Vlad The Impaler (VAMPIRE-ELF)

61. Questionable Fashion Choices

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"Again!" The Count commanded, his voice hard and uncompromising. In normal situations, everyone would have fallen over their feet trying to obey him but in that moment, no one moved a muscle.

The soldiers who were before him were bent over with their hands on the knees. They first looked at The Count, to the hot coals he was ordering them to run over for the 159th time in a row then back to him again. The pleas they could not voice out were displayed in their beseeching eyes and strained faces.

Their muscles were sore from exhaustion, their bodies sleek with sweat and their bare feet raw with torn skin and tendons. What was left of their soles was covered in angry bloody blisters but that was to be expected when one ran over a field covered in embers for the better part of the night. The only thing keeping them standing was the knowledge of what would happen should they fail to stay up.

The routine had been going on for hours and there'd been no breaks to pick out the coals that had gotten embedded in their feet, to feed and certainly not to recuperate.

Vampires healed fast but when faced with constant blood loss, continuous injury and depleted sustenance, even their nearly indestructible make-up was challenged. They wanted to obey their ruler, they did. The will was there but the energy was simply absent.

"Do I need to repeat myself?" The cold, deadly voice of the Count cut through the air like whip in his hand, sending chills that were not of coldness to all who were at its receiving end.

One by one the soldiers that had become statues of uncertainty, fear, indecision and attempted defiance, began limping off.

"Right foot in front of the left, you heard The Count. Move ladies!" Alexander yelled at the exhausted men.

When everyone was gone, Alexander pivoted on his feet and faced his maker. Dracula's jaw was clenched and set in a way that warned Alexander from testing him. His eyes were and steely but there was nothing cold about the wild turbulence of emotions that were swirling within him. It was that which gave Alexander the courage to do what he was about to do.

Angry, passionate Dracula he could deal with; it was cold, calculating and emotionless Dracula who put the fear of God inside him and since the latter was safely locked away, he gathered whatever balls he had and opened his mouth. Hopefully not for the last time.

"They are tired, let them go."

"Are you trying to tell me how to train my own army now?" The Count asked in a deep dark, quietly seductive tone that could make death itself sound sexy.

"They need a break. They are hesitating to carry out your commands not because they are trying to disobey you but because all the skin on their feet is gone."

Alexander had never considered himself a martyr before but the whole conversation had death sentence written all over it. His death sentence.

"This is not a new training regime; we have done the hot trail in the past," The Count rolled his eyes.

"Not for ten hours straight."

"If you have a point Alexander I would suggest you get to it."

"Permission to speak freely?" He needed reassurance that what he was about to say would not end with him in the dungeons, the test subject for all of Terrence's sick fantasies.

"Let us not pretend my answer will keep you from saying whatever it is you want to say," Dracula scoffed.

He wasn't that impertinent, was he? Alexander wondered.