A Vampire’s Pet

VYM

My head...

A reflexive snarl ripples across my face. I'm breathing in spits, muscles cricking, limbs slapping into me like stones.

Adjusting my knees, joints crackle, and I curse... I don't even know if my movements could be termed gathering: shins rough sliding as if walking on the flat of my legs. Piteous! And now it's even harder to lift my hands off the floor. Attempting to push me up takes three tries, and I already dread my next move.

Each step I take is carefully considered. I look intoxicated, and I wish I was—at least it would give me a valid explanation of what is happening to me.

I exhale. At last, the living room.

This should be a cause for celebration. Yet a veil of mist robs my vision as if I were gazing through a piece of gauze, my small accomplishment falling by the wayside as I try to find my bearings. I sail my eyes over a foamy corridor that nearly killed me, the great hall, the kitchen flanked at a distance beyond my comprehension, and after a near-perfect rotation, finally moor them at my distending grand piano. I hold my forehead for a moment and take several slow breaths. Hallucinations seem to be an inevitable part of this unsettling experience.

I stay still.

Leave seconds to pass.

Allow gravity to pull my feet, blood to travel, and my heart to settle.

Behind the piano is a vast space void of furniture. This is my sanctuary—a circular floor paved in black and gold mosaics representing the constellations, perfectly mirroring those at midnight. There's a drain in the middle. Whenever people ask, I say it's because of the rain pouring down from this patch of open ceiling that's symmetrically opposed to this beautiful flooring. But all it is for is to evacuate the blood that drips from Khiva when I feed on him.

I aim for this sacred place, fading light beckoning me as I walk past the largest of my windows—two gigantic panels as high as a two-story building, and the only ones where the blinds are never lowered. Despite being my weakness, the sun is a bulwark against any threat my kind poses. I have pushed many of my opponents into this well of light whenever there was one.

Yet, I step into the constellated circle, immediately drawn by the glows of a sunset peeking through the city's towers. Some thick light beams are ponding in this very center. And like a moth to a flame, I drift toward it.

The sun.

I throw my head back and open my arms wide, allowing this very ball to spear straight at me.

Instantly, my skin sizzles as the rays lather over me.

Teeth clenched, I hiss silently.

Across the window, they travel, smatterings of golden notes not enveloping me, but branding me with ribbon-shaped rods. My skin starts to burn as the heat reaches my bones. I cling to my arms, aware layers of my flesh are powdering into ash. There is a distinct smell to it—Datura.

My eyes lock on the buildings standing tall behind the glass walls, and a wince fractures my face as the sun's glint stirs from a distant window.

An inaudible grunt erupts me. This warmth... if it could take me...

"My lord!" the voice of a young male shrieks across the atrium. It resonates against every angle of my condominium, shattering what's left of my ears to bits. It's preceded by a pair of running hooves, slamming hard against the marble floor. They clop, clop, clop, making me question the need for such body parts. One swift twist of the ankle would be sufficient to rip one off, and a second's speed would render it painless...

Then again, I can't be bothered. Besides, those ankles are mine, and I can't stand owning broken things.

While trying to block out the noise from my mind, I devote all my attention to soaking up as much sunlight as possible.

My head tilts up, clambering for daylight's last kiss, basking in what seems like fire. I envision flames melting my cheeks, crisping my lips.

But that's not what I'm here for; it's for this glow permeating through my eyelids. I can see it even as I keep them shut. Nature's radiance... The order of things.

"My lord, I beg you." A ragged breath flanks against my spine and rolls up to my nostrils. It smells of fruit, essential oils, cappuccino, and fear, and it belongs to my precious pet, Khiva.

He twists his hinged nails into my waist, undecided whether to push me forth or pull me from the light, flushed, hugging me for all it seems.

"Please!" he barks.

Hooves slip against the polished stone from the creaking sound wincing behind me. They can. I will not budge.

"My lord!" The satyr snatches my arm, tugging as if attempting to open a locked door, two delicate hooves for breaks, clinging with madness to the ground.

Pointless. Khiva pulls at a limb and can continue tugging at it; I won't shift in my tracks.

"Stop!" he roars, his grip sliding off my arm as my dissolving flesh sticks to his fingers like rotten fish.

