Dominion (Book 1 of The Dominion Series) (15 page)

We take rooms in an inn nestled on the side of the mountains. Night fell several hours earlier, and I've fed and now stand in front of a basin of water, cleaning off the blood from the kill.

I watch Michel with Marguerite. He's sitting on the divan in front of the fire, having freshly bathed and wrapped in a sheet, his chest bare. She sits facing him, equally unclothed, enjoying his attentions as he feeds her sweet dates brought all the way from the Holy Land.

He plucks one after another from a small container and feeds her, kissing her after each morsel, smiling, enjoying himself. I'm not jealous – it's the most peaceful I've seen my brother for a very long time – even before he was turned. I feel no real love for Marguerite. She's beautiful, and she's smart in a feral way, but she's brutal and manipulative. I never know what she's planning next. Whatever it is, she tries to make Michel and I rivals for her affection, but neither of us play into her plans, much to her chagrin.

"These are so good, Michel," Marguerite says. "How sweet of you to get them for me. How thoughtful. Your brother doesn't seem to think of me the way you do."

I turn to face her, drying my hands on a towel.

"Rest assured, dear Marguerite, that I think of you constantly. You've made it impossible for me to do otherwise."

"Ignore my brother," Michel says and turns her face back to him. "Thoughts can be hidden, if one is strong enough. Only actions matter." He kisses her. "As for these, I purchased them from a vendor in the night market who had just returned from Jerusalem. I'm told they are the very best of their kind. You seem hungry and I'm only too pleased to feed your appetites. All of them." He smiles, and it's a wicked smile I've never seen on his face before.

"These are just so sweet. You are so sweet, I can't resist," Marguerite says as she chews on a date.

"You taught me not to resist," Michel replies and kisses Marguerite again, pulling away the sheet wrapped around her, his hand slipping down her neck to a breast, which he squeezes, his thumb circling her nipple. "To love submission to you in all things."

"And I'm so glad you no longer resist."

"Oh, I no longer resist any of my inclinations," Michel says, his voice low, husky. "Whether for sex or blood – or vengeance."

She pulls back at that and looks at Michel quizzically. Even I turn to regard my brother. What does he mean by that? Vengeance against whom?

"What do you mean, vengeance?" she says, a frown on her pretty brow.

But Michel ignores her. Instead, he pulls Marguerite into his arms and kisses her, a hand tangling in her long fair hair, his kiss silencing her questions. She lets him kiss her and slips her arms around his neck.

For my part, I pour a glass of wine and decide to go out onto the terrace while they play with each other so I can watch the stars. I'm in no mood to watch them go at it – again. Michel really seems to want to fuck her at every opportunity lately and I'm surprised and a bit saddened that he seems so ready to accept her domination, but his happiness is all that matters and Michel truly does finally seem to have accepted his lot. She has finally broken him and it has taken only two years.

I lean on the terrace rail, looking out across the valley below. A full moon hangs in the sky and thin wisps of cloud obscure the stars. I turn around and lean against the balcony rail, staring straight up in the other direction, hoping to catch sight of a few stars but the moon's too bright.

When I look back inside the room, I see Michel laying a naked Marguerite flat on the divan, his mouth moving from her lips to her neck and lower, tonguing her nipple as he squeezes her heavy breast. Her head is back, her eyes half-closed, and I can hear her sigh from where I stand. He moves lower and pleasures her while she runs her fingers through her long hair, moaning. Then, he rises over her once more, and her arms go around his neck, her legs wrap around his waist, and he fucks her for the second time today.

I turn back to the stars. It's nothing I haven't seen hundreds of times before. At first, when we were together in the early days, I found it hard to watch my brother with her and was uncomfortable with him watching me with her, but now, after being forced to do it for this long, it is as natural to us as breathing.

Instead of watching them, I watch the moon rise over the valley.

When I next turn back to the room, Marguerite appears to be asleep, for her eyes are closed and it's unusual for Marguerite to close her eyes during a sexual encounter, greedy as she is to watch her partner's pain or pleasure, depending on her mood.

Then, Michel stands and pulls on a pair of breeches. He turns and sees me on the terrace.

"Come," he says and pulls on the cassock of his vestments. "We don't have long. The potion will last less than an hour."

"Potion? What are you doing?" A jolt of fear races through me.

"Getting my revenge," Michel says without emotion. "I met a woman in town who claimed to have a potion that could make a witch powerless. Of course, I didn't believe it, but I thought I'd try anyway. I tried it, and Marguerite didn't even notice. Poor dear thought she'd simply drank too much wine. I decided to use it again. This time, I'm prepared."

"What are you planning?" I dress while Michel pulls his white surplice and alb over his head and slips on his boots. He straightens his vestments and runs a hand over his head to smooth his hair.

"The witch will burn, tonight. While you kept her busy last evening, I met with the Inquisitor and arranged for the local sheriff to come and take her away to the square. They're only too happy to have a witch burning as a lesson for the town." He slips on some gloves and then goes to a leather bag by the door. Inside is a long length of chain. It's shiny, and I know it's silver.

"Put your gloves on and help me," he says. "This will disable her. I'll have to gag her or she'll try to compel the humans who come too close to her."

I do as I'm told, my mind numb, slipping on my own gloves, and then help Michel tie up her hands and feet with the silver chains. Her skin burns, smoke rising from where the silver touches her bare skin. Whatever the magic is, it's powerful enough to prevent her from waking.

"You know this is going to displease her Sire," I say. "From what she's said, Soren's an Ancient. Very old and very powerful."

Michel shrugs as if he doesn't care. "I've never seen him, so he must not care too much for her. I'm leaving for London once this is done," he says. "Come with me and we'll start new lives there."

