During the day, he'd had Shan clear the castle of all of their blood providers. The nomads who served them never really minded when they asked things of them, and they had filed down into the lowest levels on the western watch station. They didn't often get time to just roll around and relax, so Tala didn't doubt that they were all just as happy as they'd been doing menial tasks around here. His healthy relations with the desert nomads kept the humans safe from the extreme weather swings as well as any other erroneous issues, while giving the Sols blood without relying on blood slaves that could turn on them for freedom at any moment.
It was imperative that there be no pulses to distract Neil. The boy was already a walking ghost this evening. Getting him out to the gardens had been a feat in itself, and after some serious coaxing, he was now sitting in the grass next to the twins who were both beaming at Neil with curiosity. They were all so young. The twins were in their prime, likely twenty-two or three in human years, but their eyes were so innocent and new to everything.
It was eerie that the more mature of the twins didn't need to tell the gentler one anything as they sat. The boy had woken and just known, something that would prove invaluable once he was trained. Having two men in completely different places who knew the happenings of both instantly but could remain completely invisible was quite an asset.
They also seemed to like him, and Tala had no idea when that had happened. The one who'd snuggled him the night before had lied, he knew. It wasn't hard to notice, but it had seemed harmless. Something he'd seen while invisible had given the man respect for him, but he was wary to share what. Considering it couldn't be the worst thing to hide, Tala turned to Neil.
With his eyes cast into the grass, he was listening even if he didn't know it, reaching for a pulse, blood. But he was fed. Tala could tell by the color of his skin and the vibrancy in his eyes. Vincent had left him alone with many humans, and Tala knew what that meant, why he now thought he was a monster, and wouldn't go near him even when he reached.
"It's okay," the timid twin said, and Neil flinched his gaze to the man and cringed. The twin had spoken too loudly for him. Vampires were hyper sensitive to sound right after their change, but the twins seemed to have acclimated faster than Neil. "I'm Ghost," the man said, offering Neil a hand, and Neil stared at it.
Neil reached slowly, and Tala watched as he grazed his hand against Ghost's with the gentlest of touch, feeling the foreign dark energy that vibrated from his skin before retreating back to himself. It was a strange sensation, how vampire kind buzzed to those who could sense magic.
"It doesn't make you a monster," Ghost said, and Neil snapped his eyes over with confusion, with fear. "They left me alone in a cell with humans, and I couldn't stop myself either," Ghost said softly, and tears rose to Neil's eyes. "You had no control, just as I didn't, but if you dwell on it, you will only get worse. The best you can do is learn to control the hunger so that you harm no one else."
"Do all vampires do that?" Neil finally spoke to Tala, looking up into his crimson eyes with fear, and Tala shook his head.
"No. My nomads would be livid if I killed any of their men or women," Tala said slowly. "I wanted to ease you through the change, and I would not have allowed you to take any life during your transition. It starts out your new life with a bitter taste, and you shouldn't hold any fear or animosity of what you are to start. What Vincent did was wrong." Tala clenched his fist.
"I begged him to stop, told him I wasn't ready..."
"I know, Neil. Your father is twisted, and I regret more with every minute that passes that I let you go to him. I never thought him capable of such an atrocity, to change you before mental maturity, let alone without the physical growing you needed. Forgive me."
"You're the only one who doesn't need forgiveness," Neil said, and Tala smiled to him. "What do I do next?" Neil asked, trembling.
"Well, this will take years, so all you need do today is sit, absorb the sounds of the trees, the birds, the water. Isolate those which you want to hear better and focus on droning the others out if you don't want them as loud. We no longer need the torches, as it must look like daytime to you even though the moon is high."
"I can see, and with how bright the moon is, I'm sorry that I made you sit around those bright flames." Neil frowned, and Tala laughed.
"The photosensitivity wears off. Lights are not that bright to me. I wield flames. If you'd like, you can listen in on what I have to say to Ghost and his brother. It's secret though, so you can't take it anywhere."
"I can keep a secret," Neil bounced with a bit of his human vigor, and it relieved Tala to know the boy was still in there.
"I have a proposition for you two," Tala said, turning to them, and they focused on him. "Your unique skill is astounding but also dangerous if it's known. The ability to fade from vampire perception is not something anyone has ever seen before. Whatever you two did when you were in the process of the change made your brother quite unique, and you possess two skills I've seen so far which transcend the current field of magic."
"You are saying if people find out, we could be targeted," the yet named one said, worrying about his brother who seemed to take information with more calm.
