Death Song (Tales from the Tarot)

8. Charlie

Chapter eight

Charlie

I t’s open.

The door is open.

My tired brain is on high alert as I stand with Rex behind me, holding onto the keys for the door I know I locked shut before I left earlier in the day. It’s just open a crack, but as I look down at the lock, I see that it’s been broken.

And then I know.

I know what has happened. Colin had told me that his client would have what he wants no matter what he had to do to get it.

“The paintings,” I say, confirming out loud for myself what will be missing when I push open the door. I give the wood a shove and race through the entry way, my sneakers squeaking on the shiny, glossy hardwood. I cross through the open living room where everything sits as I left it. The couch, the TV, the red crochet blanket I curl up with on rainy days, all untouched as I knew they would be.

Splintered wood sits on the ground as I step into the space at the back of the loft I’ve turned into my studio. The closet along the wall containing the paintings I’ve done in my dreams is cracked wide open like someone took an axe to it, and I drop to my knees as I stare into the emptiness.

“What was in there?” Rex asks, startling me.

I glance up at him over my shoulder as a myriad of emotions cross through me. The biggest one being a gut-wrenching sadness that grips me tight. I can feel tears prickling at my eyes as I look into his face. The face that made up the paintings that have now been taken.

“Art,” I choke out as the strange sadness takes hold of me. I didn’t want the paintings, didn’t want to waste the time when I should be sleeping to create them all, but now that they’re gone, I can’t stop this odd grief from shaking me to my core and I don’t know why.

But… there still may be one left.

The painting I started last night of Rex wearing a crown atop his golden hair should still be on the easel in my bedroom. If this was Colin who has come to take what he tried to buy from me, he wouldn’t know that I moved these dream paintings into my bedroom after he left. I push to my feet and race to the bedroom, tears streaming down my face and relief pooling in me as I see the cloth covered canvas still sitting on the easel where I left it. The floor is scattered with sleeping pill bottles and debris from my late-night painting, but I step through all of it to grab the canvas and hold it tight to my chest.

I still have one.

I still have this.

Not everything has been taken, and though I didn’t give a single shit about these paintings before, I am clinging to this one tightly.

“What is it?” Rex asks, and I go as still as water in a glass.

I breathe heavy into the silence, wondering how I can explain. How I can escape without revealing that I know him. That I knew him long before I saw his face. That I know what he looks like when he is happy, sad, and everything in between because I’ve seen it before in my dreams.

“Charlie?” he asks, and I feel his hand land gently on my shoulder.

“I paint my dreams,” I say, not sure where to go from here, but knowing I have to offer something. “I see things and I put them on canvas. I can’t not do that. The pain that happens when I don’t nearly kills me. I have to paint the things I see. I have no other choice.”

“Charlie, what do you dream?” His voice is cautious, and I don’t blame him. I also don’t blame him if he chooses to react poorly to what I’m holding in my hands. I didn’t ask for these dreams or these urges to paint, but I painted them all the same.

“You,” I whisper, moving the canvas in my hands away from my chest. “I see you. Always you. You are in every dream I have had over the last five months, Rex. Even before I knew who you were, I was painting your face.”

I pull the cloth from the painting and turn around, watching as Rex reels back away from the image I put onto the canvas. His eyes are wide as saucers and he breathes hard, staring into the painting in my hands. Finally, he moves towards me, and I flinch, anticipating the worst, but he holds his hands up in the air in front of him, shaking his head.

“I just… it’s my crown,” he whispers, reaching towards it. I can feel his fingers tracing the golden jeweled circlet on his head in the painting. His eyes meet mine over the painting, confusion and a sadness so deep in them that my own body shakes and quivers. “You know who I am? What I am?”

“No,” I respond. “I can guess, but I only know what I see in my sleep. I don’t often get to know what I’m dreaming about, I just know I’m dreaming. I don’t know how accurate these paintings are, I just know that I have to paint them or it hurts.”

Rex swallows hard as he turns his eyes back down to the canvas in my hands. “I haven’t seen this crown in over a hundred years.”

Over a hundred years. That is staggering. “It’s real then? They’re real?”

“This one is,” Rex says, reaching to take it from me. I let it go into his hands, trusting him to not destroy it because it’s somehow precious to me now. He turns to me again, his eyes filled with wonder and worry at the same time. “What else have you seen, Charlie Marius Polston?”

