Angelos Theasthai: Marionette of the Prince

Yeah, I know. I should be telling you about me, about how I ended up where I now am. Truth? That part of my memory is blacked out, as in, someone’s done a good number on my mind. How would I know that? Well, I guess the obvious clue is that I don’t even know who I really am before I became the creature of the night. They tell me that its not important, that all that mattered was that I was finally one of them which was destined to be. Destiny? Fate? How was I to cope that they played parts in who I was to be. Then all that washed from my mind after the first few nights of the new me. I was hungry and no food could satisfy that hunger but blood. Fresh blood straight from a warm . . . sweet . . . ripe . . .

But that’s off topic, isn’t it? I mean, I can’t keep telling you my most intimate fantasies about humans. If I did, what would I tell you later, huh?

I’m cooped up all the time temporarily in a theater where the vampires sleep in the day in the basement of the place that didn’t seem much like a basement when everything was so lavish and expensive-looking. I always had a guardian with me, and each night I was not allowed to wander off, but to be taught about the customs of my new people, the vampires. I was their Prince and it was my duty to be a future leader for them.

They explained to me I was chosen not because of my looks, but because of my blood. I had some special type of blood that proved I was destined to be a Prince of theirs. I wasn’t old, believe me. Still not even past my teens, 17, I was 5’5” with long black hair down to my waist and the weirdest eyes in vampire history. Through my change, a part of the vampire cells apparently changed my eyes from sapphire blue to an ever-changing shade that mixed with silver. So, one minute there would be a ring of silver around my pupils. Then the next, there would be a slash that crooked as if lightning struck through them. Then it’d change to something else again. It was cool, but it got annoying when some vampires stared.

“You ready for your lesson, young Prince?” asked a burly vampire many inches taller than me. I had a crick in my neck looking up. He had red-brown hair, cut short that went in every which direction. His eyes were pools of never-finding lake green.

I whined. “Do you have to call me by that title? Can’t you just call me by my name, Aryen, or at least my nickname, Ari?” I walked next to him as he turned to walk me to one of my mentors.

He thought about it by staying quiet, but then smiling, shook his head. “It would be rude of me too. Besides, you haven’t known me that long, so how would you know that you liked me? A few sightings means nothing.”

I pouted, one thick lock of hair going into my face. “Then how would I get friends if everyone has to act so uptight around me? Am I meant to be alone forever?”

Jaggen—the vampire’s name—looked so sad when he replied, “As a creature of the night, it is one thing we learn. Choose those who you befriend wisely. Not all of the vampires are happy about having you of all humans as one of our leaders. Then, there are those vampires who don’t follow our laws at all. Those are rogues. I wouldn’t try to trust many people even if I had been a Prince.”

Part of what he said confused me. Why shouldn’t I trust everyone? What if I was kind to everyone? Would they treat me kindly back? I asked Jaggen.

“No. You are young, but even of you offer your hand, they have their minds set to the task they must do. Get rid of you. Their hearts might not be in it or they may regret it later, but in the end, what is done is done. There is no going back. So be careful. From here on out, you will know many hardships and the truths of life.”

I wanted to ask more, but the doors that we walked up to, which were not there before, opened slowly with creepy sounds. Jaggen pushed me in, waited until I walked more, and then turned to walk away.

It was not everyday that you got to see the inside of what may be the remains of an Egyptian palace. Torches lit the walkway, leading me to where I was supposed to go. There was so little light, but even with vampire enhanced senses, I could make out a bunch of stuff like the stone cat-guardians or the drawings on the wall.

At the end of my walk, there was a vampire slumped over a throne chair, the far leg and arm over the arm of the chair. He had short black hair down to his shoulders that curled at the ends slightly out. The right side of his face was covered while one ice blue eye stared at my approaching figure. He had on these tight leather black pants that made me cringe in discomfort for him. The shirt wasn’t really what I’d call a shirt because it was just long sleeves that connected mostly in the back — I’d seen something like that before — and a thin string in the front over his chest. Of course, none of my other mentors had smiled so why should this one.

Remembering what my first mentor had taught me, I stood straight and waited for him to address me with respect. I was a Prince and underling vampires had to acknowledge me, not the other way around.

There was grin for a second in the silence as I waited, but then it disappeared as if I had imagined it. “Prince Ari.”

I made a princely bow by tilting my head down slightly. “You may be . . . ?”