No matter what he does, nothing will keep me from catching every last drop of sun.

Every vampire recoils in fear before this giant ball, but I never flinch.

I prefer to face my enemy, its heat and what is abounding from it—life and death.

I don't have much experience with mortality because I have never experienced it, nor have I ever walked under the sun like the sired kind once did—the result of being the offspring of a vampire queen. From the moment I was born, the memory that could have been gleaned was robbed from me...

"My lord," Khiva's teeth grit, "what are you doing!?"

A cape wraps around my nakedness and shrouds me from this light.

I shimmy the cloak off my shoulders and turn to find a godlike faun, face redder than furious cinnabar, a duet of crooked horns stemming from under lush honey curls. Hair could be confused with a crown of wild gold-plated leaves. They graze upon his bare, unscarred shoulders, the fuzz on his muscly caps, an abstract tuft of ombre suffusing into a back fleeced with dark chestnut fur, sparking a desire in me to tan his hide the way we both like. Indeed, one could mistake Khiva for a god's child if they didn't know better.

Khiva is divine.

I respond in kind, my arm extending this mantle he thought well to protect me with. And trying to convey a gesture as soft as his, I murmur, "Waking up to the night, pet."

A grimace spreads across his face as he takes the item back. I must be handsome to look at.

Feeling skin building up as my body returns to a seemingly normal appearance, my gaze rebounds to the window, but there is no more to be seen.

"When you said you were tired, I didn't think you were referring to your missing screws, dark prince!"

The moment I fix my eyes on Khiva, the urge to berate him tenses up my neck. My favored talks too much.

But he's not far from the truth. In fact, I'm slowly beginning to make sense of it: Fayra's party. Everything leads me to think it's because of this bite... I find this unsettling since my symptoms are not what I would expect coming from a Bloodsinger. I'm supposed to relish in a trance, her blood swamping our bodies as its smell lures me for more, not be treated as a friend while being thrown semi-nonchalant accolades. Fay and I are supposed to lust for each other, experience a sexual high like no other. So why doesn't she return my affection?

My feet face forward in a long and lengthening motion, and my toes barely lift off the ground as I tread, sluggish and hesitant.

These stop inches from Khiva's.

Our gazes align perfectly, Khiva matching my height to the inch. Rich, amber eyes take possession of me, almost halting my frail breath. By nature, Khiva arouses a sense of beauty in the viewer. Me, the first.

If I so desired, I could bend him over right now and he wouldn't fuss—quite the contrary. However, I am not up to the task. Not now.

With waves of a migraine crashing against my skull, I tilt in the direction of my brain. "You must be tired, Khiva. Look at you, begging for eternal sleep."

Indifferent to my warning, if it can even be called that, Khiva holds ground, standing tall and brave before me, waging a cute, inoffensive war in his stance. "Never do it again. You could die."

I tunnel a hand into his tawny blonde locks and relish in the softness of his neck. He's warm... Too warm.

Khiva frowns, lustrous ears shaped like short spears falling low, one inclining against the back of my hand.

"When did the fever return?" I whisper, dancing a thumb on the soft, velvety fur under his ear.

"It was just a small nightmare."

"Why didn't you come to me?" Waiting for his lips to purl, I hook an irresistible loop behind his horn.

"Sorry, I was too busy biting my nails, hoping you didn't turn into a big pile of ash somewhere in a very bright alley. You weren't home!"

A smirk spreads across my face. Khiva's puffing about, making a big ball of wrongness from my garment, to then toss it on my Torina sofa fronting the great window beams. While his tail whips the backrest, this buck's arms fold over his chest, a little hoof tapping on the floor with frustration.

I bring my body to press against his, his chest leather-harnessed, biting against my own, and a shivering breath escapes him.

"Khiva..." Bending my head in the opposite direction to his own tilt, I lick my lips, thinking of this unborn kiss between us.

I sigh quite simply and take in the shimmering of his eyes. "Why? You would finally be rid of me."

A nagging sensation beckons as I dance my hand up his tempting throat. I grasp his jawline as his panting crashes against me. He's fuckable, even more as a shy gasp escapes him at how I'm angling his head up.

A blow rushes out between his sweet lips, the tip of his teeth peeking at me. "Have mercy, my prince."

