Knight Of Coins (Work In Progress)

Hi Everyone,

Here is the second chapter of Knight Of Coins.  Hope you enjoy it!

Sara.


Chapter Two


I still held the blade of my sword to Sabrina's tender throat feeling rebellion rise strongly in her mind at the mention of blood and being forced to consume it. I pressed her back in her seat once more when her body jumped to move. A smile twitched at my lips as I remembered my own reaction the first time I was made to take blood. It took more than a sword to my throat to hold me down. It took two Royal knights to keep me still as one of them force fed me. Sabrina would struggle, we all did when the time to change came upon us unannounced and I would have no option but to be firm and harsh in my treatment of her until she accepted the life giving essence that would mark her transition.

'There is no way you are going to make me take blood,' the tremble in Sabrina's voice threaten to overwhelm her. 'I won't let you,' she told me with conviction. 'I can't . . .'

A cry of pain echoed loudly from her pursed lips and she raised her hand to head in agony and then I felt it, felt her in my mind for the first time. I lowered my sword to the floor as she raised her other hand and held her head, rocking back and forth with the pain. Her consciousness swept on into my mind searching for anything and everything amongst my thoughts. I was ecstatic. Her resistance had been broken down by the bond itself.

'Don't do that. Don't wander into my mind uninvited,' she shouted at me.

I gave a small laugh as I took hold of her arms and prised them away.

'Look at me, Sabrina. I am not in your mind at this moment, you are in mine.'

'What?' Tears sprung into her eyes and her body began to shiver. 'What's happening to me? I need to go to hospital,' she was almost talking to herself unaware of my presence. 'I'm afraid.'

I punctuated my tone with firmness and strength when I spoke, hoping my confidence would give her belief that I spoke the truth and that I would carry her through the cruel process.

'Concentrate through the pain. Try to keep your link with my mind. Let me shoulder some of the pain for you. Sabrina, don't be afraid. I am here for you and I won't ever leave you. I promise I will make sure you are safe.'

'No. This isn't happening. I don't want to be in your mind. I just feel more pain.'

My voice lowered as I made every effort to gentle her and coax her acceptance and trust now I felt her disbelief weakening at long last. I cupped the side of her face and gently lifted it to me commanding her attention. She looked at me with childlike wide frightened eyes filled with the heavy weight of pain and confusion.

'That is because you have been resisting our mental bond and it has caused me discomfort when you refused to allow me access to your mind. I had to fight it to get inside you. You are a strong woman, Sabrina,' I smiled.

'To be apart from your mind, your thoughts causes us both physical pain. You must allow the bond to follow freely or you will spend an eternity locked in pain and sentence me to the same punishment. Stop resisting and accept your fate. I have little choice in our joining just like you but I want this Sabrina more than anything and I won't ever let you go, darling. I've waited too long for you to come to me. There is no escape.'

She stared at me but did not speak. I heard her teeth chatter as her body temperature began to rise higher and her human body fought to cool itself. Another cry of pain. She opened her mouth and yanked one of her arms free from my hold to press her fingers against the top of her jaw. I waited for her to find the irrefutable truth of her new emerging existence as she probed her finger between those pretty pink quivering lips of hers. Her eyes widened with shock and she was suddenly raising her aching body and stumbling to the mirror over the fireplace at the side of the sofa.

I stood just behind her and put my hands in my pockets patiently watching, waiting. With shaking fingers she lifted her top lip and viewed the new pointed incisors viciously splitting open her gums and pushing aside her other teeth to settle their position just like a newborn teething. Her eyes filled with hurtful resignation and a fresh batch of tears she did her best not to shed gathered in her eyes as she stared back at my reflection in the mirror. I felt her sense of helplessness crush her as she looked at me with terror.

My heart leapt. I wanted to hold her, comfort her in my arms and reassure her frantic mind that all would be well, that I would be there for her day and night. She would not have to face this new existence alone but she needed a moment to accept her new reality. I stood still and viewed her with sternness still sensing a frisson of denial echo in her mind. Finally after a couple of silent minutes as she studied her teeth once more her eyes began to roll backwards and her face drained of colour. She clutched at her stomach and started to fall to the ground. I heard myself gasp but my movement was quicker than lightening and in perfect time. My arm was under her falling body and sweeping her up into my arms before she fainted to the floor.

