1. Callie

Avoice found me in the pressing darkness. Sun Child, you have lived a thousand lives. Use their knowledge to guide you now.

I couldn’t hold on to the words. They slipped away as quickly as I’d heard them. My mind drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, but no dreams came to me. I was here alone.

I knew pain awaited me when I woke but there was something else too. Something which filled me with a burning purpose I’d never felt before, a path for my feet to follow, a journey for my life to take. I moved towards it and my senses came alive in a way they never had until now.

My eyes fluttered open, and I frowned at the strange room. I was lying on a bed, a heavy duvet draped over me and a musty smell filling my nostrils. Without turning my head, I could tell that someone else was in the room with me. It was like a sixth sense prickling at my skin, informing me that another slayer was close. The fact was reassuring; I wanted my kin near me, but it was disconcerting too, my mind adjusting to this new way of perceiving the world.

I pushed myself onto my elbows, looking around at the large room I found myself in. Wooden furniture lined the dim walls, but it was all covered with a thick layer of dust, making it clear the place hadn’t been occupied in a long time. Cobwebs adorned the corners of the space and wooden shutters were closed over the windows. A single candle burned on a desk beside the window, its flickering light the only reason I could see anything at all. My gaze snagged on the details of my surroundings more than usual. A broken corner on the top of the wardrobe. A scuff mark on the wooden floor beneath the mirror. Each thing telling a story of something that had happened here before, hinting at my surroundings and making my senses prickle with awareness.

“You’re awake,” Magnar rumbled, and I turned to find him sitting in a wooden chair by the door. His gaze was guarded as it fell on me, his face a blank mask, but I could sense his concern.

“How long was I out?” I asked.

My mouth was thick and dry like cotton wool, and my limbs were heavy with fatigue. It felt like I’d been sleeping for a long time. I guessed he’d brought me here from the hilltop after I’d taken my vow and the world had fallen to darkness around me, but I had no idea where here was.

“You collapsed after taking your vow before the sun set yesterday. You have been unconscious for over a day.” His tone was clipped, and I frowned as I tried to figure out why he was upset with me.

“Are you pissed at me, Elder?” I shook my head in confusion as the strange word spilled from my mouth. I’d meant to say his name. “I mean Elder...wait, no-”

“Are you having trouble speaking my name?” Magnar asked, pursing his lips. The fact didn’t seem to surprise him.

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?” I curled my legs beneath me and sat upright, trying to align my thoughts. Had I hit my head when I collapsed? Why wouldn’t my tongue do what my brain told it to?

“This is what you wanted. You bound yourself to me.” He stood and strode towards me, taking my left hand in his and lifting it so I could see the mark on the back of it. The image of a star stood out along my skin, and I blinked as I tried to remember it appearing. He was right. I had wanted this. I could feel a pool of power writhing beneath my skin and it filled me with a sense of the strength I’d been longing for.

Magnar dropped my hand like it offended him and folded his arms as he towered over me next to the bed.

“So what does that have to do with me not being able to say Elder, no I meant-”

“You cannot speak my name until your training is complete and you are released from your bond to me. I am your Elder now. Your mentor.”

“But that’s ridiculous, surely you don’t give a shit about me using your name. Do we seriously have to abide by every little rule?” I shook my head, wondering why I would be following a rule I hadn’t even known existed in the first place.

“What I mind or don’t is irrelevant. You’ve taken your vow. You gave up your freedom and bound yourself to the way of our people. The goddess, Idun, will enforce the rules even if you don’t wish to follow them,” Magnar said icily.

I had to be missing something because I still didn’t understand why he was so angry about it. Hadn’t he wanted this? Hadn’t he been all alone, the last of his kind? So why was he looking at me like I’d just tossed his favourite sword in a swamp?

“But...” I traced my thumb over the star on my skin, a sense of unease filling me.

I’d never asked Magnar about what taking the vow really meant. I knew it would unleash my gifts, but he’d warned me that I’d be relinquishing my freedom too. I clearly hadn’t realised quite what that entailed. Though I’d never expected to lose control of my own tongue.