Such a beautiful, fiery creature cannot possibly value his life only as a means of sustenance? And yet, Khiva does, with all his heart and soul.

"Mercy is for cowards." My eyes crease in sympathy to note a shiver goosing down his cheeks. I would be an awful master not to have my fangs rasp down one. So I indulge until reaching his mouth. "Why would you need mercy, anyway?" My lips brush against his teasingly.

"My lord..."

I shudder at his moan and stiffen a second at his delicious scent, excreting from every pore of his skin, fast to light a fire under mine. Khiva is a wintry breeze against my destructive heat; he keeps fanning me for a blaze, and I am always incandescent... And for a moment, my headache dissipates.

"Sweetest Khiva..." My tongue prints on every curve and glistened twists of his, spelling his name at the back of his throat. It echoes, moaning in return, that I eagerly swallow. "My addiction has me worrying for you. Do not exert yourself for me."

My hand navigates down his crotch as the pole behind his pants erects. "And if something happened to me, how free would you be."

He clasps my working wrist, firming it against him. "Please..."

Too eager to torture him, I retract my head, creating a thin rift between our lips. His own tremble, edging forward as if fearing the absence of my touch. I snort to find him so devoted, obedient, and...

My eyes close at a thought, fragile, bringing me out of my heated state.

I cup his face and stare at him. My lips pinch to find a wound under his left eye. Although the scab is small, I can clearly see it. Refusing angst to surface, I refrain from frowning.

Khiva lowers his head in my clasp. "I wouldn't be free." My nails pressure his cheeks, summoning those eyes to look at me again—and they rush up as expected. These bright ambers have a wetness and, despite being fleeting, something resentful. "You would still haunt my every dream."

I free his head, my gaze slanting down at the hollow of his throat, whisk a sprinkling of hair from my eyes, at which point I tuck my chin. "Would that not be called a nightmare?"

"It would if your life is considered a dream."

With this embarrassing statement, I gently palm his chest and push him aside, preferring to trudge past him rather than indulge in one of Khiva's famous melodramas.

Aiming for this designer kitchen at the far end, where no one ever cooks, I catch a small, broken, mostly unwanted cry at my back. "I couldn't live without you."

My gait remains unruffled despite his comment. Yet, I must garner all my remaining strength to not clench my jaw—not to revolve on my heels, flash at his neck, and make him remember his place.

I coyly chant, "Your emotions are showing, Khiva."

It's like my words hit back at me. They resonate against the cave of my mind, and my legs halt midway, faintness taking a violent hold.

"Keep them in check. Remember, I am not interested in what your heart spews for me," I say, rubbing my nape, trying to soothe whatever's rattling between my temples. A strange sensation is sweeping through my body again.

I must be ailing in some way. What's concerning is that vampires never are.

Hooves skitter behind me. "But it's true, and you know it." Khiva's now whispery voice succeeds in snuffing out the truth. Yet, my hands fist into tight rocks.

Khiva is sick.

I am a vampire prone to chaotic ideations.

His condition takes advantage of my free will to live or die.

To say we are bound by a chain called Somnimors—an illness near insurmountable—is an understatement. Anxiety manifests in his body, turning his nightmares against him and causing inflammatory symptoms that can last for days. The number of times I've awoken to Khiva screaming and his flesh flaking raw layers is staggering. The thought of being skinned alive terrifies him. My venom cures him for the time being, but how long will it be before he makes a nightmare so lethal that he never wakes up...

I try delaying his illness, but it keeps insisting on taking him. If I die, Khiva dies. In a perfect world, Fidr wouldn't be holding monster's magic in such an iron grip. Then, Khiva could consult a sorceress and his illness wouldn't even be a memory. I tried to find one, sifted the black market and activated my contacts. Sorceresses and warlocks are either unqualified or simply not stepping out. A creature like Fidr is intimidating enough to keep anyone from breaking the rules. And now that the borders have been closed...

I bite my cheek when his fragile fingers wrap around my hardened knuckles. The pressure of his grip, protective, the motion of it, soft, soothing...

And from it, moaning want rises within me, rumbles across my tongue and crashes against my sealed lips. It slips out when Khiva's thumb strokes the tender part of my wrist.

