Unleash (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 6) (3 page)

She edged closer to him, her heart thumping crazily in her breast, her gaze locked on him and watching for an attack even though she knew he couldn’t break his bonds and reach her. He tried to lunge for her, his blunt claws scratching at the air. His red eyes shot to her, focused and sharp, locked on her like lasers.

Her stomach fluttered but her step didn’t falter.

She swallowed her trembling heart and reached out to him, afraid that he would somehow manage to injure her but strengthened by the knowledge that she might be able to do something to crack the hold his bloodlust had on him and guide him back to his loved ones.

She stopped at his side and dared to lift her cloak so he could see her, hoping it would calm him and he would see she wasn’t a threat to him. She gently lowered her hand, intending to touch his face as the female, Sera, and his brother had.

Snow snapped at her fingers and tried to bite her, his sharp fangs gleaming in the low light from the lamps around the black room.

She changed course and settled her hand on his bare chest instead. His powerful heart thundered hard against her palm. A heavy tribal beat.

It accelerated as she stood over him and then she shifted her eyes to meet his and it began to slow to a more gentle sedate rhythm.

He blinked slowly, long dark lashes shuttering his crimson eyes before lifting again to reveal them to her.

She whispered to him, soft words in a tongue that was probably foreign to him now.

A song to soothe him.

She sung of soaring in a midnight sky, dancing over mountains, and reaching towards the horizon, beyond the snowy valley and the frozen waterfall.

Snow stilled, his expression turning docile, and she bravely moved her hand to his face, stroking his stubbly cheek as she softly sung to him of a prince and his love, his kingdom on earth while hers was in heaven.

Two worlds too far apart.

Two hearts too close to part.

Snow blinked languidly again and then his eyelids drooped and he settled heavily into the bed, his arms lax and hands hanging limply from the cuffs. She focused on his wrists, on the red lines that slashed across them, and willed them to heal.

She brushed her fingertips across his cheek and whispered, “Sleep… dream… remember who you were.”

Voices sounded in the hall and she tore herself away from him, stroking his cool cheek one last time and leaving a streak of beautiful colours on his skin.

She stepped back and spread her wings, her eyes still locked on him.

The vampire slumbered peacefully, and it warmed her heart and gave her hope.

“Take more care of yourself. I will be watching.”

The door behind her opened, throwing golden light across her and Snow, though she cast no shadow upon him.

She was already gone from this world.

She stood at the edge of a white battlement, staring down at the world far below her, distant and indistinct.

It was done.

Now she had to leave him alone or her master would discover that she had sinned again because of Snow.

He would never forgive her this time.

P
ain. Blinding. Debilitating. Sickening. Pain.

It rocked every inch of him. Throbbed deep in his marrow. Lived inside him and refused to die, no matter how hard he struggled to contain and obliterate it.

There was peace too though, a strange sense of calm and warmth that felt as though it was trying to subdue the pain and drive it away. There was also a weird notion that he hadn’t been alone.

Snow’s head thumped the hardest, fiery lightning splintering across his skull and causing his eyes to ache. He opened them a sliver but the light pierced them, increasing his agony, and he screwed them shut again. He tried to rub the salt and grit from his eyes and grimaced when steel cuffs bit into his wrists, causing sharp lances to jab across them.

His ankles blazed too.

He managed to crack his eyes open enough that he could see his wrists. Shackled and scarred. Multiple lacerations. Dried and fresh blood.

Snow focused on them and his body, taking mental note of any injuries and how weak he felt, trying to gauge how long he had been chained to his bed. Possibly a few days. His senses came fully back online.

He wasn’t alone.

His gaze slid painfully down to the male sitting in the wooden chair beside him to his right.

Snow spoke but it came out as a gravelly rumble. He cleared his throat, realised it was sore, figured he had been screaming his head off as usual, and tried again.

“How long have you been in the room?” It took a lot of effort to get that many words out. He drew in a deep breath and it wheezed past his throat and rattled in his lungs. Snow changed his previous calculation to over a week without leaving his bed. He didn’t normally feel this refreshed after an extended period lost to his insanity though.

