RomaniaxReader~Sustenance Pact~Ch 13

Sustenance Pact~Ch 13~

The air was sweet and warm. You could get used to this kind of atmosphere after being down in the sewers for so long. It reminded you of several things: your old life, the times you would smile, Roderich's baking…

Wait…

"Roddy!" you cried out and flipped the covers over smacking your forehead straight into something—or rather, someone—delivering a pounding pulsation of pain throughout your already aching head.

"God!" you screamed and clung to your head writhing in pain. It didn't help that your head already ached due to the lack of oxygen being delivered after losing so much blood.

"I'm sorry, __________!" Vladimir apologized. "You startled me! I didn't mean to! Honest! I was thinking maybe you wanted some cake or something…"

"Cake?" you started and looked back at your familiar vampire companion. Indeed, he was holding a small plate with a freshly cut slice of black forest cake.

"Want some?" Vladimir asked holding up the quaint china plate.

"Yes," you answered immediately and snatched it away from his hands and began to devour it. Goddamn, it was sweet—but it was good. It even had chocolate.

"Did Roddy make this?" you asked curiously.

"Yeah," Vladimir nodded and made a face. "I can even smell the sugar off of his baking. I can't imagine how it must taste to you."

"Funny," you mused. "I thought the only thing that tasted sweet to you was my blood."

"That's true…" Vladimir sighed gazing longingly at your neck.

"Ohhhh no," you snapped clutching your neck with your free hand. "You probably sucked at least more than a pint of my blood yesterday. There's no way in hell I'm going to let you do that again."

"I figured you'd say that," your soul mate chuckled. "I think I'll be able to stave off my hunger for a long time."

"Good," you said between mouthfuls of rich, rum-filled cake. "All this chocolate is going to make me sick one day."

"Don't say that, __________," Vladimir frowned. "Your blood tastes sweeter when you eat chocolate."

"So I've heard," you groaned sarcastically and swallowed your helping of cake. After you cleared your plate, Elizabeta came in looking much more livelier than she did right before you had passed out.

"Oh, ___________, I'm glad you're awake," she said with a warm smile. "Thank you for rescuing me."

Your disappointed soul mate raised an eyebrow. "You thank her, but you're not going to thank me?" he asked. Suddenly, your friend threw the vampire a hard look of what appeared to be pure hatred.

"It's your fault that this happened," she said. "You…if I knew you were responsible for everything that's been happening to me and __________ and Roddy, I'd—I'd—!"

"You'd what, Eliza?" you blinked surprised at your friend's sudden burst of heated energy. "What happened? Did Roddy tell you something?"

Sighing, Elizabeta held back any more of her biting words and stared at you. "Yes, he did, __________," she answered. "Roddy decided to tell me first so I wouldn't have any negative feelings towards your irresponsible soul mate."

"But that doesn't change the fact that you seem to be so demeaning towards him right now," you pointed out. "Plus, it was really thanks to him that we were able to get you and Roddy out of GERUN in the first place."

"Yes, but nothing would have happened in the first place if this wretched vampire didn't come out," Elizabeta retorted. Not knowing how to respond to her words, you gave Vladimir a quick look before attempting to get to your feet—only to falter right after getting up from the sudden rush of blood draining from your body.

"___________!" Vladimir and Elizabeta both cried out. In an instant, they both reached for you, but they butted heads—literally and figuratively.

"And why should you want to help her, leech?" Elizabeta snapped at Vladimir. "Just because you help her doesn't take away the fact that she's almost anemic because of you."

"Oh?" Vladimir snarled. "And what about your soul mate? At least I have self-control when it comes to not eating my soul mate's friends."

"You're still a leech!" Elizabeta hissed.

"Sappy little hunter!" Vladimir threw back.

"WILL YOU PLEASE STOP ARGUING AND HELP ME UP?!?!" you shouted at the top of your lungs. That turned out to be a big mistake; you could almost feel your face turning a prune-ish purple from your bubbling emotions.

"Sorry, __________," Vladimir apologized hastily and helped you to your feet without Elizabeta's help.

What the fuck's Eliza's problem? you wondered as you leaned onto your soul mate for support much to her discontent. She was fine just a while ago. What did Roddy tell her?

"Shall we go hear what Roddy has to say?" Vladimir asked softly tenderly stroking your hair.

"Yeah," you blushed trying your best to put on a neutral expression. Despite that, you could feel some of the color returning to your cheeks as Vladimir took the time to make sure you were able to stand.

-----

"I'm glad you're alright, ___________," Roderich said when you and your two companions joined him in the lounge of your rented apartment.

