Chapter 4.32 – Fifteen Hands

Note: I’ve sort of found a workaround for the whole ‘vampires lose their features’ bug, but it doesn’t work for Kitty so there are still some hastily-drawn edits here and there. Have fun spotting them.

In the den of the Galloway Manor, Seth and his bloodlust brethren had been summoned, at Kitty’s command, to play a rousing game of four deck flash. Seth was certain that Kitty was the only one in the room who truly understood the rules of this ghastly game, yet he played along, losing hand after hand as Kitty and Faith battled for superiority.

Faith, he had long learned, was not a fan of losing; a trait matched by Kitty. Yet the game required four players so, long after Caleb and Seth had been left in the dust of the race, they were inclined to play until their female friends had forfeited.

“It appears that I win hand number thirteen.”

“Best of fifteen hands,” Faith muttered.

“Very well.” Kitty smiled and shuffled the decks.

Caleb slumped in his chair like the petulant teenager he was and groaned. “I’m getting thirsty…”

“You can wait another round,” Kitty replied smoothly.

“You said that six rounds ago.”

Seth remembered Kitty well enough now to know that this attitude would seriously irk her, but she remained composed. “That may be so, but is this not marvellous?” Kitty gushed. “The four of us, bonding. Simply tremendous!”

The silence of disagreement fell around the table, but unperturbed, Kitty pressed on, swiftly dealing cards with her nimble wrists until everyone had a neat stack before them.

Seth glanced at his cards and knew that he had lost yet again. Sure, he could slap on his best poker face and bluff his way to victory but that was simply so much effort for such small gain and, like Caleb, he was too thirsty to really care. But unlike Caleb, he knew how to control himself. So, he feigned interest in the game as he listened in to the thoughts of his fellow fiends. Caleb and Faith, at least; he daren’t attempt an assault on the mind of his mistress. Despite his freakish fancy, he didn’t invite her heavy-handed efforts and he actually liked having his bollocks attached.

Caleb was, as expected, thinking of his basement blondes and how he wished he was locked around them, latched on in four places and drowning in their soft haze. His mind really was no more interesting than that. At least, to Seth, it was marginally less dull than flicking his losing cards into the centre pile turn after turn.

The boy knew when he was being read. A lifetime of mind ministration will do that to a man. He kept throwing irritated glances at Seth, trying to put up walls, trying to distract him with thoughts of Lilith of all things, but ultimately failing entirely at keeping Seth out.

Regardless, Seth quickly tired of playing with Caleb’s head and tuned instead into Faith’s.

Since he had siphoned her mysterious and disobedient power from her, Faith had all but lost her ability to resist being read. At first, Seth wasn’t sure if she was aware of him lurking in the crevices of her mind but her she didn’t respond to his prying so he assumed that she wasn’t.

Her thoughts were very telling. She definitely still held a torch for him. She disagreed with that fact, naturally, contrary as she was, but it was there. Every glance his way sent her aflutter, and not just between her thighs. When he caught her eye, and smiled, he could practically hear her blushing.

Faith was, despite all her denial, still very much ‘his’.

He had known that this foray with Caleb was purely a distraction of her own feelings for him, but this confirmation stoked the flames within the ancient vampire. There was still hope. Faith would come back and this time, he wouldn’t drive her away. He would never let her go.

“Aha!” Faith shouted, throwing down her cards. “Take that, Frecklehead!”

Seth smirked as Kitty’s smile flickered a touch. Faith had bested her at her own game, this round at least. The two were once again tied and at least one more round was in order. But more, he was amused that Faith had called Kitty ‘Frecklehead’ and that Kitty has responded as if she was not bothered by this in the slightest.

He knew that she would be livid at being belittled like this. Kitty dealt humiliation; she was never herself humiliated. The game Kitty was really playing here had nothing to do with cards. Faith, almost oblivious, seemed to think that the pair were friends, or at least heading in that direction. It was a dangerous path to walk, but what could Seth do until he fully understood? Kitty might have professed to being his equal, but Seth knew better than to take her at face value. He was not a fool. He knew that he was bound by the unspoken connection of their blood and his authority would only stretch so far before Kitty had her elegant stiletto back in his nether regions, metaphorically, or otherwise.

He hated that this thought aroused him. He hated it. Hated her and what she had made him.

She glanced at him coquettishly, tickling his leg with her tiny toes, but he was certain that she wasn’t reading him. He felt nothing of the sort and she wasn’t sober enough to read him without him knowing, anyway. He wondered when she became such a lush, purring around the soft blur of bourbon as she cut her cards with a long, freshly-polished fingernail.

Seth ignored Kitty’s wandering foot and prepared for another round of this tortuous game with a smile on his face. Kitty’s plan for Faith would reveal itself, in time, but by that time he planned to be read up and long gone, hopefully with his fickle fledgling firmly by his side.

