Blood Bound
A young nobleman travels to the middle of nowhere to find the legendary Darryth Monsterslayer so he can convice the man to take him on as an apprentice. He gets much more than he bargained for when he finally tracks down the disgruntled government employee - danger, excitement, and (strangest of all) love in the arms of a rare creature that he never would have believed existed.
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Chapters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Christmas Sucks
Chapter 1
It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas…much to his chagrin. Donnell MacAindris sighed, standing on a street corner with his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. He really, REALLY hated this time of year! Actually, Donnell hated all times of the year, but Christmastime had to be the worst. This was when humans gathered to celebrate, when families came together in love and joy, when there was light and color and life everywhere. It was at Christmas that he felt the most alone, and completely left out of all of the gaiety and frolics taking place around him. Donnell shoved his hands into his pockets and crossed the street. He wasn’t really going anywhere; he had nowhere to go.
He hadn’t had anywhere to go for a very long time, in fact. Ages. Literally. All of his friends and family were long gone, lost in the mists of time. Donnell was very much alone, as even his own kind tended to avoid him. They thought he was far too morose and depressing to want to hang around with him. That was fine. He didn’t really want to be with them anyway. Donnell had never liked his own kind much. He thought most of them were arrogant, egotistical, and far too self-involved. All they were concerned with was their next meal, or finding just the right clothes to make them look like douche bag poseurs. The whole all-over black thing had never made any sense to him whatsoever. Most of them just looked like they were going to go into undertaking for a living at any moment.
The sun broke through the heavy clouds for a moment, outlining the street in shades of gold and white. Donnell stopped to turn his face up to it in a ritual that he’d developed over the years. Once upon a time, it had amused him heartily that humans had this odd idea that his kind would burst into flame if they stood in the sunlight. If he stood in it long enough, he might get a nasty sunburn, but… It was all the fault of his fellow Irishman, Bram Stoker. That bearded fool had written a book so full of lies and exaggerations that it was bound to become a massive hit – which it had. Ever since then, his folk had had to periodically put up with a frenzy among the humans as they lost their minds over all things vampire. This latest craze was only the worst in a long line of horrors – in all of the last hundred years or so, at least they’d never had to put up with vampires that SPARKLED before!
Yes, Donnell MacAindris was a vampire. A blood sucker. A creature of the night…although not really. He was, in fact, the most miserable vampire that had ever lived. Well, technically not lived…but….he sighed again, plodding along as he headed for his apartment. He’d shut himself inside and sit on the couch mindlessly watching television, and hopefully be able to forget for just a while how much his life sucked. Both literally and figuratively. Being a vampire was the worst.
Once he hadn’t thought so. Like many a crazed teenager of today, when Donnell had met the tall, handsome, and charismatic man with the magnetic eyes he’d fallen hard. The exotic stranger had appeared in his village one day, claiming to be from distant lands far to the East. Donnell had been completely enthralled with him. Vassily had wooed him passionately, taking his heart by storm. And not too long after that, his body as well. It was only afterward, when he was completely in Vassily’s thrall, had the dark and mysterious man told him just what kind of creature he actually was. And by then Donnell wanted nothing more than to join his lover in living forever, so he’d begged Vassily to turn him.
Donnell could remember with a shudder the pain he’d gone through as Vassily’s blood had coursed through his body, changing him forever into something not-quite-human anymore. He’d screamed and thrashed as his own blood seemed to boil in his veins, and Vassily had held him down and shouted into his ear that he’d feel better soon. He hadn’t believed his lover, but finally the pain had subsided. Donnell MacAindris had come back to himself as something else altogether – a creature that could see in the dark, had a better sense of smell than a dog, and was extremely strong and agile. Not to mention non-aging, of course. And all of that for the simple sacrifice of his unwanted humanity, his ability to age and die. It was a good deal, in his eyes.
He didn’t think so anymore. Time had proved him wrong. Not only had everyone that he’d ever known long since crumbled to dust, but he could ill afford to make friends with any humans as their life spans were so short. They seemed gone in the blink of an eye to him. It was like befriending a fruit fly, truly impossible. Worse, his Maker Vassily had grown bored with him after awhile, and had deserted him in a foreign land to merrily go on his way without Donnell. That had broken his heart; since then he’d mostly avoided other vampires. They couldn’t be trusted, not a single one of them. They’d all lived too long. They didn’t care about anybody but themselves. He’d long since given up believing that anything would ever change for him. He’d go on and on, feeding himself more out of necessity(the cramps that came with going without eating for more than a few days were absolutely dreadful) than anything else and just enduring his long, LONG un-life until he finally begged someone to dowse him in gasoline and set him on fire. Or maybe he’d work up the courage to do it himself; anything to be free of the cage of his existence.