Perhaps he was wrong about how long he had been lost to his bloodlust. He might have screamed more than usual this time.

It would help if he could remember what had triggered his latest round of crazy.

“Not five minutes,” Antoine said, his voice a low steady rumble that spoke of fatigue. His brother looked like hell too, dishevelled and weary, and that made Snow look away.

Guilt gnawed at his heart. He had worried Antoine again. Hurt him.

“I sensed you calming and came to check on you, and found you sleeping soundly so I thought I would stay a while to keep you company.” Antoine raked his fingers through his thick brown hair. It was longer than usual. Definitely more than a week. More than two? “I did not mean to wake you.”

Snow frowned at his brother’s odd words.

“You did not wake me. I wasn’t sleeping… I mean… I was at least conscious.” Snow looked himself over, the pain in his eyes fading as they adjusted to him using them again. Clearly, he had missed something. He didn’t remember sleeping. He remembered the rage, the dark hunger for blood and violence, the insane craving to kill everyone who came near him but being unable to get free and satisfy that desire. He remembered feeling trapped in his body, caged by his bloodlust, unable to break its hold over him. He recalled coming around from bouts of unconsciousness to rage all over again too. He had been doing neither of those things prior to this moment. “I was asleep.”

Antoine nodded, a glimmer of hope and curiosity in his blue eyes, and rose to his feet. “And you are awake now. Very awake.”

Snow understood why he looked curious and what he was implying. His bloodlust had receded. Receded but not gone. Snow could feel it lurking within him. Something had driven it back but it was waiting to seize hold of him again. Something that had made him sleep too. He never slept before coming around from one of his attacks. He was always unconscious or came out of it while awake.

Antoine took some items from the ebony nightstand to Snow’s right. Cotton wool and antiseptic by the looks of things. His brother doused a wad of the white padding and moved to Snow’s feet, and began cleaning the blood from his ankles.

He looked at his younger brother and frowned, unable to shake the feeling that he hadn’t been alone, and it hadn’t been Antoine’s presence he had felt.

“No one was in here with you?” he said and Antoine shook his head, came up beside him and began cleaning his neck and shoulders. “You did not hear anyone singing?”

“No.” Antoine’s expression darkened, as though the thought of someone being in here with him disturbed him. Had he been that far gone that Antoine had wanted to keep everyone away from him? Someone must have come regardless. He sniffed and smelled Antoine and Sera, and lily of the valley mixed with snow. No one at the theatre smelled that way. “Perhaps you were dreaming?”

Snow hoped his brother was right, but the sense that someone had been here with him plagued him, together with the song. It had been familiar. His brow crinkled as he struggled to remember it, the tune and lyrics drifting towards the surface of his mind only to slip through his grasp and disappear again, teasing him.

He growled. “Someone was singing… I swear it, Brother.”

Antoine moved to sit on the bed beside him and gave him a sympathetic smile. “Do not push yourself. Will you take a little blood?”

Snow forced himself to nod. He wasn’t hungry but it would ease Antoine’s mind and help Snow maintain his current mental state. It would also take his mind off the feelings he couldn’t shake. Maybe Antoine was right and he had been dreaming. He had long ago made it a habit to forget his dreams upon waking, because he never saw anything good in them. His dreams were where the past waited to punish him.

Seeing his brother every night and knowing what he had done to him all those years ago was punishment enough for his sins.

Antoine left the bed and walked around the foot of it to the cluttered black dressing table on the left side of the room, opposite the door, his bare feet silent on the wooden floor. He picked up the small metal canister there, unscrewed the cap and brought it to his nose. He sniffed, smiled, and picked up a glass and returned to Snow, settling on the bed beside him again.

Antoine poured some blood into the glass and held it out to Snow.

Snow reluctantly nodded, closed his eyes and opened his mouth. He hated cold blood, but it was all he had known for centuries now. He could no longer remember what fresh blood straight from the vein tasted like.

Antoine carefully brought the glass to his lips and tipped it, allowing a steady flow of it to enter Snow’s mouth. He swallowed it down and grimaced, suppressing a shudder as it chilled his throat. Disgusting.

