Chapter 22 - Jesse (Part 1)

Jesse snapped his eyes open as he sensed the descent of dark magic. It had been some time since Dev had left him to assault the Arcs, and he couldn't bring himself to move even though he wanted to curse at whoever was coming. Locked in a dark cell in the lower levels of the complex, he was isolated at the end of a long hall. Cells lined the walls, but no one shared space with him in the darkness.

The Fleurs hadn't bothered to check on him either, but he wasn't frustrated from lack of company. Most of it was the blood loss, his mind spiraling and his body shriveling from lack of nourishment. The skin around his face was uncomfortably tight, and his fingers were near bone thin form starvation. He probably looked half a corpse, which was how he felt emotionally anyway.

No one missed him, not the Arcs nor the Fleurs who were supposed to care for him at the least. Perhaps Tara, but he'd known the girl a day or two, and surely she'd moved on when Lorenzo spun some lie about him choosing not to continue with the liaison program. Even if she hadn't given up on him, Jesse couldn't offer her the life she deserved. Things like this would happen to him often, torture, capture, or some vampire wanting retribution for something the Zehirs had done. Without a house, he was a punching bag, nothing more. At worst, he was a target on Tara's back, and he couldn't afflict that on her.

Eyes glowed just outside his cell, the light color of a cloudless day. The ugly Fleur-blue shone much different from the color within Tara's eyes. Tara held vibrance and the color sank deeper, much like the dayflowers that grew on the edges of the Zehir pastures. Like the woman, they bloomed for only a day before their beauty was snatched away.

Jesse wished all the Fleurs dead as Asmodeus Fleur came into view, dressed in his perfectly pressed and primped white suit, adorned with frivolous frills of white and ice blue down the front. Jesse's torture had been less the Fleur's fault and more Dev's, but Lorenzo had been able to stop it and had chosen not to. This was Lorenzo's territory and Fiorello would have sided against torture if his progeny had asked. Jesse was nothing to them though, so what happened to him was of little consequence.

"Tired of the dungeons?" Asmodeus asked in his boyish tone, too high for that of a seasoned warrior but low enough to be definitively male. The prick had his arms resting on the bars, and a stupid smirk spread on his lips.

Jesse had enough in him to snarl, yanking the chains as far as they could go from the wall. With how hoarse and dry his throat was, the sound ripped out of him in a threatening display of a ravenous beast. The smirk dropped from Asmodeus face, but much of the fight left in Jesse faded. If Asmodeus was here to garner glee from his pain, he wouldn't waste the energy.

"I'm not your enemy, Jesse Zehir. I'm here to free you," Asmodeus said, words that were impossible. This man was devoted to his master, so much so that he'd rip his own heart out before he'd speak ill of the man. While the Fleurs were not the most affectionate family as far as their house unity, Asmodeus was reverent of Lorenzo.

"What ploy is this?" Jesse rasped, coughing when the words were too much.

"A ploy it is, but not for you. Come, we haven't much time." Asmodeus opened the cell and dropped down to undo his shackles. They fell to the ground, but Jesse hadn't enough in him to stand, let alone throttle the boy beside him. "Come," Asmodeus said with allure, and Jesse craned his head to a human man following and dropping to his knees near Jesse. "I assume you can feed from him without harming him? I'm not here to kill anyone."

Jesse was unable to respond as the pulse of blood thundered so near his mouth. Everything but that enticing symphony faded, his fangs lengthened, and he yanked the man's throat to his mouth. All of it was instinctual. His body cried out for the blood even though Jesse no longer wanted live, to continue this pointless existence.

The sweet, thick liquid rolled over his tongue, and he drank the calm flow of life. Under whatever allure Asmodeus had inflicted on the man, there was no adrenaline nor fear, just a calm that kept Jesse sane through the process. It had been a while since he'd fed, but he was old, so very old, and used to starving and controlling his hunger in the direst of straits. With that control, Jesse released the man when he could give no more without harm. Jesse turned his attention, still in disbelief, as Asmodeus nodded for the attendant to leave the cell and sit on the floor in silence.

"He will not remember this," Asmodeus said, standing up and heading back out the cell door to glance down the corridor.

The man was checking to see if anyone had smelled the blood. It was such a potent scent that vampires could easily perceive it floors away. That meant that no one was here. This was the central castle, and it was always fully protected.

"Where is everyone?" Jesse managed as he stood, observing the skin on his hands swelling with life as his face edged back from the bones as well. It wasn't enough to rejuvenate him completely, but well enough what he needed to escape if that was Asmodeus' intention.

"Mostly the northern castles and borders. The Arcs have amassed a large portion of their people there for negotiations. Lorenzo knows it's a ruse, but he can't leave our people open. This is the most centralized location, and safe from any incursion from without, so the best place to leave unmanned." Asmodeus paused, and his face crinkled. "Why is he so talkative?" Asmodeus rubbed his face, and Jesse didn't understand the last sentence.

