Filed to story: The Vampire Prince’s Bride
“It’ll all be explained in time.” She sat back down on the foot of my bed, still looking beyond pleased with herself. “But first you need to eat. Once you eat, you’ll feel better. I promise.”
“Unless the food contains the antidote to whatever drug you gave me, I doubt it’ll make much difference.” I narrowed my eyes, keeping my guard up despite the pain pounding in my head.
“I didn’t drug you.” She laughed, although her attention quickly turned to the door. “Do you hear that?” she asked, perking up. “Dinner’s here.”
She walked across a sitting room area and over to the doors to throw them open. A tall, buff man waited on the other side-I assumed he was one of the guards she was talking about. Next to him was a scrawny, older man in shackles.
She pulled a knife out of her boot and slashed it across the old man’s neck.
The sweetest, most intoxicating scent I’d ever smelled filled the room, and my body exploded with pleasure. My gums ached with need, red filling my vision as I ran for what I desired-the blood pulsing out of the man’s throat.
The next thing I knew, I was kneeling over his drained corpse. There wasn’t even any more blood left from where it had landed on the hardwood floor. It looked like it had been licked clean.
HadI done that?
I stood and backed away in horror, my eyes locked on the man’s empty gaze. His pupils were dilated so much that I could barely see the brown in his eyes. It was almost like he’d been drugged to death.
More horror set in as I realized I’d just drank his blood. That shouldn’t have made me feel good.
Yet, the burning in my throat and the pounding in my head was starting to ease.
“The prince is still hungry,” Laila purred from behind me.
“We’d prepared for this.” The guard reached for his phone and used it like a walkie-talkie to say, “Bring the next prisoner in.”
The “next one” turned out to be a woman around my mom’s age.
“Please,” she begged, looking at me in terror. “
Don’t-“
She didn’t have time to finish her sentence before the redness filled my vision again, and I pounced.
When I came to, she was crumpled on top of the old man’s corpse.
Dead.
This continued until there were four human corpses in the pile.
In the middle of the fifth one-a male who looked around my age-I became aware of what I was doing. The redness cleared while my mouth was still attached to the twin holes in his neck. I heard myself moan as the most delicious liquid I’d ever tasted rolled down my throat, filling my body with a warm, Heavenly light.
The man went limp in my arms. If I didn’t pull away soon, he would die.
But everything in me pulsed with need. My mind said, “stop,” but my body said, “keep going.”
My mind stood no chance against the fervent desire of my body. I didn’t stop until I’d drained the man of his last drop of blood.
“No more.” I dropped the body on the ground, studying it so I’d feel the full weight of the life I’d taken.
Once I’d memorized his face, I turned around and ran for Laila, wrapping my hands around her throat like she’d done to me earlier and forcing her to the floor.
“What have you done to me?” I yelled, bringing my face close to hers.
She just looked up at me and smiled, like she enjoyed being strangled.
Before I could scream at her to answer me-or to fight me, since I knew she could-the guards grabbed my arms and pulled me off of her. But I twisted out of their grasps and ran for the door. The pile of bodies before it was the only thing that made me pause.
The bodies of the people I’d killed.
In that split second pause, something pricked the back of my neck. An icy-hot pain burned through every vein in my body, all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes.
I screamed and fell down to my knees, shaking from the pain.
“That’s better.” Laila appeared between me and the doors, a needle of light green liquid in her hand. “I’d give you more to punish you for attacking me, but I suppose I can’t blame your outburst, since I didn’t exactly introduce myself properly the first time we met.”
I just stared up at her, swallowed down the pain, and forced myself to stand. It hurt like Hell-like my joints were stiff and rusted from neglect-but I refused to remain on my knees in front of Laila like a pathetic, subdued weakling.
“Most would be writhing on the floor like a dying animal after the dose of wormwood I just gave you.” Her eyes glinted as she watched me struggle to stand, like she was getting some kind of sick pleasure out of my pain. “But not my Sean. You’re strong. Just like I’d planned.”
“What are you?” I asked, somehow forcing myself to speak through the pain.
“I already told you what I am-it was one of the first things I said to you. But of course, you didn’t believe me.” She stepped closer to me, sounding nothing like the sweet, flirty girl I’d met at the bar. “You thought I was joking. But maybe you’ll take me more seriously now that you’ve had your first meal. Because I’m Laila, queen of the vampire kingdom of theVale.”I stared at her in shock, unable to believe it. This was all insane. It had to be a nightmare.
But it felt real.
And the proof of what she’d said was right in front of me-the bodies I’d drained of blood. It was also in my memories, when she’d flashed her fangs and sank them into my neck back at my hotel room.
I should be dead, like those five humans I’d killed.
Yet I was here. Alive. I was stronger than ever, and I’d drank blood.
I didn’t know much about vampires. I’d been too focused on my training to care about silly fantasy stories. But I knew enough to know that vampires turned people into vampires by biting them.
Was that what she’d meant when she’d said she’d turned me?