“So I can’t say your name? I just call you Elder?” My throat thickened with emotion, heat scoring across my cheeks at the humiliation of having to address him with a name that insinuated respect, regardless of my feelings on it. I’d spent my entire life caged, forced to bow to creatures who had placed themselves above me against my will, and taking the vow had been meant as a way to rise above that, to stop bending to the will of others. But now I simply found myself beneath a different beast, the actions of my own body betraying me and forcing me into submission.

I swallowed down the surge of emotion, forcing back the prickling in my eyes, refusing to allow a single tear to fall over this. I had given all my tears to my grief. I wouldn’t spill another.

Elder. The word felt like a chain around my neck. It made me feel like I was something less than him. Like we weren’t equals and I was no longer free.

“That’s my title, and out of respect, you have to address me that way.” Magnar’s eyes glinted with steel, fury caged within his gaze, a flash of betrayal there which I didn’t understand.

“Don’t you want to teach me?” I demanded.

After everything that had driven me to take the vow, I was suddenly beginning to doubt my choice. If Magnar didn’t want to take on this position, then what was I supposed to do now?

“When I told you about the vow, you made it clear you didn’t want to take it. So I didn’t consider teaching you after that,” he snarled.

“So what? I changed my mind. Surely you, of all people, can understand the need for vengeance that my father’s death caused me to-”

“Vengeance will be the end of your life if you let it control every decision you make!” he yelled, his voice a harsh crash of noise against the silence, making my heart leap and causing me to flinch back against the pillows.

Magnar smacked his hand against the headboard beside me, then turned away from me, stomping across the brittle floorboards and shoving his fingers through his long hair in clear frustration.

The spike of fear had adrenaline surging through my veins, but I refused to cower beneath him like some chastised child. My lips drew back on a snarl of my own.

I shoved the duvet off me and rose in a fluid motion, ready to punch him in his stupid head if that was what it took to force some answers from him. But my legs were shaky beneath me as I tried to take a step, and I had to grasp the bed frame to stop myself from falling. I felt dizzy from a lack of food, but something else was different too. Like my limbs didn’t quite move in the way I expected them to anymore, my body responding faster to my desires, my awareness of my surroundings growing as I moved.

I glanced down at myself. My clothes were dirty and torn, and my feet were bare. Mud and blood were still crusted beneath my fingernails from building my father’s cairn. I should have felt like shit, but there was a lightness to my body which went against my expectations.

Each movement I made felt different somehow. Like I had to get to know my body again. I crossed the wooden floor with purposeful steps, making no sound as I stalked towards Magnar. It was as easy as breathing. A piece of me wanted to marvel in the changes, but my mind was caught up in what else this had cost me and the most desperate desire to kick Magnar for being such a dick.

I reached for him, meaning to force him around to face me, but he turned before I could grip his arm, catching my wrist in his hand instead, his fingers easily encircling my flesh.

“You wanted this,” I accused in reply to the anger in his golden eyes, and he scoffed.

“I have only ever wanted one thing for myself in my entire life,” he replied. “Just one. Yet the gods forbade me from claiming it. You think you understand the concept of vengeance but you’re just a naïve child when it comes to the world you live in. You know next to nothing about the monsters who have taken ownership of your world, and only an accident of fate set you free of their clutches when you stumbled across my path.”

“I escaped the Realm myself,” I hissed, jerking my arm free of his hold, and he let me, his lip curling as I tightened my hand into a fist.

“Oh yes,” he agreed. “You managed to lead the only people you love in this world out into freedom for all of a few hours before they were hunted down and captured like the weak humans you all are-”

My fist snapped out faster than I expected, endless rage exploding through my core as I launched myself at Magnar, my grief turning to rage, like a wildfire spreading at the turn of the wind.

Memories spilled through me, lessons learned, training which had taken place in other bodies now lending me the knowledge I required. I twisted my body into the movement of the punch, and for a split second, I actually thought I might land it.

