Hope you enjoy everyone! This hasn't been beta read so please let me know if something makes no sense without the context of having the chapter from ROF right next to you.
Expect new chapters weekly! (they're prewritten, don't worry)
Prologue.
For decades, his world was pain.
The pain of the newly turned, the pain of bloodlust, the pain of anger and anguish and injury. He learned to deal with it, then he learned to revel in it. What was the point in wishing? The ideas of love and warmth had long faded into the obscurity of his memory. His family were likely long dead, humans were fickle and easily wiped from this earth.
What was the point in hoping for the complex, when what he had was so simple? Why should he want love when he had sex? Why should he want fulfilment when he had blood? Why should he want friendship when he had Maria?
It wasn't just him. The cloying, invasive feelings of the expendable sods below him drained any life or warmth that could live in that war camp. Darkness drowned out the sunlight, numb haze sucked the vibrancy from the trees. The world was empty and he floated empty through it.
Until Peter.
Once the shock and the fear of this new awful life had faded, his brother took one look at his sire's face and exploded into warmth and life. Peter just knew things, sometimes. He just knew who Jasper was, not just a sire but a brother.
To an outsider it appeared that Peter relied on him to live. Any closer and it became clear that he only needed help not to die. Jasper relied on him for life, for light. The warmth and joy that radiated from the man he called his brother was no less than a miracle and Jasper depended selfishly upon it. He kept Peter from dying, stopped his final escape from this miserable life so he might be his torch in the darkness, fire in the night.
A miracle he thought could never happen again.
Chapter 1.
Battles never took a long time, but this one seemed to. Evenly matched, or as evenly matched as Jasper ever allowed them to be. His soldiers were strong, trained and capable, by far the superior force - but Johan had them outnumbered. Jasper told himself it didn't matter as a newborn's neck shattered in his fist and he surveyed the battlefield. His soldiers could take out more than one enemy each, especially if he made up the difference.
Yes - he span to the side, grabbed an enemy's arm and ripped it from its socket, hooked their chin under his elbow and threw their head half a mile away from their body - it was fine, Johan had more men, but they had the advantage.
Or at least they should have done. Jasper raced from the middle of the fight to higher ground. The tides had rapidly turned, his forces were stopping in their tracks and being mown down.
It didn't make sense. He jumped down from his perch and ran to the peak of the fighting. A few metres away from the nearest fighter a wave sliced through him and for a second he had no idea where he was or what he was doing. His brain muddled, the focus he was pumping out became confusion, he stopped in his tracks. He blinked, and an enemy soldier who had been a safe distance away was right in front of him. The wave dissipated, and he had a half second of clarity to jump out of the way of the newborn's arm.
This wasn't right. Jasper looked around the battlefield, his men were falling at an alarming rate. Right in front of his eyes a group of four of his soldiers stopped moving, their hands fell limp and the enemy they had been dismantling got free and killed them himself. He looked further, to the only two people standing still. Johan, and a vampire beside him. It was clearly newborn, very new as it twitched with untapped aggression and energy. It turned its gaze to another of Jasper's soldiers and they stopped in their tracks.
Johan had a gifted soldier, an advantage Jasper hadn't planned for. He took a quick glance around, could he get to them somehow? Unlikely, he would have to get behind enemy lines and if he was noticed the newborn could disable him instantly. There was nothing for it, they could not win this day.
He shook his head and gestured to his forces around him.
"Retreat!"
They ran. Johan's forces followed, but Jasper always had a retreat plan in place. They reached the trees and scattered, one on one Johan's forces had no chance and his gifted soldier clearly needed its victims in its eyeline. He lost a few soldiers, but Johan lost far more following them. They got away and met at the far point.
Jasper counted as his men ran in. 15 of them, he had lost over half. Anton, his fellow second in command, came running in soon after.
"What the hell?" He shoved Jasper's shoulder. "We had them!"
"No, we didn't." Jasper grumbled. Anton had been covering the far side and most likely could barely see the main battleground. "He had a weapon we stood no chance against, look how many men we lost."
Anton looked around himself, then turned back to him regardless. "You just wait for what Maria thinks about this!"
"Maria is an intelligent woman who understands basic battle strategy." Jasper responded. "I have no doubt she'll agree with my actions. Have you seen any stragglers or are they all here?"
Anton shrugged. "Haven't seen anyone."
Jasper searched the small crowd, assessing who was or wasn't there. One dirty blond head was noticeably missing.
"Where's Peter?" he whispered.
Anton grunted. "Must be dead."
Jasper resisted the urge to grab Anton by the throat and show him what being dead really meant, but familiar footfalls sounded behind him and he turned with an immense amount of relief.
"Phew!" Peter exclaimed. "They really gave me the runaround there, Major!"
Jasper quickly clapped him on the shoulder. "Are any following you?"
"Nope, killed 'em."
"Excellent, let's move out."
