Moonlit Surrender
Chapter Twenty-Four

Lerexus straightened his robes with a repulsed growl, but whether it was meant for Lucy or himself was not clear. In an aggravated huff, he plucked a decorative wooden box from the cold mantle and pulled out a set of handcuffs. Their unusually brilliant gleam stole Lucy's eye from the chest of her lover cradling her still. In a sudden and violent manner, Lerexus' cruel hand ripped her from John's lap and she heard the clicking of the cuffs locking in place around his wrists. John hissed softly in controlled pain as a visible steam lifted off his stark flesh from the pure metal.

"Stay put while I fetch that lazy whore of a helper, Doris Pemberley. I needn't remind you my guard is still standing watch attentively outside the room and should you still be tempted to hatch some sort of half-brained escape attempt, I will not hesitate to destroy you both on sight when I catch you," Lerexus growled as he glared down at his old protégé. "You can no longer run from me, Wright. If you are the smart man everyone thinks you to be, you will accept this undeniable fact."

For a moment, a look of surprise seemed to flash across his face, but then John's brow fell low over his stormy eyes and his lips pressed together tightly as he held up his burning wrists. "It would be quite an achievement indeed to escape like this."

The ancient vampire did not linger a moment longer, turning on his heel and exiting the sitting room in a blur with a sour grumble, "I need to clean this filth off of me."

The room was left in a sudden silence and Lucy stood awkwardly, attempting to cover what parts of herself she could as she stood on gelatin legs, still nude and beginning to shiver from the ever-present chill in the air. John leaned forward and tugged his jacket off the back of his chair and offered it to her.

Reluctantly, she accepted it. She shrugged it on quickly and then huddled up on the couch across from him. A thousand questions raced through her foggy mind as she realized this might be the only moment she'd ever get to ask them. How could he have let this happen? Why had he taken so long getting here? Was anything between them real? As she struggled to choose which to demand an answer to first, her mouth hurdled the one she couldn't seem to shake to the background, "What the fuck was that?"

He looked confused. "I'm sorry, what was what?"

"That? Just now? He was inside me. You just sat there and let it happen! How could you just leave me at his mercy like that? You said you loved me."

"You weren't left at anyone's mercy, perhaps but your own."

"You should've stopped it."

"What I just witnessed was no helpless wretch. I saw a young woman owning her own innate power and seizing control of the room. I saw a great vampire lord well older than the very country we sit in now brought to his knees, crushed by temptation, seduced into giving in to his baser desires. I saw an unassuming human girl just take advantage of one of the most prideful and powerful vampires to ever walk the earth. I count myself privileged to have witnessed such a sight. Why would I have stopped it?" He leaned back in his chair, obviously still in great discomfort from the silver sizzling around his clasped wrists, but pushing past it to focus on her. "Truly, I am in awe of you, Lucy Beckett. Very few survive this castle. I wasn't sure what I would replace when I got here. You are far stronger than perhaps any of us knew."

Tears of defeat spilled down her cheeks.

I don't feel strong.

"What took you so long?" she whimpered, hiding her face in her hands. "How could you leave me so long in this hell, with that monster?" She sobbed into her palms, exhaustion weakening her resolve.

His voice cracked as he leaned forward once more and said, "I need you to trust me, princess. Everything is going to be okay."

"You're just saying that!" she wept. "None of this is okay. Nothing can ever be okay after this!"

A sneer from Lerexus interrupted them. "Now it's crying."

Great. Back to being less than human.

"Johnathan," he continued, "I believe you remember your old colleague."

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Doris swept proudly into the room in a long, romantic gown of black with a bodice cinched tightly about her small frame, emphasizing her in all the ways she desperately needed.

She finally found something that works on her. I guess Doris is the only one who found her happy ending.

She did a proud twirl and smiled wide enough for her sharp fangs to show. "Well, what do you think?" she asked with a condescending giggle, as if she had stolen it from him.

"I think this explains why you took our talk so well."

She laughed again, cold, metallic. "Yes, I hadn't any use for you any longer. You refused to give me what I wanted for so long, but I finally found someone willing to give it to me and he is more man than you can ever hope to be." Her prodding couldn't rattle him in the slightest. In an even tone, he answered as though what he spoke was simply fact, "You've always been a parasite, Doris. It's only fitting you should have fangs now."

Her jaw clenched and her nostrils flared with anger.

Lerexus stepped in between them before the tension could escalate. "There," he said to Doris, "you've had your little moment of revenge. Now, take this thing away and see to it that it is cleaned up. It's revolting in this state." Lucy cringed under his words, shame seeping into her chest despite herself.

Doris gripped her upper arm with her long nails digging into her soft flesh and dragged her away from the two men, a sour grimace settled on her scarlet painted lips at the unsatisfactory vengeance she had been permitted.

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***

She was shocked when Doris led her back up the castle's winding stairwells to the master suite, positive that in Lerexus' brief moment of defeat and rage, he'd have her sent back to the dungeon. Her guide unlocked the massive double doors and threw Lucy in carelessly, letting the girl tumble over the back of the couch in the sitting room and topple onto the cushions in front of it.

She closed her eyes, her head spinning from the shock of the sudden movement.

"Get up," Doris commanded icily. "He wants you to bathe again. You shouldn't even be on the furniture in the disgusting state you're in. I heard what you did, little slut, getting your filth all over the master, making him unclean with your lust. I think he should be done with all this and just kill you. You don't deserve his kindness."

Lucy stared daggers at the woman, repulsed at the idea that any of the things he had done to her could be called kindness. Lerexus was vile, evil incarnate, and this slow death he was putting her through was a torture she wouldn't wish on any save him, not even Doris.

"You're a shameless whore, but there is nothing special about you, nothing exceptional or timeless or magical. You're nothing but a pair of tits and apparently male vampires are no better than mortal men at using the head on their shoulders rather than the one between their legs." She knocked a vase off a table in anger. "Stupid fucking men!" Her washed out green eyes stared deeply into the fire warming the massive hearth and whispered softly to herself, "It should be me." Doris Pemberley a vampire queen? That's laughable.

What does being his queen even mean?

She watched her old professor sneer at the flames and then storm out without so much as a single glance her way before slamming the heavy oak doors behind her.

Lucy shakily lifted herself up onto unstable legs which felt ready to give at any moment and took slow steps towards the private bath. She felt drunk, lightheaded and as if she were walking on air as she glided through the rooms, and so foggy that by the time she had finished washing herself and was climbing into the massive four poster bed, she wasn't quite sure how she had even gotten there. Too fatigued to care, she fell back on the pillows and slipped into terrible nightmares of screaming blind in the black pit of Lerexus' crypt.