Unleash (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 6) (12 page)

He went under again and feebly kicked twice before drifting down into the darkness.

Blue light burst into life above him and grew brighter as the world around him grew dimmer.

A pale shape formed amidst the light. As it drew closer, he saw it was a girl, more beautiful than even his mother. She reached for him and so he reached for her.

When she caught his hands, they both shot from the water and landed hard on the ground. The force of the impact sent him tumbling into darkness.

Snow could hear someone singing.

A song of ice and fire in the sky. A prince and an angel who were destined to love but forever be apart.

The female voice was sweet, warming the chill in his heart and his body, chasing his pain away. He tried to breathe and choked up water. It spilled from his mouth and she continued to sing, her fingers softly combing his wet hair. He shivered and trembled, weak and frozen stiff, unable to feel anything. Numb.

It took most of his remaining strength but he finally managed to open his eyes.

The dark world was foggy at first and then gradually cleared to reveal the girl he had seen in the lake. She knelt beside him, her white dress saturated and her black hair hanging in tangled threads around her shoulders. She smiled when she saw him and continued singing, although her lips didn’t move.

He heard the song in his head and his heart.

She stared at him and he at her, her fingers still gently stroking his hair, and her song slowly chasing the numbness from his body, returning warmth to his chest first. It spread from there, easing down his arms and towards his legs.

“Hello,” Snow said, his voice hoarse from his sore throat. He hoped she knew his language. He could understand her song. She had to know his language. He wanted to speak with her.

She didn’t answer but she did stop singing. Her soft features turned sorrowful.

“What is wrong?” He sat up and she looked away from him, towards her shoulders. She had small wings, as beautiful as the owl’s had been. There were darker feathers threaded into the pure white. “What do they mean?”

Even as he said it, one turned jet-black, far darker than the others were.

She wrote in the shallow snow beside her.

Bad.

Snow frowned. “Why?”

She pointed to the frozen lake to his right and then to him. He gasped, his eyes shooting wide.

“Because you saved me?” He didn’t like that he had gotten her in trouble. A pure black feather. He had got his cousins in trouble a few times, his mischief normally landing them in some sort of dire situation that had the adults searching for them or having to come to their aid. His cousins were boys though. He had never gotten a girl in trouble.

She wrote another two words.

Vampire. Evil.

Snow snarled and slashed his hand through that second word and jolted to his feet, angry now.

“I am not evil,” he barked and she remained sitting, serenely staring up at him, sorrow in her eyes, as though she had seen his future and knew what was to come for him. Snow cursed her and she flinched away. He panicked, ashamed that he had frightened her when she had been the one to save him from the lake. “I am sorry.”

She looked back at him and shrugged.

“Are all of them because I am bad?” he crouched in front of her, shivering in his pale wet furs, his throat still burning from inhaling the icy water.

Her dark eyebrows furrowed, the sadness in her eyes increasing, and she shook her head. She pointed to the word ‘bad’ and then to herself. Snow frowned.

“You are bad too?” he said.

She nodded. Snow held his hand out to her and smiled.

His mother called for him.

“Do not be sad. You can run away from the mean angels who said you were bad and live with me.”

The pretty girl smiled at last and went to place her hand into his.

Light blinded him.

When it receded, a black-haired male in white armour towered over him, his pure white wings spread wide. His amethyst eyes pinned Snow with a dark look of disgust.

Snow sprang to his feet, determined to stand up to the mean angel.

The man backhanded him before he could move and pain ricocheted through every bone in his body as he flew through the air, crashed hard into the ground and tumbled across it. Snow gasped for air, fire burning every inch of him, so intense that he couldn’t breathe or even think. His vision swam, blurring and distorting.

He heard someone running towards him. Saw the girl and the fear in her eyes. Snow growled through his agony and tried to push himself onto his knees, determined to protect her from the nasty man.

The male grabbed her arm and hauled her back to him, holding her in spite of her violent struggling.

Snow cried out when he tried to use his arms. One was broken. One of his legs had suffered a similar fate. He could taste blood too. He spat two teeth out onto the pristine snow. His head spun but he tried to get to his feet again.

“Come.” The male’s voice boomed around the mountains. “I warned you to leave the wretch to die. Now you must take all of the sins he will commit unto yourself. For every sin, you will suffer, and you will have them as black marks on your soul.”

The light blinded Snow again and he collapsed into the cold embrace of the earth. He struggled to remain conscious, concerned that he had got the angel into more trouble.

“Snow!” Mama.

He rolled onto his front and managed to get onto his knees this time, using his good arm to push himself up. Colourful ribbons danced above him, bright against their velvet backdrop, beautiful and soothing his pain. His bones throbbed, the pain threatening to pull him into darkness, but he clung to consciousness.

The snow was cold beneath him, stealing more of his strength, luring him into surrendering to the darkness.

“Snow?” His mother’s soft feminine voice curled around him, chasing the chill from his body as it warmed his heart.

She rounded him and crouched in the snow before him, her beautiful face full of affection and concern, her smile renewing his strength. Dark furs covered her body, her pale hair spilling across the long soft fibres. She stood much taller than he was even though they both knelt in the snow, and he looked up at her, into her ice-blue eyes that looked almost white in the low light.

Her warm hand swept the strands of his white hair out of his face and she stilled when he flinched in pain.

“What happened?” She leaned down and licked his cheek, sealing the cut there.

“I made a friend, Mama… but the man made her go.” Snow’s head turned and he wavered. His mother caught his arms and white-hot pain seared his bones. He cried out and squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking from their corners.

“Darling!” his mother called and Snow managed to shake his head.

He didn’t want his father to come to them. He didn’t want his father to see him like this, weak and useless. He had to be strong. His father would be proud of him then.

