A Shade of Vampire 8: A Shade of Kiev (3 page)

My stunning human captive stood in my bathroom, undressed from the waist up. On seeing me enter, she reached for a towel and clutched it against her chest. I walked over and stood behind her, slipping my hands beneath her towel and running them along her skin. I shivered as I drew warmth from her pregnant body.

“Please, Kiev,” she choked, flinching at my touch. “Let me go. I can’t survive this without my husband.”

On mention of Derek Novak, I stopped caressing her and settled my hands over her protruding stomach.

“I told you to forget that man.”

“I can’t. I won’t.”

I gripped her abdomen tighter, applying pressure with my fingers.

“If you want your twins to be born alive,” I whispered into her ear. “I suggest you heed my warnings.”

“Please. If you let me escape this place, I’ll do anything…willingly.”

The anguish in her voice made me take a step back. My gaze roamed the length of her body before meeting her glistening green eyes. Her beauty made me ache inside.

Anything? I began to mull over all the things I wanted to do with her at that moment. The possibilities were endless…

I was shocked when she took my hand and pulled me into the bedroom, toward the bed. She lay between the sheets and looked up at me with a determined expression on her face even while tears brimmed in her eyes.

“If this is what you want from me,” she whispered. “I’ll give it to you.”

If you don’t take her now,
I thought to myself.
You’re going to regret it forever.

Brushing aside her long auburn hair, I pulled myself over her and leaned toward her neck. I breathed in her intoxicating scent before running my tongue along her bite marks, licking away the dried blood. It felt like no matter how much of her blood I drank, I would never be satiated.

Standing up, I looked into her eyes again for a reaction. They looked docile. Jaded. For as long as I had known her, Sofia Claremont had never given into my demands without a fight. Now, her surrender to my darkness unnerved me.

“You don’t want me,” I muttered after several minutes. “You’re just desperate.”

She looked up at me, her eyes widening. Perhaps she believed it to be an act of mercy. If only she had known that what I had planned for her was the furthest thing from merciful.

I woke up in a sweat. Night had fallen and the boat had stopped moving. I sat up, noticing that the pain in my body had subsided. I ran my hands along my skin. It felt smooth. Mona had been right. The sleep had done my body good. How long I had been sleeping, I could only guess.

I stood up and looked around the empty deck.

“Witch?” I called.

Splashing came from the waters nearby. Over the edge of the boat, two shiny heads bobbed above the waves. And the witch. She sat with her legs on either side of one of the dolphins, her wet dress hiked up her toned thighs, blood around her lips, nimbly picking apart a fish with her bare hands.

“They needed to stop for dinner,” she said.

I was ravenous. Even the sight of fish blood made my stomach grumble. I slid into the cool waters.

“How do you catch those things without a net?” I asked, swimming toward her.

“Kai might be able to spare you one, if you ask him nicely.” She patted the dolphin on the head. It lifted its shiny face from the water, opening its mouth to reveal several squished fish.

The smell made me feel nauseous. Ignoring her insult, I turned away and ducked beneath the waves. I opened my eyes, and immediately felt like a fool. The salt stung my eyeballs.
Clearly it’s been too long since I’ve swum in seawater.

I had no choice but to rely on my sharp sense of hearing. I held my breath and ducked down again. A school of fish swam about ten feet away from me. I kicked hard and pushed myself downward, my claws outstretched.

I resurfaced with nothing.

Mona eyed me. Unwilling to let her watch me make a spectacle out of myself, I swam to the other side of the boat where I was out of her view. I took a deep breath and dove deep once again. I continued failing. After several more attempts, I gave up.

As I returned, Mona looked at me, a hint of amusement in the corners of her lips. She strapped what appeared to be a set of waterproof glasses over her eyes. I had no idea how she would have gotten hold of such an object. Withdrawing a thin dagger from her belt, she pressed her heels against the dolphin’s body and they both disappeared beneath the waves. Several moments later, they resurfaced, three large fish pierced through with Mona’s dagger. She handed the blade to me and I was too hungry to refuse out of pride. I dug my fangs into the fish.

