Memories of his time as a human flooded Sion’s mind, and no matter what he did to stop them, they came like armies of misery sent to undo all the control he’d worked so hard to maintain since that night his sire had rescued him from his base life as a human. He tried to focus on the information in front of him, but the words on his laptop screen swam in front of his eyes, blurring into one long string of letters.
Shaking his head, he leaned back and inhaled a deep breath. This wasn’t happening. He’d spent every night as a vampire containing his emotions, working to make himself secure from feelings and the memories of his life as a human. He hadn’t felt anything like this in decades, so why now?
His skin ached to the touch, as if thousands of pins pricked at his body. There had to be a logical explanation to what was happening to him. Perhaps it was Kali’s blood. She was an ancient vampire, so it could make sense. Just the taste of it hitting his tongue had made the top of his head feel like it was going to blow off. And he had taken a large amount of her blood, so the effect would be exaggerated because of that.
But even as he tried to convince himself that was the truth, his mind began to spin out of control from the memories of the man he’d been before his sire saved him. That being was more monster than man, but in the world he’d lived in, so many had been monsters then.
It still was no excuse for what he’d done.
The night air chilled him to the bone, the early December cold settling into the camp. He had two hours left before he could return to his barracks at the far end of the compound, but until then his job was to watch for prisoners who tried to escape.
No other man above or below his rank excelled like he did in capturing prisoners. No matter what they tried or how clever they thought they were, he sniffed them out like an animal did its prey. He had the eyes of an eagle. Nothing got past him.
And when he found one sneaking in the shadows, thinking they had fooled him, no other guard relished delivering punishment like he did. Before the war, he’d been lost and rudderless, unsure of what a man like himself should do, but now his life possessed purpose.
He was meant to inflict pain, so what better than the position of camp guard?
His eyes darted left and right, eager to seek out another soul to teach his lesson to. The last one had made him the champion of the camp guards with twenty for the year. That one had felt good when he pounded his fists into the man’s face. They always wore the same look when they were caught. First surprise would fill their eyes, but only for a fleeting moment. Then that incredible look of terror that fueled his very being settled into them and the begging began.
The begging always made him love what he did next even more. Without fail, they whimpered like frightened children when he first raised his fist. Cocking it back, he held it a few seconds longer than he needed to, relishing the horror he saw in their eyes.
“Erich, see any tonight?” someone asked behind him.
Turning, he saw another guard, Gunther, who he knew idolized him for his treatment of the prisoners. A young man with the picture-perfect Arian look so valued by the Reich, he’d never finished off anyone yet.
“No. Maybe it’s too cold for them,” he joked.
Gunther laughed hard at his jab at the poorly clothed prisoners who wore barely enough to keep them warm in springtime, much less during the cold winter nights in northern Germany.
“That one the other night didn’t seem to mind the weather. He was barely wearing his fucking pants when you caught him.”
The memory of the poor fuck he’d caught three nights before flashed through Erich’s mind. He’d been a fast one, making him break into a full run to get him. Still healthy enough to run even after a few months in camp, he’d almost made it to the fence line. By the time he caught up with him, the man was out of breath but his eyes flashed a look that told him he still had some fire in him.
And it was his job as a guard to make sure that fire was put out.
So he did his job the way he always did, and when he watched them drag his limp and lifeless body away, blood still oozing out of him as it left a trail on the snowy ground behind him, all his fellow guards congratulated him.
And to celebrate his latest kill, he went into town the next night and found himself the best looking whore around to fuck before returning to the barracks to retell in all its gory detail the story of the latest prisoner he’d murdered.
Murder was the wrong word. This was wartime. Nobody was committing murder. The prisoner had been some Frenchman who should have paid for the past sins of his people anyway. Fucking French. Two fucking wars his people had been fighting because of them. Nobody could convince him one less Frenchman on the earth would be any crime.
“How many did that make for you, Erich?”
Lighting a cigarette, he took a long drag and slowly let the smoke trail out between his lips. “Twenty. There’s still nearly a month left in the year, though.”
Gunther laughed loudly again, this time slapping Erich on the back. “There’s no one like you. Camp champ!”
“Someone’s got to do it. These fucking people keep pouring into here every day and we’re expected to make sure they don’t get out of hand.”
His anger boiled just below the surface at the change of the camp from a prisoner of war camp to one of them like the army had set up all over the eastern regions. He didn’t mind killing people, on the battlefield or right there in camp, but dumping thousands of people on them in just months made his job almost impossible.
“I hear you,” Gunther said as he nodded his agreement. “And now they’re sending us all those fucking Communists. They’re even worse than the French.”
Erich took another deep drag from his cigarette and then tossed it away. “We’re going to be lucky if they don’t fucking overrun us before this war is over.”
“Not if you have anything to say about it,” Gunther joked as he turned and left him at his post.
Sion squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push away the memories of the human he’d been back then. Even now, over seventy years later, who he was made the bile in his stomach lurch up into his throat. Vicious and cruel, he’d been the perfect German soldier in 1943. Back then, if he’d ever had an attack of conscience, he would have been able to say that his twenty kills that year paled in comparison to those of the guards of the special camp that held Jews and gypsies.
But his conscience never bothered him then.
The human he was—Erich Sturmer—never thought about the men he killed other than to count them, brag about the details of their deaths at his hands, and see them as the spoils of war. He’d never been anything other than the detestable creature he was in that camp in northern Germany during the Second World War.
Belsen. The scene of his crimes.
Those twenty men were just a few of those he’d killed in his life. Cringing, he remembered every one of their faces. He’d never been able to remember them as a human, but once he’d been turned, the memory of each and every one of them never left him.