"Yes. That being said, you're not completely undetectable, and I will happily teach you how to become so. That will take a deal of practice though, and it would be best if you remained invisible the entire time to practice. What I propose for you is no easy task, but if you are willing, I would be honored to have you."
"What would you like of us?" Ghost asked, just as protective of his brother, but more methodical in his words.
"I want you to be mine, my personal guard, at my side at all times, carrying out my orders to infiltrate as needed, but always with one of you in my ear to convey what the other discovers. This is a position of power, and as such you would be the keeper of my secrets, and in return I would expect full honesty from you."
"You want us to remain invisible at all times?" Ghost asked as he processed and Tala nodded.
"That which is unseen and unknown can be a powerful ally in battle, and it affords you protection from being found out. If a man falls at my back, my enemies will think that I have some dastardly magic, not that I have men with me. That will terrify them and keep you safe from being targeted."
"You want us hidden from even your own people," Ghost said after a moment of contemplating. "Why?"
"For the same reason I do not allow vampires to visit my territory. Less eyes, less lies. The more people who know about you, the greater risk that your abilities become known and the less useful they become."
"I understand," Ghost said.
"How can I become silent?" the other asked with excitement, and Tala smiled. They were one, yet each differed in how they reacted immediately to information.
"I had Shan make something for you two. Consider it a uniform. Vampires have a heightened sense of sound and we can hear even your clothes rubbing against your skin when you move. For you to be silent, you must wear appropriate clothing if you don't want to go about naked."
On cue, his general came in, eyed them something terrible, and extended the two suits down to him before retreating. Shan had been told that he would keep his distance from this as well, even though he knew that one of them had been invisible the other night.
"Put these on," Tala handed them the clothes, and they started to undress with zero warning.
Neil's eyes grew big before he turned from them with a warm blush on his face. In all this, Tala had forgotten that he'd come upon them naked. Having clothes on was new for them, and they held no shame for their nakedness, which wasn't normal.
They figured out the suits easy enough, slipping their legs in the holes at the bottom and finding the arm holes. All that was left was the face covering that hung loose at their neck. Ghost figured it out and pulled it up over his nose and adjusted it at the back of his head. The other, fiddled with it and looked to him for some sort of further explanation.
"The material will hug your form and stretch when you move instead of shifting against your skin. The face mask will keep anything from getting near your nose and mouth that might give you cause to make any sound. It will also muffle the sound of you inhaling. It makes speech harder though, so you can take it off for now, Ghost." The man complied before they sat on the ground, and one of them groaned as they sat on a rock.
"It does not offer any physical protection so you must get used to your body being open. Such pain from a small rock offers no real harm, so you must also train yourselves to respond little to that which does not affect you. That is the second thing that gave you away. You felt fear, curiosity, anger, all of which vampires can sense. You must remain calm at all times, watch that which make you anger, hunger, or weep all with the same distance."
"That is going to take work," the more animated one said.
"This will take years, yes, just as Neil's progression will. While he learns to hear, see, and control his urges, you will learn to disappear. You both can already control each other's hunger, something you also must hone and work with, since when Ghost was asleep you lost that control."
"I know." The one who'd fed from him reddened, and it darkened his already tanned complexion just a bit.
"That brings me to the last point in which you couldn't have hid yourself from me no matter what you did," Tala said, drawing the man's dark eyes up. "Vampires can sense their own blood. A house head feels those they sire and those who carry their blood within them, as some employ humans empowered with their blood. I do not, but you uniquely need vampire blood, which means whoever you feed form can sense you."
"That's a problem if my brother drinks from anyone else then," Ghost said with understanding, and Tala nodded.
"From what I've seen, my blood is too strong for your brother to drink much, so I can provide for him all that he needs as long as I remain fed on human blood. I will be his sole provider, if that is what he needs."
"Th-thank you," the man said, brimming with that adoration again, and it was starting to creep Tala out. What had the man seen?
"Tell me what you lied about," Tala said abruptly, and the man cringed back. "If you want to be my arms and eyes, then you must tell me everything, and in return you shall know my everything. It can't go one way. I do not see why you do not want to say what made you respect me. What harm is there in telling me?"
"He doesn't want you to hurt the man," Ghost said, and Tala craned an eyebrow.
"Why would I hurt someone who made you like me?" Tala asked with a complete loss of understanding. These men seemed to be adept at baffling him in both actions and words.
The men looked to each other and then back at him.
