Inspire, Expire
So, Loren Blake has never been a favourite of mine. when I first started this series, I found him kinda creepy, and that scene in chosen? a world of no. But, this was given to me as a challenge, finding some hypothetical way to justify him. This will be very different from my characterization of him in my older piece, Volta.
Warnings: I do allude, sometimes what I see as a little crudely, to Loren's little scene with Zoey in Chosen. If you can handle his quote about sacrificing true love and a popped cherry to the god of deception and hormones, this shouldn't phase you.
Through everything, he'd been his light. He'd been his world, his muse, his inspiration, the other half of everything that was him, and naturally, as the time came, expiration, that moment when a young man becomes a jaded old creature. Inhale, exhale, inspire, expire, for every good thing, there would be a perfect opposite. But it hadn't always seemed to be so.
Loren blake had come to the House of night as a nobody, who's family hadn't even deigned to say goodbye. Immediately, the high Priestess had been there, to get him adjusted to the House of Night. Neferet was her name, and she was as spectacular as the ancient Egyptian roots of her name suggested. He'd aways had at least a little crush on her. And what was the harm? She was a beautiful priestess, with no consort he knew of. It worked nicely.
That is, until his twin brother joined him in the House of night. He was everything Loren wasn't. Dante was quiet, not of may words, but he was a warrior. He was full of quiet power, that took the world by storm. Sporting equipment bowed to him, as rightful king, where it bound Loren's limbs the instant he tried to use it. Loren was the mind, the poet, the one with the words, but Dante was the body.
And these two twins, they were both inseparable and unstoppable. If they set their mind to it, they would invariably succeed. Loren felt, for the first time, not just like the skinny, nerdy writer he'd been as a human, but like someone important, the other half of a team destined for greatness.
That is, until Dante forgot him utterly. Loren had been the bard who spun the tales of their exploits until, part of the way through their second year, Dante started seeing the girl. Loren had had girlfriends, but none that superseded family. Dante was obsessed with this girl though, the head of the Dark Daughters. Oh, they were the story book romance, weren't they? The big manly warrior finding his sensitive other half in some girl who didn't even know him, except what the inside of his throat tasted like on the tip of her tongue.
So, in short, Loren was jealous. Not because he couldn't have had any girl he wanted, because with his silver tongue, lovers were a dime a dozen, if that was what he sought. He didn't want to be loved by meaningless fans, that kins of idolization that would be a love for his image, and not for Loren Blake, like a person.
That is, until Neferet took an interest in his work. She stroked his ego like the cats she could speak to, through her affinity. Read his mind like a book, and wrote out both his fondest dreams and darkest fears. Nothing escaped the omniscient, and in that moment, he swore she was. But she liked his work, and sent only his best to the high council.
Poet Laureate, the first male poet Laureate in longer than Neferet had been alive. The title was beyond his wildest dreams, and Neferet promised it to him, on one condition, that he survive to make the change. And that night that he'd been promised everything, he wanted to celebrate it with the little piece of family that he had. But Dante wasn't in his room that night—or rather, that day, because of the reversed times. Loren daringly went into the girl's dorms, searching for him, but he wasn't there, not until he knocked on that girl's door, and she opened it, eyes red. "No, really, I'm fine," Dante insisted, coughing slightly.
Coughing slightly. It was a soft enough noise, but it resonated through Loren's head, breaking everything into duct, ash, nothingness. Loren had no words for this, it was unspeakable, unthinkable, a thoughtless calamity, rocking his world, and jerking his girl just sent Dante with him, and Loren didn't sleep that day. On the day he'd been promised the world, he lost his part of it.
They stayed up all that day, talking, Loren's words like a leaking faucet, flowing and ceasing awkwardly, cut off by coughing, as his brother, the strong one, became weaker and weaker. He remembered holding the brunette, and screaming for Neferet, as he first hacked up blood. He remembered the daily sky turning black with grief as the priestess said this was Nyx's choice, and he couldn't save his brother. He remembered feeling like everything in him was crumbling to pieces, like fragile didn't begin to describe him, as he held the boy who's been his twin, his opposite, his only family. The blood smelled so sweet, but the tears just tasted bitter, and he bid the only person who'd had any purchase on his affections goodbye.