I raced out into the large hall and carried her up the long staircase to my bedroom at speed. I had to hurry and make sure she fed before death claimed her. She was moving her head from side to side in a frenzied delirium when I laid her upon the bed. I knelt on the bed beside her and stripped off my jacket, tossing it to the floor and undid the cufflink on my shirt to roll its sleeve up my arm away from my wrist. I lifted my arm under her shoulders and pulled her to me and up to sitting. I kept my arm across the top of her body holding down her arms to prevent her fighting me and bit into my wrist.

She was squealing and sobbing with resistance when I brought my bloody wrist to her lips and pressed it against them. She closed them tight just as I and countless others had done in our own change. I fought to keep my patience. I was frightened for her life but also afraid of hurting her with the force I could exert upon her to make her feed. But it was becoming inevitable that I would need to be cruel to be kind.

'Open your mouth, Sabrina, or I will have to hurt you to make you,' I thundered at her.

Still she fought me with her dying breath. Damn it, the woman was stubborn beyond all realms of sensibility. I wasn't losing her whether she liked it or not.

'Just let me die. I don't want to be one of them,' she panted. 'Please, I just want to die.'

'No, no way. You don't get out of life so easily. I won't let you have that choice. It isn't yours to make alone now. We are Taleian mates. I get a say in your life and you are going to have to realise that and no you are not allowed to die. I forbid it.'

'Arrogant, son of . . .' I heard her begin to say in her breathless voice. It was all I needed. I moved my arm up around her throat to hold her in position and pressed my wrist against her open mouth before she could finish her sentence.

'Ladies shouldn't swear, Sabrina,' I said with gentle humour as she violently struggled, gulped and gurgled as the blood hit the back of her throat. 'It is very unbecoming.'

It took several minutes before her legs stopped thrashing around on the bed and her hands stopped clawing at my arm that imprisoned her against me before she began to suckle the blood with eagerness. Taking the blood would ease some of the transition pain as the body moved out of its denial and into acceptance of its physical transformation. Now she drank the blood contentedly. It was just like feeding a baby. But then that was what this whole process was, a birth.

After a while I decided she had taken sufficient to ease the danger and I removed my wrist, allowing my bite to heal. I fluffed up the pillows on the bed and sat back against them stretching out my long legs and turned on my side to hold Sabrina against me in my arms. She looked up at me, quiet and peaceful even though fear of what was to happen reigned uppermost in her thoughts. I was happy and relieved beyond measure when she pressed her body and face against me for nurture and protection. I held her tighter loving the feel of soft feminine face against my chest.

I felt her brow. It was soaking. It wouldn't be long now. I kissed the top of her forehead and felt the dampness coat my lips and sat in silence waiting for her human death.

'I can't hear your heart,' she whispered. 'This is real, isn't it? I am going to die.'

I cupped her face and stroked my thumb along her paling cheek wiping at a single tear that escaped her eye.

'Yes but you will awaken again.'

'I'm afraid.'

'Shhh, it will just feel as though you are slipping into a deep sleep,' I soothed softly feeling the familiar fear I had experienced at my own human death in 1890 in London when I was just 24 years old.

Sabrina was making the change in her early thirties. It came when the body was ready, no matter the age. Besides there were advantages to being a Taleian hybrid vampire, you never aged past twenty-five in appearance even whilst still a human. It was one of the only benefits of the Druid's curse that was settled upon my ancestors and turned us into vampires when our ancestors were driven from our lands in ancient Briton.

Sabrina's body felt cold and clammy and a ghostly whiteness was colouring her complexion. There was no fight left in her. She was calm, serene and resigned to her fate and my control. I had witnessed only one death and rebirth before. There was always sadness at the death of the human body and I felt it its heaviness engulf my mind. An obsessive fear would follow as the lost one lay in the sleep of death for hours, and the Taleian hybrids waited and prayed that they would awaken. Sometimes the hybrid didn't. A weakness in their body may have prevented their full change or sometimes they simply died and we never knew the reason.

I looked down at Sabrina as though she were a babe in my arms and willed her to make the change with safety.

