Chapter 3: The Joining Ceremony
(More than a thousand years ago.)
“Dazzling,” Sirah said, gazing into Prince Zadrian’s eyes as tears trailed down her cheeks. “Your eyes are such a strange color. Pale and golden, but almost pink in some lights.” She parted her naked thighs and climbed onto his lap, straddling him brazenly and without inhibition. The flesh of her exposed buttocks, bright red from being struck repeatedly with a cane, hovered above his legs. She dare not sit completely and chance the sting of contact, but instead shuddered and trembled in place, allowing her master to enjoy drawing a single white claw over one of her bruised breasts. “Am I sorrowful enough yet, master? Or is there more punishment to be endured?”
“Let me see.” Prince Zadrian leaned forward, his unnaturally long tongue sliding out to slither over one of her cheeks and all the way up to the fragile skin of the bottom lid of her left eye. He pushed his tongue against it, threatening to do something unnatural, to try to pry the lid downwards and slip his tongue between the socket and the sclera. She didn’t move and instead moaned her approval of the threat. “No, certainly not yet as anguished as I’d like.”
“Perhaps you would reward me if I left to find someone in the remorseful state you seek?”
“That’s no fun,” he replied, seeking an arbitrary spot on that full, shapely breast to slowly stab his claw into. He heard her breath hitch and watched the uncertainty in her eyes as she began to wonder how far he’d go. Would he leave a tiny crescent of nail imprint? Would he press far enough to draw blood? Or would he go even further, creating enough of a hole that he could begin to work his fingertip inside of her? Sirah bit her lip, closing her eyes and trying not to scream. He didn’t like those who screamed theatrically, she’d found, and he could always tell. When the sharp claw finally punctured her skin, she heard his teeth click together and begin to grind as blood slid down her breast and dripped onto her thigh.
She begged for him to stop when the pain was no longer something she could force herself to tolerate. And, surprisingly, he did stop. That terrible claw withdrew, and he licked it clean, ignoring her as she whimpered and squirmed and bled. When his hand suddenly gripped the flesh of her raw red rump, she shrieked, arching her back and trying to push against his shoulder to get away. Her attempts to fight were useless. He grabbed her hair with his other hand and held her in place, keeping her captive so that he might lean down and lap at the blood flowing from that breast. She could feel the terrible burn of his rough tongue, that cruel muscle trying to pry deeper and deeper into the cut.
Her mouth would make no sounds save for begging, begging him to stop, to make the pain stop. She’d become insensate, unable to control anything about herself, her entire being nothing more than agony and instinct and sincere pleading.
And then, the pain ended. A flood of exquisite elation starting at that breast shot outwards as if every nerve ending in her body experienced an erotic caress followed by a gentle fizzle of bubbles. Her muscles went slack, unable to hold any tension, and the confused folds of her sex became embarrassingly slick.
“A one-track mind,” Prince Zadrian murmured when his fangs finally withdrew. He hefted her up, easily carrying her to the nearby bed. “But, I’ve no time to fuck you today. You must undertake the task yourself.”
The wound on her breast had already closed by the time she began to come around from the intoxicating high of being bitten. The saliva of the vampire had evolved such properties as to disinfect and close wounds, as it would be an unfortunate thing for every bite victim to die of blood loss after the fact, or worse, infection.
“But,” she murmured, spreading her legs and sliding nimble fingers down her stomach and over the glistening flesh between her legs. “I am ready for you.”
“Then, you can remain ready,” Prince Zadrian replied as he turned to the large wooden cabinet beside the bed. When opened, it revealed no end of wicked implements and toys. Whips and canes, blindfolds and manacles, and a plethora of items whose true nature were known only to the vampire. But the one he removed was made of tempered glass. Prince Zadrian turned the considerably sized phallus over in his hand, examining the girth and workmanship. “You’ll use this on yourself until I return.”
“But…” She shifted away from him, her mind balking at the size of the…task.