He was brought out of his dark, morose thoughts by someone planting themselves firmly in his path on the sidewalk. Donnell halted in his tracks, looking up(he had, out of necessity, since he was all of five-foot-five) into the face of a young human. Very young; he only looked to be about nineteen or twenty. A gamin grin was spreading across the human’s lips, as he met Donnell’s gaze easily. That wasn’t something terribly common; most humans recognized one of their predators instinctively and looked away when they accidentally met his eyes. And there was something odd about the human’s eyes, anyway. They were parti-colored; that is, the left eye was a sort of mist-grey color, and the right was a light-brown flecked with gold. That was disconcerting, even more so than his being able to meet Donnell’s eyes. He wore his mink-brown hair pulled back in a tail at the base of his neck, and he was wearing the wildest clothes that Donnell had ever seen. A long patchwork coat opened up over a tie-dyed shirt and a plaid skirt(A skirt! A man wearing a skirt in this day and age!), and furry brown boots with high tops were half-sunk into the snow. Assorted necklaces of beads and crystals and teeth were strung around the human’s neck in a jumble, and his belt was a length of fine chain.
This very strange-looking stranger grinned down at Donnell as though he’d just rediscovered his best friend in the whole world. “Why the long face, cutie?!” he called over the sounds of the city and the other passerby.
Donnell’s frown deepened and his brows drew down. What was happening here? Who was this impertinent human? Seeing his expression, the human youth laughed. “I was just curious,” he told Donnell, “One of my many failings, I’m afraid. As they say, curiosity killed the cat. Not that I’m a cat, but I think it applies to humans too. When I saw you, I just had to come over and find out how old you are.”
Perplexed and wary both, Donnell replied coldly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The youth waved a hand at him. “Sure you do,” he said easily. “I mean, you look like you’re in your mid-twenties, but looks are often deceiving, aren’t they? I’d bet a couple of hundred years, at least,” he added half under his breath, so that no one passing by them on the street would be able to hear what he said.
Shocked, Donnell just stood there for a moment. This young human was not a vampire; he always knew his own kind by both sight and smell. But he seemed to know what Donnell was. To clarify, he spoke slowly in a low voice: “You think that I’m a couple of hundred years old? Are you daft?”
The youth cocked his head to the side a little. “Definitely,” he replied. “But not about you. I could tell by your aura what you are. I haven’t seen one of you in awhile, though – I was beginning to think that you’d all gone extinct or something.”
Now totally bewildered, Donnell shook his head. “And just what is it that you think I am?”
The boy’s grin widened. “You’re a…VAMPIRE,” he hissed in a dramatic tone of voice, waiving his hands and rolling his eyes as though he were having some kind of attack.
Donnell felt his lips twitch in the first urge he’d had to laugh in he couldn’t remember when. “How do you know that?” he demanded, not bothering to deny it.
A chuckle. The youth held up one of his gloved hands and twiddled his fingers in the air. “Easy,” he told Donnell. “It was magic!” He felt a weird tingle run over his skin, as something appeared in the air above the youth’s palm. It settled and took on shape and form, becoming an apple that lay on his hand. He smiled impishly and raised it to his lips, taking an enthusiastic bite. “I’m a magician,” he went on when his chewing had subsided.
“Like David Copperfield? Can you make yourself disappear now?” Donnell asked dryly.
Another merry laugh. “Not that kind of magician. That kind specializes in illusion, not real magic.”
Donnell lifted his brows, intrigued. “The last time I checked, there was no such thing as real magic, “he told the youth.
“And the last time that I checked, there was no such thing as vampires,” he replied.
“Touché,” Donnell said. “But you’re really trying to tell me that you’re a magician? Like Merlin or something?”
The youth laughed gleefully, tossing the apple into the air and making it disappear. “You’ve hit the nail right on the head!” he exclaimed, pointing a finger at the bewildered Donnell.
“What?” he was starting to feel a little irritated, on top of being intrigued. Two emotions that he hadn’t experienced in some time, actually…
The human tapped himself in the middle of his chest. “I’m not LIKE Merlin,” he explained. He paused for dramatic effect, looking Donnell right in the eyes again with his weird parti-colored eyes. “I AM Merlin!”
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