Getting into that carriage was the last thing Rose wanted to do. A miserable, shaken sigh escaped her lips as two Vylewrought escorted her towards a dark, gothic horse drawn carriage that waited beneath the unblinking gaze of the sky's eye. Sy, the watcher. The air was grim and foggy, heavy with the scent of metal. The two horses were Vylewrought breeds, their skin decomposed, stale and leathery. Their ribs exposed. Their flesh, or what was left of it, had pulled over their skulls to reveal bone, rotting muscle and hollow, eyeless sockets.
She felt her misery ripen to fear as the carriage's heavily decorated door clicked open as if by itself.
Shadows trickled out.
Her captor sat in a mass of darkness inside. "We don't have all night."
Night. Her desire to run or fight battled across her mind until it became no more than a fickle splinter of hope. She glanced over the Vylewrought and their hanging eyeballs and rotten teeth, to the caves just beyond. She had been fighting the day they brought her, Cato abandoned her as soon as they entered Hel. She didn't see where they had taken her, she was too busy screaming. But now she had finally stepped out from that mad, awful place, she could take it in in its entirety. The entrance had the face of a skull, massive pillars flanking each side. The mouth of the skull was pitch black. Skeleton trees scattered about, mere silhouettes against the gloomy, brown-green cloudy sky.
I'm taking you away
Where?
To my home.
Where was his home? He said it so casually, as if he truly found solace in his home. Would her life be worse than the caves? Would he lock her in a cell until she died? what could be worse than this? She had asked herself the exact same question when Cato offered her what she wanted. And it was, in fact, worse than what she had endured already. One day...one day she might give up. And the clock was ticking, the days slipping. One day she will. One day she'll find peace.
Rose climbed into the carriage and settled by the window on the opposite side well away from the strange man covered in shadows. The door slammed and the coachman's whip snapped the air. The carriage jerked into an unsteady, uncomfortable movement, and Rose watched the caves grow smaller with a pang of relief. "Are you going to kill me?" she whispered, staring out of the window, watching the skeleton trees. Ash forest, she heard them call it.
"You've asked me that already."
"I'm asking again."
He didn't reply. Blanked her completely. "What is your name?"
She turned her head and fought a recoil when she saw one of his shadows slither its way across the carriage floor and slide onto her seat. He hissed and the shadow shrunk back, falling away. "You know it already."
"Your full name."
Did she really want to give him her full name? giving him her full name felt like she was giving him a piece of her that was already dead and gone. Who cares, anyway. She'll probably be murdered by the time they arrived at him home. He will probably become famished during this ride and decide to make a meal of her. "Rosalie."
He was quiet, Rose almost thought he didn't hear her. "Demetre."
Demetre. It felt like he had given her something. Rose fought against leaning back in her seat, she didn't want to get comfortable, nor did she feel comfortable around him, but she was so tired. The caves do not let prisoners sleep well, the darkness dredged up old memories that made it nearly impossible for one to sleep. Frightened humans tasted better, so they say. Fear was like seasoning to them, the more frightened the mortal, the sweeter the blood.
"You keep thinking about how tired you are, yet you refuse to relax."
Her blood chilled, her body bobbing as the carriage maneuvered over bones, probably.
He angled his shadow head. "I can read your thoughts."
"My thoughts aren't for reading."
"It is difficult for me to ignore your thoughts when you are practically screaming them to me."
She curled her lips into a snarl. "Stay out of my head."
A shrug, his shadows shivered. What was it with him and those shadows, he clearly was not made of them. They shrouded him like a cloak, twisting and swirling around his figure like they liked being around him. Like they were his. She remembered how the shadows in the cave bowed when he entered, they've never done that before. "You can sleep. It's a long journey to my home."
She won't, wouldn't. Not with him sitting just across from her. He was a monster, a Vampyr of sheer beauty and raw, unimaginable strength. No heart, no conscious, just savagery. She won't ever let her guard down, ever. "And where exactly is your home?"
"Attahelm. One of the seven outer regions."
"Why not just leave me in the caves, why take me all the way to your region?"
"Because you killed three Vampyrs and no one knows how or why," he said sharply. Viciously. Reminding her of who he is, a lord, a ruler. Someone who hated her. "I intend to find out."
She didn't know how or why. But it seems that whatever happened, the Vampyrs wanted to know about it. And it was enough to keep her alive. How long until her luck runs out? Rose said nothing, instead she laid back and clasped her hands together.
Thinking of the boy and the tattooed girl who smiled at her in one of her many, many dreams. Wondering if they missed her.
~
Rose woke with a frightened gasp.
