Author's note: Holy crap this has been long in coming. This chapter isn't going to make much sense . . . thankfully, sense isn't what I was aiming for. Enjoy!
Hot skin, cold steel table at his back. A terrible pain was building in his skull and threatening to explode in his chest. It took him several minutes to understand why he couldn't move, until he saw the silver manacles fastening his wrists and ankles to the steel surface. A woman clothed in medical scrubs was sliding a needle into his arm when a shadow behind her slit her throat and held the woman above him so that the thick stream of red poured into his mouth. He fed. The shadow took hold of the stake embedded into his chest and yanked it free, and he screamed. A grimace fixed onto its face, the shadow opened a black book and picked up the sharp tools lying on the tray and set to work. Through the agony, a name spilled from his lips over and over. He called out through the long night to a savior who did not come.
"Malakai!"
Even half conscious, he could still recognize the tormentor who stabbed into his flesh with needles and scalpels and drained his blood. The voice that had condemned him for his obsessive love was the very same that whispered dark incantations in his ears and called out orders for his own men to die so that he would be fed . . . he cursed weakly, praying to a god he did not believe in for these nights to end. To be allowed to die. Anything to make the pain stop.
But then . . . the shadow disappeared . . . and the soldiers guarding his door went away too. And when they left, so did the sweet warmth of blood they dripped into his mouth while they burned and cut and branded him.
His body was broken. They had torn apart his chest to play with his insides and put something in there, something dark that called his name. His hands had been used as a canvas for a scorching brand. He reached inward to find the shadow of his powers to release him from the manacles that bound him and found nothing. Nothing. Hours ticked away in his mind and he kept searching. But there was nothing there to find.
His body began to heal. The precious blood they had fed him began to fuel his body as the flesh knitted itself back together. But the pain didn't stop. It would never stop, not ever, his punishment. Bloodlust began to burn in his veins, his throat. He felt like he was suffocating. It didn't take long for him to begin screaming. And not long at all for him to start hallucinating. Memories buried deep beneath three centuries of bloodshed emerged in his pain-induced delirium.
"Malakai . . ."
He's never coming. I'll never see him again.
31 days of confinement in the dark cell. 31 days and nights alone. He was barely alive. There wasn't a shred of sanity left in him. He was a monster in a man's body. Something gentle reached for him from far away. Something cool and soft. He lashed out at it with what was left of his mind. It enveloped him.
Vlad.
Malakai . . .
Remember me.