Page 20 of Wicked Magik

“There were four humans?” My Lord raised his thin eyebrow and crossed his arms over his wide chest. It made his waist look that much narrower in his black lab coat.

“Is that a question? Or have you forgotten how to count?”

I cleared my throat. “As you said, I was blinded with rage. There were four that were conducting a spell to raise the dead. A dead human body that laid in the middle of a terribly written spell circle which would be five.” I held up my claws to show him the exact number.

He hummed and nodded for me to continue.

“And when one of them began speaking, I heard your voice to punish, and I did. Once I tasted their blood, I lost control of my body.” I bowed my head, a heavy sigh escaping my lips as I wrestled with my inner turmoil.

It took many moons to battle against my destructive instincts. My hands trembled with the memory of past chaos, yet I yearned to earn my Lord's approval. But the metallic scent of blood was what I wanted most. It made my stomach rumble with an almost uncontrollable desire. I craved to taste it, to let the crimson warmth fill my belly and quench the thirst.

It requires an iron will to restrain myself. My Lord often resorts to potent spells to keep me contained. Animal blood may not stir the depths of my hunger, but the essence of fae, goblins, and now humans ignites an insatiable craving deep within me.

And pet Vesper.

My stomach yearned to lick up her dried wound like candy chips on her forehead.

I will not drink her dry. I won’t. I refuse.

My Lord stepped away and leaned up against the table. He crossed his arms again and assessed me. “Why could I not reachyou after? Why could I not see what you were seeing? Even now I cannot see what you can see.”

I tilted my head and stuck my finger through one of my eye holes. “I do not understand? I cannot make you not see what I see.”

My Lord ran his sharp fingernails through his hair. “It’s so simple to see what you see. Are you sure they didn’t cast a spell on you? Something they said or did? Are they all truly dead?”

I nodded eagerly. “Yes, the spell casters are dead. I even took the spell book. It is upstairs.”

But not my pet. She did not cast a spell.

I snorted and hid my skull.

My Lord turned his body back toward me, fire in his eyes. “This is not a joke, Oryx. I cannot see what you see. I cannot get inside your mind. What the hell is going on?” He stormed toward me and pulled my skull down by my horn. “Did you stuff your skull with straw? Where have you been all these hours? You should have come straight back home. I’ve been worried fucking sick!” He pushed me away and my skull slung away from him.

I rubbed my horn and slumped my shoulders.

I could not do anything right.

I tried to think of a lie that would not be caught. My Lord was very crafty and could find out if I was lying very easily. But, he could not get inside my head, a reason I would have to find out later…

“I stopped to smell the flowers.”

Which was true. I smelled my pet. She smelled like flowers.

“Since when do you like flowers, Oryx?” His shoes clicked against the hard floor as he returned to me. “Since when do you not come home right away? You always come back when you are called, or when I have given you a time to return. There are reasons for this. There are reasons I put these rules in place for you.”

“But, my Lo—”

My Lord's face, once as pale as freshly fallen snow, now blazed with a furious crimson that seemed to burn with the intensity of a raging fire. His hand shot out with the sudden, explosive force of a thunderclap cracking through a stormy sky. Books, scrolls, and parchments erupted from the nearby bookshelf, tumbling down in a storm of paper. They cascaded to the floor in a whirlwind of fluttering pages, thudding covers and scattered across the room.

“I have told you!” he roared, “to call me Veylor yet you still deny me! Why?” Black storm clouds sputtered around his head, strengthening larger and larger until they rose above us and covered the high vaulted room entirely.

I whimpered and shifted from hoof to hoof. “You are my maker, yet I cannot call you father.”

My Lord’s hardened face softened.

“You aren’t my master, because you never call me servant. You won’t let me call you savior to which I am indebted to for giving me life. You say I’m your friend, but when I reach for you, you turn me away. You have this whole estate to yourself yet you leave me confined to the shadows like no one. Which means, the only name I can call you is Lord. Lord is the only word to best describe you.”

My Lord's eyes glinted like shards of ice, their gaze unwavering and almost cruel. On days like this, I knew he would keep his distance, leaving me in the solitude of my thoughts. I could see the storm of hurt and pain swirling within those cold depths. Today, that storm reached out to me, wrapping around my hearts tighter than ever before, and I felt the weight of it pressing down on my very soul.