“I felt you use your Power. Only a Dark Fae can control the storm like that. Despite what I told Constantine, you have been acknowledged, Liv. Your father will come back for you.”
I pace the library like a caged animal. Half an hour has passed. Sebastian left and I am itching to go and find CK and try to make this right. I am not one to sit around waiting and it is driving me crazy. I decide to fuck it and go to find him, to confront him. Alone, I might have more luck as Sebastian said. I don’t have long to wonder where he is, as I hear the crashing and smashing as soon as I exit the library. He is in the South Tower. The one with the Substitutes room. He probably went there because he thought I wouldn’t follow him. Well, screw that. I’m going up there whether he likes it or not. I race up the steps on foot, not wanting to Astral so that I give him as much notice as I can that I am coming. I reach the top and see that the door has been ripped clean from its hinges and I duck as various ornaments come flying through the open doorway. A vase that probably costs the average person’s annual salary flies over my head and smashes against the wall into a thousand pieces.
“I told you to leave,” he snarls at me as I cautiously enter the room.
“Well, too bad. This is my home as well and I am not leaving it,” I say calmly.
“Not anymore it isn’t,” he bellows at me and my heart almost stops beating.
“Yes, it is. It is mine and yours.” I am still being quiet and calm, the complete opposite to his loud rage.
“Liv, just get out. I don’t want to see you.” Yet more things crash to the floor around me, but I don’t move. “Get out!” he roars at me as he Vamps out and rips the entire bed to shreds in a matter of seconds.
“No,” I still say, and it is the last straw for him. My defiance in the face of his anger tips him over the edge.
“You want to stay?” he asks then, focusing intently on me, his eyes black as they pin mine. “You want to be in here knowing what I did to all those whores wishing it was you?”
My sharp intake of breath at his hurtful words makes him smile, a cruel and evil flash of fangs as he advances on me now rooted to the spot. “Oh yes, Aefre. Every second I was in here hurting them, fucking them until they cried and begging me for mercy, I was wishing it was you.” He pauses to gauge my reaction. “Does that hurt you?” he asks casually.
I just blink at him, knowing that he doesn’t mean any of it, he is just saying it to hurt me. “You don’t mean that,” I stammer and curse myself for my weakness.
“Don’t I?” he asks as he glides closer to me in Hunting mode. I inadvertently take a step back and it pleases him. “You should be afraid. I have let you get away with far too much over the years. You need to be punished. Do you want me to punish you?” He is now standing so close to me with his hand around my throat, his claws digging painfully into me. He knows I can’t go anywhere as he has cut off my ability to Astral, and I can see it in his eyes that he is going to play with me as a cat would a mouse. All those times I pushed him to show me his monster had been a big, big mistake. I don’t want to see it. Not when it looks at me like it hates me and wants to tear me apart.
“Constantine,” I whisper, and he tightens his grip on my throat. I can sense a Power building, but it isn’t coming from me. It is coming from him. I have never felt anything quite like it before. His eyes are now completely black, as in not just the irises, but his entire eyeball is glowing an evil black that I didn’t even know he was capable of. I struggle to breathe as the pressure starts to increase in the air. It is stifling, like it is pushing down on me. The wind picks up in the room, a swirling vortex that we are standing in the middle of and I am actually terrified, as I don’t know this man standing in front of me, not even a little bit. I choke as he squeezes tighter, the wind speeds up and the unseen pressure pushes down on me, literally forcing me down.
“That’s right. On your knees, whore,” he says to me as I drop. The only thing holding me up is his hand at my throat. “I have tried to treat you differently, I never wanted to use my Powers on you as I wanted everything you felt to be real. Even if it wasn’t love for me, I still never wanted to manipulate you in this way. Even now, when you need to see reason, I couldn’t do it. Had to have someone else do it to you and that little prick you sired. You just couldn’t let him go to that girl, had to keep fighting it. You made me do this, made me make someone else do this, because I couldn’t bear to think about hurting you that way myself. Violating your mind. Bending you to my will. But no more! You are no better than all the others,” he shouts at me as if he is about to rip my head off, and I know now that the visions that Remiel were showing me were all true. It is the thing I need to get my own Power to work. It’s there all right, hovering under the surface, but I am not used to it. Not used to calling it to me to defend myself with it. He has nearly three thousand years’ worth of experience over me, and it shows. I start to coil it up deep inside, ignoring the pressure he is putting on me. It is exactly as he just said, he is bending me to his will, and it is scary, scary stuff. Even more so that I never even knew he had this Power. “All this time, all I wanted was complete control over you,” he continues as he lets me drop to my knees. “But you could never even give me that. Not even once. You belong in here with the rest of the whores to be taught who owns you,” he snarls the last sentence at me and I gasp as he backhands me so hard across the face, I go flying into the unforgiving stone wall behind me. My head bounces painfully off the wall but I shake it off and stand. I am fighting against his own Power and it enrages him further. “Complete control,” he roars at me over the twister that is whipping around the room, ripping everything into even more tiny pieces. “Submit!” he yells at me as he grabs the front of my sweatshirt. “Submit!” His inner monster has completely taken him over and had I been a weaker Vampire, I would have been on my belly ages ago by now, groveling at his feet, but there isn’t a chance in Hell he is going to win this Power struggle. He may have finally revealed his scary ass Initial Vampire mojo, but I have some scary ass Queen of The Underworld Power of my own lurking somewhere. Somewhere where I wish it would hurry up and show itself before he kills me. Or at least tries to kill me. That thought petrifies me more, as at least if we both knew how I could die, it would be quick and painless. As it is, he throws me across the room and I slam into the opposite wall, rattling me painfully as I slide down it, only just staying on my feet. “Don’t fight me, Aefre,” he warns. “You know how much I can hurt you.” And just to remind me he slashes his claws down me, cheek to navel, ripping my clothes and slicing my skin wide open. My blood spurts out all over him as he nicks an artery and I hiss at the agonizing burn his claws have left. I sink to the floor trying to fight through the pain, as he cut me so deep, he hit my rib bones on his way down. Fuck. He is vicious. When I said that I would rather he take it out on me than walk away…I was being a fucking idiot. I should have done as he said and left. He may be only slightly physically stronger than me now, although my own strength seems to have abandoned me in my time of need, but he knows how to fight and harness his Power and he isn’t afraid to hold back. To be truly ruthless and merciless.
