Afflicted

It is very strange to live in a house where almost everyone in it wants to eat you, Charlotte mused. Her fingers wound around in one of the holes in her skirt. Valek hated when she dressed this way, after Sarah had given her so many of her old clothes. Charlotte just didn't fit into any of them. It wasn't her body. It was life. She couldn't picture herself trapped in that house in Sarah's beautiful hand-me-downs, awaiting nightly feedings by her adopted Vampire coven, when Valek was out there trying to figure out how to save their world. She wished they'd all just move beyond their fears of being caught by a forgotten Regime member, and go hunt other humans on their own. She wished they'd all just find an easier answer for sustenance instead of continuing to be so reliant on her, simply because she was there and they were comfortable with her. But as her scar blazed along the side of her neck, she was reminded of the horrible truth. She needed them as much as they still needed her.

She couldn't shake the memory of the nightmare. She couldn't just lose herself in the serene silence of peaceful thoughts. The only thing that remained, replaying over and over, was the vision of Valek and the woman over him in the bed. It wasn't the same jealous sensation Charlotte experienced when she'd found him with Evangeline. This was more finite. More like an omen. She ground her teeth as developing tears stung at the corners of her eyes.

The scar at the side of Charlotte's throat, which had finally cooled for about an hour, thanks to Sarah, began to blaze again up the side of her cheek, to her temple and down along her left shoulder blade. It wasn't insufferable yet, just an annoying discomfort. Squirming, she dug her nails into the skin of her thigh to distract herself. She didn't ever imagine Valek's initial bite that evening, so many nights ago, would leave such an intolerable impact. Nightly it plagued her. It begged to be ruptured again. That was what it desired-for her to be bitten by the same set of incisors that had created it. It was the only thing to pacify her. Maybe it was her body telling her it craved something more. Something Valek would never give her in a million years. To be like him.

Her life had changed so vastly over the course of the past few months. As it turned out, her happily-ever-after hadn't ended so happily after all.

The small gaggle of Vampires had become Charlotte's new family in spite of all of the discord. They'd moved from Prague, which was still under siege, back to their modest, Bohemian Occult village, hidden from the rest of the world and its mundane, mortal towns and cities. She was a part of the magic, though alone in her mortality.

Valek had reestablished the rules, however, once the coven of rogues moved in. He kept his promise to Charlotte, challenging Francis' original agreement that she would be looked after and protected by the coven as long as she remained their exclusive source of blood. The new agreement was this: Valek would house his new family, protecting them from the eyes of whatever was left of the Regime, as long as they promised not to lay a single talon on Charlotte. Begrudgingly, they obliged, though not without sneaking tastes here and there. And Charlotte could hardly help herself anyway, needing them as much as they still wanted her. Whenever Valek caught one of them with her, the consequences were always gruesome for the perpetrator. It caused Charlotte's innards to twist with guilt upon hearing their painful cries from downstairs, in Valek's office, as he punished them. The fault was always at least half hers.

The left side of the ornately carved double doors creaked open, and a pair of lavender, ballet-flat clad feet toed in over the polished wood floor. Sarah padded back into the library almost silently. It had been nearly an hour since she'd left and Charlotte wondered what she'd been doing. She watched the Witch as she drew deeper into the study, carrying with her a silver tray of the enchanted food. There was her answer.

A ceramic teacup rattled atop it and a plate of the fresh sweet rolls she'd been mixing earlier enveloped the room with their heady, cinnamon smell. It was actually enough to make Charlotte sick to her stomach. The spicy scent burned in Charlotte's nose, a catalyst for the bile lifting once more in the back of her throat. She held her breath as she willed herself not to dry heave. There was nothing in her stomach to regurgitate anyway, but she didn't even want to think about eating. The scar produced such strange effects. There was only one thing she craved now. Her fingers wound in tight, impatient knots in the material of her dress.

"You don't have to eat it until later, Charlotte," Sarah muttered, as if she heard precisely what Charlotte was thinking. It wasn't the first time someone in that house had answered one of Charlotte's thoughts. Everyone had a key to her mind. It was entirely frustrating not to have any privacy at all.

Sarah knelt down next to her on the library floor and affectionately ran her fingers through Charlotte's curls, her nails slightly grazing the back of her neck. It made Charlotte shiver.

"Ready?" she whispered after a moment.

Her voice wavered, like it held some heavy emotion. Sadness? Charlotte squinted at the space in front of her and wondered why. What she was going through now was entirely her own business. She didn't want to worry anyone else. Especially Sarah, her very best friend.

