Page 15 of Blood Claims (Garnet Dagger Mafia #2)

STORM IN A TEACUP

VASILEIOS

I was a monster.

I was the mark of shame. The black heart. The vessel of evil.

The family stain and scar of ruin. I was all of those things and more.

I knew this, for I had allowed it to happen.

My rage had manifested itself into a physical thing, clinging onto my skin and warping my once mortal features.

The face in the mirror was the stuff of nightmares that Vampire younglings were made to fear.

The fucking boogeyman at the ready to steal your soul and condemn it to an eternity of being nothing more than some Hellish plaything.

And I was always ready to take. To feed the darkness.

Any shred of humanity I once had was lost that day my life was torn apart. I hadn’t always been this way but like my brothers, I always had it in me.

Festering.

A beast living there in the depths of my dark soul, the only difference being that I had long ago released mine into the world. And well, once that darkness was out of the box, there was no way of ever putting it back in there again.

So, I fed it instead.

I gave it what it wanted, time and time again, and in return it made me stronger…

invincible. Powerful enough to beat two of the most powerful Vampires in existence.

Soon I would possess the Garnet dagger and with it , the throne.

The right to rule my sector, which would be only the first step in taking control of the Fondatori.

For I would take them all out, one by one, until none were left.

But before that, I needed to take the biggest threat off the table.

My brothers.

There were very few Vampires who wouldn’t recognize the family name, Erebus, without recoiling in fear.

But far less who would know of its sordid history.

How deeply the rot actually ran through our bloodline, like the deal made to the very Hell our forefathers originated from.

And so, with souls exchanged and Hellish deals done, the darkness was born, and with it one that passed down that family line.

But not to twins like everyone believed.

But to triplets.

And I was the oldest.

Not Victor.

Therefore, the dagger was my birthright, as was my right to rule. Victor wasn’t the only one who possessed the gift of patience. I had laid in wait, the shadows feeding my dark soul each night as I counted my days until the time was perfect.

And now that time had come.

However, it did so by adding a slight complication.

The girl.

She was the complication I could have done without and I knew, in reality, there was nothing slight about it. Yet that did depend on her blood and whether it sang to me the way it had already been Fated to sing to my brothers.

Their Moirai Theía

A Vampire’s Fated Goddess.

But then there were the dreams. For as soon as I saw her face, I knew she was the one that haunted them. Haunted my sleep, rendering me powerless against them.

Yet no matter how much they affected me, I knew that I could not let her get in the way of achieving my life’s goal.

So, if the price of my rule was giving up what was fated to be mine as much as it was my brothers, then so be it.

I would sooner eat her heart than possess it.

Sooner let my darkness claim her soul than keep it safe.

Sooner drain her dry then keep her addictive blood on tap.

No, I would not allow the temptation of her to cause me to lose focus on my revenge.

She was a means to an end and nothing more.

My dark reflection hardened in the mirror before I turned my gaze from the half I still recognized. Half of a man still living, whilst the other was possessed by the darkness. A hellish entity that I had let take hold and make me strong… despite the price paid.

So, I grabbed the half mask I always wore outside of my own home and fixed the straps that kept it in place under my hairline.

The folds of black leather had been made to look like half a skull.

One that only covered the infected part of my skin that had crept further and further across my face in the decades that had passed.

My dark eyes were made to look even darker, thanks to the blackened skin that consumed more and more with each year it gained power over me.

Soon I would be unrecognizable.

Soon I would lose myself completely to the darkness.

Soon I would have my revenge.

My mother always called me a storm in a teacup. A powerful force waiting to be unleashed at the smallest of things. My temper never to be tamed, for I would explode and become deadly in a heartbeat. But that had been before.

Before the ruin.

For my patience to lie in wait had become a battle I had been forced to master since leaving my father’s world behind. Two forces of nature always at war, two sides of me locked in an eternal fight.

My mother’s storm in a teacup.

My father’s greatest weapon.

Well now it was time to release that storm, starting with the prisoner I would soon obtain, stealing her right from beneath my brothers. A prize I knew they would do anything to keep and now, it was time to put that theory to the test.

I grabbed my long black jacket at the same time my darkness started to swirl around me, fed from the shadows I shroud myself in.

I lifted the large hood to hide my face as I let the darkness take me to where I was to meet the witch.

For I knew the amulet I gave her was connected to only one place.

And seeing as I didn’t trust Circe, I therefore did not want her knowing where I lived.

More so, I didn’t want her knowing where I planned on keeping my little captive, so as she didn’t have the opportunity to double cross me. Not when she had information to sell, for it could easily slip her mind that I owned her soul. One I knew she was desperate to get back.

Foolish fucking witch.

She would soon learn. But first, she would give me what I wanted.

I passed through the warped reality of the mortal world and felt the moment my large body reformed itself. Extracting my flesh from the darkness. Each time I did this, the darkness clung on a little harder, claiming yet another piece of me.

Now if I could only use this power without that price paid, I might have smiled, for that would have dominated my power overall.

But the fact remained that my time was limited or should I say, my full control over the darkness was.

Because I was a finger snap away from that same power I used tipping the scales, meaning I would no longer win over it.

I would lose all control.

And honestly, I didn’t know what would happen when I did. I just knew that I couldn’t stop it. Not when it was an addiction, plain and simple. A sickness that rotted my soul as well as my body. My mind addicted to the power and thoughts of revenge, that was all I knew.

That, and the rage.

In fact, my dreams were my only solace from all of this.

The only light flickering in my life of darkness.

A light that these past few years had been getting brighter.

That was until weeks ago when I had finally gotten close enough to see a face in the blinding light.

I had finally reached her and the second I did, I woke with a start.

For it had been the first time since that night that I had felt powerless.

I had felt like her prisoner.

I shook off these thoughts as I arrived in the abandoned building.

Riverside Hospital had once been used for quarantinable diseases and was long ago uninhabited, left to decay on its own terms. The North and South Brother Islands were a pair of small islands located in New York City's East River between the mainland Bronx and Rikers Island. The infamous hospital itself was situated on the North Brother Island and had remained untouched by human presence for forty-five years. With it’s sad and ominous history long ago forgotten.

In some ways I could relate and was no doubt why I picked it over all other abandoned buildings New York had to offer.

The sun had dominated what it could from the day and was close to setting.

But what light still lingered shone through the glassless bay windows that framed the open doorway of the Tuberculosis Pavilion lobby.

Which was part of an infamous quarantine unit where Typhoid Mary died, finally succumbing to her namesake illness in 1938.

The woman, also known as the less distasteful Mary Mallon, was an Irish immigrant who worked as a cook and was made famous in an unfortunate way.

She was the first identified asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever in the United States.

And seeing as she was identified as the source of multiple typhoid outbreaks between 1900 and 1907, she subsequentially was quarantined.

Something that lasted for the rest of her life on North Brother Island, with or without her consent.

Twenty-six years were spent as a prisoner to her fate, for she was said to have died in this very room of the quarantine unit.

Perhaps this was why I felt a dark affinity with it, knowing of my own sickness and the inability to prevent my own fate from taking hold.

And speaking of fate, Circe soon emerged from the broken doorway, one that hadn’t seen a door at its frame for many years.

The overgrown grounds were at her back, with parts of the natural world trying to claim this room through the rotting window frames.

The floor was covered with pieces of plaster and paint chips that had rained down from the cracked ceiling above, coating each surface in its dust. Broken pieces of furniture framed the circular room with a rolled-up carpet pushed to one side, dumped like a dead corpse.