AN: I'm glad you guys are enjoying this. Let me know what you think!
Chapter Three
As the last rays of the sun disappeared behind the horizon, giving birth to the night, Eric rose from his coffin. He'd been awake for nearly a half an hour already, but chose to lie in his place and think. He made plans on how to retrieve the woman from the box because he knew, somehow, that she had no intention of returning to him despite her promise. Throughout the day, he felt none of the fear he should have given she intended to hunt and kill more vampires. Any rational person would be afraid. He felt nothing, in fact, aside from determination so strong he could taste it, so he knew, deep inside, that she fled rather than come back. He wasn't surprised. He expected it, in fact.
Eric pushed open the lid to his coffin with every intention of hunting his prize down and chaining her up in a much smaller box when he smelled it. Cleaning supplies, the stench so chemical he could smell it no matter the distance. He sighed. Apparently Ginger had cleaned up the mess.
Already exasperated just thinking about the work he would have to put in that night, Eric trudged through Fangtasia to the main belly of the bar, and paused. With his hand extended and the tips of his slender fingers barely pressed to the door, he noticed that it had been repaired. In fact, the bright glitter of new brass caught his attention quickly, as did the unpainted frame they were screwed into. He arched a brow curiously. With a gentle push, the door swung open silently on the new hinges.
The smell of chemicals hit him strongly, forcing his narrow nose to curl. He scowled and stopped breathing immediately to save himself the burning it caused, but the scowl vanished when his eyes fell to the pristine layout. Not a chair or table out of place, not a hint of blood remained. Everything glittered like new, even the black and white tiled floor.
Eric stepped deeper into the bar, his keen eyes searching for even a hint of viscera or a droplet of blood left behind, but there was nothing. He knelt down and ran his index finger along a black tile. It squeaked it was so clean, and he could see the outline of his reflection shining back. Not since they renovated to turn Fangtasia into the nightclub it had become were the floors so clean.
"Hm," He mumbled to himself as he stood.
The door to the building opened, throwing the last pink shades of sun in. It drew his attention. He expected, briefly, to see Ginger, though he somehow knew otherwise. Never since he'd employed her had Ginger cleaned anything half as decent as his floor currently was.
A young woman, the woman from the box, was the intruder. She'd cleaned herself, as well. Where dirty clothes had once clung to dirty skin was a freshly laundered black shirt that hung off of narrow shoulders. What had once been torn and stained jeans was now a pair of black shorts, almost invisible beneath the hem of her long shirt. Her skin was devoid of any dirt or grime, leaving the ivory tone of it in bright contrast to before. The pair of strappy, black, ankle-boots on her feet gave her inches more than her own height. And her long, nearly black hair was twisted into a lazy braid and slung over the front of her shoulder.
Her head remained down as she approached him, her face illuminated by the screen of a cell phone. He wondered only briefly where it'd come from.
"You came back."
Pam's voice drew both Eric's eye and that of the girl from the box. She stood in the open doorway that led to the back, her face twisted with clear confusion.
"Why?"
The girl looked from one blonde vampire to the other before her gaze rested on Pam.
"Because we made a deal." The girl replied simply.
Eric scoffed a small laugh. Pam shot him an odd stare, arching a perfectly formed brow at him when she did. He shrugged a single shoulder.
"And," Eric said, drawing the girl's eye. "What did this deal get me?"
She finally stopped a few feet in front of him. He could see her neon eyes flash with anger again, with resentment towards him that, truthfully, almost brought another smile to his lips. There was something undeniably entertaining with the way she felt about him.
"Four years." She said unenthusiastically.
Eric let his smile show, to the point she could see his pearly whites. She scowled and rolled her eyes, apparently not all too pleased with his merriment.
"That's only eight." Pam said as she approached. "Thought there was nine?"
"I couldn't find the last one." She replied with barely-contained bitterness. She leveled her stare on Eric. "But I will."
"Later." He told her. Eric's long legs carried him the short distance between them easily. She didn't bother raising her chin to meet his eye, instead staring up through her lashes. "Right now, I need something else from you."
