On The Run With A Vampire

16. Raven

CHAPTER 16

RAVEN

“Hang on,” I say as Lucien puts his foot on the bottom step of what is about to be our fourth flight of stairs. “How is this possible?”

The building had looked—and smelled—like a decrepit old fishmonger’s from the outside, but inside it’s a maze of twisting corridors and a long, narrow, and seemingly endless staircase. It’s also dark. Incredibly dark. The only source of light is a very tiny candle at the bottom of each flight of stairs, which illuminates only about an inch or so ahead of us, meaning we have to make our way up the flight in pure, inky darkness until the next tiny candle appears.

I hear Lucien, a few steps ahead of me, stop suddenly, and I grind to a halt so I don’t bump into him.

“I believe it’s a spatial enchantment,” he says. “Magic isn’t my forte, so I won’t be able to give you any specifics, but it essentially boils down to?—”

“It’s bigger on the inside,” I finish for him. “I’ve watched Doctor Who before. I get it.”

I can hear Lucien’s frown. “Your doctor, who what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, shaking my head. Explaining Doctor Who and his TARDIS to Lucien is not particularly high on my list of desires currently. “I meant more like—well. Is Cordelia doing this? Like, actively? She’s holding this entire place together?”

“Of course,” says Lucien.

I try to wrap my head around the idea of Cordelia maintaining this sprawling labyrinth. “So she’s keeping all this running while still managing to do everything else?” I ask, incredulous. Back downstairs in her office, I never would’ve assumed she was exerting any effort towards anything but antagonising us.

“I believe so.”

“But what happens if she can’t hold the spell any longer?” I ask, suddenly fearful that the walls are about to collapse in on us. “What happens if something takes her attention away from maintaining all of this?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Lucien says with a shrug so nonchalant, it’s abundantly clear he isn’t worrying at all. “Cordelia is perhaps the most formidable witch on this side of the Atlantic, and she’s been doing this for years. I imagine it’s second nature to her now. As natural as breathing for you and me. Well, not for me anymore, but you get the point I’m trying to make.”

I do get the point, but it doesn’t do anything to soothe my nerves that I’m about to be flattened and also?—

“She couldn’t put in a bloody light?” I grumble as we turn an inexplicable corner and head into more darkness.

Lucien chuckles. “As you saw back there, Cordelia isn’t my biggest fan.”

“So she’s making us trudge up six flights of stairs in pure darkness out of spite?”

“Well,” Lucien says, “it’s not pure darkness. We do have the candles.”

“Oh yes, and what a great help they are,” I mutter, glaring at the tiny candle that appears as we approach our sixth and final flight.

As if Cordelia’s listening, the candle suddenly snuffs itself out, and we are, finally, in pure darkness. Ahead of me, Lucien sighs.

“What was that you were saying about spite?” he mutters.

Without even a pinprick of light, we take the final flight slightly slower than the rest. When we get to the landing, there are six rooms, three on either side of the corridor. Lucien, key in hand, makes his way to the second door on the left and opens it up.

The room is, to put it bluntly, awful.

It’s tiny, with creaky wooden floors that literally let out a ghostly wail as soon as we exert any kind of pressure against them. There’s a chipped porcelain sink in the corner, complete with a leaky tap and a mirror above it that is almost entirely stained with rust. The wallpaper is peeling. The curtains are in tatters. There’s a persistent damp smell. And then there’s the bed.

The bloody bed.

There is just one, single-sized bed in the middle of the room. The frame is made of rusting metal, the mattress is visibly lumpy and saggy, the pillows are little more than yellow lumps of stuffing, and the singular thin, grey sheet on top of the bed looks like it might scratch me to death.

“Wow,” I mutter as Lucien and I step further into the room and let the door swing shut behind us. “Cordelia really does not like you.”

“That is an understatement,” Lucien sighs. He makes his way to the bed, shimmies out of his coat, and then begins unbuttoning his shirt. “Unfortunately, it’s not unwarranted.”

He takes off his shirt and then twists around awkwardly, trying to get a proper view of his latest injury.

I turn around and move to walk towards the bed, intending to pretend to be fascinated by the scratchy sheet in an attempt to give Lucien some semblance of privacy as he inspects his body. But then Lucien lets out a pained hiss, and I’m moving towards the bed before I can think better of it.

The skin on his back is bruised and mottled with dark, angry patches where his flesh has been pierced and torn.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

Lucien lets out a dry laugh in response.

“Sorry, stupid question.” I take a step closer and reach out a hand. Lucien flinches as my hand presses lightly against his skin. “I just mean—are you okay?”

“Somewhat,” he says through gritted teeth. “The first wound is healing nicely, but the second one…”

He drifts off, and I let my gaze slide to the wound from the stake I pulled out earlier this evening. There’s a thin, sinewy layer of flesh knitting itself over the hole, and I realise I’m watching, in real time, his body heal itself.