Feelings—a gift from my late mother. While my love for her was unconditional, she left me with a legacy of mawkish emotions, and one in particular that will forever plague me. The fear of losing a loved one weakens me down to my very undead fibers.

"You shouldn't fool around with daylight. Do you think yourself invisible? Because you are not."

My glare flashes Khiva's way. "Do I look like I care?"

As if in response, shy fingers softly fold between my softening ones. I don't even glance at it; the feeling of his skin is enough, though I don't know why. It's just enough, and it's all I want right now.

Khiva is my bane. He's supposed to be an animated object, a walking blood bottle, not a hired confider—another of Fidr's joy-killing reforms. Slavery, once forced upon chosen mortals, has become a recognized occupation in Faerhan country, with mortals willing to become feeding bags, eliminating the pleasure vampires would have had in taming them.

The process of taking Khiva as my pet was draining. We had to go to the Faerhan authorities multiple times—once to obtain social clearance, a second time to claim our wish, a third time to get the form stamped, and a fourth to take our fingerprints, registering us under the Vampire/Pet Act. Only then were we issued a ten-year contract to sign. Khiva gave himself mind, body, and blood in return for protection, wealth, and... venom—the latter not disclosed in the contract.

And here we are, three years later.

With ease and a finesse unique to him, Khiva guides me to my ostentatious kitchen island made from one singular block of concrete, looking no more than a sacrificial altar.

I feel myself collapse for a dizzy second before my hands slap against it.

My head hangs low. There is this tiredness in me... Once again, a veil obscures my vision, and a weak sensation leaves me feeling spineless.

I try focusing on Khiva, and all I perceive is the blurry silhouette of a demon: serpentine horns, powerful hindlegs, and the outline of his unruly head of hair.

My eyes burn as if I had doused them with acid. Despite my best efforts, I struggle to open them in full.

As I watch Khiva flick a few light switches on, I pull a stool from under the counter and sit.

"You're just hungry. Let me fix you something." Khiva's purr dulls my skull-fusing pain for just a moment.

My slitted gaze sweeps across an oversized window spanning the entire length of the kitchen and finally settles on my pet's lovely face. There's a lot of agitation in the kitchen, and I'm unsure what he's doing. "Why are you not asleep?" I ask, still slightly groggy, as though I had just awoken.

His hooves break. Khiva cocks his head, a supple coil of locks bouncing before his nose.

I exhale when he wrinkles his forehead as if awaiting a bullet. "I was waiting for you to wake up. My lord, you don't look wel?—"

"Your tongue, pet... it's chatty. Don't overuse it." I clasp my head at once, my brain about to explode. "I'm a lover of silence."

"It's not only chatty..." As I peer through my fingers, finding Khiva, all grins, dawdling his copper-tufted chest toward me, he hoists himself on the counter within an inch of me and says, "It licks, too."

In meekness, I let my hands fall before I puff a simper. Khiva caught me. His flame eyes are darkening, and my chest groans. He knows I love it when he stares at me like a freak.

"My family is coming later tonight, and I want you out of their way."

"Why?"

"The authority of my father extends to any pet I own. Don't spoil what's between us. The concept of sharing isn't attractive to me."

A wry smirk passes over his face. "I understand, my lord." He then titters as if rape were something he enjoyed.

My head sways. By all means, he couldn't possibly fancy my father.

The hyperactive satyr becomes bored because he slides himself off the counter, prances around the island toward a large glass door enclosing as many bottles of wine as there is of blood, and pulls out a vial. He closes the door with his tail looped around the handle, opens an upper cupboard, and brings out a glass. And while he uncorks the spherical container with his teeth, I blink sardonically. Khiva never had manners. I tried to teach him some, but he's immune to class.

"Have a drink. You will feel better." In his clasp is a bulbous, ruby-red glass.

I lift a hand to seize it, but my bones appear missing. My vision sways left, walls becoming ceilings. A cracking sound travels from my forehead, right down to my spine, leaving shrapnel of pain in its wake.

"Vym!"

My eyes open to Khiva's head hovering over me.

The back of my neck feels warm. And as my eye shifts to one side, I notice I'm flat on the floor, my head on his lap.

"My lord, get back on your feet. You're scaring me."

I help him lift me up, a tentative effort... for nothing.