“That’s about as far as my hospitality goes,” she muttered, watching me drink.

Once I’d finished, I dipped my head in the water to clean my mouth. Looking at her still eating, I was keenly aware of how much tastier a morsel she would have been. Thinking it wise to distance myself from the temptation, I swam back to the boat and lifted myself up onto its edge.

“Why do you live like this?” I asked, staring at her.

“Huh?”

“Why don’t you live with your kind in The Sanctuary?”

She averted her eyes to the water. A few moments passed before she cleared her throat, wiping blood away from her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I prefer freedom over comfort,” she said.

“Have you always lived this way?”

“For a long time.”

Although she appeared to be in her early twenties, her eyes told a different story. Something about them told me that she had undergone more suffering than any twenty-year-old should have. They were jaded. Fearful. Untrusting.

She finished her fish, guided the dolphins back into their harnesses and pulled herself onto the boat. I joined her on the bench where she grabbed the reins and urged her pets forward. As the wind caught her long hair, it brushed against my face.

“You’ve asked me questions,” she said. “And since we’ve still got some journey ahead of us, I suppose it’s my turn. So tell me, who are you?”

Who am I?

I could think of many descriptions for myself, for my life that had thus far been defined by my father.
Murderer
was the first word that came to mind, but clearly not the wisest choice of answer given the circumstances.

“Just a man who had the misfortune of bumping into a hungry vampire,” I found myself saying.

I was sure that Arron wouldn’t have had any reason to discuss my history with a slave. There was no way she could have known that I was putting on an act.

There was no way she could have known that, in reality, I was an unpredictable monster who could have blackouts at any moment. Who could regress into uncontrollable states of violence that were still very much a part of my being, thanks to my father’s long reign over me. I recalled my last night with Natalie. She had tried to make me remember what we used to have. And her attempts to appeal to my humanity had made me break down and lose myself completely.

I’d tortured her to death.

No, there was no way Mona could have known that I was a bomb with a faulty fuse.

Besides, I would be gone from her life soon, and she would never see me again.

“How come you ended up in Aviary?” Her eyes turned on me suspiciously.

“I’d been a prisoner at the hawks’ headquarters in the human realm while Arron was visiting. He brought me back to Aviary along with a dozen other vampires,” I said.

I felt confused as to why exactly, but I didn’t want her to know that I was a coward. I wasn’t proud of stealing a newborn from his helpless mother, knowing that he would be of value to Arron.

I had supposed that the only place I would be safe from my father was in the realm of his fiercest adversaries. So desperate was I to escape his clutches, I hadn’t given any thought to the quality of life I might have there. Any place away from the Elder’s reach would give my soul a gasp of air, no matter how toxic that air might be.

“So you’ve been a victim of Arron too, huh,” she muttered darkly, gazing back out at the ocean.

I didn’t need any imagination to guess the type of things he would have tried to get Mona to do. Because I wasn’t any less wicked a man than Arron.

“Why did he list you as one of the vampires I shouldn’t give a last meal of blood to? What did you do to betray him?”

“It was… over a human girl…” My voice trailed off. Pain settled in my chest just thinking of Sofia. “A human girl I cared for. Perhaps even loved. I let her escape back to the human realm before all the hawks’ portals were finally sealed off.”

Mona’s deep blue eyes reflected the moonlight as she turned to face me, her eyebrows arched. “That was brave of you. Selfless even. I didn’t get the impression that you were capable of such finer emotions after what you tried to do back in the prison.”

“I was desperate. And starving. I barely knew what I was doing.”

What the hell am I doing? Why am I trying to defend myself?

I felt shocked by my reaction. I didn’t know why I was trying to paint a picture of myself as someone decent and virtuous. As someone capable of love.

Why do I care what she thinks of me?