Lucien turns around to face me, and I’m met with the delightful view of his chest.

Not the time, Raven, I scold myself mentally as my thoughts immediately drift towards wondering what Lucien’s bare chest might feel like pressed against my own.

“It’s a slow process,” Lucien continues, oblivious to my thoughts. “But it’s working.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I ask.

His eyes dart downwards for the briefest of seconds. I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been watching him so intently. But I am watching him, so I don’t miss the way his gaze focuses on that particular spot on my neck. Or the way his eyes darken.

Or the way his lips part slightly.

Or the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows thickly.

I don’t miss any of it.

Lucien suddenly shakes his head roughly and takes a deliberate step away from me. “No,” he says gruffly. “You’ve done enough.”

You’ve done enough is a very roundabout way of saying ‘ thank you for letting me suck your blood earlier today ,’ but I’ll take it.

“Are you sure?” I ask, mirroring Lucien’s movements. We both sit down on the bed and wince at the hard mattress.

“Certain,” Lucien says, voice slightly strained. “As I said, Ms. Hartley, you’ve done more than enough for me already.”

A flicker of irritation shoots through me. “Raven.”

“Excuse me?” Lucien asks.

“My name. It’s Raven. You don’t have to keep up with this Ms. Hartley thing.”

Lucien seems to bristle slightly. “It’s called being polite, Ms. Hartley.”

“Raven,” I say again, shooting him a sideways glare. “We’ve been through enough together; I think we can drop the formalities.”

Lucien seems to consider this for a moment, and I have to wonder if the same memories are flitting through his mind right now. If he’s remembering how good it felt back in the car to have my body pressed up against his while he drank from me.

If he’s thinking about how much he’d like to do it again.

“Very well,” he says softly.

I arch a brow, and his lips twitch upwards into a smile that shows off the points of his fangs.

“Very well, Raven,” he amends and, yeah. That’ll do it.

Something stirs in the pit of my stomach. Something hot. I squeeze my thighs together and pray a silent prayer that being able to sense arousal isn’t something vampires can do.

“You can take the bed,” Lucien says suddenly. He makes a move to stand up, but I throw a hand out and stop him.

“There’s literally nowhere else for you to sleep,” I say, gesturing around our bare room. “And with that injury, you’re definitely not sleeping on the floor.”

“Perhaps I’ll turn into a bat and hang from the ceiling rafters,” Lucien says. My mouth drops open in shock, and Lucien huffs out a sharp bark of laughter. “I’m just teasing you, Ms. Har—Raven. And there’s no need to worry about my comfort. You take the bed. Get the rest you need.”

“No,” I say stubbornly. “I don’t want you injuring yourself any more than you have already. I’m not just going to let you suffer while I take the only bed.”

Lucien hesitates, and the silence that stretches between us is heavy with unsaid thoughts. Finally, he exhales deeply through his nose and rubs the back of his neck. “Fine. But I need to make sure that you’re aware of one thing.”

I frown. “Yes…?”

“The bed is quite small.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to stop a laugh from escaping. “I’d noticed.”

“I just mean, it’s barely big enough for one person. If we’re going to share it, we’ll have to—Well.” He clears his throat. “We’ll be rather close.”

His words make the heat in my stomach flare up again. I try to ignore the flush creeping up my neck and focus on the practical aspect of the situation.

“I guess that’s the only option we have,” I say, trying to sound casual despite the thrum of nervous energy that’s currently buzzing through me. “It’s either that or you risk making your wounds worse.”

Lucien nods. “Yes. My wounds.”

Such a flimsy excuse.

“Alright then. We’ll share the bed.”

We both stand up and begin the awkward process of arranging ourselves on the bed. It’s every bit as uncomfortable as it looks, maybe even more.

Lucien lays down first, trying to find a spot where his injured back isn’t pressed too hard against the sorry excuse of a mattress. I watch him for a moment, then cautiously lay down beside him, trying to avoid touching him too much. But the bed is small, and within moments, our bodies are pressed close together.

“Sorry,” I mutter as I adjust, trying to give us both some space. It doesn’t work.

“No need to apologise,” Lucien replies softly. “I suppose some might describe this as cosy.”

I can’t help but laugh quietly, the sound almost swallowed by the darkness around us. “That’s one way to put it.”

“I should apologise, though,” he says. “If it weren’t for my history with Cordelia, I imagine we’d be staying in a much nicer room. I’m sorry that you have to bear the brunt of this feud.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say and then, after a beat of silence, “Why didn’t she help them?”

Lucien doesn’t answer right away. For a moment, I think he’s not going to answer at all, but then he turns onto his side and looks at me with wide, almost pleading eyes.