"Where is he?" Charlotte asked desperately, wanting just to fix her addiction so everything could go back to normal for a short time. Her words came out rough, like sandpaper. Every sensation about the room had been magnified a hundred times, it seemed. Due to Sarah's magic or her scar, she had no idea. The crackling blaze in the fireplace in front of her bellowed in her ears like a roaring brush fire.

Sarah's touch, light on her shoulder, might as well have been hundreds of tiny electric shocks zapping at her skin. Even the Witch's breath in her ear was enough to chill her like the harsh winter wind from outside. Charlotte swallowed. Even that was painful.

Sarah stood up again, and almost tiptoed back to the library door. Her creeping feet, however careful she was, sounded like an elephant parade. Charlotte shut her eyes against the noise that created a pulse in her eardrum, another miserable side effect. Something suddenly oozed slickly from the inside of her ear. Blood.

Sarah pulled the left side of the door closed before the right, bolting them together at the center of the threshold. Charlotte's pulse reacted to the impending knowledge of what was coming.

"They're home," Sarah warned, her voice low and grim.

As if on cue, dozens of ravenous, screeching howls wailed from outside the house walls, loud enough that the foundation seemed to quake beneath them. At a distance, it sounded like the blood-curling songs of the sirens that inhabited the banks of the Vltava River-haunting. Threatening. Though very far away, the wave of harrowing screams echoed closer and closer with each passing second. A swarm that sounded like it was headed straight for Charlotte, like they had pinpointed her exact location. She could sense them closing in on all sides. Her heart slammed to the front of her chest, her fingers winding tighter around the material of her dress, though her eagerness swallowed the fear whole. The excitement they would soon arrive electrocuted the ends of her nerves as she shifted, leaning more forward on her knees.

The sound drew nearer. It raced through the front door, so close, her eardrum felt like it might burst. Her pulse raced in her throat, stopping the flow of oxygen. Though her vision had gotten blurry again, she could see Sarah guarding the doors from within the library. She stood there, with her back pressed against the entrance, her eyes tearing, like she wanted to reach for Charlotte, though she did not move from her place there.

They were just outside of the library doors then. She lurched forward, her hands cupped tightly around her ears, begging for relief from the hellish noise as the scratching and pounding began to fuse with the banshee wailing. Her mouth fell open. She screamed as tears began to roll from her eyes, though her own voice she could not hear over theirs. She pulled her quivering hands from her ears and looked to see fresh blood staining her fingertips, and heaved. Everything seemed to swirl together. Their granite talons, hard and stone-like, pounded against the library doors, demanding access to her as Sarah quickly moved her hands to hex the lock.

Charlotte forced herself to open her eyes, looking to Sarah who had turned to face the door again, both of her white hands gripping tightly around the baroque brass handles, holding them in place in case her hex failed and the assailants burst through. She had her forehead pressed to the doors.

"Stop!" Someone bellowed from the outside of Charlotte's library sanctuary.

This noise was the only thing that differed from the rest. It was velvet and soothing and the raging chaos on the other side of the library doors was instantly pacified, going as silent as the crypt. The whole world quieted.

Sarah frantically rushed to Charlotte again in the middle of the library floor. Clawing at her face, the Witch pried her jaw open to pop something inside. Charlotte instantly recognized it as one of her chocolate beads.

"Here," Sarah's words came out breathlessly. "Swallow that. It will at least give your blood a head start to replenish. If you must do this, at least be wise about it!"

Charlotte relaxed her shoulders a little as the chocolaty marble slid down the back of her throat. The eeriness from the outside seemed to seep in through the crack under the door, and she knew the peace was only very temporary. Sarah's magic always did something to quell her addiction-related suffering. And while it calmed the beasts from the outside, it also did something to subdue her pain as well. The sweltering dimmed at the side of her neck, and it felt like she could breathe again, even if it was just for a moment. She fixed her eyes wide on the doors, waiting for him to come through.

Pulling her forehead from the polished wood, Sarah opened the doors just a crack to be sure. Charlotte had been their host, their carrier, for months, since she and Valek had found the coven's hideout in the middle of Prague. That had been the agreement settled upon by Valek and the coven's leader, Francis. But they weren't allowed to feed from her anymore. They had learned to keep their bloodlust satiated until each found other victims. That's the way it had been settled since they all moved in. But that did not change the fact that the smell of her blood still called to them. And even though they'd been out hunting all day for the light-magic blood that would satisfy their addictions to the sunlight, night was coming, and they still required something else. Something warm, and thick, and mortal. The thing that would keep them animated for eternity.

