Poisonous Temptation: Division 2 (The Berkano Vampire Collection) Page 2

  Thoughts like that – ridiculous thoughts that were emotional rather than analytical – only occurred in his head when he was hungry. The last time he’d fed had been yesterday. He tried to feed once a day, eating human food throughout the day to keep up his strength.

  Thanks to the Rift curse, he was much more human than he would have preferred.

  He still possessed his abilities of speed and acceleration. He could jump over buildings if he had the stamina and was fully fed. He could still manipulate humans, bend their will slightly. It was how he was able to get in and out of brothels without question. That, and while he lived like shit, he did have a decent amount of money saved up from his time before the Rift.

  However, he was sensitive to the sun. Like all vampires.

  Perhaps that was why his clan had turned him out. The Berkano clan had a reputation, even before the Rift, of doing things their way, whether it was right or not.

  Thyos was not one to be moral. He had no inner compass, guiding him to do what was right and what was wrong. Thyos did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted within the realms of logic. If he was hungry, he fed. If he was horny, he fucked. If another vampire came at him with every intention of killing him, he would do everything in his power to defend himself.

  He was brutal. He particularly liked to use his hands as weapons, rather than his fangs or the force that came with his power. That was how he had been raised.

  The Berkano stole, pimped, killed, raped and did everything else that could get them the death penalty plenty of times over. No one ever thought to challenge them because they were in power. They absolutely hated witches. Witches were the only beings who could overpower them. As such, Thyos had been tasked with killing witches as soon as a new one was revealed. And he did so without question.

  Questioning the Berkano was not permitted, even if it was family.

  Thyos was good at his job. Witches underestimated vampires because vampires, while physically powerful, did not have magical abilities. Power was ingrained in witches—it was something they were born with. Vampires, for the most part, had been changed. Their abilities rested in their physical nature, something they acquired once they were turned. Thyos did not know if the same could be said of those vampires born to a human parent and a vampire. He had never really thought about reproducing, even though the Rift had cursed them with the ability to do so now.

  When the Berkano ordered him to kill a witch of no more than seven, he refused. He knew it would be the death of her, so he tried to transport her and her family—two humans who were unable to have children until they took a magical tonic provided by a witch practitioner—somewhere far away, somewhere the Berkano could not get them.

  He was a fool to think the Berkano did not reach everywhere.

  In three days, just three days, they’d found the family and brought them back to Thyos. Other Berkano clan members raped both the witch and her mother, forcing Thyos and the husband to watch.

  Thyos still woke up to the girl’s screaming.

  He was one of the few people grateful for the Rift. The Division in land had forced the Berkano clan to split as well. He had been living in the Citta di Paludi for fifty years and had not run into his family. Even so, he’d withdrawn from society, never allowing himself to care about things again.

  How could he, after what happened to that girl and her family?

  Instead, he kept those he knew at arm’s length. His small flat in the slums of East Babylon was barely furnished. The only piece of furniture he let himself splurge on was a worn leather couch that was nearly as comfortable to sleep on as his bed.

  Thyos breathed through his nose, looking away. He ignored the harem of vampires Emperor Paletyn ordered to clean Thyos up and undress him, changing him into his original attire he wore before heading to the arena.

  He needed to feed and let off some energy.

  There was a brothel he liked to patron on the border of West Babylon, where the witches and humans lived. It was frequented by vampires who had the ability to manipulate a human’s vulnerable mind—dazzle them with wicked promises and silver coins—in order to hide their true nature and feed on prostitutes while simultaneously fucking them as well.

  Two birds with one stone and all that.

  “Wipe his wound,” one of the witches who had been assigned to be his guard instructed the younger one. He recognized the older one as Adela, a beautiful but fierce witch who barely spoke to him and refused to look at him. Not because she was afraid of him but because she wanted nothing to do with him.

  Because she looked down on him as the pitiful vampire that he was.

  Which actually did not bother him. He did not particularly care one way or the other what she thought of him, or what anyone thought of him. He was content with being whatever he needed to be in order to satisfy people’s judgments of him.

  “Aurelia,” Adela snapped at her. “Heal his wound.”

  The one named Aurelia – the very same girl he had become distracted by for the briefest of seconds – turned to look at her sister.

  “Adela,” she whispered. “You know I cannot –”

  Adela shot Thyos a look. He pretended to be interested in one of the female vampires, but his ears pricked up, slightly surprised that he was actually choosing to listen to this.

  “Mother demanded that I take you for the very reason that something might trigger your abilities,” she said. “You have to at least try and heal his wound.”

  “He’s a vampire,” Aurelia pointed out. “Won’t it heal itself?”

  Adela rolled her eyes. Thyos tried to keep an amused grin from spreading across his face.

  “That isn’t the point, Aurelia,” Adela snapped in a low whisper. “The point is to employ your magic. You know, the very thing that is supposed to make you a witch.”

  Aurelia looked away. Thyos was almost disappointed in the girl’s lack of response. He wanted to see how she would defend herself. However, he realized she was chanting something.

