Torn Asunder

Chapter 9 Dante

I was waiting for the Imperial Death March music to strike up as we walked the last steps into a house I knew was filled with blood sucking, soul stealing vampires. Since I was now one of the hunky dead myself, I couldn't really hold their eating preferences against them now could I? But as I entered a literal house of inequity, there was no scary theme music to warn me away, and no sense of forboding shivered down my spine. Instead I felt embraced and welcomed as I walked into the house, the faces that turned to regard me and my friends coloured with excited happiness. The newest Children had come home.

Isa held my hand tightly, as if I were a small child that could get lost in a crowded mall. I know her possessiveness and the pride with which she displayed me to the other vampires of our Family should have flattered me. Instead it annoyed the daylights out of me and made me want to pull a Valentine, and go be by myself in a corner. Not that my twin was antisocial, she just didn't see the point in trying to get to know someone when they're preconceived notion of you get in the way. These monsters looked at me and saw the smiling face of their newest Son. None of them, not even my precious, beautiful Isa, knew the truth. That I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with these things, but I had to play nice to save Valentine.

So I let Isa clutch at my hand, wondering when her fingers had gotten so skinny they felt like a skeleton's digits wrapped around my fingers, biting and gnarled as barbwire. But flicking my eyes down to look at the beautiful woman's hand, I realized that there was nothing wrong with her hand, that it was as delicate and plush as always. It was my perception that was beginning to change and I was not liking what I was learning. Isabeau was still delicate and blonde, petite and perfect and stunning. Just looking at her made my heart throb painfully (it had stopped beating again though every now and again it liked to lurch back into action and I felt like I had the worst gas ever), and I was constantly adjusting my pants as things she said or did caused an immediate physical reaction from the more active of my two brains. I was still undeniably, immasculatingly in love with this monster. I just hated what the cost of that love was becoming.

I could Hunt and kill, Feed and fuck my way through a million faceless women. I could be the pet monster my Master wanted me to be and eventually I'll forget that I never wanted this. But as much as I knew all that was in my future, I also knew that I hated this woman as much as I loved her because she was making me kill my twin. I smiled at yet another vampire who's name I didn't bother to listen to, dragged along slowly by Isa. We were being taken to see Lucretia, but first we had to get petted and caressed by every damn fanged thing in this building apparently. It wasn't sexual this time though, more like how great cats stroke to scent each other, and I found my own heightened senses were luxuriating in the scent of so many others like me.

As much as I hated it, the scent lulled my Hunger and soothed something inside me and my withdrawn guard started to ease off a little. It's hard to explain, it was almost like a hypnotic incense that lulled the defences down and allowed me to relax in a den full of strange monsters. Isa's hand once again began to feel normal in my grip and I was glad I couldn't sweat anymore so there was no dreaded slimey palm situation. I felt my body cool to the temperature of my lover, surprised to find that I had even been warmer at all. Isa loved the moments I felt more human again, said it was like having her cake and eating it too, just more literally than the quote ever normally got. And I was addicted to being her cake. *

The new Children were led to the back of the low building, and I realized that the block front was a lie, there wasn't a series of semi detatched homes here, but instead all one giant complex of a house. A communal block. The vampire warren of India. THe thought made me snicker and my Master gave me a funny look. I opened my mouth to explain the joke when I realized that she wouldn't understand it. There was only one person who would and she was somewhere else, trying to rescue me.