Destructive Embrace (18 page)

I wrapped my arms around
myself in order to not defy my mother's request that I remain
hidden, so that I wouldn't get up and throttle the lowlife bastard
who dared to speak to my mother with such disrespect.

"Tywin, you are a spiteful
bastard who doesn't care for anyone but himself. And sometimes, I
even doubt that you care about yourself," she told him, shaking her
head. The pity in her voice was evident, and I could only imagine
what her expression looked like from where I hid.

I saw something snap in my
father, but wasn't fast enough.

By the time I revealed
myself, my mother's body was already on the floor of the attic,
blood pooling out around her from the hole in her chest. In Tywin’s
hand was my mother's heart. He stared at me with a disgusting grin
on his face.

"What, boy? What can you
do now? You certainly can't go anywhere, you were always such a
needy little brat, needing your mother to coddle you for every
little thing," Tywin taunted. My eyes were frozen on my mother's
face. I was unable to move, to think about anything at all, until
Tywin threw her heart down on the floor.

Then, I snapped. I snarled
at Tywin, bearing my fangs dangerously as I stood over my mother's
body protectively. The bastard laughed at me, arching one eyebrow.
He was clearly amused by my actions.

"What can you do, Dmitri?"
he asked, shaking his head.

He took a hand towel out
of the waist of his trousers and began to clean up his hands. Then
he tossed the rag at my face. By the time I got the stupid cloth
out of my face, Tywin was directly in front of me, his own fangs
showing as he hissed at me.

Acting on reflex –
combined with the instinct that told me I was going to die if I
didn't move – I thrust my hand out, carving into his chest with my
fingers. When I reached his heart, I wrapped my hand around it and
squeezed.

"How do you like it?" I
asked, grinning at the shocked expression on Tywin’s
face.

Then, I ripped the organ
from his chest and thrust his body away from me; his blood was not
worthy of mixing with my mother's. As I tossed his heart aside, a
creaking noise met my ears and I glanced up to the door.

Zeke stood there, eyes wide
and full of hatred as he stared at me. "You killed our parents," he
whispered. The shock was evident, but it was shadowed by the pain
in his voice. "You killed our
mother
." before I could deny that or
defend myself, Zeke was on me, grabbing me by my throat and
throwing me directly out the door. I rolled about a third of the
way down the stairs before catching myself. Nothing was broken, but
I was a little stunned from it.

"What... No!" I insisted
as Zeke rushed down the stairs after me.

In his hand was a silver
dagger – our father's dagger – that he pressed to my throat. The
sharp edge barely touched my skin, but the burning was
excruciating, so I backed away from it. Thankfully it was shallow
enough so that I didn't scar, but my brother grabbed me by my hair
and began dragging me down the stairs.

"You will pay for this act
of patricide," he growled as we reached the main hall. I didn't
know where we were going, but soon found out that all of Zeke's
time to himself was spent honing his skills, if you could even call
them skills.

I had no choice in the
matter: if I fought against my older, stronger brother, then I
would be wounded by the silver blade in his hand, but if I didn't,
I would be strung up so that I could be flayed for a crime I’d only
half committed.

"Zeke," I said. "I didn't
kill our mother," I tried to explain.

"I saw you rip the heart
out of our father's chest, you little worm!" he spat at me, shoving
me up against the wall of one of the small cells in the large room.
"And I saw the hole in Mother's chest, which means she died in the
same way."

I realized then that
I
had
killed Tywin
in the same way that he'd murdered his wife. It looked very
condemning. But I knew I was innocent. "Brother, stop. I loved our
mother more than anything else in this hellish world! What reason
would I have to hurt her, let alone kill her!?"

By this point, Zeke had
gotten shackles around my wrists. I was bound to a wall. He’d
chained me so that I was facing the wall. For a moment, I thought
it would be as easy as tearing free, but after a few minutes of
struggling, I realized that the chains would hold.

"What the hell!" I looked
over my shoulder at my demented brother.

Zeke laughed. "These are
reinforced with silver. The outer part isn't silver, so it doesn't
burn the skin of vampires, but they are strong enough to hold even
a vampire here for as long as I need them to. Now, shut up and
repent for your sins!"

Before I could speak, Zeke
hit me across the face and I saw stars. Next, I felt an
unimaginable pain as he cracked a whip across my back. The feeling
shouldn't have been as bad as it was, but the burning sensation at
the wounds told me that he'd used silver on me.

"What is this?" I growled,
clenching my hands into fists as I tried to not cry out from the
pain. I was trapped in Zeke's clutches, and he was beating me with
–

"Silver tipped whip.
Nothing is quite like it, I'd say. This makes my hobby more
interesting, you see. Human women will get boring after time, so
I’ve managed to attach these tiny silver claws to the ends of a few
of my whips. Now, I can beat a vampire woman – or man – to my
heart's content. I suppose that I could have before, but a vampire
would heal quickly after a few measly whip lashes. So I had to come
up with something that would allow my prey to fall to me over time.
These small claws," he paused so that he could show me the tip of
his weapon, "are just the right size to create a lot of pain
without making too big of a wound so that they don't bleed out too
fast. Fun, don't you agree?"

I laughed at him
humorlessly and he retaliated by lashing out at me with the whip
once more. I could feel the tiny claw digging into my skin and
pulling harshly as he yanked the whip back toward
himself.

When I thought the pain
couldn't get any worse, I heard Zeke put the whip down and I sighed
in relief.

"Oh, no, no, Dmitri," he
tsked me. I turned my head so that my peripherals could catch Zeke
over my shoulder. He was grinning. "I'm not quite done with you.
I've now tested my single silver tipped whip. Congratulations on
being the first victim of it, by the way." small noises met my ears
– the tapping of his foot as he walked over toward another wall,
the soft noise of a whip being lifted off its holder, and the
gentle clinking noise as metal came into contact with
metal...

