Page 48 of Claimed

“You have not been in the mood or mind to listen for quite some time, Alexei. You needed to learn that I am capable of taking away everything you hold dear. The rising is not to be ignored. Vampire numbers are about to increase seven-fold. Blood will run in the streets. The last time this happened, the packs were almost entirely hunted to extinction. I, believe it or not, am trying to save you from your own arrogance.”

“What do you get out of this?”

“When you live as long as I have, you take pleasure in gardening.”

“What?”

“I watch over several familial lines, descending from people I once knew and loved. Including yours, Alexei. I knew your great-great-great-grandfather. I knew his mate as well. I have had a hand in protecting your pack for as long as it has existed. You were known to me when you were still in the womb.”

I feel Anya tremble in my arms. The creature thinks he is benevolent, but he was made by a dark curse and that means malevolence flows in his veins.

“Please,” Anya whispers almost inaudibly. “We have to get out of here.”

I am sure the vampire can hear her very well, but he pretends not to.

I hold her a little tighter. It is just she and I, and we are surrounded by vampires. I should have stopped to think before I came. I should have brought the pack—or should I? Perhaps that would have only served to lead all of us to the slaughter.

“I am always going to know where she is. What she is thinking. How she is feeling. I am aware of her in ways nobody else ever could be aware of her,” the vampire says. “I could make her my thrall, my puppet, my pet, my slave. Do you understand, Alexei? I leave her enough free will to say and think things like that so she remains amusing to me. That is what the gods do, is it not? Create entities with just enough self-determination to be of interest?”

Of course he has a god complex. Living forever will do that to you.

I know when I am in the presence of a dangerous creature, and there is nothing more dangerous in this world than this vampire. An ancient megalomaniac with nothing to lose and everything to gain. He could snuff out our line in an instant if he so chose.

He acts like a patriarch, but I sense his cruelty keenly. Whatever interest he has in our line, it is not benign.

“I cannot wait to see what young she bears you, Alexei. You were a beautiful baby.”

He has forgotten something. A true god is a creator. Dom is not a creator. He is an infective agent, a curse crawling on the planet’s face. He will never know the embrace of true eternity. He will be standing on the world when it ends.

For a moment, I feel sorry for him. He, like all of us, is lost in a search for meaning, and it is harder for him because everything is ephemeral. Even the very vampire progeny he makes are taken from him. Anya wounded him when she killed his son. He is demonstrating that pain now, showing us a fraction of it.

“What do you say, Alexei?”

I clear my throat, and lean into his metaphor.

“Men are not great because they are made by gods. They are great because they exist in spite of their capricious cruelties.”

There is a brief pause in which he does not respond, then there is a smirk and a nod of acknowledgement.

“You’re not going to submit, are you?” He says the words thoughtfully and perhaps even sadly, as if he is being forced to confront a reality he does not want to deal with.

“No. I am not.”

“Then I am afraid neither one of you can ever leave this place. You are a liability to yourselves and to the… Aaargghhhgghh!”

We never hear the end of his little speech, because the room bursts into a kind of light that forces both Anya and me to close our eyes to avoid having them burned out.

This is a weapon that the pack has been developing. Giving us time to work before letting us know where Anya was turns out to have been a significant tactical error. We have not all been sitting around waiting. Many of my pack are incredibly intelligent, and with an aim to turn their intellect toward, they have become rather dangerous.

Vampires do not like sunlight. Ancient vampires can tolerate it, but what just exploded in this room contains enough UV to kill a hundred of them in a single explosion. It’s designed to incapacitate, and it does so brutally.

Dom is screaming. I imagine thousands of years have passed since he last felt pain. By the sound of it, he’s finding it very unpleasant. That’s likely because his skin has melted off, his eyeballs have bubbled away to nothing. He cannot see and he is a shambling mass of bare, dead flesh rotting visibly.

“You will all perish for this!”

His cry of furious rage heralds not our deaths, but the arrival of the pack.

They were behind me. Of course they were.

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