Chapter 13: Why Does Your Neck Look So Delicious?
While Lucien pondered this, the vampire woman, Elara, had been staring for quite a while at the towering vampire's neck.
Her chestnut hair fell forward, framing her face in wild disarray as she leaned imperceptibly closer to him with each passing moment.
Every time he spoke, she watched the veins twitch and move up and down beneath his marble-pale skin, the movement almost hypnotic in its rhythm.
The tendons shifted beneath the surface when he turned his head, creating valleys and ridges that seemed to call to her.
When he bowed his head in thought, she noticed the veins slowly faded from view, hidden by the cascade of his dark brown hair, and this momentary loss of sight filled her with an irrational panic.
For some reason, this sight filled her with a gnawing hunger that clawed at her insides, demanding satisfaction.
The hunger was becoming impossible to resist, like being presented with a perfectly cooked lamb steak after weeks of starvation—its scent lured her in, primal and irresistible, bypassing all reason and restraint.
The urge only grew worse with each passing second, pulsating through her veins like liquid fire.
It reached the point where saliva, thick and viscous, dripped from the corner of her mouth in a glistening thread before she snapped back to awareness.
Her red pupils widened in horror, dilating so completely they nearly eclipsed the crimson irises surrounding them.
No... I'm not like him... What am I thinking?! Disbelief and shock left her motionless, her body rigid as marble as fragmented memories assaulted her—the expressions of her servants, their faces fragile and terrified as their blood was drained, skin shriveling against bone, eyes bulging in their final moments.
Now, with sickening clarity, she found herself imagining doing the very same thing to Lucien, picturing her fangs sinking into that perfect column of flesh, the hot rush of blood flooding her mouth.
What makes me any different from him, then?! She tried to steel her resolve, reprimanding herself with vicious intensity.
She narrowed her eyes, forcing herself to look away from his neck, focusing instead on the shattered chandelier above where the mechanical birds watched with their jeweled eyes, their tiny gears clicking softly in the silence.
This creature is the one who killed my sister! The thought burned through her mind like acid, accompanied by the image of Lyra's smile, frozen forever in death.
This damned creature is the one who killed Sir Bastian! Her eyes reddened further, blood vessels bursting in the whites, creating a crimson lattice around her glowing irises as her head slowly, inexorably shifted back, her gaze inevitably returning to his neck like a compass finding north.
How can I... HOW CAN I LUST FOR HIS BLOOD!
Fangs finally protruded fully from her upper lip, extending to their complete, terrifying length.
Her whole body trembled with barely contained need, each shudder making the tattered silk of her gown whisper against her fevered skin.
The scent of blood in the air—metallic, coppery, intoxicating—seemed to grow thicker, more potent with each passing moment, until it was all she could taste, all she could feel.
Her rational mind was consumed by one singular, overwhelming thought—hunger—that eclipsed grief, rage, and even self-preservation.
"GRR!" A guttural growl escaped her, the sound more beast than human, reverberating through the cavernous hall and disturbing the dust motes that hung suspended in the colored light.
In a blur of supernatural speed that left afterimages in the fractured moonlight, she lunged at Lucien, her claws fully extended, her hair rising around her face as if electrified.
"Huh?" He blinked in surprise, the movement almost comically slow against her preternatural speed, startled by the vampire woman who now seemed utterly crazed.
What's wrong with her? Lucien wondered, genuinely confused by this sudden shift.
But—for reasons he couldn't explain—his perception seemed to slow, the world around him decelerating until he could count the individual droplets of saliva flying from her open mouth, see the individual strands of her wild chestnut hair dancing around her face, notice the way the colored light from above painted her in shifting patterns of crimson and azure.
With fluid grace that belied his massive frame, he grabbed her wrists in his powerful hands, the impact sending a jolt through both their bodies.
His fingers encircled her completely, marble-cold against her fevered skin, supernatural strength meeting supernatural strength.
He noticed her ragged breathing—each inhalation sharp and desperate, though neither of them needed air to survive—and how feral she looked with her two fangs bared, gleaming wetly in the prismatic light.
Her eyes were no longer human or even vampire—they had become the eyes of something ancient and primal, all reason burned away in the inferno of bloodlust.
SNAP!
"GRRR!" The sound of her teeth closing on empty air echoed through the hall like a gunshot.
She thrashed against his iron grip with unexpected strength, her body arching and twisting like a wild animal caught in a trap.
She tried again and again to bite him, neck straining forward, fangs seeking flesh with desperate intensity.
Saliva dripped from her mouth in thick rivulets, splattering against the tattered remains of his poet shirt.
"What's wrong with you?" Lucien demanded. He pushed her body back while holding both her wrists in an iron grip, his long fingers encircling her completely.
But her legs were already coiled beneath her like serpents ready to strike, muscles tensing with supernatural strength.
She kicked his chest with explosive force, catching him completely off guard, her foot connecting with the solid wall of his torso.
CRACK!
"Ack!" The sound of bone shattering echoed through the mansion like a gunshot, accompanied by the sickening crunch of ribs collapsing inward.
His eyes went wide—crimson irises blazing with shock and pain—and his grip on her wrists began to loosen involuntarily as agony radiated outward from his chest.
The force of the kick shoved Lucien back several feet, feet sliding across the blood-slicked mahogany floor, leaving twin trails through the crimson pools.