“I don’t want you to think badly of her. You have to understand, Mother has seen and felt so much loss in the three hundred years she’s walked this earth,” Lucien begins. “Can you imagine having to watch everyone you’ve ever known and loved grow ill and die? And then finding new people to love and having to watch them be hunted and slaughtered just because of what they are? Can you imagine the toll that might take on someone?”

I think of my parents and Dad’s cancer scare a few years back. How I’d been in a constant state of fear and anxiety until he got the all clear. I think of Daphne and how my heart had leapt into my throat when Melody turned her crossbow towards her.

“She decided, a few years before she found me?—”

“Found?” I interrupt. “You mean, your mother isn’t the one who turned you?”

“Oh, goodness, no,” he says. “She found me, newly turned, in the throes of bloodlust and put me on a better path. She isn’t my biological mother or my Sire, but she raised me in a way—the vampire me, at least—hence the name. It was the same for Blaine. She found us both within weeks of one another, and we’ve been together ever since.” Lucien pauses and frowns. “Until recently, I mean.”

“You left,” I say, and Lucien nods.

“After century after century of nothing but loss and destruction, Mother decided it was time to forge a new path. She stopped believing that she could rely on the kindness of the occasional human and even others in the supernatural community and believed the only way for vampires to survive in this new world was for us to isolate ourselves from everyone else. We would take care of ourselves and only ourselves from then on. She bought a plot of land in a remote part of the country and built the estate where we’ve lived in peace for the last one hundred years.”

“But how do you feed?” I ask.

Lucien gives me a wry, almost bashful look. “You’d be surprised at how many lost hikers wander onto our land. We’re not gorging ourselves by any means, but it’s enough to live on. Enough to survive.”

That admission should terrify me.

But it doesn’t.

“And that’s how I’ve lived,” Lucien says. “She raised me—and Blaine and Warren—to believe that this was the only way to survive. That we couldn’t trust anyone who wasn’t a vampire, and if we opened up our home, our sanctuary, to them, it would mean our downfall.”

Realisation dawns on me. “That’s why she turned Cordelia and her sisters away?”

Lucien nods. “She was afraid that letting them through our doors would trigger the end of everything she spent the last three centuries building. ‘ Rather them than us ,’ I remember her saying.”

“That’s—That’s—” I shake my head, at a loss for what to say. “That must’ve been a very difficult decision for her to make.”

“I think it was,” he says. “I think it’s haunted her for years, but she won’t allow herself to admit it, because that would mean admitting she was wrong. That all of this was for nothing.”

“But you left,” I say again. “Why?”

“Because it was all for nothing,” Lucien says bitterly. “Aside from a brief stint on my own when I was first turned, I’ve spent the last one hundred or so years within the walls of Mother’s estate. And while it might seem like a luxury to anyone looking in from the outside, it felt like a prison to me. The estate is beautiful, comfortable, secure—everything you could want. Yet, I was constantly haunted by this gnawing emptiness. I was surviving, yes, but I wasn’t really living.”

He pauses, and I can sense the weight of his words settling in the dark space between us.

“Isn’t that what eternal life is supposed to be about?” Lucien asks quietly. “Isn’t the point to live, to connect, to experience something? But I was just existing. Day after day, year after year, in a routine that offered nothing but safety. I became a ghost in my own life. What’s the value of living forever if you’re not truly alive?”

My heart just about breaks for him.

“That’s why I left,” he says. “I needed to break free from the cycle of isolation, from this safe, unchanging existence that Mother had carved out for us. I needed to seek something real, something that made me feel alive again.”

“I thought,” he continues, his voice softening, “that maybe by getting out from beneath Mother and stepping out of my comfort zone, I’d finally find that missing piece. That’s why I left. That’s why I came to this city.”

I flip over onto my side so I’m facing him more fully. “And do you think you’ve found what you were looking for?”

Lucien’s gaze meets mine, and for a fleeting moment, there’s something vulnerable in his eyes. “I’m not sure yet.”

“Well, I hope you do find it.”

Lucien gives me a tight smile. “Thank you, Raven. But enough about me,” he says in a tone that is so self-deprecating, it stabs at my heart with its sharpness. “You must think I’m uniquely pathetic lying here, complaining about the woes of eternal life.”

I shake my head. “Not at all. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re not living life. Like you’re experiencing it and things are happening to you and all around you, but you’re not living.”

I mirror Lucien’s earlier movement and turn onto my side. “God knows I love my parents and I understand that they were just doing what they thought was best, but my childhood was pretty similar to what you just described.”

Lucien frowns, his brows knitting together in the middle. “I don’t like that.”

