Page 95 of Besieger
“You do not have to cut your hair on my behalf. Day after day,” Victor heard himself say.
“There is nothing to it, once you get used to it.” Erik shrugged and placed the book in his lap. He raked his fingers through hishair, ruffling it further. “There are dozens of little mundane things mortals do every day.”
“Yes, but do it becauseyouwant to,” Victor insisted. “Do it for yourself, not for my sake.”
“Then what doyouwant me to do for you?”
“Be yourself. That is enough.”
Erik huffed; his coy smile faded.
“Courting you is impossible.”
Victor could not help but laugh.Is this what we are doing? Courting?Vampires were a strange breed. Lycans he understood; their urges were manageable, but vampires…An impulse rose in Victor’s chest, to cross the room, narrow the distance between them, and to run his hand through Erik’s short hair, to smooth it away from the youthful face. Erik’s cheeks were still flushed with blood—Victor’s blood.
Later…There would be time for that when he got home from the bakery.
“You have quite the appetite on you. It took me by surprise, I must admit.” Erik patted the ruined cushions of the sofa. His nails scratched off flakes of blood.
“What do you think I was going to do when you offered me a bite?” Victor asked, eager to hear the answer, for he had none of his own. It was a craving he was not familiar with, a part of the beast he had never allowed to awake.
Perhaps Irena had been right, therewasa danger in having a vampire here. Before they met, Victor had been in control, his urges manageable, he had never known such hunger. Erik’s blood was doing something to him. Even now, having exhausted himself in the forest, he wanted another bite; Erik pinned on the ground beneath him.
“Take a nibble?” Erik said. “Every time I drink from you, you stare at my mouth, as if you want to eat me alive. I thought you were going to muster the courage and do something about it, not literally devour me.”
“I will be careful next time.” Victor’s voice carried a soft rumble.
Erik’s eyebrows shot up, his chest shaking with laughter.
“Oh, no. I will be the only one feeding next time, wolfling. If you want to take a sip, you will have to make do with my wrist. You nearly tore my head clean off.”
EMERICK, 2017
The room was strange, the bed was too big for him, too soft and empty. The pillows and sheets smelled of nothing he recognised; his scent had not settled into every crook and cranny, had not yet displaced the sharp tang of detergents and chemicals. It was worse than sleeping in the earth or in a box. Emerick was not used to sleeping alone.
This will not do, he huffed and got up.
Crossing the hallway, he let himself into Victor’s room and nudged next to the sleeping form on the bed. It was warm, and solid, human. A shape to keep him company, a body to anchor Emerick as he slept, plagued by dreamless dreams.
Still he could not drift off, despite the hour. He took note of the bedding: the heavy blankets, the quilts, things meant to keep one warm during the long hours of the night in winter. He had never given such matters much thought; the sheets they used in Béziers were clean, silk or cotton, the blankets and covers were red, royal blue, midnight skies drowned in his and Silvio’s scent. Never quilts, never coarsely spun wool. Emerick had never been cold in Silvio’s bed, a vampire hardly, if ever, felt cold. Now, next to Victor in the small bed, he was getting flustered and crushed under the weight of the wool in its many bright patterns.
Victor was like a roaring fire, burning to the touch and loud. So impossibly loud... His heartbeat was deafening and the sound of his steady breath, held in sleep’s embrace, was enough to drive Emerick mad.
Have mortals always been this loud?
He nuzzled closer to Victor despite himself, trying to block out the endless noises the human body produced. He would have to teach himself to ignore it; in time, it would fade into the background, no more intrusive than the flood of foreign thoughts that assaulted him daily.
Sometime in the late hours of the afternoon, Victor twitched and sobbed in his sleep. He had turned away, facing the wall. The blankets lay kicked aside, leaving him to shiver.
Emerick knew better than to rummage through a human’s mind while they slept, the nightmare could pull him in if he were not careful. He dabbed Victor’s forehead with his sleeve, gently arranging the covers over him. His sorry state reminded Emerick of how they met. Emerick had been wearing the vestiges of the Reich, a makeshift costume to blend in the chaos, as he tended to a man he had picked from the street. Victor looked like he had been caught in a mortar blast, parts of his body torn, his face a map of gashes and rents.
Don’t let me die.The man was praying to the void.Tobias, don’t let me die in this uniform. Don’t let me die. Don’t let me die. They will bury me in it. Take it—take it off me. Tobias—It was not vanity that dictated those final words. Emerick lifted the body and carried it away with him, earning Silvio’s scorn, but he did not care, what harm would there be in nursing this mortal, in talking to him as the war raged on.
Emerick had not lied when he said he needed a distraction, an entertainment of sorts. He was angry with Silvio, with all of them. Frustrated at not being consulted before theMarquishad accepted the crown and sceptre, rising higher in the court of the dead.
‘MarquisGabrielli’, Emerick chewed on his new title and tried to swallow it with mouthfuls of Victor’s blood.
Poor wolfling, are you hungry?He teased after each sip, aware of how Victor’s eyes never strayed from his mouth, how they flashed, nocturnal, like a bird of prey.Do you remember how I taste?He had licked along the man’s face and jawline, the curve of the neck, familiarising himself with the dips and curves ofTobias—as the man had introduced himself. Emerick had sliced his palm and let the blood drip and sizzle over the torn flesh of the abdomen, watched the skin churn and knit itself back together; no scar left to tell the tale. Some wounds he could not heal; bones were impossible to grow anew, so he made do with human means and let time do its work. He gave his patient cups of blood, the smallest of dosage of immortality.