Shit. She'd fallen asleep. She had brought her legs up onto the chair and drifted unawares somehow, she wildly underestimated her fatigue. Draped over her body, however, was a thick black coat. It smelt of death and some sweet-smelling perfume. She looked over to Demetre who had a shadow leg crossed over the other, a pen in his hand and a pad that had materialized from god knows where. He was scribbling furiously.
"We're here," he grumbled. And the pen and pad vanished into shadows.
The carriage careered over what felt like muddy, sodden earth, and abruptly came to a halt. The door flew open and a Daywalker dressed in a black suit and grey tie appeared at the door. Wordlessly, Demetre clambered out, and Rose hesitantly followed, still draped in the lord's coat. It was way too big for her, it swallowed up the flimsy cloak the Vylewrought had given her to travel in.
She let herself taken in the hell hole she had arrived in.
A grove, set atop a sloped hill, with dead trees that foretold ill stories. Their spines and branches old. Gravestones, covered in moss, stood like gumless teeth in the earth. But it was the castle that made Rose shrink.
Crawling vines, green and cold, climbing up the stone castle from their beds. They seemed to be growing, tall and grim. Little flowers puffed open, throwing musky perfume into the air. Spires so high they disappeared in the sky, and when she tried to catch their bony fingers to gauge their height, Sin caught her watching. The knower. The eyeball hung wide in the sky, its iris did not have the same murky green shade as its sibling Sy did, instead its iris was pale and stormy. Silver like the moon. Attahelm was so far away, it stood in the second corner of the mother's star. She wondered what the High Arches looked like, their eyes were all different, were their faces different too? Ruined horrors, things of murder and sweet grace?
Demetre patiently waited for her to take it all in, and even though Sin was watching from above, Rose forced her legs to move. They crossed a metal gate with two statues guarding. When she looked in the distance, beyond the spindly arms of the trees, she saw jutting buildings lining the horizon. Lights flickered. A city? A city of Vampyrs. A region of undead.
Two lovely looking servitors greeted them at the entrance. Twins. Oil black hair, ash coloured skin, dim red eyes. They curtsied.
Suddenly Demetre's hands brushed her shoulders as he peeled off his coat and dropped it into the arms of the Daywalker who had met them at the carriage.
"Alke and Afet," he gestured to the servitors. "They will be your service."
Service?
"Show her to her quarters. And don't eat her."
The two girls shared a smile but didn't object. One took her hand, the other took her arm, and Rose entered the home of the devil.
~
Alke and Afet deposited her in a room atop a winding, massive staircase. The castle ceiling extended like a crypt with vaults and archways of stone. The architecture was breathtaking, the halls wide and long, she felt miniscule scuttling about them. Her room...room not cell, was just as gloomy and dark as the rest of the house. And large. She had the breath knocked out of her when she stepped in. The vaulted ceiling with dangling chandeliers that leaked with a pale, cold glow made the place even more sickening.
Despite her protest, Alke and Afet pushed her into a bath and scrubbed her rather roughly until she smelt of soap and perfume. They dressed her in simple clothes, brown trousers and a long sleeve cream shirt which she had to convince them to let her button up herself. The trousers were too big for her, they would have fit had the caves not starved her to near bone and skin. They left her there with the promise of fetching her for breakfast, whatever breakfast was. She was sure it was not mortal friendly.
The problem with having a never-ending night meant that time lost its grip, days blurred into long, dreadful moments. Sleep none existent. She sat crossed legged on her bed marking the room. The floor was carpeted a brown, grey colour, patterned with flowers. The floor itself was just as wide and the walls just as tall, the room could double as a ball room if it got renovated. There were several tables with lamps, and trinkets and vases with dead flowers. Two plush couches situated opposite each other with a coffee table between them, a rusted old piano with a silk veil over the top. Unused. Cabinets full of curiosities and unlit fireplace. The six massive arched windows had a complex gothic tracery of ribbed moulding, making the place breathable yet uncomfortable. Not a cell.
The room felt so normal, terrifyingly morbid and hollow, but normal. The bed, the couches, the piano and the tables. She didn't know what to expect from a Vampyr home, but it wasn't this. However, it did not change the fact that the room felt as though it were alive. Watching her watch it. The silence was deafening, and Rose's heart rate started charging.
Thump.
Rose shot to her feet.
There, on the floor, a golden rusted box lay on the floor just under the table. Alive, alive, alive. Rose didn't want to wait for Alke or Afet, she didn't even bother with the shoes they had left by the door, she just left.
She found herself wandering blearily through the zigzagging halls, knowing full well wandering without a guide could lead to unpleasant encounters. She padded through, each hall more horrific and beautiful and grotesque than the last. Moans and screams startled her, they echoed from every corner, every hall. Groans and cries coming from below the castle. Every bloodcurdling scream ragged through her, making her stomach churn. Like beautiful melodies telling of terrible things.