But of course, he moved before I could, his head turning just enough to force my strike into a glancing blow which did little more than brush my knuckles across the rough stubble of his jaw.

Magnar batted my arm aside, my second punch deflected just as easily, his arm somehow snaking around my waist as my momentum threw me towards him. He spun me violently, flipping my back to his front, pinning me in his arms.

“You were supposed to leave once you found your family again,” he growled in my ear, the rumble of his words vibrating through my chest.

“I haven’t found them,” I replied, the pain of that truth cutting me far deeper than any savage words from his lips might. “Not all of them. And my dad…”

A sob caught in my chest and I held it there, stamping my lips shut as the grief rose in me once more, the pain too sharp to bear.

Magnar blew out a harsh breath, his hold on me loosening, though he still kept me there, trapped in the cage of his arms.

“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” he muttered.

“So explain it to me,” I bit back. “You mock me for knowing nothing about the monsters who rule over my kind, but there’s only one answer to ignorance, and that’s knowledge. I’m asking to know, so give me the answers. Tell me what else the vow will force upon me. What can I do? What can’t I?”

Magnar cursed, turning me once again, drawing me around to face the rage which still blazed in his golden eyes. He backed me up against the wall, pressing me against it and placing his arm above my head.

The nearness of him made me blink in surprise as he loomed over me, the weight of his body trapping me against the wall, the immensity of his presence surrounding me as he dipped his head, his lips a single sin away.

“I am your mentor now. Nothing more,” he said slowly, the meaning of those words blazing in his eyes, but I didn’t understand it.

“What do you mean ‘nothing more’?” I breathed, wondering how there was any oxygen for me at all while his aura took up so much space around me.

Magnar laughed, but it was a dark, hollow thing filled with no joy.

“Why don’t you kiss me?” he offered, and my eyes widened in surprise. Whatever I’d thought he was going to say, it hadn’t been that.

“You want me to kiss you?” I frowned in confusion. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because even when you’re furious with me and wanting to spit and curse and strike me, you still can’t get the memory of my mouth on your body out of that pretty head of yours. You can’t stop thinking about what it might be like if we did that again, or how long you might hold out before you beg me to give you the rest of me.”

“Oh please,” I sneered. “You’d be begging for it long before I ever would.”

“Prove it then,” Magnar replied, a wicked dare in his eyes. “Unless you’re simply full of shit.”

I gave him a hard glare, then pushed up onto my toes, meaning to prove him wrong and have him on his knees for me with nothing more than a damn kiss if that was what it took to wipe that look off his face. I fisted his shirt in my hands, yanking him down, my eyes on his mouth, but instead of feeling his lips against mine, my head turned aside, and my chin collided with his shoulder.

Heat flared in my cheeks as I jerked back. I hadn’t meant to turn away, so what the fuck had just happened?

Magnar leaned towards me but didn’t try to touch his lips to mine, simply allowing the space between our mouths to become as small as possible, letting me taste the words which fell from his tongue.

“We will be bound by our cause, forfeiting all other ties,” he hissed bitterly, quoting the vow. “Thank you for that.”

“You mean we can’t be together?” I asked, my gut twisting at the thought.

I hadn’t even known the words of the vow before I’d spoken them, how could I have realised what I’d been agreeing to when I made my decision?

“No. We can’t kiss or fuck or do anything at all inappropriate for an Elder and his novice. The bond between us is one without equal power, and as such, the gods blessed the vow with this protection for you. Perhaps you should thank them for that while you fuck your own hand and dream of me in the dark.” He turned and stalked away from me before I could reply, moving to the shuttered window and pulling the wood aside so he could look out into the night.

“Seems like a simple enough price to pay,” I snapped even as I felt the loss of his presence like an ache in my gut. But what did I care? It was only sex. Only a physical outlet for my rage and pain. Surely I could claim that through learning to kill the bloodsuckers anyway. Though the tightness in my chest suggested that kind of satisfaction might not be quite the same.