“Him,” I confess, though it pains me to admit I know the face of his lost lover. “I have seen your Marius. I have painted his face. Not as often as yours, but I’ve painted him when you’ve appeared together in my dreams.”

“He died because of me. Because of what I am and the things I did back when I was foolish and young.”

“You sang his death,” I whisper. “I’ve painted it. I’ve gotten the tune of it stuck in my head more days than I can count.”

“I did.” Silence falls between us as Rex stares at the painting of him in his crown and fine garments. Finally, he exhales a long breath and turns to set the painting against the wall of my bedroom. “I am not human.”

“I know. I figured as much. In my paintings and dreams, sometimes you have fangs. Sometimes, there’s blood.” My heart is beating impossibly fast as I absorb the things I’m connecting together with the man – no, vampire – in front of me.

“I was human once, before my sire made me one of what I am now. He’d unlocked the secret of eternal life and extended it to me, creating me into his chosen heir.”

“Vampire.” I nod.

“Vampire Lord Adhrexos, the Raven Bearer,” Rex corrects with a wry smile. “I was made to rule and lead, and I did for many years. Until my brother gained the gift of eternal life and fell into madness, taking my throne and crown with him down into the depths of depravity. I am ashamed to say that instead of staying to protect my realm from him, I fled with Marius into the countryside where we tried to build a life in peace.”

“The cottage.”

He nods. “We should have been safe there, if not for my brother and his bounty upon my head. He thought I was coming back to claim the throne, but I wasn’t. I had no intention of doing so. We were happy in our cottage. We were at peace together, living beneath the open sky among Marius’ flowers.”

“I painted his garden often,” I say. “I know it well through my dreams. Why do I have all this knowledge, Rex? Why am I dreaming of your life?”

He hesitates and I can see he is at war with himself over what to say. His brow furrows and his lips purse as he thinks until, finally, he sighs. “The Bloodrend Court. My brother, I mean. He kept a seer in the depths of the castle. One who could see beyond the veil into past, present and future. I believe you are one or have some traits of one.”

“A seer?” I’ve read about them in comic books and novels, but hardly within the real world.

“Visions, or dreams,” he continues, “of things you shouldn’t know, yet somehow do.”

“But only you,” I respond. “I only ever see you, Rex. I don’t know past, present and future. I only know you.”

“That is something I have yet to figure out. There are certain things that have come to me that speak to a deeper knowing of you, yet I don’t have the answers as to what that might be. Something is happening within you, though I don’t know exactly what the nature of it is.” He is lying. I don’t know how I know this, but I can see in his eyes he isn’t telling me the truth. Either that, or he has a theory he isn’t sharing.

I choose to let it be, my head is aching, and I am rapidly growing tired again. The sleeping pills still aren’t touching the dreams, but I still take handfuls of them before I crawl into bed in hopes that they will at least delay the dreams at this point. The side effects, though, are that I wake feeling sluggish and spend the day in a suspended place between sleep and waking.

“Who has the paintings?”

“Colin,” I respond with a yawn. “He wanted to buy them for a client, but I couldn’t part with them. I refused and he told me that his client would get what he wanted either way. I guess theft is the way he chose.”

“Did he say who this client was?”

“No. Just that things were coming that I wasn’t ready for. I suppose he was right. I wasn’t ready to be robbed, that’s for sure.”

Rex hums thoughtfully as my eyes drift closed. I can hardly keep them open anymore, but I try my best knowing that I have company and falling asleep would be rude. Rex moves to my side and places his hand on my shoulder.

“You need sleep,” he murmurs. “Rest and we can talk later.”

“I’ll take a cab tomorrow,” I say, though the words are slurred as they leave my mouth. “I’ll come see you at the building.”

He laughs softly, and I feel his hands gently guiding me to bed. “Rest, and I will be here when you wake. You are not safe without a lock on your door, and even then, I don’t trust this place.”

I should be more bothered by his words, but I can’t find it within me. Instead, I find comfort knowing that Rex will be there while I sleep. Flopping onto my bed, I start sorting through bottles to find the one that still contains some of my sleeping pills.

“You do not need them,” Rex comments, but he doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know that without them, I will wake up in a few hours and be pushed to paint his life or else there will be hell to pay.