"Remember me, Loren," had been Dante's last plea, before he stopped coughing, and Neferet, in a hollow, empty voice, pronounced him a different kind of dead from the one humans thought vampyres to be. And she gave Loren a tube of some white liquid, telling him it would help him sleep.
He kept taking it, trusting her. Neferet had consoled the inconsolable boy, telling him of the way she'd lost her mother, her first cat. Loren clung to her stories, as he forgot his own, asking her why Nyx hadn't saved her cat, his brother. He needed a scapegoat, and he picked one well, the only one who wouldn't make excuses. Neferet fed it, feeding him goopy white lies, until he broke that sacred promise, and he lost that grief, that love, lost even his faith in his goddess, until all that was left was anger, and nothingness.
The day he made the change, he was awarded the title of Vampyre Poet Laureate, both the youngest and the first ever male, and he didn't feel a thing. The spewed him sonnets of empty words. He just felt cold, and he shared that with the only kindred spirit he knew, the High Priestess. She made him feel something that night: lust, blind attraction. He was a museless poet, hashing out words by rhyme-scheme, by what felt levels of complete he didn't understand, and he didn't even know why.
And she was able to play that void like a well-tuned instrument. as ever, she spelled his darkest fears and wildest dreams out to him, played them like a lullaby on the strings of his crumbling mind. She even told him definitively who he was and wasn't, and how to be it. And all he ever told her was yes. He let her in his body and mind, let her play him like an instrument, and let the chains that bound him to his long-dead brother become her strings, to make him dance for her, serve her bidding.
And when she'd told him to seduce the girl, make her reveal her secrets, he'd refused to even use his own words. He'd lied, and lied, and quoted, because she was a mission, and he didn't even know to what end, he was caught in a maze, in a mess, bound in the strings that controlled him. His words were empty, and so too was the man writing them.
It didn't take long before it all was torn asunder by the spinning blades of fate (or, in layman's terms, defecation met oscillation.) Many sacrifices were made that day, the first being true love and a popped cherry to the god of deception and hormones. Neferet liked that one. She'd slithered all over him, and in her joy at another's destruction, he saw that he was just her tool to it. No better than if she'd hired a common streetwalker, and used them to extract information from the child. But the blood, the sacrifice was on his hands. And that alone hadn't been what stirred him from bed, feeling the child's pain in the front of his mind, it was the primitive part of his brain, screaming in impulses that caused him to finally see the other person who saw.
Pale as the snow, starved for his affections, eyes red as death, he saw his brother. He ran from the room, leaving a frustrated Neferet who'd prove to be his undoing later. Forbidden memories exploded through his consciousness, bringing him to where he'd spent most of this accursed day, his knees. He remembered. She'd made him forget, but he never would. Loren ran after Dante, noticing where they were, just on the east wall.
Dante shoved him, hand moving forcefully to crush him into dust, as he flet like he was. the void was so close to being filled, Loren could have a family, if only he hadn't been trying to fill it another way. Ironic that his efforts better served to keep him from everything he'd fought for.
And it was then that the figure stepped away, and ,stifling a tear that shone like ice crystals, said the words, pronounced his sentence as a sacrifice. "You forgot me," he said, diamond tears shining from normally barren eyes, before he became dreams, and fog, and eventually nothing but razor-edged memories.
Neferet was brutal, the way she killed him. Merciless. It was like he'd finally seen, she'd been holding back this whole time, and it all bubbled up, all the anger, all the rage. She was a better actress than he, but he'd learned to lie well enough. And in blood, and truth, and karma, he was spilled across the pavement, and she walked away, licking it off her hands as she went.
Loren, meanwhile, entered the otherworld to the turned back of his brother, and, for the fourth tin today, got down, this time, in repentance, to the goddess and to the rest of himself, "inspiration, when taken becomes expiration," he explained, voice caught on a plea, "and through everything, this life had one light, one star to shine beside the moon. Who was I to look up once it was gone, and see black?" he began his story, but words were cheap with a silver tongue.