Entertaining the Vampire King

Finally

I don't know how long I stared at Thaddeus. It felt like hours. I heard him say my name, but it was drowned out over the soft ringing in my ears. Family. My family.

It was a topic long forgone. When I was a girl I would ask mistress about my mommy and daddy. She would simply say, "Not yet." And leave it at that. When I was older, she informed me that my parents had died, and that I had been brought there rather than killed.

I had long accepted that I had no family. Surely they wouldn't send me to such a place to grow up as a poor servant. Not that my life was horrible. I was one of the luckiest girls I knew. Mistress was kind; she didn't sell us like common whóres. That alone was enough for me to be thankful.

I was one of her favorites. Mistress taught me to read and write. She educated me on the nights where I couldn't sleep. She taught me how to cook better than the average kitchen girls. I was special to her, and she was the only mother I could have ever asked for. She had sometimes been better to me than her own daughters.

"Ayla!" Thaddeus shouted next to me. He shook my shoulders. I blinked a few times and turned to look at him.

"I don't have family." I said softly.

"Alright... Ayla, would you like to hear a story?" I was thrown off by his obvious change of subject. Another story? Anything to get my mind off of his obviously wrong statement.

"Please." I whispered. Thaddeus pulled me to him, cradling me against his hard chest. I turned my face into him and he relaxed. He sighed and stroked my hair.

"After Aldred was killed by the hunters, I tried to find them." He said. I held in a gasp at the thought of him facing the killers.

"I began to use my research on the hunters. I found out that it was not a group of people, but an entire family line. I traced them back for centuries, as far as I could find. I wanted revenge. I wanted to destroy them." He was nearly at a whisper. I shivered at the image of violence, picturing Thaddeus killing the hunters.

"Did you find them?" I asked, breaking the silence.

"Unfortunately yes. It took me decades, but eventually I traced them to Hungary. I thought I could pick them off, kill them one by one. But trained hunters are more than a good match for a vampire." I couldn't hide my gasp and slight trembling. Thaddeus tilted my chin up to look at him. He kissed my forehead gently and I calmed myself.

"I ended up meeting two vampires along my journey for revenge. They sought the same thing after hunters killed their brother.
One night we planned an attack outside of their estate. We waited in the woods, ready to pick them off one by one. As the night peaked and they left, no doubt to hunt more of us, we killed all of them. Five men that night. All that were left were the women and children inside."

I shook involuntarily. "You killed them?"

"No. We had no need. They posed no threat, so we thought."

I felt a tear run down my cheek. Thaddeus slaughtered innocent men... like a monster. But were they innocent? No one was it seemed. Not in this new world I have discovered. They spared the women and children. Did that make it better?

"The two vampires, were they..?"

"Nathaniel and Mary. Yes. We have been friends since." He said as if he read my mind. I shook my head as thoughts of Nathaniel tried to creep in.