There was an unmistakable groan that laced his words, one that was perhaps meant to be enticing, but it made her frown. She clearly didn't like it. Then again, it could have been his tone, or the insinuation behind it that caused it.
"I'm not sleeping with you." She told him plainly.
Pam chuckled in the background at her brash and blunt statement, to which Eric smirked, tilting his head to the side as he did.
"Presumptuous, aren't you?" He countered.
"I prefer to say that I'm not an idiot." She told him firmly. "I'm meant to be a food source, not a fuck toy."
He had to admit, he liked it when she spoke so plainly. It was a relief in many ways. Most people tended to dance around their points with him, to skirt the meaning versus risking angering him. The girl from the box wasn't as timid.
"We'll see." He grinned. "For now, I'm famished."
He reached for her hand with every intention of pulling her to his chest to feed, but she snatched it away quickly. A wave of apprehension swept through her, strong enough he not only felt the trickle of it down his spine, but smelled the shift in her body. He narrowed his eyes curiously while she did everything she could not to meet his gaze.
"You don't want to do that." She mumbled. She took a marginal step back, placing her hands behind her. "I'll be in your office."
And without another word, she walked back through the door, stowing her phone in her pocket as she did. Both Pam and Eric watched her with mild curiosity.
"Oh good," Pam said with thick derision as she turned her attention back to Eric. "You have a blood bag that doesn't like being touched. That'll make feeding easy."
"Hm," was all he said.
Eric walked by his smiling progeny and to his office where he found the girl from the box sitting in one of the chairs waiting for him. He immediately snatched her up by the scruff of her neck and shoved her against the wall. Eric was pressed against her in an instance, stood over her at his full height, sure to illustrate that he was the dominant one in their twisted little relationship. But she didn't shy away. In fact, unlike before, she met his stare head on without the slightest apprehension.
"Never disrespect me like that again." He told her sternly, adding a small growl to his words to illustrate his point. "You are here for food. I own you for the next four years. Do you understand me?"
"I do." She answered plainly. "And I accept that, but you can't touch my hands."
His brows pulled together as he narrowed his eyes. Of all the strange, bizarre things she could have said, telling him to avoid her hands never even crossed his mind. It was such a weird request that it actually took him a moment to absorb it.
"Why?" Eric didn't know if he asked because he truly wanted to know, or if it was simply reflexive.
What followed was perhaps the most unsettling thing Eric had ever heard, not because of the words themselves, but the way she said them, so evenly and coldly, that it made him truly second-guess taking her from Anthony, if even for a moment.
"Bad things happen when I touch people."
Eric stared down at her with the first bit of uncertainty he'd ever felt since finding her in the box. There was something about the way she answered him and her unflinching stare that disturbed him. Part of him was curious as to what happened, enough so that he contemplated grabbing her hands regardless of how she felt. Another part didn't care. The part that didn't care won out within a few seconds of thought.
Seeming to sense his acquiescence to her warning, she turned her head to the side, revealing her neck to him without complaint or protest.
His eyes traveled to her throat. They found focus on her artery, watching the way it fluttered beneath her milky skin. Her heartbeat thrummed in his ears, but it was steady, not erratic. She wasn't afraid of what he planned to do, of what she knew he would do.
As his eyes traveled down the gentle slope of her neck, he noticed a glint of silver. He immediately glowered.
"Silver?" He asked with a tight jaw.
She looked at him curiously for a moment before down at her necklace. She reached into her shirt and revealed it to him, a thin silver chain with a pendant on the end, a symbol he didn't recognize. But the longer he looked at it, the more he thought he could.
The body of the pendant was shaped like a narrow oval, though the end that pointed down was sharper, like a head of some kind. Protruding from the rounded end at the top was a long, serpent-like coil that twirled around in a wide arch where the chain was connected before wrapping around the body of the pendant fancifully.
The longer he eyed it, the more certain Eric became that the pendant was a cat. The details had been rubbed away through the years, and it looked beaten from age, but it was indeed a feline that laid flat against her chest.
She said nothing, and with a delicate touch, she removed the jewelry. Eric frowned.
"I never want to see that around your neck again. Do you understand me?"
