Beast of the Damned #2

*Chapter Twenty*

*note- video is a song a reader (sorry, can't remember who you are) says reminds them of this story. Song is stunning so I'm sharing!) And I know I am a week late. I'll make it up to you guys : *

~ KINLEY ~

Pink swirls around my feet, the scarlet-kissed water gradually turning clear as I wash the blood of female Warriors of the Damned off me. It doesn't matter how hot I set the temperature. My skin stays decorated in a raised shiver. The phantom weight of the detached arm that landed on my lap remains with me. I turn the temperature of the water up again, scalding myself. The exposed tendons and ligaments of severed heads and extremities lying next to me replay like the grotesque picture show Zaidan and I stumbled upon in the Royal Library.

I'd never seen film before that day.

It was old, much older than the technology of that day and age permitted. Vampires have always been ahead of the humans in advances. However, the film seemed mystic. More like snapshots had been captured from someone's mind and transferred into film. It makes me wonder if the original content was once stored in stone crystals the vampirie call Eyes of the Serpent. I got to hold one once. The Dark Prince told me it was the last stone his first mate had made. Eyes of the Serpent are said to house prophecies Rakasha would see in her dreams.

The scalding stream of water seems freezing as I can all too well recall what it is I saw when I gazed into the crimson-colored crystal with a yellow center—a headless dove, blood staining it's pure white feathers as it flew in place like it was trapped, waiting to be freed from the Eye of the Serpent.

A gargantuan shadow eclipses the light. Crystal clear water and soapsuds run down the shower drain as I lift my gaze to the tile wall in front of me. The beast I saw in the water in the dream realm is cast in the shadows. Where the eyes should be is nothing but two empty holes. The shadow grows bigger until my whole body fits inside the head of the creature. It isn't just my body that fits in the beast's skull. There is another shadow within the creature's face, one much taller than me.

"Blessed hellfire," I curse, the soap and bloodstain rag I'm using to wash myself falls over the drain. Tristan Darkos is posted up in the threshold, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed over the breastplate of his splattered armor.

His gaze doesn't stay on my startled one. Instead, his attention drops to the rag by my feet and slowly works its way up. I can't find my embarrassment over the situation of being naked before him. All I can find is the endless depth of his devil black eyes tangled in with the trembling of my legs.

Tristan's shoulder pulls away from the doorframe, his arms uncrossing as he takes a step toward me.

The water spray drenches me as I withdrawal in reverse. I keep going until steamed shower tiles covered in condensation stop my retreat. What I want to be doing is dashing for the towel hanging on the hook beside the shower stall while yelling at Tristan to get out. A massarra's flesh is not for any vampire to gaze upon when I'm in such a state. Yet, I can't seem to move away from the wall I've plaster myself against.

All of me is aware the vampire before me isn't the same one I met before. Whatever Tristan I've known since he and his army came to Valderanna, the one whose bloodline hates me—this one is more dangerous. It's in the way he moves and the way he controls the black veins covering him, commanding them one by one to dive where I can't see his lethal power as he makes his way over to me.

"There were two of you." I breathe out, anxiety riddled in my voice as his boots halt right before the lip of the shower's entrance. There are no curtains in the showers in the restricted area bathrooms. No glass either. There is nowhere to hide.