Chapter 163

Chapter 163
Aeron
Leaving the pits is always more difficult than approaching it in the first place. It wants us there. It wants to keep us there. Even the innocent ones.
And still. I've never seen anyone respond as strongly to the place as Isla did. She felt the death. The weight of it. And the ferocious appetites of the things living in the dark.
The souls inside the pits are dead. They just don't know it. What emerges after a long sentence like Idun's is a shell. A thing masquerading as a vampire. It takes many more decades, centuries event, to piece back together the fractured pieces of soul.
Isla looks over her back one last time before we enter the treeline where my family waits. She stops dead and narrows her eyes, then bumps the side of her head with the heel of palm. "Isla what's wrong?" I ask.
My first thought is that Idun is sending images to her from the pits, but it's impossible. The magic will contain anything she tries to throw at Isla. The mages who built the place made sure that nothing, not even a thought, can ever escape that place.
But Isla is seeing something, and she doesn't have the gift of prophecy.
Well....
Not as far as I know at any rate.
"What's going on?" I ask her again.
Isla looks up at me, her eyes stark and wide with fear. "Someone's coming. I can feel him. Cold and cruel."
Nicolette sighs and rolls her eyes. "It's just Vlad. She's not used to... feeling the others' presence yet."
Just Vlad. As if the presence of our bloodthristy brother won't throw Isla completely off balance right now.
Nicolette likes him. So does Michael, for the most party, but it makes sense because the both of them are stone cold psychopaths. They both have redeeming qualities though, something warm Isla can cling to. Something that gives her hope for them.
Vladimir is a hundred percent irredeemable. And my bride is way more perceptive than any of us ever knew. She can sense it.
"How has he not ended up in the pits yet?" Michael asks.
I look at my brother. He's upset. Usually, when Vlad rolls into town, they can be found at the nearest human drunk tank, getting the mortals high and drunk, so the two psychopaths can fuck and drink and kill to their hearts' content.
But it bugs Isla.
And Michael loves Isla more than he enjoys his hedonistic activities with Vlad.
He knows how to skirt the line like no one I've ever met. He stops short of breaking the law, staying clear of my kingdom for the most part because I have the highest expectations, and whoring where others can't ever find him. There are places, between our kingdoms, not rules by anyone or anything, where my brother can indulge in all his sickest desires with abandon.
An image of a young woman screaming, 'no, no, no,' and then then high pitched holler as the stake went up her rectum and exited her chest flashes before my eyes.
It was a particularly brutal way to die - but not worse than the Romans who liked to make their victims suffer. Vlad's stakings could kill someone instantly, or it could take hours, but it rarely took anyone days to die.
The Romans found weighs to make humans suffer for days and days before death came for them. By then, the poor victim embraced death as a welcome friend.
"Vladimir," I say as my brother steps from the shadows.
His hair is short, beard shaved, he's wearing modern clothes.
I'm actually surprised. I almost expected him to look like he did when Idun made him.
We've all changed.
His smile is still the same though. Cocky, chilling, a little condescending. "You throw our mother in the pits?"
His accent changed. He doesn't sound like he used it, but his voice still has the raw, unfiltered quality of someone who swallowed a cheese grater. "I am the king."
"She broke no laws."
"She poisoned my home with Sorrowshade. That alone is enough."
"She killed initiates." Michael adds. "Our allies. That is against the law."
Vladimir steps up to Michael, never break eye-contact. "Your laws. Your brother's laws."
"Your brother too," Hakon reminds him.
Vlad nods slowly, and from the corner of my eye, I notice Isla standing a little closer to me.
"I had a brother once," Vladimir says. "He betrayed me. Chose his captors over his own flesh and blood."
"That mad is not your brother anymore," I remind him. "He died many centuries ago. We are your family now. Your brothers."
Vlad grins, his smile white and grotesque in the dark. "Of course you are. I live close. Please, spend the day. Make use of my humans."
It makes sense that Vladimir lives here, this close to the pits, this close to the place where suffering his heaviest and deepest. He always thrived on it. "I'm surprised you're not a pit keeper," Michael voices the words I were thinking.
Vlad shrugs. "I considered it, but-" he looks over his shoulder at the wastelands -"their bitches are too bony, and I still prefer the warmth of blood over the coldness of an empty soul."
Einar lets out something that sounds like a strangled cry. "Idun was not soulless."
Vlad stops and turns to our father. His eyes are filled with fake sympathy, but I can see the truth playing around his full lips. "You are wrong, Father. I know you loved her, but Idun's soul was cold and empty. It is why I loved her. Why she loved me."
"It's why the two of you were best buds, right?" Nicolette says. "But where were you when she turned to stone? You left." Her voice is better and filled with acquisations. "You were happy to impale people with her, but when she needed you the most, you were gone... and we had to deal with her psycho ass."
Vladimir doesn't budge. "We had an agreement. I never agreed to protect her from a curse. To stand guard over her. She gave me what I needed to defeat my enemies. In return, I rewarded her with their fear and suffering."
He looks over his shoulder again. "She won't return from the pits. She'll become one of them. A keeper. She was born for that place."