"You lost?" Maria hissed, her burgundy eyes dark with rage.
Jasper bent his head. "I'm sorry ma'am. Johan had a soldier with a gift I had no counter for, if we had stayed we would have been destroyed."
"Please." Anton rolled his eyes and kissed their mistress's hand, his fingers lingering treacherously slowly. "My group faced no problems."
"Because you were nowhere near the real fighting!"
"Boys!" Maria interjected. "You have given me enough problems without killing each other. So we have lost, how bad is our loss?"
They glanced at each other. "About half our company, ma'am."
She stared at them, let out a great sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose with delicate fingers. "Well this is very disappointing…"
"I'm sorry, ma'am…"
"I still say we could have taken him-"
Maria silenced Anton with a wave of her hand and turned to look at the tent wall, her raven hair shimmered behind her with a mind of its own.
"Leave me. I don't want to look at either of you."
Anton acquiesced and scurried away but Jasper was forced to linger.
"Should I begin the search for our next camp?"
Maria sighed. "Must we move?"
"I'm afraid so."
She shook her head. "My Major… whatever shall I do with you."
She turned and strolled towards him, ruby lip sucked between sharp teeth, hips swaying from side to side. She took hold of his jaw and angled his head down to look her right in the eye.
"You're lucky I love you," she murmured, and pulled him in for a kiss. Her teeth nipped at his lips, tongue dominated his, her nails found the base of his skull and pulled the hair there. He whined and his idle hands found her hips and pulled her body flush to his. She laughed and pulled away.
"Go on then, Major. Find me somewhere to hide."
He nodded and backed out of the tent, savouring his eye contact with her until she turned away.
He turned to the battered camp they'd taken refuge in, an old one that Johan wouldn't expect them to return to. The soldiers were all sulking in groups, sitting in clumps and grumbling about the others. They all nursed wounds, ripped limbs and great holes gouged from their skin, leaking venom. The camp stunk of it, venom and stale blood.
Sunken black eyes followed him as he looked around for Peter. They had starved them all for this fight, something Maria liked to do. Jasper wasn't so sure about the tactic, it made them more ferocious and motivated, yes. But they weren't so easy to control and would make silly mistakes, and their wounds wouldn't heal when they were beaten.
He finally spotted his second, sitting around and chatting with the peons, the only one smiling in the whole place. Peter made eye contact with him and jumped up, he saluted the poor sod he was talking to and bounded to Jasper's side.
"We findin' a new camp, Major?" he asked.
Jasper nodded and ran on, trusting Peter to follow him. About a mile out of the camp a cloud lifted from over his eyes, a heavy presence that always weighed down his mind, holding him back from within. He blamed his gift, those camps were made such pits by the damn newborns and their uncontrolled emotions that they would try to drag him down with them. Running away always cut him free of that, left him exposed to the elements.
He wasn't sure if he loved it or hated it.
They ran around for about a day, scouting hundreds of square miles. He ended up deciding on taking Maria closer to civilisation. Johan would never expect it, and being close to a city would prevent large scale attacks on their camp for fear of drawing too much attention. Horror stories had spread around about covens that set their sights too high and were wiped out by some terror in the night, it forced them all to stick to small level settlements and travellers nobody would miss.
He and Peter skirted around Austen and found a place a few miles out, far from the road, large forest for tree cover, river nearby to cover scents up if necessary. It was the perfect place for them to lay low for a while.
"Wanna feed on our way back?" Peter grumbled. "I'm famished."
"Good idea."
They crawled through the streets under the cover of darkness, it was the middle of the night but the streets were still alive. There was a light on in every home, music and laughter came from every inn and bar. There were many drunks in back alleys to choose from. Jasper and Peter took two each just because they could. When they had their fill and were on their way out of the city limits, there was a great roar and explosions rocketed through the sky. Jasper flinched and ducked for cover, an instinct he thought was long buried. Peter laughed.
"Oh look how purty!"
He was right, Jasper realised when he looked up. The night sky was lit up with bright lights sparkling as they rose and fell. He recognised them, in a dim sort of way. He had seen them when he was human, but never since.
"Fireworks!" Peter said, somehow knowing Jasper was confused. "Dunno how they work, probably magic."
Yes, fireworks. That's what they were called.
"Why are they setting them off?"
Peter frowned and peered around at the houses still close to them. "Y'know… I think it might be New Years. I remember celebrations like this back home."
"Oh…" Jasper had lost track of the date a few months prior. He couldn't remember anything like this from his human years, oh so far away from him. He had spent too much time away from them, too much time surrounded by death. Celebrating something like the passage of time seemed so strange, so alien. Why would humans celebrate new years dawning when each one brings them closer to death?
"What year does that make this?" Peter asked.
"1886." He at least knew that much.
"Well," Peter held out a hand, "Happy New Year Major."
Jasper shook it. "Happy New Year."