Under your spell {A Vampire Romance} [#9]

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Original Publish Date: 2/22/2009



 Another car ride. It was ok though, because I was sitting in the passenger seat while a vampire named Jeffrey drove the bulky SUV and Lucian sat in the very back seat. We’d been on the road for at least an hour now, and I’d been sure to observe my surroundings in case I needed to find my way back.

 The moon was full tonight, and I couldn’t keep my gaze from it for too long; it was just so beautiful. Suddenly I had a huge urge to look in the rearview mirror, and I did, only to find Lucian glaring at me.

 I looked away quickly and wondered why he had been studying me with a glare on his face. I would just never understand him.

 “You keep glaring like that and the mirror just might break.” Jeffrey said in an amused tone and I looked at him like he was crazy. He smirked at me then fixed his gaze back on the road and I caught Lucian turning his gaze to the forest outside. What was his problem?

 An hour and some hard thinking later we arrived at a fairly huge three story mansion and piled out of the twenty or so cars that made up our escape group. I instantly jogged over to Ariella and Hunter’s van to help with her. Ricoh, the vampire ‘healer’, came out with them and I nodded to him with a half-smile. He smirked and nodded back. Without a word we moved her inside and laid her out on a couch so they could pick up where they left off in fixing her.

 “How is she doing?” I asked. I’d been pushed to the corner by the two men and couldn’t get any closer because they were constantly moving around her and blocking her from my view.

 “Better. We’re lucky she’s a vampire, otherwise she would have died from blood loss.” Ricoh informed, his voice steady yet flat because he was concentrating on something else. He almost sounded like a doctor.

 “Do you need help with anything?” I asked sheepishly. I practically already knew the answer. Just then another vampire entered the room, and I practically gaped at him. His hair was beautifully streaked (naturally of course) with red, brown, and blonde. It was absolutely astonishing. His amber colored eyes looked me up and down and his posture practically screamed anti-human.

 “What could vampires possibly need from a petty human except food?” He asked in a high-and-mighty voice and walked over to Ricoh and Hunter. The two men I was familiar with gave me a nervous glance but never said anything and I began to fume.

 “Gee, I don’t know, maybe their mates? In case you hadn’t noticed yet, I’m Lucian’s mate.” I retorted. No one seemed to mess with Lucian, so I figured it would be a good thing to say. Oops.

 “Lucian is far below me and everyone else in this house for that matter. Do you have any idea who he is and what he’s done? Maybe you should do a background check on your friends before slinging their name around like it actually means something.” He glared and I could tell that this was the nice way of putting what he wanted to say. What could Lucian possibly have done that was so awful though?

 I spun on my heel and stormed out into the hall, slamming the door behind me. Childish? Yes; but it made me feel good. I began at a furious pace down the hall and figured Lucian probably wasn’t far, so I started yelling his name; reveling in the relief it gave me to do so.

 “Have you ever heard of disturbing the peace?” Lucian’s arm wound around me and one of his hands clamped over my mouth to shut me up. I grinned at him in a bitterly sarcastic way after spinning around in his arms and put my hands on my hips.

 “As a matter of fact I have, but I don’t really care about that right now. What did you do?” I asked not thinking about the fact that he wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

 “What?” He quirked an eyebrow and gave me a quizzical look.

 “I mean, what did you do that makes you so much lower than everyone else?” I tipped my head to the side and looked up at him. Lucian took a few steps away and cursed under his breath.

 “What have you been told?” He asked me and I was shocked to see that I had taken him off guard.

 “Well, nothing; that’s why I’m asking. Lucian, what happened? Why do you look like that?” I asked him. I was starting to get even more scared because Lucian never looked the way he did right now. His eyes were filled with regret, sadness, and anger and his posture was stiff and tense. I took a step towards him and he took a step back.

 “Let’s keep it that way. I don’t want to talk about it.” He looked me in the eyes firmly and turned to start walking away.

 “I’m not going to leave you alone until you tell me. I want to know!” I yelled after him. When he said nothing and didn’t stop walking I ran after him, grabbing him by the wrist as soon as I caught up. “I’m talking to you. I want to know. Is it really bad?” I had succeeded in stopping him, but not in having him look at me or talk to me.

 “Well, you already hate me, so why not?” He looked up at the ceiling and shut his eyes as if he were in dealing with pain. “C’mon, we can’t talk about this out here.” He tugged on my arm and I followed him a few doors down to his room. When we entered he flicked on the lights, and I was amazed with what I saw. This room was decorated a lot like the last, except there was only black and silver – no green – and it was all in a kind of Asian theme. On his black bedspread a fierce looking silver dragon sprawled vertically down the middle and I found myself staring at it.

 I sat at the end of his bed and he stood pacing around. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, a curiously cute little gesture, and finally walked over to kneel in front of me. “When I first turned into a vampire – and I’ll save you all the details – I went crazy. Literally. I lived in this coven with my brother, but he handled much better than I. It wasn’t an unwilling crazy either. When you first become a vampire, it’s like a high, because you feel so much more powerful and invincible. I felt like I was better than everyone else and I killed whoever I wanted to. There was even a time I massacred a whole group of girls that had followed me home.

 Anyways, Sebastian was a member of the high council then, and therefore responsible for preventing me from doing stupid things. Needless to say I did them anyways. One night I exposed what I was to a girl, and a few members of the council happened to be at the bar that night, so the whole thing turned into hell. The girl ended up executed and so did a few council members – by my hand. I ruined the coven that night. I also almost killed my brother. I was forced into solitude by every single vampire on this planet, marked as a threat to the entire race. I’m just lucky they didn’t kill me.

