Scarlet Night (Limited Edition) (6 page)

And we do!

Every.

Fucking.

Night!

But right now—right here—it's
his
time to regret!

It's
his
time to suffer.

He's shed the last of his confidence and we sneer at the sight as he continues to shiver and slink back like a beaten animal. The gesture triggers something within him and the last ounce of control holding in his dignity shatters and he begins to piss on himself.

We cackle again.

Our laughter rolls forward with the fury and malice this wretched mutt has come to know us for in the little time we've known him and we take him in our sights—still roaring with exuberance—and let our eyes tell him just how much we want to see him suffer.

His bladder finds more fuel at that moment.

Whimpering and whining, he steps back once more and finds…

Us!

We smirk as he spins and finds us standing behind him; realizing then that our vampire capacity for moving faster than the eye can see has not been lost on our new body.

And then he sees the truth…

We've been
playing
with him! Fucking with him from the very start!

The chase. The struggle. The effort.

Nothing more than our own game of cat and mouse.

“Game over, motherfuc—GAHH!!”

“Let him go.” A voice from behind resounds both in our ears and echoes in our skull and a tremor spreads through our body. Somehow, through the struggle within us, we keep the writhing mutt in our grasp
. I SAID PUT HIM
DOWN
, ZANE!

The roaring voice in our head stirs something deep within us; something we distantly recognize…

We put him down.

He's on the ground for less than ten seconds, staring intermittently between us and his savior, before she tells him to get lost. Realizing this is the only chance he's going to get, he does just that.

“What are you doing here?”
we snarl, watching as our quarry hightails it over the roof; leaving only his canine stink and a trail of urine to remember him by.
“You getting a wet spot for mongrels all of a sudden?”

“What I've got a wet spot for is
hardly
your concern, you asshole!” Zoey steps around—her short, bluish-black hair sweeping through the darkness like a shark's fin in dark water—and locks on us with a pair of angry blue eyes brighter than the moon. Despite being more than four feet shorter than us, she crosses her arms over her chest and lets a moment of silence waft between us with a static pause as a disapproving mother would a reckless child. “Would you care to try to explain?”

We snarl at her,
“WE DO NOT ANSWER TO YO—”

“Enough, Zane,” she holds up a small hand and rolls her eyes at us.

At US! How
dare
she—

“Pardon me? How dare I
what
? You think being a jerk to a therion who made you upset is making good use of your time; or, better yet, your
life
?” her hair shifts angrily as her sea-blue aura starts to slip free and tussle it and she stabs a finger towards the corner that the therion had made his escape, “Would you like to try that with
me
, Zane? You want to use this gift as a—”

We roar in her face,
“IT'S A CURSE!! WE ARE—”

“Shut up.” Her aura whips forward at that moment and ensnares us by the throat with enough grip to hold us. We feel the rage build up within us—the dark thing darting about within our body and sinking its toxic fangs into any part it can find to drive us to
fight—and we try to throw our own red aura at her to counter. She absently bats it away with an auric tendril and lifts us off the ground and holds us—swaying several feet over the rooftop—to force us to listen. “Always bottom of the bottle with you, isn't it? You can never reflect on
how
it got that way, or
why
you allowed it to get that way, or even
what
you should do about it! It's just 'wah wah wah! My bottle's empty and my life sucks for it!' and I, for one, am tired of watching you
masturbate
your misery. You, yourself, have admitted that you
earned
those tattoos as a
punishment
and this thing that comes about from them, but you've outright
refused
to ask 'why'! You'd sooner put the blame on anybody—any
thing
!—that could momentarily divert the responsibility that those symbols have placed
squarely
on you! But you don't have sense enough to recognize that it's
your
fault and you
need
to reign this in and use it
for
you rather than
against
the world!”

Her eyes shift in the direction that the therion had run off in before narrowing on us again. “You'd likely argue that he had this coming, right? That him being mean to you had warranted
this
response, am I right? And don't bother denying it either, because we
both
know that I can
see
into your head plain as day and I don't even need my aura to do it! You're wrong, Zane—no buffers, no complexities, no sympathy; WRONG!!—and I'm
tired
of you moping around—taking this
gift
”—she paused long enough to let the word hang in the air to see if we'd try to challenge it again. We didn't—”and all the opportunities that Gregori spread out before you when
no one
else would even give you a crumpled bill for another drink—and
wasting
everything it is that the clan—your
family
!—sees in you!”