Or perhaps I don’t…

Maybe all this is my subconscious showing through. Maybe, now that I might have a chance to carve out a life of my own away from my father’s shadow, it’s portraying the person I want to be. The person I had hoped the human girl could have made me.

Perhaps I do prefer light over darkness.

I couldn’t deny that my mood swings had reduced since I first escaped my father. Without his presence, I’d found more room for my own thoughts in my head. I’d had a chance to experiment controlling my own willpower.

I wondered then, if I practiced being someone else every day for long enough, whether that could eventually become reality. I might have failed at changing my appearance, but if nobody knew who I was at The Cove, maybe that didn’t matter.

Can an actor ever truly become the part he plays?

Do I want it enough?

“Well,” the witch sighed. “I’m not convinced you’re not just saying all this to warm me up. I’m still dropping you off at The Cove.”

Again, her words made me feel like punishing her for her audacity. I wanted to maim her. Instead I just nodded. I looked out at the endless expanse of water rushing past us, taking in deep breaths.

“How did you train those things?” I asked.

“Things? You mean my dolphins? I was taught by a mermaid.”

“Are there many others like you?”

“A fair number. We tend to move around in groups. Our chances of survival are obviously better that way.” She paused and ran her tongue over her lower lip. “But honestly, I keep to myself most of the time. My group is large enough to allow me to do that. I’m a wanderer in the true sense of the word. I don’t like the commitments that form when you’re around people for an extended period of time.”

Asking her aimless questions was distracting my mind from her blood, so I continued.

“Do you have family?”

“Dead.” She said the word without a hint of emotion. “Do you?”

My parents had died while I was still a human. I’d been a young boy when an epidemic had swept through our town centuries ago, taking them with it. As for my younger brother and sister, after my turning, I’d never seen them again.

“No,” I said.

But the words felt strange as I said them. For so long my Elder had forced me to address him as my father, and his other children as my siblings, that it was ingrained in me that I should still be acknowledging them as family.

Pull yourself together, Kiev. You’re away from him now.

You no longer have to live under his shadow. You have choice.

You can become whoever you want to be.

I wondered why I had started talking so freely with this stranger. He didn’t even seem interested.

Perhaps, despite all my attempts to convince myself otherwise, I was just desperate for someone to talk to. Perhaps I felt I could confide in this man, open up to him in ways I couldn’t ever with anyone else, because I knew we would part ways in a few hours and I would never see him again.

Whatever the reason, I found myself answering questions about my life. Though I was always careful to skirt around the parts that were hidden too deep to reveal even to this complete stranger.

My hands became tired from holding the reins after a while. Normally I would stop Kai and Evie, but since Kiev agreed to hold them, we switched places. For a while, I placed my hands over his icy ones, guiding him on how to manage the dolphins. I tried to teach him to use the compass and explained when the dolphins were going too fast and what the optimal speed was. He was a fast learner and after half an hour, I was able to sit back and watch him take control.

Now that I wasn’t navigating, I let my gaze fall on his face. I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to his red eyes. They sent chills down my spine whenever he looked at me. They reminded me of the devil himself and made me hesitant to fall asleep. The moment I drifted off, those blood-red eyes would be watching me.

He had a strong jawline beneath his stubble, and his dark hair and eyebrows were at stark contrast with his pale skin. He was tall—almost a foot taller than me—and his body was strong and muscular, far too strong for comfort. He could easily overpower me should he decide to. My only assurance of safety was that he needed me to get to shore. If he killed me on board, he’d perish in the middle of the ocean. But that didn’t stop him from eyeing me with hunger every now and then, sending shudders running through me.

I’d never been fond of vampires. I found it hard to trust creatures whose very existence depended on sucking the life out of others. And they were difficult to travel with. They were needy, craving human blood and complaining whenever they were given anything but. The only vampire I could stand was the captain of my ship, but perhaps that was just because I’d known him for so long.

“Tell me more about this group you’re with,” my passenger said, turning his bloody gaze on me.

“There are perhaps one hundred of us. Mostly vampires and werewolves.”