"Three tips," Zeke
whispered. I focused my eyes back on the wall, refusing to look at
the weapon he had in his hands now. "All three with silver claws on
them. Are you ready?"

I snapped myself out of the
memory, my back aching from reliving the time when I'd received the
ugly scars on my back.

“Wait!”

Turning around, I paused. Zeke was
chasing after me. Actually running, even…

That was odd.

“What is it?” I asked politely, smiling
softly. Zeke appeared uncomfortable as he thought about what he was
going to say.

“I sent her away to keep
her safe… You
can’t
leave, which means you aren’t safe. So, at the very least, I
would prefer it if you stayed away from anything that happens
regarding my old man from here on out,” he spit out. Through his
rushed words, I sensed his urgency at this topic.

“Zeke, I… How can I stay away when this
whole thing started with me?” Frowning, I sighed. “Tywin used my
father as a way to test how much he could influence Reid’s decision
all those years ago.”

Zeke started. “What? The Blood Contract
was because of Tywin?” I nodded. “I’m starting to think he might
have been more of a power-hungry fiend than we ever
imagined…”

He trailed off, a saddened expression
on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked, touching his arm
gently.

He glanced up at me, chuckling
sardonically. “Elyssa, if I’d believed Dmitri when he told me that
the old bastard killed our mother, we might not have ever come to
this point,” he said.

A familiar pang resonated in my chest.
“Without Tywin, I never would have come here,” I murmured
thoughtfully. “I never would have met you.” I dared to peek up at
him then, only to be startled by the intense look on his
face.

“You would be safe,” he whispered,
lifting one hand to touch my face softly. “You never would have
been touched by the woman-beater, never would have been scared out
of your wits by the perverted and power-hungry old man who just
refuses to die,” he said.

I opened my mouth with the intention of
protesting, but Zeke pressed a finger to my lips. “Stop. You know
it’s true,” he said sadly, tracing gently the outline of my lower
lip.

“No, I don’t. I don’t believe that for
a minute,” I said, brushing his hand away. “Just because a lot of
bad things have happened, doesn’t mean there haven’t been any good
memories, Zeke.” I realized that I was essentially taking back my
previous wish of letting Zeke run me out, and paused.

“Besides, since when are you this nice,
emotional guy?” I teased. He rolled his eyes and
shrugged.

“Just because
you
are incapable of
evolution, doesn’t mean we all are stunted,” he drawled, shifting
his weight from one leg to the other.

Rolling my eyes in return, I chuckled.
“There we go. A bit of the normal Zeke everyone knows and
loathes.”

Just then, the little monster inside me
decided that it was hungry, causing my stomach to growl, loudly. I
shot a glare down at my belly and sighed. “Time to feed the
monster, I suppose,” I chuckled, glancing up at Zeke.

Without missing a beat, he held out his
hand, and I placed my palm against his instantly. “Shall we?” he
asked, a mischievous shimmer in his eyes.

I should have known by then that I
could not really trust him, but the part of me that truly felt for
this man didn’t care, so I smiled up at him and nodded.

“Come on. We’ll find you something that
you can snack on, and then we’ll get you guys down to the
dungeons,” Zeke said.

At his words, my eyes widened, and I
began to jerk my hand away from his. He chuckled and held
on.

“For some blood, you silly woman.” He
glanced down to my stomach. “As much as I loathe you, I do care
about that little monster you are carrying,” he
chuckled.

I stopped walking, and he sighed,
glancing back at me. “What is it?”

“You loathe me?” I asked, ashamed that
my tone sounded a little sad at his sudden declaration of his
feelings.

His eyes widened as he realized what he
said, and I started to walk backward away from him. "Elyssa," he
murmured softly.

I almost didn't want to hear anything
that he was about to say. What if he said that it was true? If he
despised my very being, what was I supposed to do then?

But what if he claimed the opposite and
declared that he loved me...

Again.

Could I really handle that?

There were only so many options for
where this conversation could go, but it was enough to send me
running for the hills. There was no way in hell that I was ready to
talk to him about this right then.

"I think I'm just going to go eat on my
own," I whispered, turning around.

Zeke grabbed my upper arm and stopped
me from going any further than the few steps I'd already taken.
"No," he said firmly. "I cannot trust you to feed yourself and my
son, so I am going to monitor your eating habits personally from
here on out."

His statement shocked me. "What do you
care? Honestly?" I asked, scoffing. I yanked my arm out of his
grasp, and he let his hand hang there in the air. "You may have
sent Roxann away, but that changes nothing about how you feel. And
even though I'm carrying a Lanistter child, you have done some
pretty awful things in your long lifetime, Ezekiel Lanistter. What
the hell do you honestly care if I feed myself and this
child?"

My words obviously stung him, but I
stepped further away from him anyway, not caring. If he was going
to push me away, then I was going to help him with it.

For a moment, his true
nature shone through, and I could clearly see Zeke-The-Sadist
lurking just beneath the surface.
That
might be the key,
I thought, grasping onto
that idea as though it were my only lifeline.

"Hell, I bet you never even loved me or
Roxann. You are Zeke the cruel, Zeke the woman beater, after all,"
I sneered. "How could you possibly love a few humans all of a
sudden?"

He shot forward then, grabbing me by my
shoulders as he so often loved to do. "Are you calling me a liar?"
he hissed, leaning down to touch his forehead to mine.

Even though his words were angry, his
body language spoke in other ways, and I could tell that he was
fighting hard to play along.