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I hear the front door closing and eagerly await his return, but sleep does not come easy.
I am relieved that we are okay now, but that could have gone very badly. I try to think of what my life would have been like without Caspian in it, and everything before him feels like a distant dream.
The hallucinations have stopped, thanks to the amulet now wrapped tidily around my neck, but I can still see the eyes of the vampires in the den as they size me up. I am nothing more than a piece of meat for them - sustenance. They hate that I am inedible to them, because of the venom coursing through my veins, and because I serve a different purpose.
I am nothing more than bait for Caspian.
The front door opens, and I hear Caspian rummaging through the kitchen, seemingly shoveling through the extra pots and pans we have not moved yet. I realize that I must have fallen asleep.
I hear the sink pouring into a pot, and I hear the shuffling of knobs as Caspian turns the oven on. My senses seem to be enhanced, for some reason, but it’s probably just because my eyes are closed. Every footstep reverberates loudly through the house.
It sounds like he’s crumpling plant matter in his hands, then mashing it together into a mortar and pestle.
The water in the pot comes to a boil, as the overhead fans in the living room spin erratically. I can feel a chill in the air overtaking me, which seems odd, because if Caspian is really boiling something, the apartment should be heating up, not cooling down. My arm stings sharper than before, and the cool air overtaking makes me more and more aware of every sensation grazing my skin.
His footsteps approach me, and he lifts my blindfold from my eyes.
“Drink this,” he tells me.
It’s a greenish substance that shines blue in the mug he’s given me. I don’t recognize it, and it smells like grass and dirt.
“Sit up and drink,” he urges me.
I struggle to stay awake and lift myself, but use my elbows, which were untouched by the chains, to rise in the bed. I take the mug in my hands as he watches me closely, sympathetically. I realize that at some point between him lying me down and returning, the sun must have set, because my apartment is almost pitch black.
I sip a bit of it into my mouth, and have the immediate urge to spit it out.
“You need to drink it all at once,” he tells me. “Don’t think about it.”
At one point, I would have suspected he was trying to poison me, but I trust him enough now. We’ve been through so much together that I would have to be insane not to.
I drink it all into my mouth as quickly as I can, and the mixture of components in it all smell unpleasant, adding to its thoroughly bad taste profile. I do my best to swallow it all even though it feels like I’m swallowing rocks, and think I might even choke on it.
It all goes down, and I feel the immediate urge to throw up, but suppress it. The nausea fades rapidly, and I look down at my arm, seeing every abrasion - every scratch - every searing chain burn - all suddenly vanishing.
“What the hell did you do?” I ask suddenly, surprised that my energy seems to have also returned.
“There are some medicinal combinations that the old world considered to be unnatural - they called it magic, and they outlawed it,” he tells me. “Many of those were plants that I left in your greenhouse. Mixed the right way, under the right conditions, and they’re as good as any spell. It really makes up for your friend’s lack of healing magic,” he tells me.
He kisses the skin where my wounds once were, at first gently, then more urgently. I can feel the savage beast within him struggling to contain itself, as he takes in my aroma, and the softness of my skin. His fangs caress my soft skin, and he cuts into it - but there is no pain. Instead, I am overwhelmed by pleasure, as his aroma overtakes me too.
As wild and feral as he is, I am also wild. I am completely subservient to his every whim. I long to be bound to him - to feel him pressing against me forever.
He tears the fabric from my torso, ripping my shirt off of me, and begins to suckle at my breasts. Anticipation builds within me, and I long to give myself over to him again. Whatever vampire has claimed me, they are ashes on the floor of a distant cavern - an aberration lingering in my memory.
I look up at him, and I kiss him on his cheek, then move my face over, across the ridge of his nose, kissing him again on his other cheek. I take in the rough, leathery feel of his skin, and let it tickle my lips. He pins me back down to the bed, as if to tell me ‘no.’ He will dominate me here, and make me his own.
But even in this interplay, there’s still something that I have to do - something that I need to make him aware of. The words urgently tingle on my tongue, burning in my mouth like the potion he fed me.
“I love you,” I tell him, before going in for a deep kiss.
I know how much control matters to him, and feel honored as he relinquishes it in this moment, allowing himself to become lost in my sweet caress.
“You’re the only vampire for me,” I tell him, smiling. “Please claim me here, and make me your own.”
38
CASPIAN
