The Vampire King’s Captive

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Bran looked away and started fiddling with the collar of his shirt. Had the room suddenly grown hotter?

“Her blood slid down your throat?” Corey asked slowly, a hint of something in his voice, but Bran couldn’t place it. “Just like that?”

“The hell do you mean?” He snapped.

“Nothing.” His friend said quickly, lifting his hands in surrender. “Of course I was just thinking that maybe the blood didn’t just slide down your throat. Maybe you swallowed it?”

It was then that Bran noticed that his friend was fucking with him. It was so strange that it took Bran a while to even realize that that was what he was doing, mainly because he’d slipped so much into the dark, he rarely smiled or laughed anymore.

Bran grunted and sat up. “Do you realize what this means? It means that everything we blamed her for wasn’t at all her fault. She might have been the one that did the killing, but she didn’t have any other choice.” A sudden desperation to make Corey understand gripped him. “I felt her pain each fucking time, Corey. She would never have done those things if she’d had another choice and she couldn’t run away because of her mother, so she had to stay while Ariti used her like… like a…” he struggled to find the word, his thoughts in dissaray.

“Like a weapon,” Corey supplied, his expression blank, fingers steepled in front of him.

“Yes,” Bran latched onto the word like a lifeline. “Like a weapon. That’s why he came back for her. That’s why he’s fighting for her.”

Fuck.

Bran shot up from the chair, unable to sit still as he thought about what Maria must be going through now that her father had her back.

How many people had he forced her to kill?

How many people had he forced her to torture?

How was she coping?

“Forgive my silence,” Corey said from behind him. “I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that I’ve been holding a grudge towards an innocent woman for years.”

Bran spun on his heel and faced him, a weight lifting off his chest at Corey’s words which meant that he believed him.

He fucking believed him.

He struggled to mask his relief. “I need to go after her. I need to bring her back. She must be suffering, thinking-”

“How are you so sure she’d want to follow you?” Corey cut him short, the words sending a needle into his little balloon of hope. “She hates her father, yes, but how are you so sure she doesn’t hate you too? Are you suddenly forgetting everything? How you’ve treated her?”

Bran squeezed his temple, wishing that he could unhear the words he’d just heard because he knew that they were perfectly reasonable questions. He suspected she might hate him just as much as she hated her father. Proof of that being her two attempts at escape.

He’d treated her wrongly, in a way he’d never treated any other woman because he’d thought that he was doing what he needed to do. That he was merely treating her the way she deserved to be treated.

He’d starved her, refused to let her have a bath while he kept her in that dirty cell. He’d almost cut her hand, she still bore the scar till this day and she would forever.

How could she not hate him?

Even he hated himself so much for what he’d done to an innocent. Someone that was as much a victim as his sister was.

“Bran, I know you-”

“I’ll think about that later.” The words came out harder than he’d intended. He hated taking his anger out on his friend, but he just didn’t want to think about the possibility that she might not want to come back with him. He just didn’t. “I just need you to help me reach out to the witch who can open portals. I need to go.”

“Today?” The surprise was obvious in Corey’s voice. “Do you even have a plan?”

“I don’t need one. I didn’t have one the first time I went there.” He turned back to face his friend. “Just please get the witch here.”

Corey’s jaw was tight as he nodded once, reaching for his phone to place the call.

***

“A little birdie told me that my services are required.” The witch announced as she strode into the house in all her spooky glory.

She had on jeans that sat low on her hips, a shirt that stopped above her belly button with the words ‘SCREAM’ boldly written on it in an equally spooky font, and a raven perched on her shoulder.

Bran barely held back a shudder.

“I need you to open a portal.”

“She also told me that it was a certain vampire.” The beautiful woman said with her red lips stretched in a smile. “I guess she was right. She didn’t mention he was royalty, though. Bummer.”

“Get on with it, witch,” Bran snapped, his sword clutched in a death-grip in his hand.

She laughed breezily, either unaware of Bran’s rising ire or disregarding it. Bran didn’t know which pissed him off more.

“My, someone’s in a mood.” She flipped her blue hair over her shoulder and faced a wall in the living room, both hands stretched in front of her. “Where to?”

“Same as last time.” Bran gritted out. “Realm of Sorceri. Specifically, Ariti’s house.”

The woman cocked a brow before nodding and moving her hands in a circular motion and before their very eyes, a portal swirled into life, growing bigger with the minute.

Bran caught Corey’s eye over the witch’s head and gave him a nod of reassurance.

Corey had volunteered to go with him, but news had come that more demons had been captured by the same group of humans and he had to intervene. He’d wanted to come regardless but Bran had told him to stay back and help his people.

Bran had to face this battle alone.

“Here you go,” the witch announced and when Bran turned back to the portal, he saw that he was staring into the inside of Ariti’s house.

He nodded once to the witch and without another glance at Corey, stepped through the portal.