He gritted his teeth, lips pressed tight against the scream threatening to escape, then with visible effort tightened his hold on her again, refusing to relinquish control despite the waves of pain washing through him.
Damn, that FUCKING hurt! Lucien grumbled inwardly, veins bulging at his temples like dark rivers beneath his marble-pale skin as a sharp, stabbing pain pulsed inside his chest.
Each unnecessary breath sent fresh spasms of agony through his torso.
He looked down: the once bloodied, tattered white poet shirt was now torn further, a new indentation—a sharp, unnatural concavity—visible where her kick had landed. The fabric sank inward, revealing the grotesque depression in his chest where bone had collapsed.
Yes, a fucking indentation, he realized, inspecting his chest with a grimace that exposed the edge of his fangs.
No wonder it hurts—she probably broke my ribs so badly that they bent inward.
Small shards of bone pressed against organs that no longer functioned but still transmitted pain with merciless clarity.
"GGGRRRA!"
A sudden, slicing pain shot up from his hand, white-hot and searing. Lucien instinctively released his grip, raising his hand to see deep claw marks—five parallel trenches of shredded flesh where his palm had been.
Blood—darker and thicker than human blood—oozed from the wounds, dripping onto the floor to join the carnage already there.
Bent before him like an animal, the same vampire woman was lost in madness.
She hissed and growled, the sounds emanating from her throat entirely inhuman—wet, guttural noises that echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
Then, she lunged at him again, a blur of supernatural speed and predatory grace—
"STAND STILL!" Lucien commanded. Blood dripped from his ruined hand, the flesh mangled beyond recognition—but slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, his fingers and skin began to regenerate. Torn flesh knitted itself together fiber by fiber.
And the beast—the vampire woman, consumed by bloodlust—froze in place as if turned to stone.
One foot remained lifted mid-stride, claws extended toward his throat, her body caught in the moment of attack.
Only her eyes moved, wide and terrified, as the command took hold of her. Blood trickled from her bloodshot eyes like crimson tears, carving paths down her cheeks before dripping from her chin.
Her whole body trembled violently, muscles straining against the invisible bonds of his command. Veins protruded from her neck and temples, bulging blue-black against her skin as she fought with every ounce of her supernatural strength to resist.
But eventually, she relented—or perhaps her strength simply failed. The trembling subsided gradually, replaced by a different kind of shaking—exhaustion, defeat, a desperate hunger unsatisfied.
Her extended foot slowly lowered to the floor, and her shoulders slumped forward as if bearing an invisible weight.
"A-ah..?" She slowly regained her clarity, like someone emerging from deep water into blinding sunlight.
Her crimson eyes still trickled blood—thick, viscous tears that carved glistening paths down her pale cheeks before dripping from her chin to join the carnage below.
Her long claws—also stained and dripping with Lucien's supernatural blood—gradually retracted into normal fingernails with a soft, unsettling sound like blades being sheathed.
She blinked in confusion, her lashes clumped together with blood, creating a spiderweb effect around her haunted eyes.
Her gaze darted around the destruction of the hall before settling on the towering vampire who frowned down at her, glaring but clearly injured, blood running from his regenerating hands in dark rivulets that pooled around his boots.
She couldn't understand why he was bleeding or why he looked at her that way—until fragmented memories returned: a vision with blackened edges narrowing her sight, like looking through a closing aperture, glimpses of herself lunging, snapping, clawing.
There—I was mad... a beast... a monster... Silence fell over her as realization struck with the force of a physical blow.
Her hands began to tremble violently, fine tremors traveling up her arms to her shoulders.
Her lips quivered, the lower one caught between her teeth, fangs accidentally piercing the delicate flesh and adding her own blood to the mixture of tears on her face.
Unable to contain it—the horror, the shame, the recognition of what she had become—she wept once more, her sobs echoing through the cavernous hall like the cries of a wounded animal.
To become the monster she hated...
"You're the worst!" she choked out at the towering vampire, sobbing, her voice shattered by gasps that made her entire body shudder beneath the tattered remains of her once-elegant gown.
The blue silk caught the colored light in rippling patterns as she swayed slightly, struggling to remain upright. "I-I... r—hiks... rather die—th-than... hiks... live like this!"
She buried her face in her hands, fingers splayed across her features, blood-tears seeping between them to stain her palms.
Her chestnut hair fell forward like a curtain, hiding her from the world as her shoulders heaved with each broken sob. "Alone... like a monster..." The words emerged muffled, barely audible, yet filled with such raw despair they seemed to hang in the air between them.
Meanwhile, Lucien—who had been frowning at her—finally let his features soften, the severe lines of his face relaxing.
The pain in his chest had dulled to a persistent ache as his supernatural body worked to repair the damage, bone fragments shifting beneath skin with audible clicks.
So that's... how I looked, when instinct took control?
The way she descended into madness, how she acted like a beast... The realization was sobering, casting his own transformation in a new light.
But me? Did I really act like that back then? He rubbed his newly healed palm absently against the tattered remains of his poet shirt, feeling the smooth skin where ragged wounds had been moments before.
No... or maybe close, but not the same. My own instincts must still have some intelligence...
He then glanced around at the carnage surrounding them, the maids in their simple uniforms, now stained beyond recognition with blood and worse; the butler, his form crumpled; and finally the other beautiful woman, likely her sister, whose peaceful smile even in death created an unsettling contrast to the violence that had claimed her.
"Then…what if I revived your 'sister' too? And your other servants?"