“It is what it is,” I say with a shrug. “I mean, it wasn’t like I was trapped in a room for eighteen years or anything like that; they were just wildly overprotective, and I can’t even be mad at them for it. They just wanted to make sure that I survived, but it meant I didn’t get to live. I wasn’t allowed to go on any school trips or go to any sleepovers—not that anyone was inviting me, but that’s beside the point. I had no friends, and I wasn’t allowed to do anything that would potentially allow me to make friends because they were so afraid I’d drop dead and that would be it.”

“Raven,” Lucien says softly.

I shake my head and blink away the tears I can feel building up. “It’s fine, I promise. I’m fine. So that was my childhood, and then when I left for university I thought, ‘This is it. I’m finally going to start living life.’”

“And did you?”

“No,” I laugh. “I didn’t even know where to start and ended up just following the routine my parents ingrained in me. I’d go to class and come home. Go to class. Come home. And I would’ve done that on repeat for the entire three years if I had never met Daphne.”

“Your friend from back home?” Lucien asks.

“She’s the one who really broke me out of my shell. She dragged me out of my comfort zone and showed me that there was more to life than just routines and safety nets. She’s the reason I started living instead of just existing.”

Lucien smiles. “Then I’m glad you met her. You, Raven Hartley, deserve to live more than anyone else I know.”

“You deserve to live too, Lucien.”

His smile wavers slightly. “Perhaps.”

“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it,” I say. “You deserve to live—to really live. Not whatever you were doing before.”

He looks at me for a few seconds before he nods. “You should get some rest.”

The abruptness of the change of topic is almost whiplash-worthy.

“I—”

Lucien turns over onto his back and then lets out a loud, pained hiss and immediately rolls over onto his side again. “It seems my wound is still too tender for me to apply too much pressure on it.”

“Do you need to feed again?” I ask.

Lucien looks at me like I’ve just slapped him.

“I just mean, it helped back in the car, so maybe you need some more blood so your body can?—”

“No,” he says tersely.

Liar .

His eyes flicker down towards my neck and then, as if he can’t quite help himself, they drop a little lower. He swallows.

Audibly.

Something clicks in my mind, and I shift slightly on the mattress, my knee bumping against his as I move.

Not a liar , I think. Just stubborn .

I shuffle closer until there’s barely an inch of space between us. If Lucien had even a whisper of air in those lungs, I’d feel his breath fanning across my face. As it stands, the air between us is still. Heavy. Charged with something electric.

“Do you want to feed?” I ask, breaking the silence.

A million and one emotions flicker across Lucien’s face. His eyes darken and then narrow, his jaw tightens and relaxes in quick succession, and a subtle crease appears in the middle of his forehead.

It hits me then that it is entirely possible I’ve misread the situation. That our little rendezvous in the car earlier tonight was simply vampiric bloodlust, and I’ve been clinging onto a pathetic delusion that it meant something more this whole time.

But then, just as I’m about to pull away and resign myself to the furthest edge of our tiny bed, the tension in his expression slowly melts away. His shoulders drop, his gaze softens, and the crease in his forehead smooths away. Whatever mental battle he’d just been going through has clearly subsided, leaving behind an oddly serene look of…relief, I think?

Before I have the chance to voice the question rattling around in my mind, Lucien brings a hand to my cheek and begins trailing it downwards. His fingers skim along my jaw, his touch almost too gentle as he makes his slow descent.

“Ask me again,” he murmurs, fingers brushing lightly against my collarbone.

My breath catches in my throat as he starts tracing soft, lazy circles around the spot he pierced earlier. “I—” My vision blurs as he nudges his thigh between my legs and presses the weight of his lower body against me.

Focus, Raven. Focus.

I clear my throat and ask again, “Do you want to feed?”

Want, not need.

Does he want to feed?

Does he want me ?

Lucien lets out a heavy sigh, like he’s letting go of the last bit of resolve he’s desperately been clinging onto. “Yes,” he murmurs.

I tilt to the side slightly, trying to give him a better angle of my neck. “Okay, just?—”

“But I’m not going to.”

Confusion and frustration bubble up inside me. I open my mouth to question him, to demand an explanation as to why he won’t allow himself this when it’s clear that he wants it, but before I can say anything more, Lucien’s lips are on mine, silencing my protest with a kiss so consuming it makes my head spin.

One moment I’m trying to figure out the best way to demand a vampire drink from me until he gets his fill, the next, said vampire is devouring me in an entirely different kind of way.

His lips are hot and demanding and his tongue darts between my lips and explores my mouth like a starved man.

The minuscule amount of survival instinct I currently have at this point is begging me to run. It’s trying its best to remind me that Lucien Valcouron is a goddamn vampire.

He’s a killer.

A villain.

The stuff nightmares are made of.

Run , my instinct tells me. Get away and run .

I don’t listen.