Truthfully, it’s not even the poor choices he’s made that irk me. It’s that he did it the very night our baby was going to come into the world. Now, because of him, I may miss the birth because I must confine my brothers before they can touch her.
I start with my brothers’ toys. The Duval brothers standing mute and still over the corpse of their father. A fact they will never know, but I can smell off the blood gelatinizing across the altar. Blood I can’t taste because it wasn’t offered to me, and a reminder that it has been days since I’ve fed. My only hope is that they will be as weak as I currently am and I can contain them once more.
Pushing that aside, I bind and hook the two together. I swaddle them in ropes of serrated tendrils that puncture molted flesh and sew them together, back-to-back, flesh binding and fusing together.
I mold them until there is nothing but the twisted remains of what may have been a living thing. Discarded in the filth, they are a single torso with four arms and four legs and two heads. Each limb twitches like a spider attempting to flip itself right side up.
It was wasted energy, but a show of strength that needed to be witnessed. My brothers need to be reminded of my power … as little as there currently is.
“You created the rules,” Dain mocks from beneath his crudely shaped human frame.
It’s poorly sized. Julen Duval wasn’t a small man and the majority of his excess flesh hung around his belly. The difference has created a flabby pocket that hangs to my brother’s knees. Even the skin around the face, the jowls droop off Dain’s skeleton in the worst way.
He looks ridiculous.
“Exactly,” I say. “I did create the rules, and the rules are that I am in charge. Neither of you wield any power without me.”
“Not anymore,” Rase cuts in. “We have been freed. We are no longer bound by your control.”
He isn’t wrong.
By offering them an offering of blood, the human has broken my seal to them. He’s given them their own covenant. A religion centered around them with only one follower. What power I had to contain them has been severed and they know it.
“Now what?” I ask instead. “Will you set out in the world and feed at will? Will you make mankind bow to your will?”
Dain scoffs, the motion making the loose skin around his cheeks swing. “We will make this world as it should be. What once was. We will be worshiped as gods, not rot beneath their feet. Surviving on the scraps they deem fit to toss our way. We will no longer be slaves to creatures beneath us.”
I understand their frustrations.
Living in the dark with only the stench of death and decay as company while the very humans who swore an oath to worship you systematically forget your existence with every new generation is never ideal, but we … I am also bound by blood.Sealed in this tomb. It’s not a matter of wanting to stay, but a fact that I cannot leave without Usher blood being spilled.
And there is only one Usher left.
My woman’s human.
As much as I would love to slit his throat and let him bleed across my altar, it would hurt her. I will never allow anything — not even the prospect of my own freedom — hurt her.
They are not bound by any such oath.
They were bound to the house because they were bound to me. Without that tether, they are free to go as they please.
“Such lofty dreams,” I state. “Why are you still here?”
“We are not like you, brother,” Rase says in a voice made for chewing steel. “We will not imprison you in this place.”
I push a large portion of my power to keeping the shield protectively around Lenora. I increase the number of barbs for good measure. Within the confines, I can hear her soft weeping and the human’s gentle words of comfort. I can taste the blood and pain soaking into the altar. Each drop fuels my power, giving me strength to hold steady.
“You won’t touch them,” I tell my brothers. “They are not yours.”
“The human man is ours. You gave him to us. We can do as we please with him, including spilling his blood to free you.”
In a normal world, this desire to save me would be seen as compassion. Love, even. But it is none of those things. Their motives serve only to feed their hunger.
Killing the human would free me.
But it will also give them power. The blood of a sacrifice can break our bond, but the blood of a follower, a worshiper will make them unstoppable. Killing the human will give them the thing they have longed for from the moment I created them.
Power.
