Page 2 of Besieger
“I am not letting you die,” Emerick had circled back, leaning in to whisper against his mouth.
Silvio opened his mouth with a sigh to receive the kiss. In his opinion, they were far too old for such theatrics. They had lived for too long, leading lives under fake names that felt alien on their tongues. No matter how many times their identities shifted he always ended up as Silvio di Flaviari, married to Countess Dulior di Flaviari. Bound in blood on the desecrated ground outside Antioch—where their greatest shame had begun.
He lifted a hand and pressed it to the back of Emerick’s head, pulling him down. Silvio’s mouth opened wide and he ran his tongue over his own fangs before gliding it over Emerick’s upper row of teeth. He felt rather than heard Emerick murmur something against his mouth, insistently pressing their bodies together.
“The Regent is going to be late.”
“The Regent can pay a visit to Ingenuar later,” Silvio pulled a little away, trying to appear remorseful. Whatever reason Ingenuar had for summoning him, it would have to wait.Vampires were nothing if not patient. All vampires except the one climbing on top of him and undoing Silvio’s silk dress-gown.
SILVIO, 1789
The wordregentburned on the harsh parchment. Silvio rubbed a finger over the ink, smearing it. He realized he was pressing too hard when he heard the crack of the wax seal on the back of the page, and watched it crumble on the floor. Letters had been arriving almost daily now. Dulior’s many so-called friends and confidants kept her informed of the goings-on within and beyond the French court. For all their versatility in politics, they had failed to predict the storming of the Bastille and were now looking for ways to either flee the country or continue living in blissful ignorance.
The peasants would not dare, the intendant would protect us, their letters proclaimed. Whenever his lady wife came and read him these letters Silvio would listen in silence, refusing to comment. Even if the insurgents had set their minds on storming and burning his estate to the ground, Silvio would gladly let them. It was a shame that the king had prohibited the use of the breaking wheel. He would love to see his wife spin on top of that contraption. Twisted and turned like the webs she had been weaving and tightening around him for centuries.
The privacy of his own thoughts was the only luxury he was afforded—one he was both thankful for and resentful of. Having gifted him immortality, Dulior would never be able to pierce the veil of Silvio’s mind, as her own remained just as sealed to him. He could resent her in blissful peace. Dare to imagine a life without her. His only regret was that the same applied to any fledgling he would create from his blood. When Silvio made Emerick, he had both given him life and entrapped him. Thethree of them, Silvio, Dulior, and Emerick, would spiral around each other into a silent vicious dance, year after year, century after century.
Sometimes he wondered whether he and Emerick together were strong enough to kill Dulior if they set upon her. They could drag her into the sun and watch the whole of her set ablaze like the beautiful red and auburn of her hair.No, Silvio thought and crushed the letter into his fist before casting it into the fireplace. Killing Dulior would never satisfy him. Not after everything that she had put them through—the humiliations and little acts of indignities towards Emerick, the abuse, the withholding of power. The real challenge was to escape and prosper without her. To have her know he was out there in the world without her. A child’s curse was to outlive their parents and as a mother Dulior had long overstayed her welcome.
Silvio had heard of the Coven in Berlin and the smaller vampire factions in Athens and Adalia[1]. Dulior often intruded upon his solitude, flaunting letters and missives she received from this so-called Coven. A vampire by the name of Raffaelle kept her informed of the machinations of the immortals. From these letters Silvio knew there was a Master Vampire, the first of their kind, the All Father, who ruled from the Coven and relied on theBasilissaand theSultanato enforce his will to the East when necessary. And now, this All Father had personally summoned Silvio, offering him a place in the immortal court as the Regent of France.
As Regent, you will choose a consort as your heir and right hand, the letter instructed. Since the day he died, Silvio had been nothing but Count di Flaviari. Now, the thought of choosing a partner before the vampire court elated him. Accepting the offerfelt like a way out, a new beginning for both him and Emerick, even if this one came wrapped in its own special kind of gilded fetters.
A cough sounded behind Silvio, prompting him to lift his head and look up from the flames. The invitation had quickly burned away, the parchment folding on itself and drying the ink. Pieces of wax crunched under Silvio’s shoes as he stepped away and looked around the room. The fireplace was burning, making it warm—even suffocating. A man was standing next to the mantelpiece, running his fingers through the flames of a candle. He was taller than Silvio but of slimmer build, dressed for the evening in formal attire although nothing too extravagant. There was no embroidery of silk floss on the cuffs and tails of his coat, no buttons to compliment the florals on the waistcoat jacket—nothing that could rival the rich texture of Silvio’s own clothes. The man wore dark green linen—breeches, coat and waistcoat—so devoid of ornament it made Silvio think of seaweed dried out in the sun. The white cravat and wool stockings finished the makeshift servant’s outfit. The only luxurious touch on the man was the Venetian silk ribbon tying back his long dark hair: mustard yellow, embroidered with flowers and suns. A gift from Silvio to his lover.