“Perhaps if you’d explained all of this before-” I began, but he cut me off.

“Would your need for vengeance have been any less?” Magnar asked.

“No, Elder.” I replied, internally cringing as I used that fucking title again.

“It’s done now,” he said dismissively, still not looking at me. “Idun continues to test me as always. I never should have thought it would be any different now. A thousand years may have passed but I’m still at her mercy, and she is just as cunning and cruel as ever.”

Wind hammered against the window, and I had the strangest feeling that it was in response to his words. He didn’t seem worried about offending the goddess though, and he continued to scowl out at the night.

“I still feel the same inside,” I muttered.

“I know. Do you think that makes it better or worse?” Before I could answer, Magnar stomped away again. “I brought in some water from a well outside and left it warming by the fire. Go and get cleaned up.”

I wanted to protest and ask him more about the vow, but his words fell on me with a command I couldn’t resist. My feet turned and walked me out of the room without me telling them to, my body betraying me yet again. It was like I had no option but to do as he said, even as my mind fought against his control. I tried to resist the impulse as I headed down the rickety stairs in the abandoned house, my heart thrashing with panic when my own limbs failed to obey my commands. I caught hold of the banister, stopping my progress for a moment, but after a few seconds, my fingers relinquished their hold on it and I kept going.

Panic built in my chest, and I tried harder to break free of the command, but it was useless. I was trapped inside my body while my limbs worked of their own accord, following his direction and continuing to descend the stairs.

“What the fuck is this?!” I shouted, but Magnar didn’t respond, and my pulse pounded in my ears as the silence of the abandoned building surrounded me.

I vaguely took in the large farmhouse as I passed through it, noting the dust, cobwebs and hints of mould which marked the years of emptiness it had endured, but my mind was occupied with trying to break free of Magnar’s command.

The light of the fire flickered beneath a doorway on my right, and I moved into the room despite trying to reach for the doorframe to stop myself, but my arm refused to raise at my instruction. I couldn’t force my legs to stop walking until I made it to the huge tub of water sitting before the flames.

I sucked in a deep breath as I gripped the edge of the bath, but the command still wasn’t finished with me, refusing to let me stop there.

I peeled off my filthy clothes, tossing them to the floor before climbing into the tub with a scream of fury.

The water was warm, as promised, but it did little to ease the weight in my chest while I was left trapped within my body, a witness to its movements, panic threatening to swallow me whole.

I scrubbed at my skin, caught in the hold of Magnar’s orders until they were completed and I finally felt the pressure to obey slipping away from me.

A sob forced its way from my throat, my breaths coming in sharp gasps which built them up into a scream of pure rage as my temper fractured into a thousand pieces. What the fuck was this? How could he hold such power over me? He could make me do anything at all now, and I’d be powerless to stop him. I hadn’t known I was giving him control over me when I’d spoken the vow. How could I have bound myself so completely to something I didn’t even understand?

I’d gone into the blood bank hoping to get my family back, and we should have been together now, heading south towards the sunshine. Instead, I’d found out that Montana was impossibly far away, my father had died, and now I was under the control of a savage who seemed entirely enraged about the situation.

I was more alone than I’d ever been in my life. And to top it all off, I’d traded in my freedom as well. I’d known taking the vow would bind me to a path where either the vampires would die, or I would. But I’d never imagined it would do this to me.

I tried to hold back the tears, but they were like a dam waiting to overflow, unstoppable as the hopelessness of my situation sank down on me.

I broke with another ragged cry, the tears running down my cheeks, mixing with the bath water as I pressed my hands over my face and tried to stave off the rising panic.

I’d been so stupid. So fucking stupid. In seeking revenge for my father’s death, I’d managed to lose so much more. Anything I’d had which the vampires hadn’t stolen from me already, I’d now lost for myself. And there was no way for me to undo it.

Footsteps sounded beyond the door and I stilled, wrapping my arms over my chest in case Magnar decided to come in. It wasn’t like I could do anything to stop him. Hell, he could command me to dance naked around the fire and I’d have no choice but to comply.