 I came back to the coven because I wanted to talk to my brother about the advances of the hunters – I’d noticed some strange things going on lately. Not too long after I came though, did Seilauna’s best friend Trace, and a trusted member of the coven, rip everything apart. It was almost like reliving what I had done, except that he couldn’t control it and I could. Now the only reason I’m here is to kill my brother if things get out of hand. I guess I’m also lucky in that they trust me to stay with them.” Lucian hadn’t looked me straight in the eye the entire time he’d relayed the story, in fact he’d been fixated on the floor. Now though, he looked up at me and what I saw broke my heart. He looked like a child that had seen far too much and was afraid of being rejected by the last person they trusted. “You’re probably even more disgusted with me now than you were before. You should go.” He whispered and looked at the floor again.

 “No.” I said, and slipped two fingers under his chin to raise his face so he had no choice but to look at me. “I’m not. If anything I feel-.” I caught myself before I said something I didn’t want to and smiled. “I feel like I hate you less. You’ve been through a lot. I will admit, the fact that you killed innocent people and slaughtered probably hundreds of vampires and humans alike is a little unsettling, but you’re different now. That’s not you. You’re a better person and you don’t deserve to live in regret of the things you did.” I had to refrain from hugging him, but after one long glance at him I couldn’t stop myself.

 I flung my arms around Lucian and hugged him to me. He did the same and his grip tightened just a little. It was amazing how right I felt with him holding me like that. Somehow he managed to push me backwards onto the bed and lay on top of me.

 Somewhere during the night before we’d embarked on our travel to the new house, I’d slipped on a turtle neck to hide the fact that I was wearing his necklace. Unfortunately, at that precise moment, it failed me. I felt it slide on the chain to the side of my neck and out the neck of my shirt.

 Lucian, with his vampy hearing, looked up to see what had made the noise and I tried to push him off of me and move before he could see but it was already too late. He straddled my stomach and pinned my wrists to the bed over my head with one hand. Lucian’s other hand slid over my neck and picked the necklace up and he looked at it for a long moment. When he just sat there and stared at it with a blank expression I began to struggle against him. “Hello! Let me up!” I yelled and he shook his head as if to rid himself from a trance.

 “Why were you wearing this?” He asked almost accusingly.

 “It’s pretty ok? I like the way it looks and it matches my eyes. Lay off it will ya? And get off of me please!” I retorted and he shook his head.

 “There’s something else. Admit it. I can keep you here as long as I want to; No light can come into this room.” He gave me a stern look and shifted his weight a little so he wasn’t crushing me as much.

 “There’s nothing else. I love the way it looks and how it matches my eyes.” I glared.

 “No, before we left and you were sitting on your bed I saw you playing with it.”

 “How?” I gasped.

 “I pay attention to details. Why won’t you just admit that-.” I cut him off before he could finish.

 “Get off of me, now.” I growled at him.

 “No.”

 “Yes.”

 “No.”

 “Oh my god! Just get off!” I yelled at him and he shook his head. I struggled as hard as I could but, being human, I wore out. I sighed and relaxed under him, seeing I wasn’t going anywhere. “I already told you, I hate you.” I looked at him innocently.

 “I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t be wearing this if you hated me, no matter how much you like it.” He pointed out and I groaned in frustration.

 “Fine, you want the truth? I like you, I really really like you, but I can’t. I’ve lived by myself practically my whole life and I don’t want it to be any other way. I love my job, my boss, and everything about the way I live right now. I don’t want some guy to take over my life and become totally dependent on him. I don’t want to need anyone; I don’t want them to be absolutely necessary to me like you are.” I sucked in my breath fast in surprise at how much I’d admitted. I’d never planned to tell him that.

 Suddenly Lucian slid off of me and sat next to me on the bed, his head in his hands, hiding his face. I sat up and then got up to walk out but he caught my arm, so I turned to look at him. He drew me near and settled his hands on my hips while he looked up into my eyes. “Then stay with me. Until you have to leave; stay with me. I don’t want to need anyone anymore than you do and I can’t believe how much you’ve changed my life. I have to be around you or it’s like I can’t breath. I worry about you all the fucking time. You’re like a drug addiction I can’t get rid of no matter how hard I try. I haven’t even known you that long but I want you with me always, and I’m willing to spend time getting to know you if that’s what it takes.” In his eyes I saw desperation and his words tugged at my heart strings.

 “No, I can’t. I know that if I let myself be with you, even just once, I won’t want to leave. I have to leave. Becoming a vampire would ruin me, I love the sunlight too much, and there’s so many things I would miss. I have to go Lucian, before I change my mind and walk into your arms like some infatuated idiot.” I said, and broke away.

 Lucian was a strong man, and hard as a rock to get through to. Seeing him with all of his guards down and his heart wide open, making him so vulnerable, was almost painful. I would never have guessed in a million years, if I’d never seen him like this, that he had a soft side. He was a beautiful man who deserved a beautiful woman, but that woman wasn’t me. I’d seen so many women who’d fallen in love or gotten married and they’d changed, become so dependent on their husbands that if they had felt they wanted to leave, they couldn’t. Love seemed like quicksand from everything I’d witnessed, and I couldn’t trust that Lucian and I would beat the odds. That was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

 I walked out the door and found my room where Jeffrey had told me it would be. Again it was decorated in earthy tones and it immediately comforted me. I didn’t bother with a shower and just changed so I could go to sleep. That night though, for the first time, I felt what it was like to be truly, utterly heartbroken. I cried myself to sleep.

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