Willing (The Un 1)

“Well, who do we have here?” someone asks behind me.

I’m so relieved to be home it takes me a second to realize the voice that asked the question was deep, smooth, and very male.

Charity giggles. “Oh, that’s just my stupid roommate. Ignore her.”

My heart sinking to my stomach, I slowly turn around to see that Charity made good on her threat.

She did exactly what she said she was going to do.

She brought home a man.

But she didn’t bring home just any man.

She brought home a man without a heartbeat.

Seven

Asher

Another night, another city.

Another failed fucking search.

I’m tired. Tired of the ache I feel across the void of existence.

Out there, somewhere in the cursed light of day, my soulmarked waits for me. Waits and is hidden from the darkness.

I can feel her at times, feel her heart beating against the bond. I can feel her emotions, so many of them. Rarely is there ever true joy and happiness. Do they keep her in such awful conditions that she knows no happiness?

Even when I fade into her dreams there’s nothing but turmoil. She carries the heavy weight of guilt across her shoulders like a yoke. Why does she feel this? Why does she loathe herself so much?

I miss her. Even if I’ve never met her or been near her, I miss her presence.

This is what it means to be soulmarked. It’s a curse ever-present in our minds. It’s an aching wound we can never fully heal, not without being joined.

I’m dying.

None of my children know it, save for Andrei. He alone knows that whatever happened the night my soulmarked was born has become my death sentence.

I have five years left to live, in his opinion.

Andrei has forever been the optimist though, and perhaps a bit of a child in his way of avoiding the ugly truth.

I’m going to be dead within a year, at the most.

I guarantee it.

Will I live to find her?

What if I find her?

Our small procession of vehicles pulls into the private airport, and I shake my head to clear it.

I seem to be ruminating over the past more and more these nights.

Stepping from the vehicle, I look to the jet-black plane that will be taking us to yet another city, and more than likely another failure.

Out of nowhere, a burning slash across each of my wrists drops me to my knees, literally.

No figurative bullshit.

For the first time in my life, as I feel the burning pain that comes from having your skin sliced open deep enough it could sever a tendon, I wonder if I’m going insane.

All five of the men with me spring into action as they try to determine the threat to me, and by proxy to them.

Raphael is instantly at my side, trying to shield my body with his own. Not that it does much good. I’m not much bigger than him, but with the way I writhe on the cold, hard tarmac, he can’t quite hold me down.

“What the fuck?” Raphael snarls as he fights with my body.

“Is it a spell?” Matthias asks, and I hear him checking the Glock in his hand to make sure it’s loaded.

“Witches no longer exist, you antebellum fuck,” Raphael spits out.

“I meant voodoo… or perhaps a druidic one, you barbaric milksop,” Matthias snaps right back at him.

“Shit. I don’t know…” Raphael growls then wraps his arms around my thrashing torso.

All the while I want to scream at the both of them to shut the fuck up, but words refuse to pass my vocal cords. This, whatever it is, has paralyzed my most needed functions, and I feel utterly powerless.

“Get him in the fucking plane,” Andrei says as he grabs my legs.

“Agreed,” Matthias snaps back as he grabs me around the waist.

Truly, each of these men should have no problem lifting me off the ground and into the plane, despite the size and weight of my body. We’re fucking vampires, after all. With how hard I’m thrashing around though, I’m not easy to move.

The pain was enough to drop me to my knees, but when I feel blood seeping down my wrists, I scream.

I scream from the loss of my vitality, my sanity, and my essence. It’s a violation I’ve never felt before, and it makes me feel profane. It makes me feel as if I’ve been truly dirtied for the first time.

“My wrists… I’m bleeding out!” I scream into Raph’s face as my men wrestle my uncontrollable body up the stairs.

“I don’t see any blood,” Andrei spits out before one of my hands belts him across the face.

“I don’t either, but it doesn’t matter. We need to secure him,” Raph says.

They toss me into the plane.

My face slams into the hard floor, and I feel two heavy bodies dropping down on top of me.

That’s one way to hold me down, I guess. Although I’m going to hurt someone once I can get up again.