Again, she said nothing, but nodded and turned her head once again to the side. Eric lunged for her, sinking his fangs deeply into her throat, without warning and without remorse. Perhaps a part of him simply wanted to drive home that he was the one in charge.
She took in a sharp hiss of air and instinctively clung to him. He was used to his prey grabbing his body, just not the surprising amount of strength behind it. Despite her size, her grip was firm, much tighter than it should have been, but he couldn't think on it for long. The moment her blood flooded his mouth, Eric was filled with a level of hunger that surprised him. The taster he'd received earlier was nothing compared to what it tasted like from the vein.
He felt it burn down his throat and fill his gut. He felt it seep into his veins, his muscles, and even his bones. It was like drinking pure fire, like drinking the sun itself. The longer he pulled the blood from her veins, the more certain he was that the power of it, the heat of it, would force his heart to start beating again.
But as the minutes passed and satiation stayed just out of reach, the softer her hold on him became until her hands fell from his body completely. Her knees began to give, and soon he was holding her up more than her own strength. He heard her heart rate slow, and knew he was dangerously close to causing her irreparable damage. Drawing back was difficult, but he reminded himself that she was his. She wasn't going anywhere.
Reluctantly, Eric pulled away from her. He kept his grasp on her arms tight, but saw the damage done. Her head hung listlessly to the side and he knew he'd drunk too much. Angry with himself, and a bit with her for not being able to withstand his feeding, Eric lifted her into his arms and returned her to the seat he'd previously pulled her from. She slumped immediately.
He clenched his jaw so tightly he felt the muscle chord beneath his porcelain skin. Eric bit into his wrist and drew his own blood. With one hand, he held her head in place while he put his wrist to her lips.
"Drink," He commanded.
His voice must have made it through some part of her clouded brain because he felt her tongue swipe across his puncture marks. She didn't take much, but it was enough to wake her. Immediately, she jerked her head away and shot him a hate-filled glare.
"Get away from me." She hissed through her teeth.
"You need to drink." He told her firmly. "You're too weak."
"That's your fault, vampire. Not mine."
His brows rose. She was scolding him for what he'd done, and while she might have the right, he didn't like it. She was challenging him and his authority, again.
"You don't want it, fine." He said as he stood. "You have five minutes to be on your feet and in that bar or," He let his sentence dangle.
She looked at him with her head still lazily dragging. She cocked a single annoyed brow. "You'll put me in the box?" Her sarcasm was evident.
Eric flashed her a quick, temporary smile before leaving her in his office alone. On his way down the hall back into the main portion of the club, he heard her mutter, prick. He didn't bother turning around to reprimand her. She deserved her anger, honestly. He nearly killed her the first time he'd been given a chance to drink from her. He slipped, like a fucking baby vamp, and he didn't like it.
Eric lightly trailed his finger across his cold lips, feeling the warmth the remaining blood had left behind. He sucked the remnants off of his dead digit and reveled in the flavor it still had. Tasting it fresh, pumping into his mouth with each heartbeat and tasting the purity of it had made him lose himself within her flavor, and he knew he couldn't let it happen again. He had to repeat to himself that he owned her. She wasn't a passing meal. He could have it whenever he wanted, and that knowledge helped. A bit.
Eric found his seat in his throne and got comfortable. In an hour, the club would open and all types of people from dead to human would flood in. But as he sat there, lining out a plan for that night and making a list, the door to the back opened again. The girl from the box emerged with her neck wiped clean and her skin no longer ashen.
His brows pulled together briefly. Her stance didn't waver, her heartbeat was strong, and her heels hit the tile with determination and strength. To anyone who cared to look, she seemed completely healed. Eric knew his blood was strong, powerful with age, but she barely took enough to heal a few scratches, and yet, she acted as though she hadn't been anemic only two minutes before.
She said nothing as she approached him and, to add to his surprise, stepped behind the thrones. She didn't sit beside him, didn't ask what he wanted her to do. Instead, she took a stance behind his left shoulder, just in his periphery, but in the background. Eric rolled his head lazily to the side.
"What are you?" he asked in a subdued voice.
"Nothing," was her only response.
He didn't believe her completely, but he didn't press, either.