  A spell.

  Something that was supposed to heal his wound.

  Thyos wondered if the girl realized her sister was being a bitch on purpose. Aurelia had been correct – his blood would heal his wound, so there was no need for her to strain herself, no need for her to make a fool of herself.

  Yet this witch did not realize it. She was too trusting, which was intriguing unto itself.

  Thyos had never seen the girl before. She was clearly related to his guard—they had the same gold eyes and the same heart-shaped face—but the older sister had dark red hair while Aurelia had a golden color that probably turned the shade of daffodils in the sunlight. She wasn’t too young to be a guard, however, though it was clear she was the youngest sister. If Thyos had to put an age to her, he would say she was anywhere from nineteen to twenty-one. Then again, Thyos had not been familiar with witch ages in a long time, especially since there were certain witches who now had an extended lifespan, thanks to the Rift Curse.

  When the woman stopped reciting an incantation, she looked over at her sister with frustrated gold eyes. There was apology in those eyes as well, as though she was upset that she’d let her sister down, when, in reality, there was no reason to be sorry. She did not need to heal his blood at all.

  The older sister started laughing, a ferocious kind of laugh that was both amused and mean.

  “Pathetic human,” she muttered with a roll of her eyes. “You can’t do anything you’re supposed to. I don’t know why Mother insisted we take you along. You nearly ruined the battle with your flinching because you cannot stomach the blood.”

  The girl clenched her jaw so hard it popped, but she did not say anything. Thyos almost compelled her to say something. Then he remembered that he did not bother with the affairs of anyone else, especially witches.

  “We wipe him clean,” Adela said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Not physically, although you probably wouldn’t mind doing something as revolting as that.
”

  That caught his ear.

  Did this witch find him attractive? Wouldn’t that be something?

  His lips nearly quirked up into an amused grin, but he stopped himself. He was not going to get involved in this sisterly dispute. He did not care about such things. He did not care about anything.

  The older sister muttered an incantation, cleansing him of any lingering spells the emperor’s guards had cast upon him before he entered the arena.

  Thyos nodded his head in thanks when she finished before leaving the witches to change into his street clothes—a simple toga made for peasants. He could have afforded the finest silks, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He undid his sleeves so the top half of his gown fell away, leaving his chest and back completely bare.

  As he headed to the changing divider, he glanced over his shoulder and caught the young witch staring at his bare back. He watched as she blushed and then looked away.

  That nearly caused Thyos to crack a smile.

  Nearly.

  Chapter 3

  Aurelia slid out of the back door of her home and through her mother’s garden. She nearly tripped over a tree root and walked through the wooden gate, all but slamming it shut.

  She needed time to herself. Despite the vast mansion her family lived in, there were moments when she felt as though she was suffocating. It did not help that she was ridiculed for being the least talented by her three older sisters. It did not help that her parents—both witches—placed an enormous amount of pressure on her to come into her talents. Besides her ability to detect lying, Aurelia could not do even the simplest of spells.

  “You are practically human,” Ashana, her oldest sister, said with a sneer. “Constantly needing assistance because you cannot save yourself. Pathetic.”

  The show had not helped her cause. Flinching at vampire blood. Staring at the one they called Thyos and being caught—not only by him, but by Adela. She’d muttered something under her voice that sounded suspiciously like vampire whore.

  It was an abomination to even think of a vampire in such a way. To think about them as attractive. As a potential mate. Though the Rift curse plagued both witches and vampires, there seemed to be a new desire among vampires to procreate, to pass on their legacy. Vampires could not breed with each other, but they could breed with a human or a witch.

  Something told Aurelia that Thyos was not the sort of vampire to settle down and breed.

  Not that she cared.

  She did not care about that nor did she care what her sisters thought of her. Adela had written her off when she was only seven and still could not do a basic spell. She was older than Aurelia but younger than Ashana and Augusta. Ashana wanted nothing to do with Aurelia, and Augusta would talk to her only if she needed something from her. Aurelia had grown up alienated, with no companion save for her imagination. She thought a lot about the humans they were being raised to protect and the vampires they were raised to fear.

  Instead of staying on the familiar path that led to ruins caused by the Rift, she decided to head into a deeper part of town. The humans lived south, near the edge of the Division where the wild brush wasn’t unruly and maintained by their vampire gardeners. Humans liked to hire particularly sensitive vampires to do things that forced them into the sun. It amused the humans how desperate the vampires were for pay well below minimum wage. Aurelia knew what was going on but never allowed herself to think about it one way or the other.

  It just was.

  However, as she continued to walk deeper into the town, she realized it wasn’t particularly fair. Houses started turning into crumbling apartment buildings, liquor stores, and abandoned buildings with broken windows.

  She felt her stomach coil with unease. Perhaps she should turn around. She would rather much deal with Adela and her poisonous tongue rather than with strange creatures who seemed to look at her like she had something to offer them, whether they knew it or not.