We growl and drag our gaze away as best we can despite the auric binds,
“He wanted us to forget him…”

Zoey sighs and shakes her head, lowering us slowly to the rooftop and holding our body upright as we fall to our knees. “Is that what you think he wanted?” she steps over us and lays her fingertips on our heaving shoulders, “That he wanted you to forget?”

“He asked us to—”

“I know what he asked, and you, of course, had to see it as nothing more than the bottom of another bottle.” She kneels down and brings herself eye-to-eye with us, “But you're failing to see this for the uncorked bottle it really is. His death and his request do not represent the end of Vail's legacy; they represent a new start to something greater.” She frowned and stood, casting her gaze towards the sky and sighing. “Times are changing, Zane. Laws are falling through and those that would see our people carouse and rule in anarchy are getting stronger while we hold to protocols and codes that nobody else is willing to abide by.” She sighed again, the sadness breaking through as she did, “You remember what they did to the Odin Clan! And for
what
? So some
boy
—the innocent son of
the
Joseph Stryker: one of the
greatest
clan rulers and warriors this world has
ever
seen—might not get to where he was? They
slaughtered
them, Zane! They destroyed our brothers and sisters—their
own
kind—just to fight a potential risk to their plans to turn us into the monsters the humans already see us as! And through
all
that”—she looks back down at us—”the Stryker-boy still fights for The Council; with
no
clan and
no
path he
still
fights!” She shakes her head at us and crosses the rooftop to peer over the edge, “I hope you get to meet him someday, Zane…” We look up in time to see her glance back at us with an appalled look on her face, “… so that you can try to tell him to his face how much
you've
suffered.”

“Zoey…
”

She holds up a hand to stop us. “You've got two options at this point! Either you drag yourself out of the self-inflicted torture chamber you've barricaded yourself inside and honor Gregori's memory by doing as he asked and seeing his life's work
not
crumble like the Odin Clan and go find his daughter, or you continue as you are and find yourself staring down the receiving end of The Council's barrel.” She bites her lip and looks away as the first tear falls from her eye, “I've come to love you like a brother, Zane! We've seen and dealt with a great deal together as members of Gregori's home… but if you don't stop this and I'm given the order, I will not hesitate to kill you!”

Her words hang in the air like a storm cloud and I suddenly don't feel the dark thing anymore. My head goes hollow and numb and my body grows heavy as awareness—
true
awareness—replaces the illusion that the heightened senses use to control me. After a moment I open my eyes and see my hand for what it's meant to be…

My
hand.

I've turned back?

But it didn't even—

“I can only do so much for you.” Zoey offers me her hand, “But I
can
do what I can to keep you from hurting.”

“Zoey…” I look down sadly, “I'm sorry. I just—”

“Shut up, Zane.” She smirks at me and shakes her head, “When will you learn that every trial
is not
the bottom of the bottle?”

I can't help but smile at the realization that Gregori's death doesn't have to be the death of my reason for living. Besides, if The Clan of Vain's future lies in the hands of his daughter, and he's entrusted
me
to find her, then…

“He really had faith in me… didn't he?”

Zoey rolls he eyes and scoffs. “You really
are
a dense one.”

Zoey was nice enough to bring me a change of clothes to replace the “no doubt shredded ensemble” that I'd been wearing before I'd lost control. While I'd neglected to tell her that there wasn't much of an “ensemble” left to shred by that point, I was certain she knew nonetheless. Besides, her taste in threads
were
nicer than anything I could've picked out: a custom-made pair of boots that Gregori had gotten for me and a pair of pants that weren't hanging in tattered shreds—a “bad way to make a first impression with a lady” as she'd put it. She was also nice enough to bring my favorite jacket, but made a note of “forgetting” to pack a shirt.

“That's alright!” She'd perked up as she had tossed me the coat, “You're chest is too yummy to hide, anyway!”

While I hadn't fought the compliment, the fact that my tattoos were showing was a little unnerving.

All-in-all, other than feeling a little exposed, I trek through the woods towards the bum-fuck cabin nestled like a zit in a plumber's ass-crack in the middle of
nowhere
. While I'm not sure as to
why
anybody would want to
live
out here, Zoey was certain that the information was up-to-date and accurate.

Sure enough, as I cross the threshold and step into the clearing where the cabin—though it looked to me like a glorified outhouse—I spotted light in the windows and the shadow of somebody moving inside.

Hearing the muffled voice of who I could only assume was Gregori's daughter, Serena, I smirk, extending my aura, and prepare to introduce myself…