Snow tried to push up onto his feet. He clutched his mother’s shoulders and pulled himself up, but his left leg screamed in pain, the shattered bone grinding together beneath his flesh. He collapsed onto her lap. She gathered her to him, fear in her eyes as she gently stroked his brow.

She raised her hand to her lips and didn’t take her eyes from his as she sank a single fang into her wrist.

The strong scent of her blood filled the night and she lowered her wrist to him. Snow took the offered blood, his small mouth working furiously to draw enough from the wound.

He wasn’t big enough to cover a full bite. His mother had tried once when he had fallen from a tree and he had spilled her blood everywhere.

He swallowed a mouthful and his pain began to ebb, his body swift to ingest the blood and use it to kick start the process of healing his broken bones. The darkness faded with it, the dizziness passing. He took another mouthful from his mother and then she drew her arm away and licked the cut, sealing it. Snow licked his lips.

His father called from the distance, drawing closer, and Snow willed his body to heal faster so his father wouldn’t see him as weak. Papa prided himself on the strength of their bloodline and their breeding. Snow wanted his father to be proud of him too.

His mother gathered her furs around them both and rocked him gently in her arms. She leaned over him and pressed soft kisses to his brow, and Snow closed his eyes, savouring the feel of her embrace and feeling safe and warm, loved. He loved his Mama more than anything. He would love her forever, and would make sure nothing bad ever happened to her.

“What was your friend’s name?” she whispered between kisses.

Snow’s brow crinkled. The little girl hadn’t said what it was. He would give her a name.

“Aurora.”

Something stroked his brow and Snow frowned as that gentle touch drew him out of his dream long enough that he hazily saw the angel above him. She sung and he drifted back to sleep, finding himself lying in a bed with his mother beside him, his body swathed in bandages.

“Try to rest, Snow.” Mama stroked his forehead, her caress soothing him. He had been stuck in bed for weeks already, his body slow to heal the broken bones, even when he frequently took blood from his mother.

The world shifted and he was sitting beside the fire outside the castle, staring beyond it to the snowy mountains and the stars hanging above them in the velvet darkness. His cousins muttered about him behind his back, complaining that he was no longer any fun. He ached to play with them but he couldn’t.

Every time he came close to giving in to the urge, he thought of the angel, Aurora, and remembered that if he was bad, she would grow more black feathers and the man would be angry with her again. He wanted to stay out of trouble for her.

He would never do anything that would result in her gaining another black feather.

He would protect both her and his Mama.

S
he refused to judge Snow as guilty immediately in order to save herself, earning the anger of her master, and instead returned to the vampire. Somehow, she would redeem him, because the thought of sentencing him to death hurt her.

How many times had she wished he no longer existed and now she couldn’t bring herself to give him the death that he eagerly sought?

When she had returned to her home that night two thousand years ago, she had cried until she had convinced herself that her master was not cruel enough to inflict upon her the punishment he had detailed.

For one hundred years, her life had gone on as it had before she had saved Snow from the lake and death, granting him a second chance, and she had grown sure that she had been right and her master had only threatened to punish her in order to scare her into never straying from his orders again.

And then Snow had committed a sin and she had gained another black feather.

She had cried again that night, scared and alone, afraid of what her future would hold.

She had realised that Snow had forgotten her, and that had only made her cry harder because she couldn’t forget him and her master had stipulated that she couldn’t reveal herself to him to remind him of what would happen to her should he sin.

All she could do was follow him, hidden from the world, watching him. She had grown to hate him because he had sinned without remorse and she had suffered greatly each time, punished for his actions.

She had even suffered in the four centuries he had served in an army of his kind and had spent many years gone from this world, ventured into Hell, a place where her vision couldn't see him. She had grown more black feathers in those years than she had in all the others combined and had only been able to wonder what sins Snow had committed to cause them.

Whenever he had returned to this world, appearing in her vision again, he had changed by degrees. She had seen it in him when he had spent time with a baby Antoine. A cold, bleak aura had begun to surround him, and then she had witnessed the beginnings of his bloodlust. Whatever he had done in those years in Hell, it had affected him deeply.

The more black feathers she grew, the more the other angels had viewed her as tainted. She had become despised amongst her own kind, an outcast because of the vampire. Only her master had dared to take her under his wing and teach her how to do her duties, and she still didn’t believe he had done it out of kindness. He had cursed her to bear all of Snow’s sins after all.

He had bound her to Snow and only he could set her free.

No. She could set herself free. Her master had given her a way out. If she judged Snow as guilty and a danger to the world, and condemned him to death, she would have her freedom.

Tears lined her eyes because she knew in her heart that she would never be able to do such a thing to him, not without good reason.

She would never be able to save herself.

Her master had told her two thousand years ago to watch Snow die and she hadn’t been able to follow his command.

She had thought him beautiful when she had seen him running through the snow chasing the owl. She had never witnessed a boy so excited and full of life, joy and curiosity.

His white hair, pale eyes, and the thick furs he wore had made him look as though the frigid land had birthed a child so linked to it that they resembled each other. She had reacted on instinct when he had fallen through the ice and plunged into the lake.

She hadn’t seen something evil that the world would be better off without.

She had only seen a child like herself about to die.

A beautiful boy that she had wanted to live.

She looked upon him now as he slumbered under the black covers of his grim steel bed, his ankles and wrists restrained, and his handsome face twitching as he dreamed.

When he had killed his family, her master had made her watch it all unfold, forcing her to see that she had unleashed a monster upon the world the night she had saved him as a boy.

She had never believed him capable of such evil and it had shocked her to see him butchering those he adored, but she still hadn’t been able to bring herself to admit that he deserved to die.