“Until I return,” he reiterated. “No matter how long. You best not climax, either. I’ll know. I’ll smell it on you.” Leaning down, he pressed several fingers against the heated slit between her thighs. “Or chance my anger if you dare. I do so enjoy punishing you. And I know you enjoy it as well.”
-*-*-*-*-
The floating palace of Xibaran once belonged to the Eternal Regata. They had dozens of floating palaces, and this one definitely wasn’t the largest of them. But Xibaran, gifted to Prince Zadrian Vayne, Fourth Child of the White Hydra, ranked among the fastest. He’d managed to arrive at the Joining Ceremony of his elder brother, Kalyx, on the planet Orem, despite having been nowhere in the vicinity. They’d have gone forward with the ceremony without him, and he felt certain that had he not shown up, most of his family would have been delighted by his absence. But, something drove him to once again remind himself of the savagery of his family, as if his past memories of it had been a mirage.
As he closed the door to the room where he’d fed from the naked woman named Sirah, Zadrian sighed. He didn’t want to be here, and yet, felt some strange pull to attend. For years, he’d been growing more and more discontented by the state of affairs among the Regata, not to mention the ruthless intrigues of the Triarchy as a whole. When he could, he instead traveled the galaxy, trying to find the answer to a single question, one that plagued him like a disease: Who is Zadrian Vayne?
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Unlike his brothers and sisters, Prince Zadrian kept the minimum number of staff and pets possible in Xibaran. You couldn’t walk three steps in Kalyx’s floating palace without tripping over a nude slave or a frightened chamber maid or a fresh corpse. But, striding through the gleaming metallic black halls of Xibaran, Zadrian came across not a single person. It gave him a moment to try to steel himself for what he knew would come next. As soon as he stepped off Xibaran, the expectations of his family would claw at him. He’d bear it, though, as long as he could avoid participation in the Feast.
“We shall touch down for your disembarkment momentarily, my Prince,” a voice murmured. It was his majordomo, a lanky youth named Nirna, appearing from a hatchway to fall in step behind the other man. Nirna’s round cheeks glowed red, probably from being forced to listen to the last hours of the Prince’s hedonistic shenanigans. It was his job to monitor the Prince at all times, in order to attend to any needs Zadrian might have.
Prince Zadrian stopped and turned to grin at the servant, his left hand raising to pat the man’s cheek. He said nothing, only chuckled quietly before turning back to continue the journey. Several hallways later, he asked, “My entire family is here?”
“Most of them, yes. The palace of the White Hydra did not arrive, however.”
“Typical.” Nonetheless, Zadrian was glad of that development. The White Hydra only ever made things worse. “Where are we?”
“Near the largest city, Wylika. Orem’s society is a Level Two. Progress has been hampered by the unstable nature of the planet’s plate tectonics. The Regata has deemed it unlikely that planet Orem will ever progress to Level Three.”
Zadrian’s lips pressed together. The Triarchy would not permit a stalled society to survive. “Nirna, I want you to go into the city. Get as many people as you can and bring them back to Xibaran. Quietly. Let the rumor be that Prince Zadrian wants to hold a party and needs staff to attend to his guests.”
Nirna tried not to sigh audibly. “Again, my Prince? You know that in light of everything, that token gesture is largely meaningless.”
Zadrian’s jaw hardened as he reached a set of large, ornate doors at the end of the passageway. Beyond this, he’d need to be someone different. “It’s not meaningless to the ones we’ll save from death.”
-*-*-*-*-
Zadrian had at least one thing in common with the White Hydra. He believed that Joining Ceremonies were nothing more than a pointless vanity doomed to end in betrayal and violence. The idea of vampires attempting to mimic the human tradition of marriage with their own variation of the institution? Foolish. Vampires lived as beasts of predation and cruelty, their endless lives spanning far beyond what a sensible relationship could endure. Like an ancient house, any coupling would fill with mold and dust, holes in the roof, and cracks in the foundation. In time, the bond would break as suddenly as a building’s violent collapse. One or both parties would be killed in the easily foreseen catastrophe.