Even on me.
“Give in?” he taunts as I take a deep breath to steel myself.
Never, I think to myself and it gets me on my feet. Just.
“Oh, Aefre,” he mocks. “You really never did know when to give up, did you?” And he slashes down the other side of me in matching lacerations that blur my vision and have me gripping my middle where the wounds have intersected, and it feels like my insides are going to fall out.
I feel my Power stirring in me as I gasp for breath, knitting the wounds together enough that I don’t spill out all over the floor, but that is all I get. I let him think that he has me right where he wants me, but he is sorely mistaken if he thinks this is the end. I gather all of my resolve, every last ounce of Power I can grab a hold of in me and I stand up straight. His eyes flash, a mixture of pleasure and also pain, which he quickly squashes to leave only the pleasure. He wasn’t kidding when he said I never wanted to see this side of him. If either one of us survive this, I hope never to see it again. Or him, for that matter. I can feel the wind swirl around and I know this time it is my Power, the lightning strikes and the thunder claps, the rain lashing against the windows. He steps back, coiling himself for a fight, as he knows I am going to come at him now with everything that I have.
The windows burst out and splinter into a million pieces as the Power in me grows and I know I can grab everything else I need from the storm outside, to throw him back against the wall as I step forward. He laughs as he recovers quickly but doesn’t move any closer to me.
“Show me what you’ve got hiding under the surface, little girl,” he sneers.
I whip my hand up and the Power cuts him viciously down his chest, throwing him back against the wall again. The tower shakes violently, and he seems mildly surprised that he doesn’t heal straight away and then he advances on me, but this time I won’t let him get his hands on me. I throw the lightning at him again and it hits him on the chest
and sends him crashing into the wall again. I form an orb of Hellfire in my palm and twirl it, making it grow bigger and bigger and I see the flash of fear in his eyes that I am going to hurl it at him. He knows he won’t survive it, yet he closes his eyes waiting for me to throw it at him and… I cave.
As much as he has damaged me, I can’t end him. I think he probably knows that deep down as well. In the end, I close my hand over it and instead throw another lightning bolt at him that he dodges, but I was hoping for that and I am quicker and in the space where I wanted him, and I have him by the throat, digging my claws into him, wanting with every fiber of my being to rip his throat out, but again, I don’t. The rumble of my Power shakes the tower beneath our feet and bits of the roof start to crumble and drop to the ground outside with the bits of window. His eyes return to normal and the evil mask drops. The pain on his face rips at me but then he smiles his made-just-for-me smile at me, whispering something I don’t hear. He relaxes and it catches me completely off guard and I relax my grip slightly in response.
It is a rookie move and exactly what he was hoping I would do, as he suddenly tenses back up and slaps my hand away from his neck before I can blink. His own hand goes to my throat, everything then seems to go in slow motion as he takes a step towards the gaping maw where the windows used to be, drenching us with rain, before he hurls me out of the hole in the wall and I fall the one hundred and fifty feet to the ground, landing in a bone-shattering heap.
Every bone in my body is broken and not healing as the wounds he inflicted are still wide open, ripped apart again by the fight and slowing the healing process down. I struggle for breath as my lungs feel like they are going to collapse and I look up towards the open hole, my eyes the only thing in my body that can still move, going blurry as I see him standing there staring down at me. My focus goes double, and I see two of him standing there before he Teleports out, leaving me there, broken, soaked in my own blood with the rain lashing down on me and alone.
All alone, I think, before I see the roof collapse completely and fall down towards me, and I thank the old gods as the sweet, black surrender of unconsciousness pulls me under before it hits me.
Epilogue
Caen, Normandy, 1012 – Aefre
“You must,” he said to me as I refused for the millionth time. “You are a Vampire, my sweet. You need to learn how to Hunt.”