"You mean to go through with this? Destroying Marguerite? Has all this been an act?"

"I learned to act when I was very young, Julien," he says. "I acted obedient to father in an attempt to avoid his kicks and blows, and then to the Church, to avoid the same. I even appeared obedient to God since it was He who chose this fate for me. It helped me to appear obedient to Marguerite, but I never intended to be her slave forever."

"You surprise me." I watch dumbfounded as he places a balled-up piece of muslin into Marguerite's mouth and ties a strip of cloth around her head to keep it in place.

He stands up from his task. "I surprise myself, but a man reaches a point where he can no longer comply with his own debasement. Even a vampire."

A knock sounds at the door. Michel motions to me, and so I go to the door, admitting two men and the local Sheriff. A priest follows them in. He bows to Michel and the two speak in quiet voices as the guards pick up Marguerite and carry her, chains and all, out of the room.

"Won't she be questioned?" I pull Michel aside, unsure what I feel about this. "Do they not need a confession?"

He smiles. "That's been taken care of. A confession was written and signed, witnessed by me, trusted priest, loyal to the Holy Church. Money goes a long way to speeding up these things. We're so fortunate we have a great deal of it."

"You bribed the Inquisitor?" I'm stunned.

"I lost my illusions, brother, the night I lost my life." Michel motions to the door. "Let's go. I want to make sure this happens quickly, before I lose my resolve. She's a beautiful thing, and it wasn't her fault she was turned so young and with such little moral development. But she's still a monster and even if we were able to leave her, she will only create more vampires to fill her needs."

When I hesitate, not sure if I can support this, he puts his hands on my shoulders.

"Come," he says, his voice solemn. "Be free of her. If we don't do this now, we'll never escape her compulsion. I must be free to do God's work."

"I thought you said God abandoned you."

"God may have abandoned me, but that doesn't mean I need abandon Him. To the village square. There's a witch to burn."

"She's not a witch," I say in weak protest.

"If anyone is a witch, Marguerite is," Michel says. "She killed us both, Julien. She turned us both into monsters. She's bewitched me so that I am her slave."

"You enjoy her. I know you do."

Michel shakes his head and when he speaks, his voice is close to breaking.

"Can you even begin to imagine how that makes me feel?"

I shrug. I distanced myself from the Church after I left, but I now realize Michel hasn't, despite pretending to do so.

"How many humans has she killed?" he says. "Thousands? She'll never leave us. She must die. Surely you can see that?"

"And how many humans have you killed since you were turned?" I say, trying my best to argue her case, but in truth, I can't see any other way out. Both of us are compelled to serve her. Both of us unable to refuse her demands. "Are you going to kill yourself as well?"

Michel closes the door behind us as we leave the rooms.

"Not until I can find a way to kill us all."

A small crowd gathers in the village square. In the center, workmen raise a post and stack wood around it. The guards tie Marguerite to the post and then the priest joins Michel and together, the two say prayers in Latin and circle the pyre, anointing it with holy water while the guards pour pitch on it.

Finally, one of the guards lights the bed of wood and sticks with a torch. Marguerite appears still drugged, her head bowed forward, her long fair hair obscuring her pretty face. I hope that she doesn't regain consciousness for it will be a horrible death if she does.

"She was far kinder in the manner of death she chose for us," I say to Michel, unable to keep reproach from my voice, hating myself for not fighting harder to save her.

"What?" he says, almost sneering. "She denied you a knight's noble death, taking you off the battlefield, stealing your soul. She corrupted me, killing me on the altar in God's own house while she debauched me. She's tortured me. She wasn't kind, Julien. Not at all. If you think so, then you truly are besotted. When she's dead and we're both free of her compulsion, you'll see. You'll feel differently."

The flames leap around Marguerite, growing in intensity, and then I see her awaken, her head straightening. She glances around in a panic, her eyes wide. She screams but the sound is muffled due to the gag, and my heart squeezes at the thought of her suffering.

Yes, I've hated her at times, angry that she turned us both, angry that she used us, that she played with us, that she manipulated us using her greater powers, but she was only a young girl of eighteen when she was turned against her will and has apparently been abandoned by her Sire. She survived using her wits, and now she'll die because of her need for attention and affection, her willingness to believe she could corrupt a priest and make him into her sexual slave.

"For God's sake, won't you do something?"

"Do what?" Michel's arms are folded as if he's watching an amusing performance rather than the death of someone he's fucked a thousand times, but his face is tense, his jaw clenched.

"Ease her suffering – kill her quickly!"

"She deserves to suffer."

Michel seems immune to her pain, and so I find a long pole with a sharpened end stacked against the wall next to the blacksmith's shed and run to the pyre. I kick some burning embers aside and step onto the pyre, ignoring the flames licking at my breeches, and thrust the wooden point into Marguerite's heart so that she dies quickly, instead of slowly from fire.

I fall back off the pyre and roll on the dirt to extinguish the flames on my clothing. I go to where Michel stands mesmerized by the fire, his shoulders shaking. Is he laughing?

I turn his face to me. There are tears in his eyes.

"You have to understand," he says, his voice breaking. "She made me love it. She made me love being debauched." He shakes his head. "I'll never be the same."

Then he covers his eyes with his hands and I take him into my arms.

In a few hours, there's nothing left of Marguerite except a charred corpse and a gold chain with an ornate cross that she enjoyed wearing during sex, just to drive home how far she'd gone from the Church. I gather up her ashes, placing them and the remnants of her bones into a pail, picking the crucifix out from among the bones and teeth mixed with cinders and ash, wiping off the blackened soot. Ironic that besides her charred bones, the only thing left of her is a tiny crucifix – a symbol she loved to hate.

I take her remains and go to where Michel sits in the dirt, his head in his hands.