"If you will promise not to harm him, tell him we told you, or change your behavior toward him in any manner, then we will tell you." Ghost spoke for them, and Tala nodded with a growing lack of understanding as to how this was dangerous.
"The man in the cells," the other one said, and Tala crunched his eyebrows lower.
"Wren?" Tala asked, running over all the possibilities of how the twin following him down there to choke the life out of that mage had changed his opinion. Was he daft? He'd been sure that was the thing that would break these two and push them away, someone caged as they had been.
"I will be honest with you as you require," the unnamed twin said after the last lingering bits of hesitation faded. "I know I shouldn't since he is your prisoner, but I like him. He was pleasant to talk to for a bit." Despite the quieter one's reluctance to speak unless it was vital, the other was the one who blushed shyly when he spoke. "I asked him why you had him prisoner, because I was afraid you were like the rest."
"I assume he told you that he killed my mother," Tala growled, but not with hostility at the boys, merely anguish at having to speak it.
"Yes, the man was very forthcoming about his situation, unusually so for a prisoner. I..."
the man rubbed the back of his head nervously. "I asked him if he wanted me to help him escape, but he turned me down, saying that he deserved to be where he was and had many sins to atone for."
"I am not angry at you for offering to free him. You both were prisoners once, and I can understand your desire to help someone you saw as in a predicament the same as yours. I am baffled that he didn't take you up on the offer though. The man can't like being down there."
"I don't think he liked being down there as much as he felt he belonged there," Ghost said, and Tala wanted to go down there and shake Wren until he made sense. "The man had some interesting things to say about you," Ghost continued, and Tala smirked with frustration.
"I bet he did." Tala didn't need to guess what foul things Wren had spat.
"He said you were kind," the other one said quietly, and Tala lifted his eyes up with disbelief. Tala was speechless as the vampire ahead of him lifted his eyes with that reverence again. "Even though he is your prisoner and you hurt him, he said that you were decent, honorable, and compassionate. That my brother and I would be happy here, and that... and that if things were different, that you might have been friends. But he asked me not to tell you that he said those things."
"Any idea why he is terrified of me but for some reason calms when I come down into the dungeons? At least before he started panicking because I came down once and didn't harm him." Tala saw no harm in picking the twin's brains if it might shed some light on Wren.
"He said that you torturing him quiets the screams of those he's killed, relieves him of suffering while he wonders if they might have been like you."
"Like me, as in kind, decent, and honorable." If Tala had any bile, it would be rising up his throat in disgust. Why didn't the man hate him? Was that what he'd been sensing from him, why he couldn't bring himself to kill the man?
"I believe so," the twin answered, and Tala ran a hand up his face.
"I left him down there too long and now he's lost it," Tala mumbled.
"The man was rather there for someone who has been imprisoned for as long as he has," Ghost said calmly, and Tala wanted to punch him.
Let Wren be crazy. It was better that way.
"We will accept being yours, Talamayas Sol," Ghost said. "We will learn to be your extension, everything about you so that we can best know your intentions, and how to be invisible to serve your purposes. We are not too comfortable around vampires as it is, so it would actually be quite nice for us to only communicate with you for the time being."
"Very well," Tala said, happy that the twins wanted to stay here, both for his safety and theirs. If they were his, they were no threat to him, and that also afforded them the best protection if those deranged breeders from the farms came looking. "I realize I don't know your brother's name, Ghost, but it is natural when you take on a new life to have a new name. Perhaps you might like to pick two?"
"One would be best," Ghost answered, piquing Tala's curiosity. "Even using the term 'we' with you is unnatural on my tongue. I do not feel an us, only a me. I can say things separately from my brother, and he does have a unique view on things in comparison, but we share thoughts. They mix and come to the same conclusions, so that we are more of an 'I' than a 'we'. It is strange, yet I am not unhappy." Ghost really smiled then. "All I wished for was not to lose my brother, and now I never will. I have a name, one that is best suited to us, to me."
"What would you like to be called?"
"Vice," they both said, but only Ghost spoke after. "I am the product of all that is wicked in your kind, and yet in the process of becoming one of you, we are now one, connected tighter than any vise could hold us. That is the name I wish to go by, and I would prefer that you also think of us as one."
"I can do that. I hereby accept you into my house, Vice Sol. We will learn and grow together." Tala outstretched his arms and Vice looked into them questioningly until they moved forward. There, he squeezed them in an embrace that nearly choked the air from them, but their dark magic resonated with his, accepting him and learning the way it felt.
After all, they would be part of him from now on.
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