"Yeah, yeah, I appreciate your concern, but do you think we could spare the details and tell me what you found out?" you asked impatiently sensing the tense atmosphere that was squeezing you in between Elizabeta and Vladimir.

"Certainly," the vampire pianist said and set down his teacup and folded his hands into his lap.

This ought to be good, you thought making yourself comfortable in the sofa across from him. Elizabeta promptly said down next to her soul mate while Vladimir hovered behind you stroking your hair affectionately now and then. There was something strange about the way he was acting ever since Elizabeta was freed—something that made you on edge almost as much as he was feeling so as far as you could tell.

After clearing his throat, Roderich began to tell you of what he had learned and the importance of going through a shitload of trouble to get him out for the matter:

"Vladimir, I'm assuming it's safe to say that you are at least five hundred years old—at least, am I correct?"

Vladimir nodded in silent response. Roderich promptly continued.

"Very good. It should make sense. Well, to be frank, I came across a proposal of joining a vampire clan recently."

You raised your eyebrows curiously. "Really?"

"Ja," Roderich nodded taking a sip of his tea. It was strange that while Vladimir was repulsed by the taste of human food—even by chocolate, his favorite treat as a mortal—Roderich was able to consume normal amounts just fine. You supposed old habits died hard and left it at that.

"I feel like this is no coincidence, but the one who relayed the message to me was none other than the leader of the clan, a person you might know, Vladimir." Then, Roderich opened his deep violet and eyes and glared into your soul mate's ruby-red orbs. "Does the name, 'Arthur Kirkland,' ring a bell?"

You could have sworn that the air in the room froze despite knowing Vladimir had a hand on your shoulder and Elizabeta was leaning on her own soul mate for support. Then, the silence was broken when Vladimir slowly asked, "What of it?"

A cold grimace escaped Roderich's unreadable expression. "Do you know why he asked me to join his clan?"

"I was hoping you'd tell us," you jumped in.

"Ja, well, it was because he had proposed that I partake in an unusual experiment involving humans," Roderich explained taking another sip of his tea from his dainty china cup. "The details were fuzzy, and I'm not sure how long he and his associates have been monitoring this activity, but this Arthur knew that I had found Eliza."

You began to chew the bottom of your lip and made a grove between your eyebrows. "And how is that important?"

"I'm getting to that, ___________," Roderich told you in a composed manner. He was good at keeping his cool when he wasn't going bloodthirsty on you. "I believe Arthur and his clan have found an underlying reason for the existence of the mortals that you and I, Vladimir, address as 'soul mates.' But I think there is more to this. I believe you knew what the purpose was all along, Vladimir—for a much longer time than you would believe, ____________."

"What?" You blinked and turned around to face your soul mate. "Vlad, is this true?"

Vladimir averted his gaze from your questionable look and refused to answer right away. You responded by persisting in trying to break down his defenses with your unrelenting gaze until you were able to get an confession out of him.

"I'm sorry, __________," Vladimir finally said. "I didn't think that this would happen again. I really didn't. I thought as long as I was able to keep you safe, I wouldn't have to deal with them again."

"Again?" you echoed. "Hold on." You grabbed onto his collar and brought him straight to your face so he couldn't look away no matter how hard he tried. "What the fuck is going on, Vlad? What are you not telling me?" Not thinking your soul mate was going to tell you since he hadn't done so earlier, you turned back to Roderich hoping to get something out of him.

"Roddy, care to elaborate?" you asked with a seething voice.

"Certainly, __________," Roderich replied calmly. He probably knew something like this was going to happen ahead of time. "You see, when Arthur was proposing that I join him, he mentioned that there was a deeper connection between a vampire and his or her soul mate. That connection happens to involve the very next line of beings—one that is even more superior to humans and vampires combined."

"What do you mean?" you asked incredulously.

"There are privileges and restrictions that vampires and humans both have, do they not?" Roderich first asked.

"Yeah…" you answered skeptically.

"I'm sure you know of them, but from a vampire's point of view, it's like this: vampires cannot age yet humans can. They are unable to reproduce—they are only able to infect and transform others like the way viruses are unable to reproduce on their own. Then, there's the fact that while vampires are able to consume mortal food, they are unable to live without the sustenance that can only be received by the blood of a human being."

"And your point?"

"My point is, what if there was a way to get rid of those boundaries?" Roderich answered with an unquestionable-like question.

"Is that possible?" you asked. Then you turned to Vladimir who was still under your grip without putting up any resistance. "Vlad, is it?"

After a brief moment of hesitation, Vladimir reluctantly answered, "It's true, _________."

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me sooner?!" you screamed.