He just had to read through a decade’s collection of notes first. The vastness of that task both daunting and exciting. He had started at the very beginning, the first notebook, filled with thoughts and musings of his journey as a creature of the night. It was illuminating.

Seth had, until very recently, had no recollection of how, or why, he was turned, what led up to it or what happened immediately afterwards. He had assumed that he had been turned not long before he had been dumped at a roadside. His waking up in that ditch and slaughtering that coachman was the earliest memory he had had for centuries.

Until he met Faith and rediscovered Angeline.

Until he was reminded of Kitty and the whole sordid event that was the final year of his breathing life.

The rest was coming back in snippets and starts, weaving together slowly as he read his old journals and re-read the books that had taught him about the world wider than Windenburg, as he slowly knitted back together the threads of his life.

He didn’t need bourbon – knowledge was intoxicating.

In the journals he had read so far, he had learned that Kitty had turned him not long after the event in the basement. He had read about how much he had protested, how the sharp sting of her teeth in his wrist felt like failure. He had absorbed the details of how, when she’d held their wrists together, both dripping with blood until she was sure it was enough, he had been shaking so hard that he had vomited on the floor. He had learned about how slowly and painfully he had turned, morphing into a monster. How Kitty had let him starve until he was so out of control that he blindly took the human she’d finally offered and tore it to shreds.

That was as far as he’d gotten before the bile burned unbearable. Before he’d been summoned to play cards, of all things.

Kitty was still flirting with him, her eyelashes fluttering as she fanned her new hand of cards. Seth was careful to keep his face between neutral and happy, his mind blank. Just in case.

The next round was slow and painful, but soon it was over and this time, Faith ended with the upper hand. She slammed down her cards, revealing her win. Kitty leaned back in her chair and slowly applauded.

“Well done, bestie!” She motioned tossing her hair over her shoulder. Was it Seth’s imagination or did her hair look different? “I think,” she purred, “that we shall call that a night.”

“Oh thank hell,” Caleb said, throwing his cards on the table. Seth had to smile; Caleb had a winning hand, he wondered how many times the brainless boy could’ve won, whether he even understood that he’d won. Whether he understood the game at all.

“I win! I win!” Faith sang, doing a victory dance. “And now a celebration is in order; Caleb, want to go hunting with me?”

Caleb began to neatly stack the cards, avoiding Faith’s gaze. “I don’t think that is such a good idea,” he murmured, but then he raised his head and smiled. “I could supervise though.”

“I don’t need any supervision,” Faith scoffed. She turned to Seth but then grimaced and looked away without speaking. Seth still heard her; maybe I should ask the ol’ smelly bastard. Nah.

She really was so eloquent.

Caleb flicked his hair from what remained of his right eye and smiled at Faith. “I’ll join you anyway,” he said, “I could do with a good walk.”

“I hate walking.”

“Then I’ll walk and give you a lift,” he smirked as he sorted the cards. “Maybe we could find somewhere secluded… or not.”

Faith leaned forward on the table, squishing her breasts together in that unsubtle way she did. “Trying to get back into my pants, Mr Vatore?”

“…Maybe.”

“Too bad,” she murmured, lowering her voice but not enough for Seth not to hear it. “I’m not wearing any.”

Kitty cleared her throat, a sweet little ‘a-hum’ as she tidied the cards and Caleb blinked as if he’d forgotten anyone else was in the room. “We’re heading off now,” he announced to Kitty in his moronic way. Caleb pulled Faith to her feet and was out of the room before she could even throw Seth a smarmy smile.

“Have fun!” Kitty called after them. “Oh Seth, wait awhile, will you?” she asked as he made to leave. Alone with his mistress, Seth waited as Kitty placed the cards back in their box and fixed him with her sickly sweet smile. “I, too, am thirsty. Will you oblige?”

There was one other thing that Seth had remembered via the scrawl in his ancient journals. He recalled that, even after he was turned, Kitty would still visit him and drink from him. He didn’t recall why she didn’t like to hunt, or to keep any other captives, only that she didn’t. He groaned as she shifted form, her skin almost translucent, her hair silver, those cat-like eyes glowing brightly in the dim light of the room as she eyed his neck, mewling softly. “Please.”

“Do I have a choice?” he said through gritted teeth.

Kitty shook her head. “You always had a choice.”

He sighed, removed his hat and rolled down the collar of his jacket, motioning for her to climb astride his waiting lap. She slid into place with feline fluidity and settled her face into the crook of his neck, slowly tracing circles on his skin with her tongue.

I have missed you, bab— Seth.

Seth felt her grind slightly against him, against the wretched traitor who clearly had a mind of its own, as she settled.

“Let’s just get on with it,” he muttered, tilted his head, and submitted.

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