"Byss take me, Dean, is she your pet?"
Raised voices, harsh and loud, struck a trail in which she followed. She passed a hall with a wall of glass and in it, tangled and stuck, were skeletons. Human skeletons. It was some prized piece, the lives that had been taken and locked here. Rose licked her lips and danced with the thought of death in her heart.
"Do I look like I have the capacity to own a pet?"
She followed the voices.
"I bought you that baby Ytgir for your five hundredth and it fucking ran away from you. I don't blame it."
A female, her voice was like a high-pitched trill. Rose rounded a corner and their raised voices silenced. She pressed against the cool marble, not daring to poke her head around the gilded door.
A cough came from within. "Hello Rosalie."
Well fuck. Sucking in a breath, Rose emerged from her hiding place and slowly entered the dining hall. It was the same design as the hall, marble with pillars. Glossy floors and chandeliers. Its walls impossibly high and its temperament brutally cold. Seated at the head on a long glass table, Demetre, swathed in shadows still, lounged in a seat with his shadow hands interlocked and arms braced upright against the table. His chin leaning on the back of his fingers. Stood halfway down the table, leaning against one of the chairs was the most beautiful Vampyr she had ever seen. Chestnut locks cascaded down, framing her exquisite face. Bea stung lips and kohl smeared red eyes, she was breathtaking. The kind of blind beauty that unnerved. Painfully, stupidly, devastatingly beautiful. The kind of face that could make men commit suicide if she refused them. One that people wrote songs about.
She was beautiful like a viper was.
"She thinks you're pretty," Demetre announced.
Rose's cheeks flushed red.
"Stop reading her mind you disgusting piece of shit," the woman swore. Rose blinked, wanted to take a step back. The woman settled those uncomfortably bright eyes on her again and smiled, revealing massive fangs. "Hello, darling Rose. Apologies for my language, my brother has a wonderful talent of pissing me right the fuck off."
Brother? She would say the resemblance was uncanny, but she has never seen the lord's face. She imagined how hideous it was, how terrifying. How his face alone could make her soil herself, weep and beg for mercy.
"Thalia," Demetre groaned. "Shut up."
Smiling bitterly, the woman—Thalia—threw him a middle finger.
Demetre sighed, shaking his head. "Does your room suffice, Rosalie?"
"Please just call me Rose," she muttered. "And yes, I guess."
He nodded once and then gestured to the empty seat before her, the one at the other head of the table. She hadn't noticed that there was a plate of food waiting her. "Sit. Eat."
She sat but did not eat. The plate was...interesting for lack of better words. She didn't know what half the contents was, and she was sure that was a tentacle of sorts. It's flesh pinky and glossy. Did it just move?
"House rules," the lord began. "You are prohibited to go below the castle, you are forbidden to leave the grounds unattended, and you must stay out of the east wing. You may go anywhere else. All my servitors have been given orders to stay away from you. Alke and Afet will fetch you for your meals. Your lesson's with Meredith begin in two turns."
"Lessons?"
"Yes, lessons. Meredith is a skilled Volri, she will give me what I need from you."
Ah yes, she hadn't forgotten how fickle her life here will be. As soon as it was done, as soon as he had gotten what he so desperately wants from her, she will be removed. So Rose nodded.
Thalia had sat down too but she was looking at Rose's plate with a grimace. "First things first, you need to get her human food."
"Is that not sufficient enough? It's highly rich in nutrients and from what I've read of humans, their bodies require protein and other minerals to function adequately," Demetre shot back. Both Rose and Thalia looked at him blankly.
"I'm not a scient project," Rose started.
"She's not a scient project," Thalia echoed with a bite. "What is science?"
"I couldn't tell you, I failed all my classes because my teachers were assholes," Rose answered.
And to her surprise, Demetre laughed.
But the siblings began bickering again. It was strange how easily insults flew from Thalia's mouth and how Demetre even shot back with his own, some very rude and others dry and witty, making Thalia smile. His shadows pulled and Rose realised he too was smiling.
"Mother's tits, what do humans eat then?"
Thalia turned to Rose. "Are you—what do you call it? The silly name for mortals who lack taste for meat?"
"Vegan?"
"Vegan! What if she's vegan? Have you even asked?"
A tendril revealed a whisper of Demetre's skin, and she saw a red eye roll. His shadows swallowed him up quickly. When he turned his attention back towards her, Rose felt slick with fear and hate and...nerves. She felt sick. His not-eyes bore so deep within her, she expected to feel the curl of his invisible hands searching the dark depths of her mind. But she felt none.
"What would you like to eat, Rose?"
Both were watching her now, waiting for an answer.
"I'm not hungry."
Thalia looked surprised, pulling her face into a over dramatic frown and looking over to Demetre who was so still, even his shadows stopped moving.