Vladimir gave you a sad look and opened his mouth to speak. "I—"

"He's seen what has happened to failed experiments before," Roderich answered in his stead.

"You have, have you?" you sighed. "What happened? Was it something that you needed to keep from me?"

"I didn't want to take any chances, _________," Vladimir mumbled stubbornly. "I've seen what happened to vampires and their soul mates in previous 'experiments.'" From the way he spat out that last word, you could tell that something awful had happened in Vladimir's past.

"I think Vladimir will be able to explain from here, ___________," Roderich said gesturing to his vampire counterpart. And so, Vladimir continued where he had left off.

"There was an original clan, _________," Vladimir began. "In fact, remember that time I left when you went to visit Roddy?"

"Yeah," you nodded. Thanks to a certain phone call, you had never gotten a second chance at being able to ask him where he had gone.

"Well, I went to go pay Arthur and the other original clan member a visit," Vladimir confessed.  "The other clan member is Lukas Bondevik. The three of us were once part of a small vampire clan" He tilted his head to the ceiling and started off in a trance-like nostalgic state.

"We were like the best of friends," he said in a bittersweet tone. "When everyone else shunned us, and we had no place in the world but as monsters, at least we had each other. Of course, the connection between a vampire and his soul mate had existed—perhaps it had existed so long as vampires or humans had been around. Even I don't know how long ago that was.

"Eventually, Lukas found his soul mate. She was around your age, too, __________," your soul mate said giving you a tender look. "She wasn't as strong, of course, but she was very nice. Though…Lukas was afraid of getting close to her. He was afraid that she would reject him or perhaps she was going to hate him fore being a monster. If was never too sure, though. Lukas was always the quiet type."

"Wait, how did he find out in the first place if he didn't get close to her?" you asked remembering how the only way Vladimir was able to confirm you were his soul mate was through biting you.

"Oh, that," Vladimir smiled slightly. "We used to be very selective and secretive when it came to drinking our victims' blood. We would usually wait until nighttime and devour them in their sleep. Nowadays, with the human's screwed up sleeping schedules, it's a little harder to do that.

"Anyway, Lukas told me that from the moment he bit her, he knew she was the one."

"How romantic," you snorted and rolled your eyes careful not to give your attention onto Elizabeta and Roderich just in case.

"That's how it happened," Vladimir shrugged and continued. "But he waited far too long. The time just flew by, and before he knew it, his soul mate had gotten grown up, gotten married, had children, and became old. We were always watching with Lukas not too far away, but we didn't understand what he was going through at the time. Then, when Lukas finally had the courage to confront her, she was already too content with her life to understand his feelings. She was perfectly happy with dying. And just like that, she passed away. Lukas' soul mate died just like that."

"How does that have anything to with the other stuff Roderich mentioned?" you asked not particularly caring about another vampire's love-hurt stories besides yours and Elizabeta's—she was your friend, after all.

"It made a big influence on the way Arthur reacted to his soul mate when he found her," Vladimir said. "When he found her, she had been young, too. He had immediately confronted her. He loved her. He really did. And by some bound fate, she loved him, too."

"How fantastic," you commented dryly.

"Arthur knew that if he didn't do something, his soul mate would die the way Lukas' did: old and void of energy to love again. So he sought out to do something. Lukas and I were more than happy to offer to turn her into a vampire so she could live forever, but Arthur didn't want her to become a monster and suffer like the rest of us. Lukas was much more persuasive of his proposition because he knew what is was like to watch someone whittle away at the expense of time.

"Finally, Arthur decided to do some research—to make a way for his soul mate to live forever. As dear friends to him, Lukas and I offered to help." Vladimir took a moment to sigh despite not needing any air to live. "Let's just say we found a way to make a mortal live forever, but she wouldn't exactly be a vampire."

"What do you mean by exactly?" you asked suspiciously.

"The process was incomplete," Vladimir explained. "We had frantically travelled over Europe hoping to find vampires and their soul mates so that we might try out the experiment before testing it out on Arthur's soul mate. I won't go into the details or the process of how it works, but eventually, we were sure that Arthur's soul mate would finally be able to live forever.

"We thought it would work—we were really confident. Arthur's soul mate wasn't afraid so as long as she would remain by Arthur's side. And so, we went with the experiment, and she became immortal."

"So it works…" you breathed in fascination.

Vladimir nodded, but his expression was grim. "Apparently, there were some things we didn't account for," he said in a low voice. "While Arthur's soul mate might have been immortal, she wasn't human any more—not at all. It was almost like the process we did only slowed down the process it took for her to mature into a vampire—with unexpected results.

