A Vampire's Life Book 6

Chapter 10

Zane was ordered to a building near the front of the property to tend the gardens. He hadn't seen Ariella since she wandered off yesterday at the stables. Zane didn't know what to think, he knew she was cold but he also knew there was a wonderfully warm woman underneath the rock hard exterior. He had to figure out how to break through it, there was something that would make her give in to him. But what? The sun was beating down on him hard, the other slaves near him were complaining of the heat, frequently sipping their water. This was his life now, for a short while at least. Blur into the crowd was his mantra. Over and over again his mind rattled, his heart heavy with pain. He didn't want to, but he had to. Zane thought that he would want for his old life, living with the rats in the underground tunnels of the city but he didn't. This place was a vastly different from his previous life. Raiding shops for food, breaking into houses that had been abandoned by the vampires that had disappeared. None of his people knew where they all went, figuring there was some vampire metropolis in another town. Once they were in grand numbers, like the humans. Then all of a sudden they were down to very few. On occasions there would be a flourish in their numbers, he would on occasions see them tending to the land. It made sense to him that there was some vampire metropolis, that they were only coming here to fix the land and were living elsewhere.

His eyes wandered to the grand house that sat a short distance away, to the vampires that lived within those grand walls. He liked the ones he met, he was yet to meet the king. Zane had seen him walking through the gardens with the queen. He fussed over her constantly, even from a distance Zane could see how much the king adored his wife. And she reciprocated that admiration and love. Zane hoped that he could find that kind of love with Ariella, but thought that it might just be an impossible path. He wondered how she could be the way she was with two parents that were clearly happy. Zane had seen the brother and his wife as well, they seemed happy and in love and for a fleeting moment, Zane wondered if Ariella was jealous. Jealous that she didn't have what her loved ones did. She had moments of happiness, he had seen her smile, he knew her happy person was in there. It was like a light bulb moment; he had seen her happiness when it was moments with him. Suddenly the impossible path that was Ariella's affection wasn't so impossible. He knew it was his mission to make her happy. But then the creeping dread filled his mind, he could make her happy but it would only be fleeting. Once he was done with his duty, she would hate him and he would be dead.

The slave keeper walked past him, moving down the long line of the building toward the other slaves. Even the slave keeper had his moments. That is of course, when he wasn't whipping him. Zane knew he deserved every single lashing he got. He had a smart mouth, he looked at the house for too long, he looked at Ariella's windows for too long, he looked at Ariella. Zane inwardly laughed, wondering what the slave keeper would think if he knew what was really going on when he wasn't around. The fact that he talked to her a lot, called her by her first name, kissed her a lot, touched her, felt her soft skin. She was temptation with fangs. But he didn't care, he knew she was worth dying for. But would his end be by her hands or by someone else? He sighed and looked up at the building near them, he didn't know what this building housed, though he had his suspicions. The women.

His suspicions were confirmed when the large double doors opened and a long line of women started to walk in a single file. Some of them were in what he had been told was the farm issue dress. It was a simple white dress that hugged their torsos and floated around their lower half. He thought they looked very pretty in them. The dresses were a stark white, far different to the ones the women were wearing when they were in the vendors compound. Those dresses were a dirty white. Some of the women were in more casual clothes, shorts or skirts, tops, dresses. It seemed they would wear whatever was available to them. Much like the male slaves, though most of them tended to wear jeans for durability.