It did what he needed it to though. The moment it reached his stomach, his body began to absorb it, using it to restore some of his strength. With his returning strength came memories that had eluded him. The black empty stage of Vampirerotique bathed in blood and entrails. An unfamiliar female and a child. Payne defending them. Males attacking his brother.

His brother’s blood spilling.

Snow growled and bucked against the restraints, the image of Antoine bleeding from wounds across his chest driving his bloodlust back to the surface. He ground his teeth as his fangs elongated, filling his mouth, and threw his head back and roared.

“Snow!” Antoine pressed his palm against Snow’s forehead and pushed his head down onto the black pillows, effectively restraining him. “Look at me, Brother.”

Snow rolled his eyes open and sought Antoine. Antoine knelt over him, concern shining in his pale blue eyes.

“I am well. See for yourself.”

Snow dropped his eyes to his brother’s chest. No blood marred the dark material of his shirt. No wounds. Antoine had already healed. Snow breathed slowly to calm himself and kept his eyes locked on his brother. He was well. Not bleeding. Not hurt.

Not dying because of him.

“Brother,” Snow said and Antoine frowned at him. He ached to be free of his bonds so he could take Antoine into his arms and hold him. He needed to reassure himself that his brother was unharmed, alive and with him. He longed to feel that he did have the power to break the hold of his bloodlust even when he feared that he didn’t. All he could do was ask though. “Your injuries are healed?”

Antoine’s dark eyebrows knitted into a confused line.

“It is a simple question. How are you feeling?” Snow tried again, needing an answer this time, afraid that if Antoine didn’t reassure him, he would lose his mind again and the bloodlust would claim him.

Antoine released his forehead only to stroke it. “Are you feeling alright?”

Snow frowned at that. He had asked the same damn thing and Antoine hadn’t answered. Was Antoine still injured? Had he not healed?

“I am fine… but your injuries… tell me you have healed, Brother.” Snow tried to touch him and the cuffs sliced into his wrists again. He winced at the fleeting stab of pain. Antoine took some more cotton wool from the black nightstand and cleaned the blood off his wrists for him, and then cast him a worried glance. “What is it?”

Antoine sat back on the bed and Snow could sense his concern and frustration. He lobbed the bloodied cotton wool into the bin near the nightstand, drawing Snow’s attention to how full it was. Some had fallen out, littering his wooden floor. How long had he been lost to bloodlust?

“Antoine. Answer me.”

His younger brother’s expression grew even more concerned. “I do not understand a word you are saying, Snow, and you are beginning to scare me.”

Snow frowned now and thought about the words that had left his lips. They had seemed normal to him.

“I never learned the language of our family’s homeland.” Antoine refilled the glass with blood and rested it on his knee.

Snow stared at him, struggling to take in what he had said. He had been speaking the old language?

His eyes shot wide and he tried to sit up, only to have the cuffs around his wrists jerk him back against the pillows. Antoine hastily set the glass down on the nightstand and grabbed his shoulders, his fear flowing over Snow. Evidently, he thought Snow was having a relapse.

For once, it wasn’t the case.

“The prince and… homeland. Prince.” Snow knew he wasn’t making any sense and it wasn’t because he was speaking the old language this time. He was speaking English. The look in his brother’s eyes as they darted between his and the glass of blood said he definitely thought the blood had had a negative effect on him, driving him back to insanity.

“Are you okay, Snow?” Antoine moved his hands to Snow’s face, cupping both of his cheeks.

“Not crazy for a change,” he snarled and instantly regretted it when Antoine released him and picked up the glass. “Prince. The song. Winter skies. Snow.”

Antoine lifted the glass to Snow’s lips. “Drink a little more. You need to sleep. Do you feel you can sleep?”

What he wanted to do was slap his brother into the next century and get him to listen, but any act of violence right now would have Antoine calling in Javier and restraining him until he forced blood down his throat and possibly stuck him with a lion-sized dose of sedative.

Snow didn’t have good memories of the last time they had tried that one. He had hallucinated for days about all manner of weird creatures and demons jumbled in with flashbacks of his past, hadn’t slept at all, and had come out of it worse than before they had tried to tranquilize him.