When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 221

“I had hoped,” he begins, sighing, each step forward only serving to further close the gap between us. “That by now you would have come around to the idea of being here with me. But it seems I was wrong-”

“Come around to the idea?”  I cry exasperated, raising my flame covered fists at him with a hardened expression. The audacity of this vampire! To think after everything we have been through, he would presume I am even remotely satisfied with coming with him of his grand little scheme to rule the world? As if! Perhaps he thinks my will is weak and pliable, or maybe he is still running off the basis that I am a good for nothing common whore who will sit in the lap of the strongest man and be content to do so.

Disgusting.

“You are deluded,” I snarl, a bright light exuding from my form as the flames around me continue to bite the air. To this, Azrael hardly looks bothered, as though the statement is hardly on any news to him- though I expected this wouldn’t be the first time he’s been called mentally insane.

“How original,” he sighs sarcastically. “You know, I at least presumed that you would not be so… hostile. But it seems you are riddled with the intent of trying to obliterate me- not very nice,” he states, wagging his fingers as magic that is not my own curls in the air between us. Another sigh escapes his lips, lacing the air with an icy breath of foreboding.

“Well you thought wrong, I have nothing to stop me shredding you to pieces right here, right now,” I spit, pressing myself further back against the wall, as though hoping to disappear back into it, though knowing realistically I will not.

At this point, this onslaught of taunting and teasing is mostly just to get under his skin more than anything, as realistically I will soon be likely to feel the cold taste of his glamour. But either way, I find myself getting an inkling of joy from the experience: a petty, half hearted payback for all the things he has done to my friends in the past few weeks.

Boldly, I lift my fists further up to him, daring him to do something about it. But it would seem Azrael has had just about enough of me trying his patience.

“Those are big statements for a rather little girl, and I don’t believe a single one of them. Because if you truly came here without a single intention to make good of my offer, why,” he asks, bringing a hand mere inches away from where my fires speckled the air between us with a shower of brightly coloured sparks, as though disdaining to quash it. A shudder of feeling runs past me as his hand slips onto my waist. “Did you follow after me, hmm?”

“Because I couldn’t let you escape, don’t delude yourself into thinking I like you,” I snarl, batting him away until Azrael growls, catching a hold of my wrist. I gasp lightly as his fingers clench my skin so tightly that the blood underneath fades to a dark, bruised purple.

“Fine,” he growls, eyes flaring angrily as they glance down to the empty space on my chest, before washing over with a stain of glee. “I still don’t believe you, but don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”

For the first time in a long while, I feel that caress of hands against my mind, as though a pair of hands are clawing over the inside of my head, moving in waves, searching, finding. Ordinarily I would have fought against them, and the hands would have retreated, stung by the power of the pendant around my neck, and my own forceful compulsion.

But instead I let the barriers of my mind retreat, draw back into me, to give the illusion they are hardly there at all. Concentrating on quelling the power of Azrael’s blood, I exude my own power over it instead, masking it with my own soul, just enough to give the illusion that my mind is as pliable and open as Azrael hopes it to believe. For he isn’t really invading my mind like he thinks he is, just glossing over the surface of what I let him in to. Hopefully whatever resistance he finds there, he will put down to little more than the strain of my own mind against the domineering grasp of his will.

When he realises he is not being pushed out of my mind, Azrael grins a wide, devilish smirk.

It is then that I hear a voice slithering over the back of my mind, unlike anything I have ever felt, cold and deathly, seductive and sickening.

‘Serena,’ it coos in a tone I never hoped to hear crawling inside my head. Blindly, I reign in my nausea, the shiver of unease that tingles through me hardly something I need to fake. But shaking like a leaf is hardly how I picture myself when under a glamour, so with one last push, I make my body go still, listening, awaiting, responsive to every and all command, how great or small that will be.

‘I want you to listen to me and only me,’ it continues, the soft lull of words filling my ears. The pendant at my throat throbs in warning, but I push down the feeling, straining against it with powers of my own and praying Azrael will not notice.

Apparently, he does not.

‘From hence onwards you shall comply to my wishes, and only my own. You shall tell nothing of what you do to Soren, or any one of your friends, and any word you have from them, you shall report back to me.”

He stops to draw back for a minute, gazing over me as I slowly and in a blurry daze, nod my head, a dizzying smile playing on my face. What a beautiful façade.

“Good,” Azrael purrs, his fingers curling around a wisp of hair on my cheek, satisfied. His rough, calloused finger pushes past the softness of my cheek, his face drawing close to mine, so close that I can see the wetness shine upon his lips, the flecks of black that lace the crimson of his eyes. So close that his breath is mine, all without so much as a shiver.

But inside, my mind is racing like a rabbit fleeing from a wolf.

‘And,’ he continues, his finger gliding across to settle upon my lip, eyes downcast with white lashes playing on his cheek as he adds: ‘You are going to help me convince and capture the remaining souls for me. Gain their trust, do anything you must, and bring them to me. Then together, you and I shall rule this sullen little world, hmm?’

I nod once more, burying down every inch of fear that remains instilled in my veins.

“Good,” he repeats simply, as he moves his mouth to linger inches away from my neck, lips parted, fangs glinting in the half light of the room. ‘You belong to me, and only me.’

“Yes,” I nod, not too eager, pulling my self out of that dreamy far off look that I have seen so often on the victims of his mind games. But then Azrael moves down, his eyes level to mine as he lifts my chin, nails carving out indents against my newly immortalised flesh.

“Yes Master,” he orders.

Given the fact vomiting right in front of him would be an awful idea, and absolutely break the façade, inwardly I choke down my disgust, letting it swirl and coil in the depths of my stomach. I never thought I would have to be calling Azrael Master- never thought I would have to be doing anything at all. And yet here I am, clutched in the grip of a chauvinistic, blood sucking whore of a vampire, who takes pleasure from sadism and delights in manipulating the masses to do his bidding.

I put myself here. The blame is all mine.

So I steel myself, putting on a honeyed, sickly smile as I whisper:

“Yes Master.”

And proceed to hold in my vomit.

Azrael grins broadly. Roughly, he trails his fingers down my cheek, my neck, stopping to linger on the tenderness of my neck, where a heart could once be felt pumping underneath the soft and subtle flesh.

Now there is nothing, the illusion completing its whole. Still Azrael lingers there, his eyes glowing, thumb smoothing over the skin, as if to determine where best to put his mouth and bite. I have seen him do so before, at the countless balls within the palace, how he would charm and seduce the women with a dazzling smile and a flick of his hips this way and that. The way he would glide his fingers over the most sensitive parts of their body, daring to do so in the plain sight of others- I suppose that only gave him more incentive. And then he would take them into his hands, cupping their face as he lifts their neck in a way that seems almost serpentine, before those long fangs would come out, and he would drink until the flush of life had graced his cheeks once more.

“Lift your head for me, Serena,” he purrs in his low, gravelly voice, breath clinging against my skin as I lift my head, my heart pounding inwardly as I realise exactly what is going to happen next. The exchange of blood. He wants me to be his.