“I do.” I grab the bottle with a few pills rattling around inside, then uncap it. I don’t even need water to wash them down anymore with how practiced I’ve become at swallowing them whole. I drop them into my hand, but before I can pop them into my mouth, Rex grabs my wrist. He gives his hand a shake, which in turn sends the pills scattering onto the floor.

“You do not need them,” he repeats, gripping my wrist in his own hand. I turn my face up and see that his eyes have grown dark, the ends of his fangs sitting on his bottom lip. It is beauty and terror in one face, and I can’t look away. I do need them though, and I shake my hand, trying to get him to let go.

“Rex.”

“Charlie, they are ruining you. I can smell the decay of the chemicals in you. It’s tainting your honey scent and churning my stomach.”

“Honey?”

“You smell of it. The honey and sweetness that you are made from, but the pills are swallowing it up. You are filled with chemicals and medicines, and I can smell the rot of them inside you. I’m trying my best here to not yank it from your veins myself, but it’s getting harder by the moment to refrain, so I ask you to not take any more.”

“Yank it from my veins?” I ask, eyeing his fangs.

“Yes,” he grinds out, his nostrils flaring and eyes dark as he looms over me. “I want to pull it out. It doesn’t belong in you, and I cannot stomach it.”

“I need them.” I have to sleep somehow.

“All they are doing is causing you harm, Charlie.” He sinks to the bed beside me and stares deep into my eyes. “Please trust me that you do not need this in your body. It is like a sickness that masks your scent, turning the honey you are made of foul and rotten. I have never scented something so wrong inside someone before. I know it’s not meant to be there, and if you would let me, I would rid you of it.”

“Like, bite me?”

“Yes,” he hisses through gritted teeth. “Let me, Charlie. Let me rid you of these pills. Of these chemicals. Let me make you pure honey.”

Rex leans forward like he can’t control himself, and I feel his breath on my neck, sending shivers down my spine. My heart slams in my chest as his lips move on my skin, gently pressing against my neck like he’s giving me an opportunity to say no before it’s too late.

And then it is too late, and the word no hasn’t come to my lips.

I let loose a small noise of surprise and pain as his fangs sink into my neck. His arms come around me and pull me onto his lap, and I have no choice but to go where he wants me. Rex’s teeth dig deep into me as I sit on his legs, my back to his front, my head tilted to the side. I can feel my blood slipping from my body as he pulls greedily at my veins, soft, satisfied grunts coming from somewhere deep in his chest. It doesn’t hurt now; the prick of pain has given way to something else entirely. Something feral and warm pools inside me as he dines on my blood.

I want.

I want so badly, this man, this vampire, feasting on my body.

“Rex,” I whisper as he devours me, swallowing me deep into the core of him. Heat licks down my spine, settling into my lower belly and I can feel my cock growing hard in my jeans. Arousal rushes through me as Rex pulls blood from my veins, and I moan softly into the stillness of my bedroom.

As if he senses what’s happening to me, Rex’s hand reaches for mine and in taking it, he places it on the tented crotch of my jeans, pushing down gently against my hardened cock. I moan as I move my hips upwards into the sensation, then Rex removes his hand. His fingers trail upwards to the button of my jeans, and he makes quick work of undoing it, the zipper following afterwards. I lean back into him, allowing myself room to reach into my boxers and pull my cock free from the confines of the fabric. With relief, I gently stroke my shaft, feeling the heat of this arousal curling around me like a blanket. Rex grunts approvingly behind me, his own hand snaking into my pants to cup my balls. I shiver as he feasts on me, cradling me in his hand while I move my fist over my erect cock. My head spins as I draw myself slowly to the edge of orgasm, Rex’s teeth in my neck sending shivers through my whole body.

Finally, he pulls his teeth free from me, and his hand joins mine in stroking my hardened shaft. I moan softly as his thumb circles the tip of me then moves to stroke the underside just below the mushroomed head. Letting my own hand flop beside me, I give in to his touch as Rex takes me in his own fist, my precum slicking up his palm.

“So sweet,” he whispers into my ear from behind, and I shiver as my hips press upwards, matching his stroking.

And then, I am lost entirely to sense and reason as my orgasm barrels through me. I gasp as I spill into his hand, his palm now slicked with my release sliding up and down my shaft until I am entirely spent.