Sarah proceeded to open the library doors wider. The dust from the ransacked foyer settled in the overwhelming red and orange light of dusk. Charlotte watched frozen in the stillness as Sarah's motions were slow, careful.

A single male emerged from the back. The group respectfully parted in two halves for him as he slowly pushed forward. His silhouette was tall, dark, and threatening, and seemed to overtake the others surrounding him. It was more than just his physicality. It was his very presence that seemed to carry so much power.

Charlotte felt her lip quiver, as her world sank into slow motion. She kept her gaze locked on his form as he slinked toward her, slick across the floorboards, as though his bottom half were serpentine. The scar on her neck singed again with the sight of him alone, though this time, the pain was much worse as he drew nearer. Seductive in each lick, the most intense it had been all evening. She winced, but she dared not move. Caught in his trance, she continued to watch Valek approach. Her mouth fell open as another lump formed in her throat. Instinctively, she willed him closer. Needing.

His hair hung long and dark in silken layers around his pearly face, luminous as the surface of the moon. All of his motions were graceful and fluid-hypnotizing. His broad shoulders rolled slightly back with each step as he crossed the threshold. She had been trapped in that house, day after day, it was true. However, now as he entered the study, she wanted nothing more than to be locked within his lean, muscular arms. He kept them well hidden behind a white linen shirt and black, seersucker vest with a garnet tie. A monster dressed as a gentleman. He continued to shield his glacier gaze under a bed of thick lashes. But when he finally lifted it to lock with Charlotte's, she could see his eyes were deep and immersed in shiny ink. Black. It sent a new jolt of electricity up her spine and made her desire for him all the more desperate. She yearned to reach for him, but the pain at the side of her throat kept her joints and muscles leaden.

Valek lowered himself steadily to the floor in front of her, a smile playing around his full and perfect lips with the plunging Cupid's bow. She saw his gaze flick to her scar-the door that marked one of the entryways to her pulse. He lifted his hand to trace the length of it with one of his graceful claws. Charlotte shivered again. Her toes curled.

"Dobry vecer." Valek smiled his good evening at Charlotte.

Continuing to gaze, transfixed, at his mouth, she could not reply back to him. Addicted. Needing. She nearly forgot the other thirsty gazes watching from the doorway now. As far as she was concerned, they were the only two in the house. Perhaps they could be the only two in the entire Occult City. That's what she wanted, so that's what she told herself.

Sarah quickly closed and bolted the library doors again, shutting out the other undead gazes from the room, as if hearing Charlotte's most recent thoughts. When he'd left her that morning, he'd promised he would only be an hour or so. What had taken him so long? Her fingers twitched for the top button of his shirt. A new desire started bubbling toward the back of her mind.

Valek chuckled darkly. "I needed to collect the others. Everyone was scattered out in the daylight. I apologize for taking longer than expected. I didn't know they were going to take such advantage of the afternoon."

Charlotte didn't respond, continuing to fix her gaze on the fangs concealed behind his lips.

Valek frowned as he began to trace the area just under her eyes. They felt heavier to her as she started to notice them, too. She was tired from the harrowing pain that was now starting to return again, in soft waves that were growing more intense by the second. Her nightmares didn't exactly allow her much rest. The visions from them began to resurface again, but she instantly shoved them away. The touch of his claws left a curious, electric prickle just under her skin, as Sarah's had. She noticed a sudden sadness that painted a thick glaze over his eyes, but it simply wasn't something for her to concentrate on now. Not now, when her own need had become so intense, wrapping her around in its dizzying and anguishing haze.

This wasn't entirely his fault. Nights ago, she had egged him on-wanted him to do it the first time-wanted him to be the first one to do it. To feed on her. An act so disgustingly desirable. Beautiful. Seducing. This was her fault. She'd allowed her human desires to take over and get the better of her. Though how could either of them have predicted that it would affect her like this?

She'd developed something Valek had never seen before in all of his years of practice. There had been similar symptoms in extreme alcoholics and drug addicts, symptoms that existed even in the magical world. Addiction was everywhere. Living in the Occult, Valek told her he thought he'd seen it all, but never had he come across a human being who had become addicted to the bite of a Vampire. The roles and the needs were suddenly reversed. Mirrored. Perhaps, she thought, because Valek had never given another human being the possibility of surviving long enough to develop the same disease.