The ceremony didn’t take long, and Zadrian begrudgingly admitted the beauty of it. Atop a temple hewn of black crystal, the pair said words to one another, promises they’d eventually break, declarations of emotion they’d come to regret. Below, a thousand dancers spun in red garb, twisting in and out of each other with long black streamers on sticks making whirls and spirals in the air. From Kalyx’s palace hovering in the sky above, tons of black and red petals showered down on the group. Kalyx gave his beloved, Selira, a tiara with rubies bigger than cherries. She returned the gesture by giving him pauldrons of polished onyx, cut to look as if they were the scales of some reptilian beast.
As the hundreds of guests clipped and drank from free-flowing bottles of blood, Zadrian clenched his teeth. It wouldn’t be long now, and he needed to get away, before…
“Perhaps you will be next, brother.” Zadrian’s head whipped to the side to find his younger sister, Anmoira, standing next to him. She could do that. Disappear. Reappear. Arrive without a sound. Leave in the space of a blink. It wasn’t speed. All vampires had preternatural speed. No, Anmoira’s gift literally allowed her to remove herself from the perception of others. It was an annoying gift. Most of them were annoying gifts. “You could find someone for yourself, and then your existence would be less lonely.”
“Existence for vampires should be lonely. Those who believe otherwise are fools.”
Anmoira raised a hand to slide her long braid over her shoulder. Like all children of the White Hydra, her hair was a stark white, as were her eyebrows. While the black silk dress she wore, slit up the thigh, accentuated every inch of her body, her face had a surprising plainness to it. Round-jawed, with an upturned nose and more freckles on the right side of her face than the left, she’d always been considered the least attractive of her siblings. She was also, in Zadrian’s estimation, the least obnoxious.
“I don’t intend to live a lonely life,” Anmoira replied. “I’m going to find someone. Maybe not another vampire, though.”
Zadrian’s brow crinkled, and he peered at his sister in shock. While the idea of two vampires ‘marrying’ struck him as insane, the idea of being joined with someone non-vampire was absolutely unthinkable. “A human?”
“No, no. Don’t be weird. Not a human. But something. There are other things out there. The possibilities are infinite, and infinity is exciting.”
Anmoira’s upbeat attitude always felt mildly infectious. After a moment, Zadrian spoke, “I suppose there’s always the chance that…”
He didn’t manage to get the whole thought out before the booming voice of the Joining Ceremony’s officiant drowned him out. He spoke in the Ancient Tongue, “Friends and family, guests of the Regata, subjects of the Triarchy. It has been ordained by an official proclamation of the Blood Regents that this planet, known as Orem, has stalled in evolution. As such, the blood seeded by our Venerated Ancestors shall be reclaimed. All humans on this planet must be enslaved and brought to an Extraction Facility, subdued for servitude, or drained of blood until death. Members of the Joining Ceremony party may have two weeks' head start before other Regata ships arrive to join the fray.”
A cheer went up from the attending vampires, all except for Zadrian. Even Anmoira clapped, albeit in a more understated manner than others.
“I must go,” Zadrian muttered to his sister.
She put a hand on his shoulder, “Zadrian. The White Hydra will find out. If you’re deemed weak…”
“I know.” Once, the White Hydra had two dozen children. Now, only six remained. Weakness was not allowed to persist. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve better things to do with my time than die.”
As he walked away, he could hear the fray begin. Terrified shrieks of hundreds of humans, the dancers invited to the ceremony, filled the air. The smell of blood followed, so thick and pervasive that it felt like a mist clinging to his skin. Chaos broke out in the streets as the humans of Orem realized the fantastic “gods from the sky” who landed on their planet didn’t do so with benevolent intent.
By the time Prince Zadrian made it back to Xibaran, a heaviness of spirit beleaguered his steps until he came to a stop at one of the ship’s viewing windows. As the floating palace slowly rose from the ground, Zadrian gaze fell upon the growing piles of corpses near the black temple. He knew that within two weeks, the nearby city would be devoid of human life. And within two months, no humans would remain on Orem.