Slowly, I began to rock myself. I’m freaking out. I couldn’t think straight. I wasn’t dreaming, and I’d actually heard his voice while I was awake. I kept shouting for Segrid in my head but I was too terrified to move.
The phone beside me began to ring. I hesitated but grabbed it up, breaths choppy. Simply listening, I was about to hang up when the caller finally spoke.
“My Vivienne? My heart? Tell me.” His voice was low, gruff, like he was waking from a deep slumber.
“He called me! He says I’m his bride and he’s going to k-k-kill you,” I burst out, a gut wrenching sob following.
“He cannot kill me,” he vowed.
“But I could, couldn’t I?” I blurted wildly.
He hesitated for so long I started to cry louder.
“You cannot harm your bonded,” he replied slowly, carefully.
Swiping at my eyes, I sniffled but tried to hold it off. “Am I bonded to you, Segrid?”
“I have claimed you, bound you to me,” he told me, which I understood in Troll-speak meant from his end, yes, but…
“What do I need to do to claim you? The words, is that it? Is that how I bind myself to you?”
“When you bond with me, my heart,” he said softly, “it will be because-”
With a snarl, closing my eyes, I focused on our dream, of that odd gibberish that’d come whispering to me on one of those tidal like waves. Blowing out a long breath, I repeated them, gritting my teeth as I finished and sharp pains began to claw their way up my arms. The mark the dream Vampire had left on my neck felt like it was bubbling, boiling. A long hiss escaped me as I gritted my teeth.
“Vivienne?” Segrid burst out. The sound of his muffled shouts and calling out to someone barely registered. The ocean was roaring in my ears, the pain burning, intense. “I am coming, my Queen!” the sound was suddenly unmuffled, his bellowing shouts ringing in my ear.
“Ow,” was all I could get out, groaning and toppling to my side. It took everything in me not to scream as pain slithered through me. When I felt more like- Not necessarily myself, but less shoulders, arms, neck and chest flayed open to be cauterized shut, I picked the phone back up. “How long?” I asked.
The sound of an engine revving and tires peeling out reaching my ears from across the line made me smile. I could make out others with him but I needed a moment to myself, catch my breath. “Soon!” he boomed out, then, “If you cannot make it go faster, hound, I will drive this junk pile myself!”
“Hey! Ethel ain’t no pile of junk, horse dick! She’s a classic! Irreplaceable! You will apologize to my baby or I will turn her right back around and dump your ass in front of your hidey-hole, you feel me?”
“You will feel me, Berserker, if you so much as go one mile under what we are now!” Segrid thundered.
“You sound busy,” I whispered, blinking as I pulled the phone back to stare at it.
Their shouting continued, until I was holding the phone at arm’s length. “I’ll see you when you get here, baby!” I shouted into the receiver. “Okay? I love you, bye!” Hanging the phone up, I shook my head. The action made my skin pull and I yelped. “Owie.” Grimacing, I stood, wanting to grab a soda, some ibuprofen, and maybe an ice pack or something, when I glanced down and remembered.
The phone, the cord. I’d ripped it from the wall. “How did he call me...?” Slowly shaking my head, my attention caught on the glowing symbols creeping up my arms. Whipping my shirt off to gape down at my person, I noted the way my skin kept trying to moisten the odd, tattoo like marks sizzling and popping, like Segrid’s did. Mating marks. “Oh… wow,” I blurted. Glancing up to check out my back in the reflection of the cracked mirror near the far wall, using the other mirror opposite it spy my new markings, marveling at how they’d suddenly stopped itching as they’d begun to really glow, I spotted movement through the corner of my eye.
Like some gaunt, ugly, pale being from my nightmares, the well dressed, cloaked figure stepped from the dark corner of the living room.
Those slivery eyes lit red. “A Troll!” the figure burst out. Flames lit his fingertips, like the thin, trembling ends were birthday candles or some shit.
He was oddly much smaller than he’d been in my dreams.
“You’ve bound yourself to a Troll?!” he lisped out. Perhaps it was his teeth. He didn’t lisp like that in my head.
Turning, my nudity forgotten in the shock of it all, I frowned over at him. He was much thinner too. This male was a wraith. Did he never eat?
“You insolent little fool!” he snarled at me. “You are mine!” He spit when he spoke, spittle flying everywhere. I flinched, but not from fear or terror. Say it, don’t spray it, Vamp. “I will kill him! You will rue the day!”
Something snapped inside me. He wanted to hurt my Segrid, my Prince Charming, my everything, my beloved. Mine. I was sick at the idea. He meant to try and take him from me, as he’d tried to take and take and take, all those nights he’d held me down, ignoring my cries, and helped himself to my blood, my thoughts, his ugly, yellowed fangs stabbing my neck. My skin crawled at the memory of his tongue rasping across my flesh, the lies he’d whispered in my head telepathically, as if he had a right to, crooning them like one would to a lover.
I hated him. Loathed him entirely. He wanted to hurt my Troll. Rage, like nothing I’d ever felt before, consumed me.
“You won’t touch my Troll, asshole!” I bellowed at him. I was moving as he was. “I’ll kill you first!” I screamed at him. Thinking of my thoughts on turning to water and choking him on me to shifting into a person, I launched myself at him, actually tried to shift as our bodies collided.
