While Bree was sleeping in his bed, Zane took this time to watch her.She looked so small amidst all of the silks and satin sheets and velvet covers.He leaned under the gilded canopy and pushed back the heavy black draperies, but was afraid to sit on the circular mattress because he didn’t want to disturb her rest.The horrible mark on the lovely neck that he had so savagely marred was healing quickly.It would leave a scar most likely, but Zane still could see his ‘good’ venom at work.It still surprised him and at times he had a hard time believing it, that he was able of producing the good venom, after a thousand years of not even knowing it existed in him.This thought made him feel better, maybe he wasn’t totally evil after all.Bree breathed a long sigh and then turned on her side away from him.He got up and walked across the large deep crimson room until he reached the anti-room with its hexagonal walls decked in heavy gold tapestries from floor to ceiling.He reached out and stroked the thick fabric with its black embroideries.Unusual for a vampire since most loved dark colors, he loved the gold shimmering under the light of the dimmed chandelier. The room still glowed warmly into the darkness of the bedroom where the blood red walls were nearly black, these walls absorbing close to all of the light that spilled in from where he stood.
Once through the anti-room Zane closed the heavy wooden door behind him and walked across his expansive sitting room, and yet another sitting room before he reached the thick doors that led out to the balcony.The night was a bit hazy as he stepped out into it.He walked across the balcony’s stone floor and out onto the semi-circle that jutted out from under the stone structure above him that shaded that part of the balcony during the day.Once he reached the edge, he rested his hands on the railing and looked out at the great river that wound its way out past the horizon.The moonlight was shimmering off of it and it glowed lighter that the rest of the gently hilly land.His small, private resort, far up and away past that horizon secluded beyond the hills, lay still and quiet and as of yet undiscovered.Humans couldn’t get to it.He had made sure of that.A thick forest of briars and thorns concealed the way there, it was only accessible by a long, underground tunnel that only he was aware of.
Zane thought again of Bree.She had woken something in him.Something from deep within that part of him that was given to him in birth by his mother, while she was still human.Bree was right, even though Zane was never human, he still had human blood inside of him.Bree had said that he was like an adult that had forgotten what it was like to be a child.She had meant that he had forgotten about his humanity.The ironic thing was that within his vampire veins some human blood flowed still.He was still part of that race, and always would be.Even though every trait he carried was vampiric, he could not deny now the truth he had been locking away inside of his brain for so long.
He was still… half human, and his great strength would not last for long now.Bree’s blood was definitely a temporary cure to his gradual weakening, and mixed with his ‘good’ venom an even longer prolongation, but he knew that even if he fed on her every day for weeks and weeks he would still weaken.And eventually he would weaken down to nothing, yet he would still exist to be bound forever in his rotting corpse.It wouldn’t be long now before the curse could not be reversed.
He was bound straight for hell.
Zane knew that every human in his vast empire willed him nothing short of hell.But he didn’t care about them.He never did.They were born, they served him, then they died.He had no remorse or feelings towards them, no matter how loyal they were.He enjoyed their fear of him.It gave him even more strength when he would drink their adrenaline spiked blood.He must have drained hundreds of thousands of mortals in his time.And he had never once turned them.No vampire was allowed to turn any human.If they did, they paid a terrible price.
Even the vampires feared Zane.
Zane stayed on the expansive and multi tiered balcony for some time. He eventually walked down one of the curved little stairways to the level underneath, one that jutted out even further from the castle wall.As he walked along he touched the flowers that were potted there along the stone walls of his grand home.It was like his own personal garden, one he actually ate from, from time to time.Zane fancied the peppery taste of most flowers.He loved the way they felt in his mouth, how the gentle petals would nearly disintegrate as he chewed them, sliding down his throat much like blood did.He picked one now, a yellow rose.He thought of the night he had eaten Bree’s rose.She had looked so hurt.If it hadn’t been for that little rose and her reaction to his eating it, he would have devoured her.And now as he thought of her, he couldn’t imagine destroying something so beautiful.
