"Poisoned Smoke" by Lyndsay E. Gilbert aka Liadan

He inhaled the poisoned smoke deeply, indulging in a smile as he exhaled. The smoke clouded before him drifting over the balcony and  out into the night.  He imagined it would grip his lungs, spreading a deadly cancer in his cells.  He knew of course that this was impossible. For he was already dead. 

He leaned against the window, closing his eyes as he drew another breath.  The bells rang, signifying the end of evening classes.  He knew Jordan would call to his quarters soon, ready to engage in the study of a curse book that he had retrieved illegally from his grandfather’s study. 

Raphael usually sought to keep honesty between himself and his grandfather but such instances called for sly dealing.  And Raphael thought Jordan too close a friend to deny him this.  He wished the best for Sorsha also.  And if cursing Joshua L’Antione was the only way to free her, Raphael did not protest.  Truth be told, he delighted in the thought of inflicting pain upon the beast.

He took one last drag before throwing the cigarette to the stone floor and crushing it beneath his plated black shoes.  He pulled open the glass doors and entered his living room making to close them behind him, but a stifled sob froze him in his tracks.

His hearing was acute, finely tuned and well beyond the power of a mortal ear.  He flung open the doors once more and leaned out over the balcony the wind blowing his dark brown hair across his eyes.  He swiped it away and his eyes fastened on those of a girl, she stood in the balcony of quarters facing his own. Raphael realised with some shock that they were the rooms of Quinn and that the young sobbing woman was Quinn’s slave girl. 

Though she had seen him she made no move to indicate that she acknowledged his presence and Raphael’s stomach dived when he saw that she was fastening a rope to the stone pillars of the terrace.  She was going to hang herself.  The anguish in her eyes communicated her fear and hopeless existence .  One that she hoped to put an end to.

Her name escaped him, still he called to her as ‘girl’ for several minutes but she ignored each of his pleas.  She was plaiting the ropes and coiling the end to a hangman’s noose. Raphael’s eyes flicked to his communicator…he could call Quinn, but even as the girl put the noose around her neck, he knew her life would be less than it was now were her master to save her.  Quinn did not take kindly to a slave’s escape.  Not even an escape through the doors of death.

She was climbing now and she stood unbalanced on the rail.  Raphael’s mind screamed for his action and yet he could not think of a course to take.  She looked across at him once more and she pled with him to give her release.  But life was too precious to throw from such a height.  She fell non- the- less.

Raphael leapt across the space between them, landing as a cat on Quinn’s balcony.  Time stood still, even seemed to move backwards until the girl was in his arms.  He stumbled back, crashing into Quinn’s living quarters and tumbling onto the settee. The girl was sobbing loudly and Raphael covered her mouth with his hand noticing for the first time that the ropes she had tied were blood stained and that her wrists gushed red where she had gashed them.

He cursed under his breath gripping her wrists tightly to stem the flow.  But this seemed useless.  Her eye’s were becoming dull and her skin was already welcoming the wax white of death. 

Still gripping her wrists Raphael twisted so that she lay across his knee and he sat for several moments listening to her whimpers and knowing that she was only discovering what it was to be alive in these moments.  But her life had been made of pain he knew.  And all he could offer her was self hatred.  He could not give her life, only a twisted parody of life.  Existence spent depending on the life blood of another. 

Her blood was spilling from under his hands, and he could feel it wet and warm on his skin.  His mouth began to ache terribly.  And he knew he wanted her. He wanted to stop the waste of her life blood as much as he wanted to stop the waste of her death.  And she lay so helplessly in his arms, crying for the life she had thrown away.

He released her wrists and slid his hand beneath her, arching her back and feeling his fangs extending as he bared her white neck to bury them into it. He drank until she stopped struggling, moving efficiently to tear his own wrist open.  He parted her blue lips and poured his own elixir into her mouth.  She resisted weakly at first, but gave into him when her body began to call out for the death- in- life that he gave to her.  As she drank thirstily Raphael found himself gazing at the paintings on Quinn’s wall.  Portraits of Shen Ta glared down at him from lofty heights, and he could see their eyes moving to scan the girl that lay across him. 

*You come into my temple wearing the curse of another god, bowing your disgraced head to my crown and kissing my altar with blood thirsty lips.  You come stealing my souls and whispering the prayers of a traitor into innocent ears…When you come crawling to my feet, a stake through your dead heart, I will turn you away…I will…*

Raphael prised his wrist from her lips, feeling revulsion sweep through him.  The girl began to convulse on his lap, and he hugged her to his chest as she screamed and tore at his face with her nails. Her wrists had healed, just as the gashes she left in his cheeks bled for only a moment before disappearing to the flawless tan of his unbroken skin.  After many moments she grew still and Raphael released her.  She sat up, her newly grown fangs pressing delicately into red lips. 

Her eyes were bright and were they had been sky blue before they now shone silver, meeting his own with a hungry light.  Raphael felt a shiver run down his spine and as he ran a hand down her beautiful cheek he felt something like pride light within him.  She was beautiful and he had created her like this.

*See my boy.  I ask for nothing but your own pure skills, your beauty and that which you can spread.  The essence that runs through your veins.  You are not dead…you are alive and I can give your everything if you will turn to me…come bow at my altar and I will feed your dry and thirsty lips with the red nectar of life…come…*

He felt himself smiling, the second  voice filled him up.  It left no room for another.  It filled him like Andreya’s kisses could.  Right into the far reaches of  his soul where he was still a child… crying in the closet, afraid to face his own blood stained lips.

He was not afraid when the second god blessed him. 

He stood, catching the girl he had made around the waist and pushing her against the wall beneath the glowering portrait of Shen Ta.  Raphael smiled up at it before crushing his lips against the girls.  Breathing deeply as she parted her own submissively, tilting her head back and curving her body against him. 

His hands moved deftly over her, as an artist’s over a blank white canvas.  He could shape her.  She could be anything he wished her to be.  She could not be Quinn’s.

He buried his fangs into her neck once more, drinking nothing this time but gripping her hair and pulling her closer to him. He laughed quietly before kissing her lips so gently, smiling again  as she sighed appreciatively.

Raphael hoped Shen Ta was jealous as he took her.  Jealous that he could not enslave every thought and every passion that took hold of Epsilon.  He explored her, hoping the god heard her small cries and planned to stake Raphael’s heart Himself.

He finished skilfully, pulling her into a hug and wrapping a cloak around her shaking form just as the entrance door swung open and Quinn stepped into the room.  But all that was left for him to see was a blood stained dress and a broken hangman’s noose.