Magnar sighed from the other side of the wood. “I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

“What was that?” Another sob tried to break free of my chest, but I bit down on my lip, forcing myself to hold it together. It was bad enough that I’d done this without me falling apart completely too. I had to find a way to deal with it.

“I won’t have this power over you forever. While I’m your mentor, you have to follow my commands, but once your training is complete, you’ll be free of the compulsion,” he replied.

“And how long will that take?”

“It varies. It took me a little under a year, but it could be as long as five. Once you can fully resist the compulsion, then you’ll know your training is finished and you’ll be a full slayer. Ready to take responsibility for your own actions.”

Something uncoiled in my chest at his words. This wouldn’t last forever. I’d be free again.

“But until then, you can make me do anything you want?” I whispered, and I wondered if my voice would even carry to him beyond the door.

“Almost anything. But I have never heard of someone taking their vow the way you just did. Selecting a mentor is something that people spend years deciding. It should be with someone you trust implicitly not to abuse their power over you. Someone you have known your whole life and have spent time learning from in the past,” he explained.

“I do trust you,” I replied, because even if I hated him sometimes too, I couldn’t deny that truth. He had rescued me time and again, fought by my side, helped my father when he was dying. I may not have known him well, and maybe I didn’t even like him half the time, but I did trust him.

Magnar released a heavy breath and didn’t respond.

“So who did you choose to teach you?” I asked.

“My father was my mentor.”

“No issues with wanting to fuck him then, I guess.” I cringed as the words escaped me, but I was beyond the point of holding my tongue.

“That rule is in place to protect novices,” he explained. “Your mentor has a position of power over you, so the goddess made it impossible for anyone bonded in that way to engage in a physical relationship. I tried to tell you before you could speak the words, but your mind was made up.”

“Why would a goddess want to take something like that from us?” I asked.

I couldn’t understand what benefit it served to stop me from being with him. Why take away our choice in how we used our own bodies?

“What if I commanded you to fuck me against your will?” Magnar asked. “If this rule wasn’t in place, I could force you to be with me even if you didn’t want to.”

“I don’t want to,” I said instantly, refusing to allow him to think that that part of this was the problem. It was the violation against my free will which I was balking against, not some forbidden desire to claim him for my own.

There was a long silence while I waited for a response, then his footsteps moved away from the door, leaving me behind.

A chill crept over my skin before sinking down into my bones. I bit back the tears which wanted to fall again, refusing to allow them. This was all my fault. So I’d have to find a way to fix it on my own.

I stared into the flames of the fire for a long time as I forced myself to accept what I’d done. There was a light at the end of this. Magnar had said that I would eventually be able to fight off this compulsion, so I fully intended to do just that. I would resist every impulse that wasn’t my own. I’d push back against his will, or the will of the goddess, until I had complete control over my own fate again. I’d learn all I could from him as quickly as I could, and I’d seek out the monster who held my sister before striking him from this world and claiming her from him once more.

I shivered as the water grew cold around me and slid beneath the surface, scrubbing at my hair and washing the tears from my face before clambering out.

Magnar had left a thick towel and clean clothes waiting for me, and I dried myself quickly before dressing again. I wrapped my arms around myself and sank onto the moth-eaten couch as I worked to process what he’d told me.

I didn’t even know where to begin with half of it, and I was sure there was much more for me to learn yet. But one thing was for sure. I really hadn’t known what I was getting myself into when I’d taken the vow and tied myself to this goddess and her laws. But I wasn’t going to just accept my lot and go along with it. If she could fight dirty, then so could I. She’d pushed me into making this decision without understanding it when my grief was at its fullest. And now I intended to use her gifts to get my sister back and bring down the monsters who had stolen her from me. She might have found a way to bind me to her rules, but if there was any way for me to break them, then I would.

I wasn’t going to leave my destiny in the hands of some deity. My fate would be my own.