
Silky strands of copper colored hair slip through my fingers as I run the brush through it, letting it fall to her lower back, finding some semblance of solace in the subtle rise and fall of her breaths. Now and then, she takes an extra slow one, I all but freeze in place until I see her move again. It’s been days without the sound of her voice. The gods know how badly I’ve ruined things in this life. It had been the wrong time to tell her, but I am not feeling like myself. My fangs throb, the venom keeping them engorged and aching. This is the longest I’ve fought the bond, and I can feel the wariness in my everlasting bones, every thought obsessively circling her, dragging her down underneath me and sinking my teeth into her soft, sweet neck. The smallest trickle of venom takes restraint.
It is what I am made for. All of my long, weary years, my only purpose is to be hers.
All the Gods have mates, humans or otherwise. It is said that when a God is born, their soul is snapped in two. That to be born whole would make them too powerful, too omnipotent within themselves. So, the other half of them is split apart, made to walk the world without them, to humble the Gods. Our mates represent our humanity, our compassion. Some never find it, some suffer a fate even worse than mine. To have never had her…I shudder at the thought. No matter how terribly our love, our bond, was perverted by the witches that sought to punish me, it is better than that. I am not so naïve to think my years here have been a mere seven hundred and eighty-three; it is simply the only part I can recall. When a god finds their other half, their soul is wiped clean. The bonding erases all so they can be made new, forget the empty wondering and transgressions of their past. When I found her, Lucretia, as she was called then, had been my salvation. It was all too short a reprieve before my past crimes caught up with us, before my bonded mate, the other half of my soul, something that was so pure, so right, was turned into something…horrible.
In every life, my sweet love will be empty, wandering in discontent until she finds her way back to me. She will love me simply because she was made to. My other half, and in every life, the bond that ties us will ride my very soul. To ignore one’s mate is to spit in the face of a fate; it is never done. To refuse the bond is an agony unlike any other. In every life I will give in, in every life, my sacrament of our love will be the thing that sets in motion another loss. Another hundred years of grief.
It is my curse, and such a bittersweet one.
To have and lose her for a thousand years.
After every bond, her days are numbered. After every bond, when our souls finally rest together, she will die. Sometimes that very day, sometimes it will be a week, a month, even a handful of painfully short years, but I will lose her. The binding that twists our souls will snap, and there is no torment greater than that.
“I am sorry, syringa, please speak to me. It has been too long without your voice.”
My tendrils, as always, act with a mind of their own, answering only my primal, less civilized wants as they band around her, seeking her warmth. I know it is time she requires, space to wrap her mind around what she’s learned, but unfortunately, time is the only thing I have both an abundance of and none at all to spare. There is much she doesn’t know, more guilt I have to atone for, but…however wrong it feels to keep secrets from my other half, I refuse to spend this time at odds. I cannot bear it. I will protect her from my transgressions, from the full and horrid ugly truth of our fate. I will do anything to keep her for as long as possible, whole and mine.
I cannot bear another one hundred and seventy-two years in the dark.
Even if she only looks upon me with distrust and hate, it will be worth it. If only to have the privilege of staring back into her eyes.
A small knock comes from the door, making me realize I had long gone still. “Master?”
“Leave us, selkie.”
She does not. My attention snaps to Molly as her eyes track one of her oldest friends. How terrible it must be to remember nothing? How lovely a reprieve it would be to remember…nothing.
“I was hoping to be permitted a walk along the beach.” The small, quiet woman asks before turning to my mate. “Come, mistress, you always long for sunlight in the long winter months.”
Molly sighs, glancing at the window. “It is cold.”
My phantom heart jolts at the sound of her voice, my tendrils working themselves into a frenzy before I dismiss them.
The selkie laughs, flouncing over to the wardrobe. “Nothing a few extra layers cannot fix. Master, I think it would brighten her spirits.”
“Syringa?”
Her wide, tired eyes turn to me before snapping away once they meet. I pretend not to be gored by that small action. “Fine.”
The selkie clasps her hands together, tugging Molly from the bed, as always, the resilient creature seems impervious to the mood in the room around her. The lack of warmth hits me like a blanket of snow as I blur off our bed, stepping between them to press a soft kiss on my mate’s forehead.
I wait until I am in my office before I dare summon Tien. “Has there been any word at the port?”
“No, it appears all has been silent since the last letter.”
Rage rises in me like an iron left too long in the fire. The putrid captain had, in fact, sent word back to the bastard who thought to take my mate from me. He’d done so simply to demand payment for her passage, perhaps ransom her back to what Molly called New Eden. A nagging in the back of my mind screams about everything I stand to lose.
It seems Joseph was more than willing to pay to have her returned. It seems perhaps he was more than willing to cross the ocean for her, too. My fangs descend, my claws scoring the top of the windowsill as I glare out at the turbulent waters. He may be willing to cross the ocean, but I would burn the world for her. I will return to the defilement I once was, and it would be all too easy to fuck and hold her as the snow turned red with their blood. Their screams would be nothing but an accompaniment to the cadence of her breath, their pleas a symphony in tune with the beating of her heart.
27
Cold Water Prophecies
Molly
The horse shifts underneath me, but for once, I pay it no mind. The beautiful white and gray steed fits in perfectly here, backed against the lapping ocean and snowy trees. His coarse mane tickles my inner palm as I make another pass of my fingers through it. Although it feels a bit of a betrayal of Jin, whom I’ve become quite fond of over the past months, I do not think he shares the same affections toward me. Péal’s ankle-length skirts rise as she dismounts, showing off a length of darkened flesh at her thighs.
“Are you alright?” My voice rings with concern, the sound of it nearly startling me; it’s one of the first things I’ve uttered in days.
Her soft, pale brows furrow before tracking my line of sight and letting out a giggle. “Of course, mistress.” With that, she hikes up her skirts, showing off her legs and well, other things I’d rather not have seen as well.
I scramble to dismount, ungracefully jerking the hem of them back down. “Péal!”
“It is simply skin, mistress. I am a selkie; my coloring changes to darker gray toward the middle.”
“Still, it's freezing out here, and you were wearing nothing underneath your skirts!”
“I am–”
“A selkie, yes,” I breathe, exasperated at times, no matter how much I adore the small, odd woman.
“It’s odd, mistress.” Yes, odd indeed. “How you still flush at the sight of nudity but spend most of your days bare as the day you were born and screaming the walls down.”
My cheeks flush a bright shade of pink, proving her point. But at least it wards off the rest of the chill, although I’m not cold. The sheer number of layers I’m wearing is perhaps too warm. The sound of my chuckle is almost as alarming as my voice, earning me a warm smile from my companion as she plops down on the muted sand. Nothing like the warm beaches in Mertigas.
Like the last few days, my mind is swarming with questions, doubt and…grief, I suppose, for something I didn’t know I lost. Something I’ve felt all my life but had no name for. So many questions that I cannot choose one over the other, so I opt for silence. My boots drag the sand as I join her, a heavy sigh leaving my chest.
“Eight times.”
My head snaps over to the woman, a question on my face, although I put no voice to it.
“I overheard part of your discussion with master Elric the other night–” naturally. “You have died eight times…that I am aware of.”