Emerick. My…
“What did the letter say? Did they storm Tuileries?” Emerick asked, his dark eyes trailing the candle flame as it flicked between his fingers. He clenched his teeth and hissed.
“Better,” replied Silvio, appearing beside him in time to pull Emerick’s hand away—his middle and ring fingers already beginning to blacken at the knuckles. Silvio lifted the fingers to his mouth and kissed them, drinking in their fleeting warmth.
“My lord must forgive me,” Emerick said, raising his eyebrows. “I am not as versed as our mother in these matters. What could possibly be better than the Royal Palace burning down?”
Silvio disliked being addressed that way—especially when done in blatant mockery. They had vowed to abandon titles and formalities the day they left Naples and set out for France. When young, ignorant Master Gabrielli had insisted they were equals and the best of friends, Silvio had obliged. He had obliged in the streets and taverns of Paris in 1083. He had obliged on horseback in Belgrade in 1097. And finally, Silvio thought—his tongue tracing the burned fingers of his lover—he had obliged crawling through the sand and wreckage of Antioch in 1098.
Turning Emerick’s palm upward, Silvio pressed his lips to the cold flesh, tracing the lines and veins. Séances and fortune tellers were popular at the French court, and Dulior had taken Silvio to more than a few. They were all mirror tricks and charlatans, of course, but he found them entertaining nonetheless. The so-called mystics took his and his wife’s hands and traced their palms. While talking of years still to come, of happiness, travels, and fortunes greater than those of Versailles or the Czar, some would always predict children, others—wealth. They would take Emerick’s hand and speak in hushed voices, low so his master would not hear, about how he was to marry in a foreign land. They predicted a man from the North promising him riches. Some mystics marvelled at the length of their lifelines; others could find none at all.
Smiling at the memory, Silvio studied Emerick’s palm and followed the veins pulsing just beneath the skin. Seven hundred years ago he had watched the blood drain out of these veins and be filled anew. Silvio had felt his lover’s heart and lungs recede to stillness, limbs grow numb and heavy, as the eyes looked up, glazed with an empty dark lustre.
Silvio closed his eyes, struggling to push the past away from his mind. Back then, had Emerick’s horse died before it fell on the ground or had it summoned its last strength to flee, dragging along the body of its rider? Silvio remembered an animal screaming as the night descended. The blood in the sunsetblurred with the blood running down his chin as he crawled. Something was moving towards him.
A woman.
He noticed her clothes first, how weird and absurd she looked dressed in silks and pearls. Her skirts were torn and her stockings and little slippers caked in mud, as she moved through the carnage. Her hands and face were distorted in blood. Some of the pins holding her hair had fallen loose, spilling red curls over her face and shoulders. One of the soldiers yelled at her, his curses dying abruptly.
Mon cœur, she called, bending over Silvio. The hand that grabbed and pulled at his leg was not human.
A few meters from him Emerick was trying to get free of the stirrups, an arrow was lodged in his arm, the arrowhead buried in the corpse of his horse. Two more arrows in his chest. A leg bent at an odd angle. His hair was loose and fell over his face in a mess of gravel and blood. How cruel the arrows protruded from Emerick’s chest, like a vengeful Cupid’s mark.
The thing kept pulling at Silvio’s leg, dragging him further and further from Emerick.
Rico!
Silvio’s fingers clawed at the dry ground and started desperately scratching and grabbing at it, trying to pull himself free. The hand holding him pressed down and he heard a bone snap. He screamed and tried to kick at the thing with his other leg, the world burning all around him from the pain and shock.
“There is a vampire coven in Prussia,” Silvio began, forcing his mind to stay grounded in the here and now, still holding on to Emerick’s hand. His lips traced the veins over the wrist, stopping at the edge of the coat’s cuffs.
Silvio was often plagued by memories of the past, of how he was made—of howboth of themwere made. And for once he was grateful Emerick could not peer into his mind and see these grotesque events unfolding. In the early years of their immortality, with each sunset, in his mind, Silvio saw it againand again: Emerick dying—day after day. Back then, the taste of blood would always first remind him of how easily he opened Emerick’s throat and lapped at the blood, his whole body in flames from the rapture. That first drop of human blood. How the hunger bloomed on the roof of his mouth as he gorged himself on his lover’s corpse. That betrayal of the flesh as his mouth and throat worked to swallow more of the blood.
