Page 31 of These Eternal Bones
Every step I take, every move, every power-play is all for her.
The door to the lower deck swings open silently, but I am not interested in being quiet. Not tonight, not for this. I slam it shut, plunging myself into darkness as the crew rouses. A cough, a curse, some mumbling as I stand, running my claws over the wood that brought her home. It was the sea this time. I give it my thanks; the Tabot set off over two months ago from a port city in Mertigas. The warm, sunny place that gave her the freckles on her shoulders. Her home before she found me. A place that makes her grow quiet, sad… what she was running from. The Tabot’s hull was mended two weeks after they docked in my town, but they’ve lingered now.
It’s not hard to fathom why.
It’s not hard to findhim. The smell ofhimon her sweet flesh has been burned into my memory as I head toward his quarters. The light from a small candle burning tells me he’s very much awake. Good. He has overstayed his welcome, overstepped his reach when he poked around at the post office, asking to post another letter back to their original port. Back to where she stowed away on such a vile ship in her desperation. Where she offered him her–
I slam the door open, my barely concealed rage thrumming. Even now, my fangs prod my bottom lip, my claws rake across the frame of his door as his head snaps toward me slowly. Humans are so terribly…underwhelming. Sluggish even at a fully exerted pace. I’m in front of him before the scream fully leaves his lungs, but I don’t touch him. I don’t have to. I’m inside him, his blood answering my call as I mingle with it, exerting my dominion.
“Tell me, Captain Faine, what has become of supernatural’s like me?”
He stutters, gasping as I pull at his blood. “We d-don’t hear bout them no more! Been years since they popped up.”
Interesting. Seems they finally realized mingling with humans would never end well for them. Very well.
“Tell me, how did she taste, Captain, when you put your rancid tongue to her cunt?”
He blanches. The rage inside me echoes around in the still cavity of my chest like a battering ram as I press deeper, making him sputter blood. It’s warm as it splatters my face, but nowhere near as warm as my sweet Molly.
“She must’ve left quite an impression, if it was worth waiting around for her all this time. The letters you’ve been sending back and forth to Mertigas. Get them for me.Now.”The words leave me in a growl, the sound demonic, even to my ears, as I call on my tendrils, using the blood already spilled. I cannot fathom the horror he’s feeling as one bands around his neck, like leashing a naughty dog as he stumbles to his desk fumbling, upsetting a jar of ink. He curses, my eyes widening when I realize what he’s done. I snap forward, ripping the letters off the desk, part of them blotted out in black. My eyes scan the words, something new…something terribly inhuman building inside me.
“It took me hundreds of years to gain control of my…lesser nature, Captain, but oh, how I have longed for arelease. You truly sought to sell her back to them? The people she ran from? You sought to take her from me?” The words rise from me in cavernous, growled echoes, their airy quality sinking into the wood of the ship as the crew finally acts.
“I-I’m sorry–” he whimpers, but I tighten my tendril, cutting his words off short.
“Who are they?” I command, loosening it slightly.
His voice comes out strained and gruff. “He-he calls himself Joseph, he’s their leader. I-I knew by her dressing, the way she spoke, she camefrom that desert cult. He wants her back–” I cut him off again, my chest heaving as I struggle for control.
“He cannot have her,” I growl. “She has been mine for nearly a millennium. He cannot fucking have her! She cannot be taken from me.” I laugh, but the sound is as putrid as the man in my grasp. “She has already comehome.”
I feel it the second my control snaps. I harden his blood inside his veins, forming them like spikes before funneling them up and out through his neck. The captain's head hits the floor of the vessel with a hollow thud as his crew funnels into the small room. They do not stay for long, catching sight of something quite horrifying indeed.
“My God in heaven, it’s the fucking vampire!” One screams as they all scatter, tripping over one another as they all funnel up along the narrow stairs to the deck. But there I am, waiting. Another sickening laugh caught on the wind.
“Kill him!”
“Run!”
For a moment, I fear it may reach her, but she is far from here. She’s safe. My syringa. My Molly.
Her kind heart does not need to witness the things I do to keep her, the lengths I will go to or the crimes I have committed in her honor.
My tendrils snag one man, gripping down on him like steel cables as his innards burst from within. “I am notjusta vampire, no. The stories have forgotten that with time.” His body thuds as I run through another with my claws, a single swipe that opens him wide. “I am thelastvampire, the first, the one from which they were created. I lived when they faded from this earth hundreds of years ago because you cannot kill a god!” My bellow is filled with rage, with the agony of those memories from so long ago. My dominion over blood answers the pained call, killing the ones that remain instantly. My chest heavesas the wind whips around the dock, splattered in the foul scent of their blood. I make quick work of the steel chains that secure the ship before pulling it out to sea. The air around me charges, the hatred of humans fueling their handiwork even centuries later as I grow closer to the barrier. I feel it the moment it slams me, knocking me further back on the ship, the confines of my invisible prison. The blackened, turbulent sea blurs as I race toward the back, driving into the icy waves.
You cannot kill a god, but you can trap him.
I’m soaked, water dripping from the dark strands of my hair as I approach her cottage. The one I built for her all those years ago, a place she could go before she was ready to come home to me. The years had passed so long this time, and the madness had gotten the best of me. I had let her home fall into disrepair, the idea of anyone stepping foot in it too painful to fathom. It is where she died in that last life, angry at me. I listen to the sound of her even breathing, her heart slowly resting in her chest as I lean against the door, closing my eyes. For a moment, I am beside her, feeling her warmth again. For a moment, the war never happened, and things were as they should be. For the first time in over a century, I sleep.
“Is this how you intend to spend breakfast with her?”
My eyes slam open, assaulted by the cresting sunrise behind the fog. My tendrils snapping up from where they were splayed out limp beside me, banding around the source of the voice. The Nephilim lets out a sharp cry, one I cut off quickly, a rustling coming from the bed inside. The tray he was holding teeters as I snap out, catching it before it falls. My attention jolts as Molly stretches her muscles, flexingunderneath her pretty, tanned flesh. Then something odd happens. Ipanic. Knowing she will find me out here, undressed and lying in front of her door, might delay her affections toward me. My body blurs as I set the food on the stoop,throwingthe Nephilim into the woods before rushing to the wood line with him.
He hits the ground hard, just as she calls out. “Hello? Pé- Selkie?”
He curses, coughing toward the ground as my tendrils jerk him back to his feet. “Go tell her I will be a few moments late. Send my apologies.”
His golden eyes stare back at me in disbelief. “You’ve just thrown me here!”