"Lottie." The depth of his tone echoed down the hollow tunnel of her mind. She couldn't concentrate, couldn't find the muscles in her face that formed words so she could answer him. His mouth called to her, beckoned her toward it like she wanted to give away all of her life to it-a sacrifice, an offering. An obsession. He stroked affectionately underneath her chin and once across her left cheek. Her eyes didn't even shift despite the cold feeling of his fingers.

"What's happened to you?" His lovely, black eyes narrowed. Demonic eyes. She was trapped in their spell.

Once again, his words came at her through a tunnel. Words that her mind was unable to comprehend, though she heard them clearly-almost too clearly. She winced. Valek closed his mouth, not uttering anything further.

Unable to tear her gaze away from his lips, she felt the tug toward him strengthen. She shifted her weight onto her knees, reaching up to graze his pale mouth with her fingers. She began to pull his lips apart, but he stopped her, gently pushing her hand away from his face with his own.

Valek sighed, his sweet breath making the room tilt in the other direction. Maybe it wasn't the bite she was addicted to. Maybe it was just him. Maybe the bite was the only way for her to be as close to him as humanly possible.

His freezing hand clutched her jaw as he turned her face to one side, exposing her bare neck to his mouth. This sent a new jolt of excitement through Charlotte's entire body, making her nerve endings light like the live end of Sarah's wand.

Valek shifted his weight to his knees, leaning forward so that his lips lightly grazed the skin just above her shoulder. A new wave shocked her system. His other hand moved to the top of her thigh, gripping it, so he could steady himself against her.

Valek sank his incisors deep into that scar-that entry to her whole life.

Charlotte gasped, eyelids flying open, as the ice picks pushed down into her warm flesh. Her blood was hot as it rolled out of her and seeped into a puddle at the hollow of her collarbone. She reached up, tugging hard at Valek's long hair. So luxuriant, she wanted to swim in all its layers. A small moan slipped from her, the pain both satisfying and numbing. It was almost as if the entire room had disappeared out from underneath her, as if she was wading through a cool, black pool of nothing and the only thing she could feel was the sensation of Valek locked against her. She wanted to give it all to him. She lost feeling in her fingertips and in her toes.

She knew Valek reveled in it as well, as he pulled the life from her. This truly was the closest she could ever be to him. She knew that. When they were linked like this, it was almost as if she had a peek into his mind, as if she could physically feel for herself how her blood soothed and satisfied the squelching flames under his skin. When they were this together, their minds seemed to fuse into one.

His dead heart gave one gushing pound against her sternum as it soaked up her life like a sponge. He clung to her as he clung to life. Drums, whether it was her pulse or his new, temporary one-she couldn't tell-pounded in both of their ears. They were entirely connected by the depth of his dark kiss.

Valek stopped just as she noted that her heartbeat had begun to slow. He backed away carefully, wiping his mouth. She watched his face, his breathing staggered, as if he wasn't entirely ready to pull away from her yet. But there was some other emotion living in his eyes, too.

The wound at the side of her neck immediately began to sew itself back up from the weird biology of Valek's saliva. The Vampire's need for self-preservation, to keep the secret, carried right down to their biological make-up. No human could be privy to the existence of magic or the undead. No human except Charlotte, of course.

The blurriness about the room drifted back into coherency. Charlotte lay there in his arms for a few silent moments as her mind reeled from the experience. She breathed a slight sigh of relief as she the pain started to fade. All of her odd trepidations about him and her nightmare had disappeared, as well as the tense pounding in her head. The smell from Sarah's sweet rolls no longer nauseated her, and in fact, she even sort of wanted one. Her stomach spoke on cue.

Valek's hand tightened around hers. Somewhere in the distance of her mind, she heard his voice calling her name, though as she began to focus on the present, the sound reverberated louder in her consciousness. Finally, she shifted her gaze to his face, and there he was. In full focus, right there, holding her.

"Hello." His lips contorted into an odd sort of sad smile.

Her gaze traced the contours of his face as she watched his irises shift back from black to their heart-stopping blue. "Hello," she finally replied.

"Better?" His tone held that same disconcerting element that his eyes carried.

Charlotte frowned as she searched for what it was she wanted to say. I'm sorry was the first thing that came to mind.

He only smiled his reply to her thought. "Sarah. Do you have the tea?" Valek beckoned without so much as a glance in her direction.

Charlotte sat up slowly as Sarah began walking over to them. She had completely forgotten the Witch, who had been in the room with them the whole time.

"I have more than that, tonight." Sarah proudly marched to the end table where she rested the silver tray. She picked up the small, ceramic saucer with the sweet rolls and held it out for Charlotte to take.