'Close your eyes, Sabrina,' I whispered softly. 'Go to sleep, darling. I will be here. I promise you will be safe. I will protect you.'

'I saw you in my dreams before I met you,' she confessed.

'Yes, it was the same for me but they were more than dreams, they were visions. They told me where to find you.'

She squirmed and I felt her fear heighten.

'There were others, three men. Night after night they plagued my dreams. One of them frightened me.'

She had to be talking about Taleian male challengers to our mating bond. I would need to be on my guard. I had sensed at least two of them desperately trying to establish a bond with her mind over my own since I first found her. But her stubborn resistance to have any of us in there had served and protected her well. Yet she talked of another I had not seen. All of the challengers would sense her change and would be planning her capture. I would not let them take her from me to make their own.

'No matter, Sabrina. They will not be allowed to harm you. We will talk of this when you awaken. Now sleep little one.'

Sabrina's beautiful facial features contorted with another wave of intense pain and she took her final breath. Her body fell limp in my arms and her life slipped away. I trembled all over and held her to me with crushing strength feeling the sharp quick loss of our mental connection and the sudden ache in my temples that accompanied it. I sat for a few moments simply holding her, stroking her face, too fearful to let go of her. But I knew I had to move, to prepare for her anticipated awakening and the attacks from the slavers and the challengers that would now undoubtedly ensue.

I laid her down and removed her boots and clothing from her cold body. I pulled a shirt from the wardrobe, the best I could find and dressed her in it before slipping her under the black silk sheets that covered my bed.

I stood at the foot of the bed unable to tear my eyes from her sleeping form wondering when she would wake. I was impatient even though I knew fine well it would take hours. I picked my jacket up from the floor and took my mobile phone out of the breast pocket and hit the speed dial for my friend Dylan Lysander, another knight who served with me as I stood over Sabrina's dead body.

'Victor, how is the delivery coming?' he asked me with humour. 'Is she still resisting?'

'Sabrina has just died and I am waiting for her awakening.'

Dylan's tone turned serious.

'Good. Then you will be needing your human blood donor?'

'Yes. The slavers have already attempted to take her from me.'

'Do you need help? You know we are here for you. The Queen is concerned and determined to visit you the moment she is told of Sabrina's awakening despite the obvious danger.'

'Stubborn as ever, then?'

'Oh yes.'

'Sabrina is no better. It's definitely a trait that runs in the royal family, especially in the women. I've never seen such obstinacy in anyone but them,' I groaned.

'Sounds as though Sabrina is going to be a handful when she wakes. I will bring the donor and check in on you. The waiting is the worst part of the process. I won't be long. Hang on in there.'

I hung up and decided to take a shower and change. The hot water was inviting as it pounded against my skin. I lifted my face to the water and ran my fingers through my short hair flattening it against my scalp. I dressed in a black cashmere sweater and some trousers to match and dried my hair. Gone were the days when I had a valet dress me, although sometimes I missed it when I couldn't decide what to wear. I came out of the bathroom noticing how still the large house appeared.

I know I had given the staff the week off to prepare for Sabrina's birth into a hybrid and there was no one else there but it seemed too quiet. I listened to the crows squawking in the trees outside in the grounds and the eerie calls of the peacocks that wandered there. Yes, everything was normal but I couldn't help shake the feeling and a Taleian never ignored his feelings however strange or improbable they were for they were always right.

I looked out of the large Georgian windows at the side of the bed. It was just past lunchtime and at first I saw nothing but the dull greyness of the day. Then the blur of a black shadow passed in front of my eyes across the other side of the window. I froze as a second shadow passed by. I turned quickly to the wall next to the window outside to confirm my suspicions. A black mass engulfed it. It slowly transformed into a physical black and green human form confirming my worst fear that the slavers had sent Hunter demons to capture Sabrina.

It stared at me and hissed with its venomous tongue. There was always another one. They never hunted alone. I swung around to the large fireplace behind me as I heard a whistling sound and a black mass seeped out of the fireplace into the room in front of the bed. I would have reached for my sword but then I remembered it was lying in the study downstairs. I would just have to fight without it. They would not have her even if it cost my life.