  It did not help that there were so many people loitering in front of rubble, talking amongst themselves until they noticed her walking down the street by herself. She could feel them looking at her dress, at the way her hair was braided, at the way she carried herself.

  She felt exposed. Found, even though she had never been lost.

  Until now.

  What was she doing?

  All because she had stared a little too long at a vampire. And not just any vampire: Thyos, one of the Berkano vampires. Granted, he had been publicly outcast when it was found out he would not be participating in their need for revenge against the witches. She was surprised they hadn’t killed him, but she thought she’d heard Augusta say that a Berkano would never kill their own kind unless they felt truly betrayed. Thyos had been a brutal warrior for them, one of the most feared and an asset to their clan.

  Now he was a lowly vampire, fighting for spectators as entertainment. Killing his own kind.

  He was absolutely stunning, however. Aurelia could not take her eyes off him, even as he fought. She might have flinched due to his opponent’s blood nearly hitting her, but that was more out of fear of staining her dress than anything else. Adela might have assumed it was because she was afraid, but blood was something she did not like to be around.

  Thyos, on the other hand, was something else entirely. His power rippled off him in waves. His grace was natural and elegant. And his blood-lust was easily discernible on his face, a perfectly symmetrical face she could not help but stare at.

  Aurelia stopped walked, reaching up to adjust the strap of her dress. She could start to smell the heavy, dank scent of the nearby swamps and felt her stomach begin to turn. She had never been this far away from home before. She turned, prepared to go back, but she had been so wrapped up in her thoughts that nothing looked familiar.

  She was lost.

  This was not the best place to be lost.

  If she had felt more comfortable, she would not have been opposed to asking someone for directions. As it was, these were the last people she wanted to talk to. Granted, she was certain that not everyone was the way she was portraying them, and perhaps it wasn’t fair to judge them based on the leering looks they gave her or their environment, but Aurelia did not feel safe. And worse, she could not protect herself if someone did try to attack her.

  “Okay,” she thought to herself. ‘I don’t remember turning at all, so perhaps if I just turned around and headed straight, I’ll return home.’

  It sounded like a reasonable plan. Without waiting, Aurelia spun on the heel of her golden sandal and began to head in the opposite direction. The sky was turning grey, something it always did as it transitioned to nightfall. That was when the real danger began, she understood. Nightfall made the world safe for dangerous people, whether they had beating hearts or no hearts at all. As long as she got back home before nightfall, she should be fine.

  Granted, she had about an hour to do that, and she didn’t quite know how long she had been walking in the first place, but she was willing to walk as fast as she needed to in order to accomplish it.

  Aurelia crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself to keep warm. Goosebumps rippled across her bare skin, and she took in a deep breath. She would not cry. She could just imagine Adela’s reaction if she came home crying because she was scared and lost. What a pitiful creature she would be, completely unworthy of the title witch.

  She hated how helpless she was. She hated how sheltered she was. Aurelia understood her parents wanted to protect her from the world since she did not have the ability to defend herself yet—she constantly had to remind herself that her powers could manifest at any moment. Just because she was only twenty did not mean she was completely hopeless. She just needed to be a little patient.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  Aurelia kept walking. Even if that voice was directed at her, she kept walking. She did not know anyone here. No one would have any reason to call out to her.

  “Miss?” The voice tried again. “Are y
ou lost? Maybe I can help?”

  Aurelia hesitated. She wanted to believe that there were good people out here, even if the environment did not seem welcoming. She did not like to look at people as the places they came from. It was not fair. But she also did not have a good feeling about where she was and the people who loitered in the streets.

  “Let me guess,” the voice said. She knew he was getting closer. Even if she ran, she would not be able to outrun him. Not anymore. “You got lost. That’s okay. I can get you back to where you need to go.”

  “You don’t know where I’m going,” Aurelia pointed out as she continued to walk without looking at him.

  She heard him chuckle. Instead of being mean, it sounded genuine. She paused, mid-step. Deep down, she knew she should keep moving. But she did not want to write him completely off if he was trying to be helpful. She also did not wish to appear ungrateful. He sounded… nice.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’m just trying to help. That’s it.”

  Aurelia stopped and slowly turned around. The man was a little older than she was, perhaps in his mid-twenties. He had blue eyes and a nice smile. She felt her guard drop slightly. But not completely.

  “I take it you’re from West Babylon?” the stranger asked, slowly easing up to Aurelia.

  She felt his body tense as he got closer to her, but she realized he was slowly doing so in order to make her feel as comfortable as anyone would be, given that some strange person from a separate faction was approaching her. She appreciated the effort.

  “Why would you think that?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t come across as stony as Adela’s sounded at times. She might not trust this man. That did not mean she had to be rude.

  “Your beautiful dress,” he said, glancing down at her attire. He did not linger on her body like he was feasting on her without her consent. He directed his eyes back to her face immediately. Her guard dropped a little lower. “And your beautiful face. We don’t typically see the likes of you in this neighborhood. Are you trying to get home?”