Silence. And then, "Very well."
"I'm hungry," Thalia said. "And horny."
Oh, she's a Wite.
"Thalia is a cross breed. Half Wite, half flesh eater," Demetre said, reading her thoughts.
"I told you my thoughts aren't open for reading."
"And I told you, I can't help it if you scream your thoughts so loudly it's all I can hear."
Anger and violating burst through Rose just as another scream, throat searing and awful, tore through the entire castle. "Lord Demetre—"
"Dean," he corrected.
Again, it felt like he had given her something dear. Something that he held onto so dearly. And she hated it, she hated how she felt like he owed her something.
"Stay out of my head."
"Then think less."
Rose's mouth opened unawares, and Thalia ducked her head to giggle. Demetre—Dean—only leaned back in his chair. Mischief mingling through the air, a dare, a taunt. Try me, he seemed to say. She didn't want to nor have the energy to. "What are you then?" she asked instead, humorless. "What bloodline."
Upon cue, Alke and Afet materialized via an archway behind Dean's chair and in their arms was a screaming woman. Broken and beaten, mud on her legs, rags over her body. She was bloody, the metallic scent became pungent in the air. Heavy. Thalia sat up and squealed, the red in her eyes turning a little bit brighter. Even as Rose watched in horror as Alke and Afet hauled and slammed the woman in the middle of the table, brutal savagery on their other wise beautiful faces, Dean was watching her. Watching tears prick her eyes, her breathing increase.
In a voice that sounded like nightmares and bones and all things evil, Dean said, "I'm the Flesh eater king, darling."
Oh shit.
Thalia pounced, fangs digging into the throat of the woman. A scream tore from her lips, soul crushing, heart breaking. With one thrust, Thalia ripped the woman's throat out. Blood splurging all over her lovely gown, her iridescent face. Madness sang. She took the woman's throat between her teeth and ripped it into smaller pieces, swallowing each one with delight.
Dean still did not move and seemed rather nonchalant about the death he was witnessing. He and Rose were locked in a battle, he was enjoying her disgust and fear and she didn't have the courage to look away. The flesh eater king, sat here before her. There have been stories about him, stories of insanity and madness and sheer savagery. The feast's he would host, feasts of mutilation and cannibalism. His promiscuity.
Thalia had decimated the body into nothing but pulps and was currently rummaging through the bloody contents looking for more to eat. She managed to find the woman's pancreas and sat back down to suck on it. Rose could not unsee the guh guh guh sounds the woman made as she fought against Thalia until her last breath. Nor could she unhear the slapping sounds of flesh and wetness of blood hitting the floor.
"I'm satisfied," Thalia licked her bloody lips. "But I'm still horny. Dear brother, do you have a human prisoner I can bed? Or am I still banned because of the last time I took one of your prisoners?"
"Fuck whoever you like, just don't eat them this time."
"It was fun, actually. The thrill of watching him release his seed and scream as I tore out his heart. He was excellent, I hope I can find someone just as wonderful with their hands." She smiled, lost in the throes of that encounter.
Bile rose up Rose's throat. She stood quickly and turned to leave, but just before she managed to escape their clutches she heard Thalia call, "Hey! If he pisses you off, don't be afraid to hit him. He's just a grumpy old Vamp anyway," she winked. "Oh, and if you ever get bored and want to hang, my rooms are the top floor. Doors always open."
After seeing what she did with that mortal, Rose did not want to spend another moment in the same room with her knowing her life was just as fragile. Rose forced a small smile and scuttled away. The walk out of the dining hall was long, and just as she crossed the threshold, she heard more raised voices enter from the second entrance.
"You ate without me?!" a man. Deep, husky.
"You never leave any skin for me when we dine," Thalia's answering voice was sweet.
"I smell a human, a girl. She's scared" another voice chimed.
"You just missed Dean's new toy," Thalia said.
"Why do you get a human fuck toy, and I don't?"
"Didn't you have an orgy with Elissa and her friends just last night?"
"Shut up Thalia, that isn't the point."
Their voices faded, and when they did, Rose began running. Rushing through the endless halls trying to find her room. Tears burning in her eyes, threatening to spill. This was a nightmare, this was horrid. It took her so long to find it and when she did, she crawled into the bed. Ignoring the eerie feeling this room had on her, ignoring the way she felt like eyes were watching her roam around.
It was large and spacious, and she found herself drowning in several pillows and thick sheets of silk. Rose slept for the rest of the day, without the sun to indicate morning or night, she didn't know how long had past since she fell asleep. But she didn't get out of bed.
She didn't get out of bed for three days.
~*~
As a woman studying graphic design RIGHT NOW I'm disappointing at how none existent my type setting skills are with this chapter