Unleash (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 6) (23 page)

Fragmented images assaulted him, causing the mansion to flicker between how it looked now and how it had been that night. Boarded up windows switched back to ones with a warm glow emanating from within.

The chilling silence became laughter and the low hum of chatter as his family went about their business.

He breathed harder, his throat beginning to close, and his heart thundered, sending his blood around his body in a dizzying rush. He dragged himself closer, focusing on Aurora where she stood at the threshold.

For her sake, he couldn’t lose control. He didn’t want to hurt her. He had already caused her enough pain.

She pushed the ancient double doors open enough that she could enter. The darkness swallowed her.

Snow halted on the path, his bloodlust crippling him, the debilitating pain of his memories stripping the remaining fragments of his strength away. He couldn’t go any further.

His legs shook beneath him, threatening to give out and send him crashing to the ground again, and his heart pounded wildly, a sickening rhythm that had his head spinning and his vision blurring. His throat closed next and it became a struggle to breathe. He wheezed with each breath he sucked down into his burning lungs.

He couldn’t do this.

Aurora appeared again, concern written across her beautiful face. He spat a vile curse at her and her expression darkened.

“Do not pity me,” he snarled and turned his back on her and the building. He clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and focused everything he had on breathing, taking slow unhurried ones that settled his pounding head and gave him back that much-needed sliver of control.

Disjointed memories flashed across the darkness of his closed eyes, torturing him. Silence became laughter and that turned into screams and garbled cries, and the sound of destruction.

Snow buried his fingers in his hair and held his head in his hands, frowning hard. He needed Antoine. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t fight an attack this strong. He was going to lose, and then he would destroy Aurora.

He would kill someone he loved again and it would end him.

“Snow?” Aurora whispered, closer behind him than he had expected, and she gently placed her hand on his shoulder. He looked over it at her, his eyebrows furrowed, no longer bothering to hide his pain from her.

“Why?” he croaked, his body already trembling, weakened by the physical and mental assault that gradually stripped his strength away, leaving him more vulnerable than ever to his bloodlust.

“Because you need it.”

That wasn’t an answer.

He growled at her but she didn’t shrink back.

She removed her hand from his shoulder and slipped it into his right one. Her fingers laced between his and she clutched his hand. The comfort and strength such a small gesture gave him shocked him and he stared down at their hands, amazed by the way something so simple could make him feel. Connected to her. Not alone.

She was here with him, even if she was also the reason he was here. She wasn’t doing this to hurt him. He could feel that in her and could sense that this pained her too.

Aurora led him to the arched double doors and as she entered ahead of him, candles burst into life, flickering and struggling to chase back the darkness.

Snow wrestled with his bloodlust as it emerged again and fought an urgent desire to flee this place. It took most of his remaining strength but he followed her inside.

He breathed hard, the rough sound filling the vestibule. Candlelight danced from the chandelier hanging perilously by a rusted chain above the centre of the large double-height room. Spider webs covered the cornices and plaster roses on the ceiling, and wove between the banisters of the sweeping mahogany staircase, all of them thick with dust.

The furniture he had broken during his rampage had crumbled to powder, leaving deposits on the marble floor, eaten by insects he could hear scuttling about in the walls and ceilings. He braved another step forwards and regretted it.

The vestibule shifted, the cobwebs sweeping away and the furniture repairing itself, only to end up broken again and as bloodied as his hands. Screams pierced his ears and shattered his heart, and he fought his desire to track them to their sources and rip apart their owners.

He stumbled backwards, losing his grip on Aurora’s hand, and hit the wall behind him.

Everything flickered, switching between black and white, to stark crimson. Between present and past. Both of them drenched in blood now.

Snow shut his eyes, trying to hide from the terrible sight, needing the darkness and the emptiness, a moment away from the horrific things he had done.

Aurora’s hand came to rest on his cheek, her touch gentle and her heart steady.

“Do you need to rest?” she softly asked, her light voice chasing back some of the darkness in his heart, giving him a momentary respite from the storm of his memories and his bloodlust. He wanted to ask her to sing to him, to make this bearable, whatever this was that she was doing to him. He still didn’t understand it.

“No.” He forced the word out from between clenched teeth and she moved away, giving him space.

Snow opened his eyes again, took a steadying breath and then looked around the entrance hall, seeing it as it was now, not as it had been.

Aurora moved forwards, leading him onwards down a dark and dangerous path, one he was sure would end in her death.

He was weak now, barely able to retain control even when he desperately wanted to. It was only a matter of time before he saw something that would send him over the edge.

Snow trailed behind Aurora, grimacing whenever he saw the past overlaid onto the present, the blood and the gore, the destruction he had wrought with his bare hands and had watched in abject horror, unable to do anything to stop it.

They entered one of the drawing rooms and he flinched at the sight of a portrait of his parents still hanging above the black marble mantelpiece.

He turned and swiftly walked back out of the room, and leaned against the wall near the door. He laid his palms against the cold plaster beside his hips and pressed the back of his head into it so hard that his entire skull ached. The pain wasn’t enough to dull the hollow ache in his heart.

Aurora came back to him, her incredible green-to-blue eyes filled with pity. He didn’t bother to curse at her this time. He didn’t have the strength to spare. He didn’t even have the energy to ask her to let him leave this place of death.

Concern touched her beautiful face and she slipped her fingers into his and squeezed his hand again. It didn’t comfort him as much as it had the first time. Each step, each second in this mansion, wore him down and left him weaker than ever, more vulnerable to his bloodlust.

She released his hand and moved off in a different direction, heading under the balcony of the staircase and into a room there. Snow didn’t want to go that way, and she had to know it. She had witnessed everything he had done that night.