Had he been speaking to himself in the third person? Jesse certainly wasn't talkative by any definition of the word.

"Come, Jesse Zehir. There isn't much time to slip you out, and it will be apparent that Neil has no intention of treating with Lorenzo all too soon. They are here to pull attention from me, that is all."

Asmodeus ducked down the back of the dungeons, and Jesse followed him merely out of lack for better options. This was suspicious, but the Fleurs didn't play with their food, so they weren't stringing him along for the pleasure of throwing him back in a cell. Asmodeus and Lorenzo weren't sadistic like Dev, nor would they participate in such a sick form of entertainment.

At the end of the row of cells, Asmodeus stuck his hand in a shallow divot. The dungeons shook, and the wall pulled back to reveal a small set of stairs. There was no way the disturbance was missed by those few above, and Asmodeus beckoned for him to follow as he flew down the stairwell. The stairs were steep, and Jesse barely kept up with the fluidity of Asmodeus' movement. The old rock was carved into the very cave it descended into, and uneven places had Jesse almost tumbling into broken bones on more than one occasion.

Asmodeus stopped at the base and waited for him to amble down in his weakened condition. As Jesse found solid ground and looked to the back of Asmodeus head, he wondered just what the hell was happening. Such precision of movement and speed were not possible with Asmodeus' youth and normal daily routine, vampire or not. This man moved like a well-oiled gear in a machine he was built and bread for, an assassin.

Dark magic stronger than both him and Asmodeus melted away Jesse's doubts as the opening to the cave came into view. Asmodeus stepped outside but held a hand back to Jesse as he followed suit. Just outside, in the morning light of the sun, sky blue rippled in curls down Lorenzo's shoulders, and his muscles flexed as he tried to make sense of what was before him.

"What are you doing, Asmodeus?" Lorenzo asked, as if there were some convenient explanation to absolve his closest friend and comrade. That was what Lorenzo wanted, for someone to have tied Asmodeus' hands, to have forced him into this.

"I would think that apparent, Lorenzo. I am leaving." Asmodeus spoke, but didn't answer, his lips pursing in a way that had Lorenzo near trembling ahead of them. For two as entwined as they'd been for years, this was ripping the house head's heart out.

"Why?" Lorenzo asked, his fangs lengthening in anger and despair that had him clenching his fists.

"You have to ask?" Asmodeus hissed, his magic circling around him in preparation for the inevitable fight. "You abandoned me, Lorenzo! Left me to die at Vincent's hands."

Lorenzo's eyes dimmed, and his lips shook as he tried to find words. "You begged me leave, Asmodeus. You know I'd have stayed and fought for you."

"Of course, I did. That's my role, isn't it? You're my master, I'm your slave. If sacrificing my life saves yours, than it has no other worth." Lorenzo moved to reply, but Asmodeus cut him off. "You could have at least come for me after, or did you think them throwing picnics in the Sol dungeons in my honor? Certainly my torture at the hands of your enemies was worth at least some retaliation or demand for my release. But you did nothing."

"Asmodeus, a lot has been going on. We were unsure if we could even–" Lorenzo tried to form some reply, but Asmodeus scoff shut his sire up.

"You don't even comprehend the severity and quantity of torture Talamayas can fit into those days, do you? Well consider me doing for Jesse what you didn't for me. I won't sit by and wait for Dev's return to resume his torture, the way I had to count my seconds of peace in those dungeons before hell singed my very soul. Get out of the way, Lorenzo." The last words were a low growl, but Lorenzo didn't move.

It didn't appear Lorenzo wasn't doing so because he wanted to bar their way, more as if he was stunned and ashamed of the happenings Asmodeus had just described. If they waited here, however, men would follow Lorenzo and capture Asmodeus with less hesitance. It was a fact Jesse was sure Asmodeus knew as he pulled his magic from the earth.

The water user may not have been old enough to be a skilled assassin, but he was sired by one of the strongest and knew how to fight. Water rose from the ground, every accumulated drop on the wet mountain grasses from a recent rain, and Asmodeus pulled further into the ground to grab the damp soil deeper. Dark magic coated shards of earth and rock as Asmodeus used the water to whip them at his master.

Lorenzo didn't even defend himself.

Jesse flinched his gaze away as Asmodeus shredded his master, spiraling a typhoon of blades that couldn't cut half as far into Lorenzo's flesh as the betrayal itself. Blood flew through the air, and Asmodeus didn't let up on the spell until Lorenzo was on his knees and his arms hung at his sides limp. A gash on either side had cut the tendons he needed to lift them, but with Lorenzo's hollowed grey eyes, it didn't appear as if he felt the pain. The man had expected frustration but never for Asmodeus to take it so far as to injure him.

Asmodeus grabbed Jesse when he didn't move and dragged him forward past where Lorenzo couldn't even utter a response that would mean anything to the scorned general. Jesse's last look at Lorenzo de Fleur was the tears slipping from his eyes to the ground as he collapsed in a mess of flesh, blood, and agony.


Word Count: 2033


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