"Alright, it's fine. It works like this. Keep your head on my lap."

"I made a mistake, Khiva." My words are voiceless exhales at best. Everything in me is shutting down. "I thought death would never come. It was simply late."

"Stop talking and drink." Khiva lowers his head, bowing his neck to my mouth. I reach up, but my arms collapse under the strain.

"What is happening to you?"

"Fayra Jinksovan..."

"Who?" Khiva knows who. His cheeks are turning garnet in color, heating at a probability that won't happen. To toss him on the wayside.

"Discovered she was my Bloodsinger. And then, Mordana with her ideas... I had to mark her, drive other vampires away."

"You bit her..." His tongue clicks. Stress is ripping us to shreds, and he doesn't need it.

"She must be known to the others as mine..."

"In any case, Mordana gave me a thorough lecture about your kind, and I am categoric that what is happening to you is not coming from a Bloodsinger." He's right and losing it. High pitches plummet into depressing consonants before picking up speed with the vowels. "It looks like poisoning to me."

There is no sensation in my body. "Where's my sister?" I need her. She always knows what to do...

"When? Where did you bite her? How much blood did you take from her?" Too many questions at once. To process... to talk... to formulate anything...

"Something is not right here!" His hand presses against my chest as he scans my torso. Among Khiva's most attractive characteristics is his dedication. Every aspect of him resembles a vampire—intense, blunt, and rather explicit. The eyes he lifts are like shots being fired at me, and even at my weakest, I cannot ignore his hold over me. "My lord, please, where is she? Weren't you supposed to bring her back?"

"She has a green wall for a boyfriend and, before it, a trench of leeches she calls friends."

"What a bunch of poor excuses."

He would usually get scolded for his insolence, but another time...

"Mordana!" I shout, though what comes out is a soft mutter of nothing.

"She left last night. I urge you to drink!"

I drop into a black pit and then open my eyes again, Khiva slapping my cheeks.

"Bite me, now!"

"I... can't," I breathe. It's all I'm good at right now.

Khiva lowers my head to the side and rolls back on his knees. Based on the clanking of cutlery, he's gone for the kitchen drawers.

"As you wish, my lord."

One of my eyes slits open, and I gasp.

Craning high above me, Khiva dangles a hand up his throat, the shine of a knife closing on it.

"Drop the knife, Khiva," I compel. But that doesn't stop him, and that is a colossal fuck-up!

With his jaw set firmly, Khiva fires me a glare, a thin line of red brushing over his throat.

My chest turns into a ruination of collapsing dread.

Tremors overpower me, my bones jump, galvanized from both horror and hunger.

My face is soaked in blood as it gushes from his neck.

The knife slips from his clench.

His knees hit the floor.

And I die a thousand times witnessing his fall.

Khiva's head slams into the marble floor.

"Idiot!"

I flip onto my stomach and draw strength from an inner well I didn't know existed. I cling to him, entangling my arms around his convulsing body.

I don't wait.

Fangs strike my pet's throat.

My embrace is soft at first, and then I roll over him, clasping him stronger until I kneel.

Until I can bring him over my lap and hug him in return.

I cannot seem to stop drinking.

I have to.

One last drop.

One...

A shouting grunt roars out of me as I try to retract away from him.

I violently resist my instinct and hurl my head back at once, my thumb darting to Khiva's wrist.

His heart pulses slowly.

I pressure my fangs to seep more venom, then nip my thumb and smudge the wound with my toxin.

It's a mess of blood on his face, his locks sticky crimson, his cut... healing.

I hug him so firmly that I am terrified I might crush him.

My heart is in stitches, and what follows, instant. Sorrow travels from my bones to my eyes, and I quiver.

"Khiva, you're a pain." My breaking face finds refuge in his neck, and I rupture, bloodied tears tarnishing his soft, golden-fleeced shoulders. My clench hardens, bracing my withering misery against him.

Hope, mother of all monsters, I pray my curse befalls you. May you rot for giving us faith, setting it on fire, and watching us burn as we try to save it.

I need the Dream Weaver. I've never questioned Mordana's assumptions about Fay. There is no doubt in my mind that my sister has my best interest at heart, and I believe now is the ideal time to take action.

Fayra. I swear, I won't rest until you're mine!