The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 04

Sparrow gnawed on his knuckles, the pain the only thing grounding him, reminding him of danger. Danger was coming.

Vestalia rode the man with purpose. It didn't feel to Sparrow like their love-making, long and laughing and indulgent, not so much a journey to release as a collection of sweet, thrilling moments. Instead, she seemed to be chasing relief, cantering on her lover's cock, clashing her body to his with a huntress hunger, her flower crown jostling, her eyes focused. Their rumbling panting filled the room, pervaded Sparrow's senses, along with the steamy scent of sweat and blood and melting wax. Moisture wreathed them, made them slide against each other. Vestalia's mouth was round and open and puckered with her rapid breaths. Her fangs lengthened again, sprouting from her gums, becoming carnivorous, exaggerated, so she couldn't close her mouth, couldn't even draw her lips down over her flashing teeth. The mask of indigo veins across her eyes darkened and made her cherry irises gleam.

Cold crept up the back of Sparrow's neck. He withdrew his fingers from his mouth and laid his hands flat against the cool stone.

Vestalia released a reverberating moan, echoed by the man beneath her and the one writhing in the bedsheets, watching with wide eyes. She combed her fingers into her lover's hair and guided his head outwards, his flushed face emerging from her neck, where the blood in his beard had left a speckled imprint. His meaty throat stretched, his jugular bulbous under his ruddy skin.

Sparrow's heart jolted and hurtled into rattling speed.

Vestalia levelled her sabre fangs.

Sparrow swallowed a cry.

She drove her teeth into the man's throat.

Sparrow clapped his hand to his mouth, stomach heaving. The man's jugular burst, spurting across Vestalia's snowy cheeks, the splatter vanishing into the black threading around her eyes. Her ruby irises flooded deep, boiling crimson, the whites of her eyes lost. Her mouth sealed over the spitting wound and she moaned like Sparrow had never heard. A sound of pure, unrefined fury and desire.

The man gurgled and silenced. He kept hold of her body, cloying, comforting. He stayed as still as stone, staring up into the haze of honey light, and let it happen, cradling her as she drained him, his lips moving wordlessly, murmuring a final prayer.

Vestalia's throat rippled with her deep swallows. Her feasting was focused. There was none of the elegance of dining nor the snapping and scrabbling of an animal. She seemed to fall into an almost meditative state, the blood pouring into her body and making her glow brighter, making her the most luminous source of light in the room, glimmering in the vibrant petals in her hair. Everything went chillingly quiet, save for the low, humming glugs of her drinking.

Sparrow stared in horror, trembling and palid. He could feel his own blood in his body, pumping hard, screaming at him to run, throbbing into his extremities in the same nauseating rhythm that the man was losing his life. Sparrow watched the colour leak from his face, watched his eyes glaze, watched his clutching hands go limp on her back. All his energy, all his lust, all his worship, it drained from him, lost like songs in a gale. Sparrow felt like his heart had been cleaved. She was killing. His mistress. His beloved. His last hope.

She was stealing life.

A viscous bud of blood bloomed under Vestalia's lips and oozed free, rolling in a straight, fine line down the dying man's back. It splashed into the carved dip in the centre of the floor and streamed down the grooves to drain from the room. The man on the bed flipped onto his front and began to thrust into the mattress, grumbling through his teeth, fists clenched in the sheets, "Yes... Yes... God, do it... Fuck, make him come..."

The blonde flinched and jerked upwards into her twining body and let out a soft moan. One more raindrop tear squeezed from the corner of his eye and trickled down his cheek.

Sparrow's eyes sprang hot.

Vestalia took a final swallow and slowly unsheathed her fangs from the poor man's neck, leaving two deep, shining slits. She rocked back and cupped his blank, grey face. Her fangs receded, returning to the two keen canines poking prettily from her sumptuous lips. She kissed the tip of his nose.

She stood.

And let him fall.

He crashed back in a heap of empty flesh and bone onto the stone floor, his limbs askew, his muscles deflated, the downy hair of his torso gummed with blood, his cock shrunken and dribbling white. The wound on his neck flowed freely. Blood poured into the grooves in the floor, inking a red spider's web that spiralled out across the black. The raw, metallic scent overwhelmed Sparrow.

Vestalia turned from the collapsed man. The mask around her eyes was a sweet, blushing pink, and her eyes were light again, if a little rosy. She swished her thumb over the corner of her mouth, caught a drop of blood, and sucked it with a small, satisfied smile.

The man on the bed groaned and rolled onto his back and clawed his thighs, bucking in his cock cage. "You're so beautiful," he said weakly. "He's so lucky."

"Soon, Sweetheart," Vestalia drawled without looking at him. She rolled her shoulders, the jewels of blood all over her naked body winking in the glow. She walked easily into a well of shadow behind a candelabra, still licking her fingers, her lily crown slightly ruffled. She melted into the darkness and vanished from the room.

Sparrow gaped, grief-stricken, at the sprawled body, caught like an insect on the web of blood. His mind raced. He felt hollowed out, his flesh clammy and his ears ringing.

Help him!

He scrambled to his feet, fingernails screeching on the stone, legs shaking. He froze at a creak and a scrape from across the room. A large tile lifted from the floor and slid aside. Cyrus rose out of the trap door, the light dying on his shaggy curls and slate eyes. He huffed to stand in the room, a stack of clean sheets laid over one of his great shoulders, a jug of steaming water in his hands. He strode over to a wash basin tucked near the bed and emptied the jug into it. He strode around the bed back into full view and tossed the sheets at the wriggling man on the mattress.

"Clean yourself up," he gruffed.

The freckled man just cuddled the fresh sheets and kept sighing to himself. Cyrus went to the carcass. It was bulkier than him, but Cyrus lifted him as if he were made of twigs. He hoisted him over his shoulder with a grunt and turned back to the trap door, eyes roving dully around the room.

Until they locked on Sparrow.

Sparrow gasped.

Cyrus' gaze turned severe. "Sparrow... Don't..."

RUN!

Sparrow turned on his heel and hurtled from the room. The fires of the temple flashed through his vision, swallowed by the darkness of the stairs, swallowed by the dazzling light of the library. He saw none of it. He raced blindly, aware of nothing but the scream of his pulse and his heartbreak. He fumbled with the library lock, wrenched open the door...

And fled.

*

Vestalia reclined dreamily in her bath water, indulgently breathing the mist perfumed with myrtle and rose. The blood washed from her skin, staining the pool scarlet, the steam rising from her body pink-tinged. She took a deep breath and ran the tip of her tongue along her teeth, savouring the last spectre of spice.

The door to the baths banged open. She twisted with a frown to see Cyrus hurrying into the room, his hair wild about his face.

"Cyrus, what-"

"He saw you," Cyrus said urgently. "Sparrow. He saw you feed."

Vestalia's face set hard as diamond. "Where is he?"

Cyrus shook his head, brow crumpling. "Gone. I couldn't catch him."

Vestalia stood in the large, round pool sunk into the tiled floor, her strong body crowning through the swirl of fragrant mist. The water streamed off her, a spot of ruby in the belly of every crystal drop. Steam curled around her fingers.

"No," she said resolutely. "Sparrow isn't going anywhere."