She glanced back at him over her shoulder, the concern still lingering in her eyes. He trudged behind her, needing to see this through to its terrible conclusion, powerless to stop himself now that he stood on the brink.

The lights came on in the room as she entered, candles throwing what should have been warmth across the tattered furniture and bloodstained floor. Snow saw only a cold, terrible replay of the murders he had committed in this room. His uncle and aunt hadn’t stood a chance. He had ripped out their throats before they had even noticed him.

Snow clenched his fists at his sides and Aurora looked back at him again, and it dawned on him why she was doing this.

He had forced her hand.

He had spoken to her of his desire to die and his willingness to accept that fate, and she wanted him to fight to live.

What did she expect from him?

Being here was only hurting him, shredding his control over his darker urges. It took him back to a time he didn’t want to remember, a time when his whole world had fallen apart and burned to ashes because of him.

“Take me away from here, Aurora.” Snow held her gaze, not concealing any of his suffering or how desperate he was for her to comply with his request. He couldn’t face this place, couldn’t take being here, and he didn’t want to lose himself to bloodlust and see himself murdering his beautiful Aurora.

“I cannot,” she said in a low voice laced with regret and a touch of guilt that he could sense in her. She could and she knew it. “Not yet.”

She took another step towards the arched wooden doors that led onto the patio at the rear of the house.

Not there.

He couldn’t go there.

She pushed both doors open, the hinges creaking and shattering the heavy silence.

The overgrown garden flashed into an elegant one with beautiful rose bushes laced with freshly fallen snow. A glittering smooth blanket of powder covered the lawn that stretched down towards the lake too, and twinkling flakes fell in a gentle rhythm from the dark sky.

Snow’s breathing accelerated. A cold breeze rushed in through the open doors and he swore he could smell the delicate scent of roses and snow.

And blood.

He took a laboured step forwards and then another, tripping over his feet until he stood at the door with Aurora, seeing the world as it had been that night. He shook his head, fearing what came next. Blood splattered across the white canvas. Screams rent the air. The scent of death filled his lungs.

“Take me away.”

He clutched the doorframe as his mother shimmered into being, her long pale hair flowing around her slender shoulders. Blood stained her alabaster skin and her dark dress. She turned to him with fear in her eyes and shook her head. Mama.

Snow ground his teeth and pushed with all his might against the doorframe, trying to stop himself from following a terrible drive to go to her. He wouldn’t. The wood crumbled and shattered beneath his hands, and he stumbled out onto the frosty patio.

Snow looked down at his wet hands, horrified by the blood of his relatives that coated them.

His father’s blood too.

He advanced on his mother, ignoring her pleas, driven by his thirst for blood and violence, a prisoner within his own body. He tried to stop himself, railed against what he was doing, his soul screaming for him to let her go.

He had vowed that he would never allow anyone to hurt her.

He had to keep that promise.

Snow’s hands closed around her throat and no matter how fiercely he tried to convince himself to let her go, to release her, he began to do the opposite. He began to squeeze.

He felt the dreadful crack of her bones as they buckled under the pressure and couldn’t tear his eyes away from her pale ones as he dug claws into her flesh, spilling her blood over her body to join that of his father.

She had run so well, fleeing him, as if she could escape. It had only made him chase her, finishing with his father so he could pursue his prey, eager to sink his teeth into her flesh and drink his fill.

None of the others had satisfied his hunger. It gnawed at him, his stomach twisting and turning, calling for more blood.

Affection warmed her eyes together with acceptance.

Snow despised her for it.

Fight.

He wanted her to fight to live.

He wanted her to kill him.

He didn’t want to do this.

The light in her eyes faded.

She died too easily and he couldn’t bear it. She should have fought him. She shouldn’t have accepted her death as punishment for what she and his father and their entire bloodline had brought upon him and Antoine by never muddying their blood.

Snow dropped her and looked back across the lawn towards the woods.

His mother stood there with his father. The world whirled past him and he stood before them, blood rolling down his arms and dripping from his claws, soaking his loose white shirt, the taste of it thick on his tongue. He needed more.

He attacked his father, violently battling the male as he sought to protect his female, shielding her from blows and weakening himself with each heavy strike of claws that cleaved his dark waistcoat and his flesh beneath, turning his white shirt and cravat crimson.

Snow snarled and battered the male, hunger driving him, lost to it as the strong scent of blood filled the air around him.

The male was powerful but distracted, the presence of the female a weakness that Snow exploited. He focused on attempting to reach her, forcing the male to take his blows in order to protect her.

The male fought back though, claws blazing white-hot trails across Snow’s body. His blood spilled from him, increasing his thirst and his need for blood. He would drain this male and then devour the female.

Snow shook his head. He couldn’t. He loved his father and his mother. He wouldn’t kill them too. The male landed a hard blow that sent his mind spinning and he roared and attacked him again, smashing his fist into his jaw, driving him towards a low wall that edged the expansive lawn.

The male said something and the female protested.

Snow tried to stop himself again. Not male and female. Father and mother. Papa and Mama. He couldn’t hurt them. Wouldn’t. His father was strong. He could stop him if Snow could only control himself for long enough. He could end his suffering by taking his head or his heart.

Snow needed that.

Claws gouged his biceps, ripping through his shirtsleeve, and the lacerations blazed fiercely, the pain obliterating the control he had regained, sending him into a killing rage.

The female ran.

He grinned and launched himself at the male. He would deal with him, drink his fill, and then hunt the female. She would make good sport.

Snow threw his head back and roared.

He collapsed to his knees on the patio, leaned over and clung to it, tears falling onto the flagstones. His entire body quaked as he struggled to breathe, fighting for air and for control.

He wasn’t sure how long he had before he went back. His stomach rebelled against the memory of all that blood and the violent deaths he had carried out in pursuit of it.