"Arthur's soul mate became immune to sunlight, but she couldn't bear the thought of even looking at it. She couldn't even love the things she used to because she had grown to become fearful of them. It was a strain of vampirism we had never seen before after all of our years of being alive."

"And?" you butted in. "What happened? She could live forever, couldn't she?"

"No," Vladimir frowned. "She killed herself."

There was a deathly silence in the room. Roderich and Elizabeta, who had been listening intently at Vladimir's story, were both extremely pale.

Feeling no need to leave everything off in such a sullen mood, Vladimir proceeded to finish up. "Arthur went insane. He vowed that he would make it perfect. He had seen the results: these new beings did not fear the darkness and they didn't need to feed off of blood, alone. On top of all of that, they could live forever. By some twisted conclusion, Arthur decided that he was going to carry out the next line of beings, and he would do that with Lukas' and my help.

"I helped for a while, but after seeing how many failed experiments had occurred and how many vampires had to be eradicated, I just couldn't take anymore. Maybe it was because I was a coward or maybe I hadn't understood the connections between a vampire and his soul mate at the time, but I just couldn't do any of it. So, I left. I visited from time to time, but they never did produce the desired results. All those vampire outbreaks, those mysterious humans vanishing over history—perhaps documented by GERUN, those were all us, ____________. I'm sorry.

"Though, when you had mentioned the vampire you killed was able to withstand sunlight, I had some doubts. I had to go check on Arthur and Lukas. When I talked to them, they mentioned things about finally completing their project."

"Did they tell you when they were going to launch this?" you asked.

Vladimir swallowed. "By next moon."

"Next moon?!" you cried. "Vlad, you idiot! Did you think hiding under a rock and keeping your mouth shut would make things any better? In case you forgot, they're probably doing things around here, too! Don't you remember that shit Gilbert was doing in his house? What if they've got other people in GERUN hexed? They've even got the humans doing all of the dirty work!"

"Gilbert was hexed?" Elizabeta asked.

"I'll tell you about that later, Eliza," you said dismissively keeping your eyes solely on Vladimir. "Seriously, Vlad! What the fuck!"

"Now you know why I'm so upset?" Elizabeta huffed. "He could have brought this up much sooner. Perhaps if he did, we wouldn't look like traitors, and GERUN would have listened to us."

"Oh, man…" you groaned. "And let me guess: Since Gilbert was hexed by Arthur, he was the one who decided to get rid of Roddy and Eliza so they would keep their mouths shut for good."

"I think that's the most reasonable explanation," Roderich nodded.

After everything seemed to be cleared up, you flopped back down on the sofa and let out a hard sigh as if releasing all your energy would somehow make things better—which, it didn't, unfortunately, but not surprisingly.

"I'm sorry, ____________, " Vladimir apologized. He knew it was pointless to try, but he told you nonetheless.

"Save it, Vlad," you sighed and looked upon your soul mate. Then again, at least you knew why Vladimir had acted the way he did around you. He had just wanted to be with you, no strings attached, no immortality, just the memories. He didn't want to bring up any of the twisted stories about what he had seen his old clan members and their soul mates go through. He had just wanted you to be happy. But perhaps the one thing he hadn't expected out of all of this was for his very own soul mate to be a vampire hunter. At least it didn't seem to matter in Elizabeta and Roderich's case.

"What do you propose you do?" Elizabeta asked harshly.

"You're barking up the wrong tree," Vladimir hissed.

"You should have taken responsibility," Roderich pointed out causing your soul mate to growl.

"Vlad, let it go," you sighed and stood between the vampires' fangs. "I think our best option is to try to get rid of Arthur and Lukas. After seeing what went down in Gilbert's basement, I think it's safe to say they're hexing a bunch of people at once. If we kill the vampires, the hexes break, don't they?"

"Right," Vladimir nodded. "I doubt they were going to give the vampires out the method for making humans immortal so easily so I'm guessing so far, they're the only other ones who know of the formula."

"Hey, one thing," you stopped him. "If you know how to make humans immortal, why haven't they killed you yet?"

Once again, Vladimir was hesitant to answer your question. "I have an idea, but until I see them again, I can't be too sure."

Your shoulders drooped and your lips pursed into a frown. "You can't even bother to tell me?"

"I can't, _________," I'm sorry," Vladimir apologized fruitlessly.

"Oh, well," you sighed; you seemed to be doing that a lot recently. "I think I'm going to see if there's any more cake left." With that, you got up and followed Elizabeta and Roderich into the kitchen area leaving Vladimir to ponder his own thoughts about what was going to happen now that nearly everything had been explained.