Page 105 of Besieger
Swallow all of it, Silvio. Swallow all of me…A voice cooed in his head.
Silvio lapped at it, drinking it in long, greedy gulps.
Afterwards, he moved through the Coven like a sleepwalker, a revenant eager to get to his last missing piece.
Silvio was on his knees among the corpses, clutching a broken arrow. The horseman came closer, his hand lifted in greeting. Silvio crawled to him, tried to rise, but kept stumbling. He dragged himself upright by the reins of the horse.
The rider leaned down, his lips brushed Silvio’s eyelids with the lightness of a moth. Blood gushed from the rider’s mouth and Silvio groaned, parting his lips to receive the kiss, to deepen it.
Behind him the corpses stirred. A hand tugged at him. The stained satin of a woman’s dress brushed against him, and he caught the faint fragrance of roses and beeswax. Sweet as rot.
One of the knights struggled to his feet, swaying on uncertain legs. His neck was torn, the blood sucked dry from his corpse. Arrows jutted from his back and chest. He leaned into Silvio, caressing his hair. The smell of rot and wet earth permeating the air.
“Has it been enough, Sil?” the knight’s corpse asked and Silvio felt the tip of one of the arrows bury into his own back, but he could not tear his mouth away from the rider.
The blood was so sweet, he was drowning in its ecstasy.
The rider wrenched himself free from Silvio, blood dripped from his chin until he smeared it away with the back of his hand. Silvio gulped, his mouth sticky, gums heavy, and narrowed his eyes at Rico’s corpse behind him—the blackened eyes, hair matted in dirt and filth, the torn tabard. In front of him the rider continued to bleed from the mouth, like a fountain, staining his mount and the ground beneath.
The corpses began to crawl and clamber one over another, desperate to reach the rider and drink.
Silvio gazed at the corpse that held on to him. The eyes gave away the illusion; Silvio knew this was not real but another nightmare. Rico’s eyes had always been hazel, reflecting the sun and warmth of their youth, shining bright with life and mischief. They were black and cold, unblinking, boring into Silvio with their complete absence of light. Dead.
Silvio shifted his weight, turning his back on the rider and the woman, and stretched out on the sofa. The fabric of the furniture felt wrong; it made his fingertips tingle. He could not remember this piece among the many sofas and ottomans in Béziers. It vaguely resembled Ingenuar’s throne in Berlin.
“You will tell me when it is enough, won’t you?” Emerick lay beside him on the sofa, bathed in sunlight.
It will never be enough,Felivar sighed with Silvio’s mouth, and watched Silvio’s—his—Felivar’s—mine—fingertips crack and crumble as they caressed his lover’s face.
Silvio’s memories were fragile. The only truly vivid part of them was his desire, his passion for another. Felivar could not pierce the veil and see the mortal Emerick…thatRico belonged to Silvio, and Silvio alone. Rico before the Blood. Rico before the Coven. It was an image of Rico that Silvio guarded like a beast. Whatever mortal memories there were, Felivar could not reach them. In Silvio’s dreams and recollections, Emerick was always dead.
Silvio’s turning had been a rushed gamble. There was no telling whether Felivar’s blood would take hold in one already turned. Silvio was not on the brink of death; centuries upon centuries of immortal blood flowed through him. But he carried a shard, the tiniest of pricks from a glass that had once been Felivar. If the shard held and the Blood responded, Felivar could use it to fester and consume Silvio from within, like mould—a parasite. In time, Felivar would slowly amalgamate with theMarquis, wear Silvio as one might a well-worn suit.
His only mistake had been failing to foresee Silvio’s ascension. Felivar had not expected the Council would make him Coven Master. He would have been equally pleased to puppet theMarquis, but now Silvio had the entire Coven, usurping the very throne Felivar had helped create. Not even he was that greedy.
No matter. He had his flesh now.
And the new Coven Master was ravenous. Even in his dreams Emerick appeared to serve him. Silvio ran his hand through Emerick’s hair, pushing him down while he hissed and whimpered. The texture of his hair felt somehow wrong, curlier,messier, shorter. Though willing and eager, his mouth had teeth that were dull. The skin was warmer, silkier; it pulsed with life, responding to every touch. His lover did not smell of the blood and perfumes Silvio had bestowed upon him.
Silvio blinked down at Kyrillos’s face between his palms; he lay sprawled on the bedsheets. He pressed a finger against the young man’s cheek, drawing a muffled moan that caught in his throat. The heart of a human beat beneath his palm. Silvio growled and flung himself back against the pillows, a little away, enough to let his servant catch his breath. Kyrillos looked up at him, face flushed, panting, lips swollen and inviting.
The Coven Master noted the surgical scars on the mortal’s chest, remembered kissing them, running his tongue over them, memorising their pattern before biting down. Oh, how eager Kyrillos was… and so young.
Silvio cupped his face and drew him into a kiss. He knew what Kyrillos craved: the man’s desires were vivid in his mind, laid bare and debased. To be fed upon and touched by the dead. And what greater honour than to be desired by the father of the dead, to be claimed by the master of the dead? To tremble like a moth, its wings spread and pinned against the sheets, Silvio’s teeth marks on its neck, between its legs…
Within him, Felivar burned with anticipation. How would it feel, how would a child of the Blood—his and Silvio’s—turn out? All his previous progeny, though strong, had disappointed him. Kyrillos was the perfect specimen, not only to Silvio’s tastes, but ripe with naivety. The young man had grown up among vampires, served them in different households, and had now been given a taste of what it meant to be the bedfellow of thirst.
Kyrillos would agree to the prospect of immortality; he would embrace vampirism beautifully. The challenge for Felivar lay in getting Silvio to rip the vein. How would he make Silvio agree—agree toturn another? How to push him to the limits of his ownmaddening desires and bleak intervals of sanity. Felivar had to turn him into a vessel overflowing with thirst.
Felivar looked forward to pushing Silvio towards the precipice. Poor starved Silvio, how delicious he would be when Felivar was through with him.
He walked the halls of the Berlin Coven, followed by Kyrillos, this new pet, and the gilded mirrors echoed his steps, the reflection breaking apart, vanishing as he passed. Felivar was coming undone again. He had to think of himself as Silvio now.I have to become Silvio.
The besieger.
The deserter.
Count di Flaviari.
