At other times, his lighthearted brother might have made a quip, but the expression on Warin’s face seemed to startle him enough to alter his usual tactics for dealing with his elder’s often volatile moods. “You are a vampire, Warin,” he said calmly. “Haven’t you told me all these years that we live to please the beast within? You were the one who taught me to take pride in what I am. Now, tell me what has brought this foul mood upon you, my blood?”
Aleric wrapped his strong arm around Warin’s shoulders, easing just a sliver of the heavy burden behind his ribs. Few of their kind were lucky enough to have such a bond with their Sire’s other offspring—but then again, few had the dark history he shared with Aleric.
“There was a girl,” he said softly, letting the wind carry his words away from his blood-smeared lips.
Aleric perked up, and Warin could see his nostrils twitch, undoubtedly searching for hints of sexual congress. His brother had a weakness for human females and the delights they offered. “Yeah?”
“She made me feel…” He grasped for the right words to describe exactly what Thea had made him feel and failed. “Wrong,” he finally settled on, scrunching up his nose at the inadequacy of the term. “So… wrong.”
“Wrong how? Was she pretty?”
Though Warin could see Aleric was doing his best to understand what he was talking about, he was not at all grasping the troubling unease the human girl had stirred deep in his very core. He snorted at the unimportant notion of her looks. “I care not about prettiness.”
Aleric heaved a sigh next to him. “And that, my friend, is why you’re sitting on a cliff, brooding, instead of delighting in what the village has to offer. Do we need to go south again? You seemed to enjoy feasting on Romans.”
Warin scoffed. What he had enjoyed was killing priests, showing them that he was a much stronger power than the god they prayed to while he played with them. The memory instigated an unpleasant and unexpected twinge in that dark place behind his ribs. He rubbed at his chest and, for the first time since he had known about their existence, worried that vampires might fall ill. Perhaps he was sick?
The thought was troubling, and was followed by a host of thoughts and emotions he couldn’t make sense of. Great. More confusion. He hated not understanding a problem. The few times he had met such an anomaly in the past, it had been easy enough to solve it by wreaking havoc upon whatever the root of it was. This time… he didn’t even know how to figure out what the root was.
Warin collapsed onto his back and stared up at the starlit sky, feeling small and hollow and not at all like the powerful creature he had been for the past centuries. Wrong.
“Brother…” Aleric’s voice was rough with concern. Warin couldn’t blame him. If he didn’t feel so empty, he’d be concerned too. This—whatever this was—was a far cry from the vampire who had saved them both from the clutches of their Sire and spent centuries feasting on human blood across the European continent. But even the ever-present beast inside of him was quiet now, curled up and aching.
“Warin,” Aleric tried again. His auburn head appeared above Warin, blocking out his view of the night sky. “Do you need… an Ancient?”
The suggestion was so ridiculous that the despair in his chest withdrew enough for an incredulous snort to make its way up his lungs and out his nostrils. “I am not dying. I have no need for an Ancient’s blood. And even if I did, how do you suggest we find one willing to trade his blood without demanding our lives in return? I would rather perish than be enslaved.” Again.
The mere notion of submitting to an Ancient’s will made the wounded beast in his chest rear its head with a snarl. Never!
“I would steal the blood, if need be. Just tell me what you require, brother, and I will bring it.”
The devotion in the tall vampire’s otherwise fierce face paired with his ludicrous words ignited a smile across Warin’s tainted lips. He lifted a palm off the ground and cupped Aleric’s strong jaw with it. “You will do no such thing. I value your companionship far too much to see you attempt to take on an Ancient. I will find an answer to this on my own.”
Aleric frowned down at him, his blue eyes not displaying any sort of conviction. “What is ‘this’? I don’t understand what’s wrong with you. We have raided countless villages with this group of Vikings. But after this one… I find you like this. Is it a curse? Was the girl a witch?”
Maybe it was a curse. He felt relatively sure Thea wasn’t a witch, but that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t have cast some form of protection over her house. Or her.
In either case, the answer would lie with her.
Warin sat up as a piece of the puzzle snapped into place. She was the root of this problem.
The insignificant human with her sea-green eyes was the key.
His beast growled in agreement, and an odd exhilaration traveled through his body in response. He cast a glance up at the sky and saw the first signs of the impending sunrise in the east as the dark black of night gave way to deep blue. Whatever fix there was to the problem, he wouldn’t have time to execute it tonight. But tomorrow night, he would rise, and then he would act. And whatever “this” was, he knew the root of it now.
One way or the other, the dull ache in his chest would go away when he rose again.
Despite the still-looming pressure behind his ribs, he got to his feet in a single, smooth movement and looked up at his taller companion. “Let us go to ground. Tomorrow night will be better.”
His brother watched him warily, clearly bewildered with the sudden change, but he followed him wordlessly as he darted for the nearby tree line to find a resting place.
Chapter 3
Aleric
The fresh soil crumbled around Aleric's up-stretched hand as he broke through the surface and into the evening chill. His usual elation at waking up surrounded by the embrace of the Earth coursed through his veins, along with a pang of hunger. He pushed through to the dirt and jumped out of the makeshift grave he’d dug for the night, ready to run, fight, hunt.
Then his gaze fell on his brother, who had climbed out of his own grave moments before, and a sinking feeling nestled in his gut.
The dark-haired vampire was crouched on the ground, peering up at the stars as if lost in thought, his deceptively young face void of the usual ferocity that had marked his features in most of the years Aleric had known him.
Whatever it was that had possessed him the night before, it clearly hadn’t passed.
“Good evening, brother,” Aleric called, discreetly scenting the air for the taint of sorcery. There was none. If it was witchcraft, the trace of it was long gone. “How did you rest?”
Warin looked at him over his shoulder, an odd fire behind his blue eyes. “We will be leaving the raiders tonight. Feed quickly—we are traveling further inland.”