On second thoughts, I've decided to do Vlad-POVs to go with all the chapters. This is (finally) the first of those. Enjoy! I'd love some reviews if you can manage it.
Disclaimer: Not mine...
Vlad had zoned Bertrand plenty of times, of course, but he'd never really given much thought to the effects.
He knew it was a rare and powerful trick, because Bertrand had told him and Bertrand was never wrong about these matters. He knew it was important to practice, knew it would incapacitate his enemies – blood, he even knew it was supposed to hurt – but somehow he'd never followed the train of thought far enough to realise that he was hurting Bertrand, that his valet was experiencing that same excruciating terror.
He'd thought, in fact, that his tutor was going soft in his old age, that he was losing his resistance to these methods, that he might even be letting him win. He still didn't entirely trust the man, after all; what if he was pretending to be hurt so that Vlad would never learn to do the job properly? At least he had the imprisonment part down; he could be certain of that.
Then Malik had produced that shield from nowhere, and Vlad had been sucked into a void, a screaming void that threatened to drive him insane just before it deafened him. The noise was everywhere, though he clamped his hands over his ears, and he couldn't move. He couldn't see, either, though he stared blindly upwards without knowing why.
Someone would come, he told himself even as he added his voice to the screaming multitude, someone would save him. Bertrand would do his best to save him, as he always did.
But you did this to him, his treacherous brain reminded him, more than once. Would you save you?
Then the world shattered, and he was curled on the floor, shaking.
Bertrand reached out for him, but Vlad couldn't bear to look at him, sick to his stomach as he realised what he'd done to him in all those training sessions, how he must have suffered. A little stiffness as he got to his feet, and Vlad had thought him weak – blood, he didn't know how he'd done it, let alone how he'd allowed him to put him through that agony over and over again, for longer and longer periods...
He pushed his tutor away in disgust, tried to focus on what the others were saying, on their accusations against Bertrand. Yes, that made sense. If Bertrand had turned on him, he didn't have to feel so bad.
He shouted at him to get away and saw the flicker of hurt in the older vampire's eyes before he obeyed. Vlad barely made it to his own coffin room before he collapsed again.