The Blood That Bonds Excerpts

Excerpt II - Lisette

The girl made the cut below the nipple on her left breast and stood, beckoning. Theroen lounged on overstuff cushions of velvet, warm from the first kill, ready for the second. She was white cream against the red fabric. Pouting lips, full breasts, dark hair on her head, between her legs. Theroen reached out, took her hand, brought her to him. The girl swooned, falling against him, panting, as he drank from the wound she had inflicted upon herself. At length he tired of this small flow of blood and, with a snarl, thrust his teeth into the flesh of her neck. The girl cried out, but made no move to escape this sudden, deadly bite.

Her death came with a tiny gasp, and the girl went limp in his arms. Theroen shoved the body away, reclined, reflected.Two of them, and still he was unsatisfied. There could never be enough death. He could drown in a sea of human blood, and it would never be enough.

A walk, then, and perhaps another victim.

In the ten years which had passed since his rebirth into darkness, Theroen had learned little of his nature beyond that which was readily evident to him. He would not take instruction from Abraham, and the elder vampire in turn shunned his creation, leaving Theroen to his own devices.

Theroen knew he was strong. He knew he could read minds with a proficiency that seemed to enrage Abraham. He knew he could make women do terrible things to themselves, and in this last he sometimes took great pleasure. 

There was no God, no devil, no heaven or hell. Lost in a sea of blackness, Theroen let his base instincts run wild. Women, always women, always engaging in acts forbidden by the church. Theroen rejoiced in these acts, though he never participated. They performed with themselves, with each other, not with him. Theroen’s touch meant only death.

Some went quietly, like the two tonight. Others laughed, wept, screamed, begged. It didn’t matter. How could it? How could anything matter at all when God had so clearly forsaken him? Theroen reveled in debauchery ten times greater than anything Leopold might ever have even imagined, and it just didn’t matter.

Someone was watching him. He could sense it, and this presence frightened him. Theroen was unaccustomed to being noticed. His speed and uncanny ability with the minds of those around him made it an infrequent occurrence, at best. What concerned him most was that he could not throw off this feeling. It pursued him through streets, back alleys, parks, graveyards. He skipped the whorehouse from which he’d been planning to acquire another victim, moved onward, toward the townhouse. Toward Abraham. Toward safety.

There was something humorous in that concept, that he might turn to Abraham for sanctuary. The vampire had all but denounced him. Yet blood bonded them. Theroen hated his master. Despised him. Loathed him.

And yet this fear ...

The presence shifted, and he realized that the feeling of being watched was more than a mere tingle at the back of the neck. It was spatial. It had depth. He felt the presence overtake him at a frightening speed. There was a short moment of paralyzing terror, and then it moved onward, in front of him now, yet still focused on him in some way.

From the shadows there was laughter like silver bells on a sheet of glass. The woman stepped out from the doorway of a cathedral. Black hair, pale white skin and oceanic green eyes. Theroen felt himself lost and drowning in those eyes, and looked away, snarling.

“Do you fear everything you don’t understand?” Her accent was French.

“I fear nothing.” A lie, perhaps. His fright was replaced with the hot flush of humiliation. Theroen was glad for this. Of the two, he preferred the latter.

“You fear me.”

“You were trying to hypnotize me.”

“I was doing nothing of the sort.”

Theroen looked back, was pulled again into the depths of those eyes. He struggled to maintain focus, coherent thought, any semblance of composure.

She laughed again, but there was no trace of mockery in the sound. Theroen’s spine knotted and he shivered. “Who are you?”

“Who I am would be a long tale indeed, my fallen priest. Your father knows me. Perhaps you could ask him.”

“Your name, at least?”

“You can call me Lisette. It is not the name I was born into, but the one I chose for myself later. After. It has a lovely sound to it, don’t you think?”

“Lisette. Madame. What do you want?” Theroen had regained some composure. His thoughts were more clear, the sense of fear not gone, but faded. The girl, and Theroen saw now that she was little more than such, laughed again.

“Ah, you are brave, child. But don’t make assumptions based on my appearance. I’ve walked this earth for far longer than you can currently conceive.”

Theroen looked again, trying to see past the facade. The eyes told him she spoke the truth. They were ancient and ageless, like Abraham’s, yet without the malice that forever darkened his. Lisette smiled at him and took a step forward. Theroen flinched, stumbled backward, immediately on the defensive. His fear seemed to leap forward, energizing his muscles. Lisette paused, shaking her head.

“Child, if I wanted to kill you, you would be very dead by now. Do you not understand this?”

Theroen shook his head, a guarded expression on his face. The woman before him was lithe, petite, nearly angelic in her beauty. A killer?

And then she was gone, and he felt the lightest touch of lips against his ear. Her voice was a whisper, heard as much in his mind as by his body. “That and more.”

Theroen jerked to the side, flailing his arms for balance, losing it, falling.

Then he was sitting. Sitting on a stone bench, vaguely aware of some sort of movement too fast even for his vampire senses to track.

“Dear God,” his voice was thick with fear and confusion. The vampire, now sitting beside him, smiled again.

“You speak to He who has forsaken you, Theroen. Is this not the case? Or perhaps you have only forsaken Him?”

Theroen searched for something to hold on to in his confusion, and found his anger. “I know not of Him. Not anymore. I know of fallen priests, and I know of their sins.”

Lisette clapped her hands together at this, laughing, merry, unperturbed. Theroen turned to her, teeth clenched, angry. She looked at him with calm eyes, and shook her head.

“I am not mocking you, my young priest. Ah, has Abraham taught you nothing? No, of course not. Your goodness disgusts him.”

“I’ve no goodness left in me, lady. You look upon a black hearted killer. A creature of evil.”

More laughter. “I look upon nothing of the sort. I look only upon a man, and a vampire, who knows nothing of his own true nature. I look upon a man who was been lead by others all his life, and knows not how to lead himself.”

“I look,” She said, “upon a fledgling in desperate need of answers.”

Theroen said nothing, but turned away. Answers? Perhaps, yes. Certainly Abraham had provided him with little in the way of understanding. He felt movement: Lisette leaning in closer. This time he did not shy away. He was instead suddenly, acutely aware of the woman next to him. She smelled of lilacs and blood. When she laughed this time, it did not bother him so much.

“You must learn to guard your thoughts, my child. Such impure images from a man of the cloth ...”

“I beg your pardon, Madame.” He could think of no other response.

Lisette moved her lips to his neck, held them above the vein. “Is that all you beg for?” Her breath set the tiny hairs below her lips standing on edge.

“Milady ...” Theroen felt out of breath. He was dimly aware of activity at his groin, a first since his baptism into darkness. No mortal woman had ever had this affect on him as a vampire, and before that, as a virgin priest for all of his twenty-three years, he had steadfastly disallowed any such impure thoughts. Now, they swamped him, overwhelmed him, swept him up.

Half-focused images, potent, carnal, flashed through his mind. Her open bodice beckoned, the white breasts luminescent in the moonlight. Skin like porcelain. Hair like ebony. Lips like blood. He sensed, or thought he sensed, some dull fire from between her legs. Theroen moaned slightly. Her lips never touched his skin, yet they burned there like hot iron.

“Alive below the waist,” She commented in a whisper. “How curious. Your father is possessed of no such blessing.”

She touched him there, ever so gentle, and Theroen made some sound, some choked sob. He began to turn toward her, desire overwhelming him.

As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Lisette sat up, and the feeling, like a building explosion, drained away. Theroen drew in a shuddery breath. Lisette laughed.

“I like you, Theroen Anders. I shall visit you again.”

And she was gone.

* * *

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