His sire told him it was one of the side effects of becoming vampire. The one who’d saved him from that life of hatred and rage, Isiah renamed him Sion because he believed there was good in him. Then he took him away from that camp and that life, along with dozens of other guards and prisoners.
Kali gently shook him by the shoulder. “Sion, what’s wrong?”
He calmed his mind for a moment to answer her. “Nothing.”
“You can tell me. I’m not going anywhere.”
He tried to figure out exactly what to say. Nothing seemed to make sense. “I don’t know. My mind’s racing with thoughts I haven’t had in years. I can’t seem to control them.”
“Maybe you need blood. You’ve been staring at this computer for hours.” Taking him in her arms, she held him to her and stroked his back. “I can help if you let me.”
Kali’s blood called to him like a Siren’s song. Never before had he craved blood like this, and a tiny voice deep inside his mind whispered that something was wrong. A warning that something had changed in him.
She is an ancient, so maybe it’s that. She did say their blood is different.
Sion pressed his mouth to her neck and touched her supple skin to his lips. It felt warm. No vampire had ever felt warm to him. What was happening to him?
“Take what you need. All I have is yours,” she murmured as she pressed against the back of his head to urge him to drink from her.
The temptation to taste her again filled his mind completely, drowning out any caution that tried to hold him back. Want turned to need and denying himself became impossible.
Rearing his head, he waited just a moment for his fangs to slam into his mouth. They ached for the taste of her, their razor sharp points a hair’s breadth away from her gently pulsating vein, and with the first push through her skin, his body came alive.
Her blood tasted sweet but stung, like honey with a dash of cinnamon. It flowed into his mouth and over his tongue, thrilling his taste buds and making his cock harden like steel. Its effect filled his mind with visions of every moment of her existence, the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Clinging to her, he took every last drop she offered, loving the sensation of truly knowing the woman he adored. Waves of happiness and love washed over him, followed by dark and painful memories he’d never heard her talk of, and just when he thought he couldn’t hang on anymore, they were pushed out and replaced by that sweetness and light he’d always found in her.
“Sion, I need your blood. You’ve taken too much and I don’t think I’ll be able to—”
Her barely whispered pleas filtered into his mind, ripping him from the incredible sensations her blood had given him. Opening his eyes, he pulled back from her neck to see her lifeless form in his arms. As terrified as the first time, he quickly offered his wrist and pressed it to her lips.
Kali took from him as she usually had, her fingers desperately holding his arm as she pulled on his vein. Slowly, after about five minutes, the color came back to her cheeks, and he knew she’d be okay.
“I’m sorry I took too much again. That’s never happened to me except with you,” he explained while she closed the holes in his wrist.
A look of concern filled her eyes for a fleeting moment, but then she smiled up at him. “It’s okay. It’s my ancient blood. I hear it’s pretty powerful stuff.”
“Makes me feel like a lightweight.”
Kali stood up next to him and playfully ran her hands through his hair. “You’ll get used to it eventually. I’m more worried about what was wrong with you before you took from me.”
All those memories his mind had dredged up came flooding back to him with her comment, but he couldn’t tell her about them. He’d never told another soul what he’d done—what he’d been as a human. Only his sire truly knew.
If Kali found out the vampire she loved had been a monster as a human, she’d never want to see him again.
Sion knew that, but he couldn’t blame her. What he’d been no one could understand. Even he didn’t want to believe it. Now after all those years of pushing his emotions down, finally having the chance to truly to be with the woman he loved meant having to deal with them because of what her blood did to him.
It was a trade-off he wasn’t sure he could handle.
He couldn’t tell her that, though, so he lied. “It’s the stress of everything going on, I’m sure.”
A tepid lie at best, but better than telling her the truth that her blood made him remember all the things he’d worked every night and day for decades to forget.
“I’m worried about you, Sion. I know seeing me fall back into my problem hasn’t been easy for you. I’m sorry about that. With everything else you have to deal with, the last thing you need is to have to nurse me back from my addiction.”
The sadness in her eyes made him feel like shit. If only he could tell her the truth—that as much as he had been disappointed by her going back to Bliss, he was more worried than angry. But then he’d have to admit what taking her blood did to him, and he couldn’t tell her that.
“No need to be worried. I’ll be fine.”
A tiny smile hitched up the corners of her mouth, the emotion slowly reaching her eyes until finally he saw the happiness in them. He wanted her to always feel that way around him. Never in his human life or his time as a vampire had he made another being happy before Kali, and he wanted to believe it hadn’t been just a fluke.
As foreign as the feeling was to him, he truly wanted to make her happy.
But wanting to and being able to were two completely different things, and as he watched the smile fade from her face, he knew even at that moment he wasn’t succeeding. He was too matter of fact, too terse with her.
“Would you like to go out tonight?” he asked, hoping to remedy the look of hurt in her expression. “We could go see a movie or anything you want.”
“Really? You want to leave these rooms?” she asked, her eyes wide in surprise. Clearly, he hadn’t been as successful as he’d hoped in showing her how much he cared in the all the time they’d spent together.
“Sure. Whatever you want to do.”
Kali looked down at the books spread out across the table. “I should get back to work. I need to catch up on the time I’ve lost.”
Sion took her hand and kissed it. “I know, but an hour or two away from your work won’t hurt. The Order can’t expect you to work every minute of the night. Just a little while and then we’ll come back.”
Throwing her arms around his neck, she hugged him tightly to her. “Thank you so much. I know dealing with all my problems and emotions has probably been like torture for you, but this means so much to me that you want to make me happy. No one has ever done that for me.”
Sion stroked her back as a smile formed on his lips. Not a forced smile or one he had to pretend was real so he didn’t look like a robot. No, a real smile she’d brought out in him.
A real smile brought on because he’d succeeded in making her happy. He could get used to this.