“I am Vexel, first commander of the Valkyerie.” He got up and began to walk around me in a circle, studying me. “I see you have caught on to the teaches of your other mentors. Well, no other Prince has come to me.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“They are not the Prince of War, first of all.”

“What?” I mean, WHAT?! If none of the other had come to them because they were not the Prince of War, then I was . . .

“Correct, as I may conclude that you have to the conclusion of. You are the Vampire Prince of War, also known as Valkieral.”

Wondering about why I was called the Prince of War, I asked Vexel about it. “We have only three princes so far and we’re not really sure how many there are supposed to be, but we recently had a prophecy read to us about the coming of our greatest leaders. It said they would have special blood, and although I can vouch that there is something about you and the other Princes that is different, I cannot be sure whether it was good or bad idea to change you. Coming upon you, Prince Ari was by chance.”

“What do you mean? Are you the one who . . . ?”

Vexel moved in front of me, looking down into my upturned face, into my ever-changing blue-silver eyes. “I changed you, Ari.”

I was taken aback. Before I even could take a step back, he grabbed me by the hair on both sides. There were tears in my eyes. “But I’m . . . just a kid. You couldn’t have just watched for me until I grew older or something? You had to take my life away from people I can’t even remember.” Realization struck me. “You took my memories.”

He brought his face closer to mine and for a minute there, I thought he was going to kiss me, which would’ve scared me because I didn’t swing that way. He only brought his lips close to my ear to whisper, “I didn’t take them. I simply locked them away from you, Ari.” Name, no title. “Ari, I didn’t want to because I saw how content you were, how innocent, but we needed you. Prophecy or no, we needed hope, needed you. If you had remembered how you felt, how the sun felt in your short life, you would go mad, I know you would because you are only a child.

“I don’t take back what I did. I will live with it, but I wanted you to understand the importance of your position to us who need the hope. Your memory will return to you, I give you my word. When you do, choose what life you will lead. Live or die.”

I realized that there were tears down my face, falling down onto his bare shoulder. “You took my life away. I can never go back to what I had. There is no life because I’m already dead, Vexel. I already . . .” I couldn’t even finish because my throat was clogged.

My face went into his black hair. He was hugging me. “I had to do what I did, Ari. I will not ask for your forgiveness, but I will give you my life. I will —” he took a pause, “— become your true guardian, your Ahikar.”

I let myself slump down to hug him around the waist while he while he kneeled in front of me. All I wanted was someone to hold me in this place of deep loneliness as I cried for the humanity I lost against my will. I couldn’t hate him or the others because he chose me, because he and all the other vampires needed me. A kid. They had put their hope in a kid. “It’s not your fault, Vexel.”

“I owe you that much for being the one to take you.”

I smiled at him as I pulled my head back to him. “Thank you, Vexel. I won’t be alone ever again.”

His lips tilted up slightly at the ends. “Never.”

“Sir!” someone yelled, barging the doors way behind us with a thud. Vexel and I pulled apart from eachother. I wiped my face clear of any evidence of tears, standing up straight, while Vexel stood to put his composure back together. It was all kind of funny actually, as if we’d done something quite dirty we didn’t want others to find out. “Sir Vexel!” It was Jaggen, and he didn’t look like he just came up to chat. He was holding a map in his hand, waving that up and down as if it was burning him. “We got bad news.”

“Hurry and speak, Jaggen. We do not have all night.” A table began walking, and I mean WALKING to us. I sort of freaked by gasping rather loudly. OK, I yelped like a girl and hated myself for it. Three chairs flew in from the darkness and landed near us. I took one chair and moved it near the table where Vexel and Jaggen immediately began talking. I was kind of lost after the first few sentences out of Jaggen’s mouth because he was speaking rather fast. I heard bits of it after a while to learn that Vampire Hunters were out again and have caught up a trail of a group of vampires not far from here.

“If they come any closer to here and then let the hunters lose their trail, it could mean trouble if they come sniffing around here.”

“True, but we are doing no harm. What is it that you are not saying?” Vexel looked like he knew, but wanted it confirmed.

“Rogues. The Sun roast their intestines inside out, but they are the evidence-leaving rogues.”

Vexel cursed. “Do the Princes know about this?”

“Just Prince Ari here,” Jaggen tilted his head at me. “Leilana has gone to Ireland to inform the Prince of Wisdom while DeKal has gone to the Asia in search of the Prince of Twilight. On your orders, I can contact them to tell the others to hide our Princes and the rest of the vampires until the excitement of the hunters have gone down. We don’t want them to be on a major hunt like 600 years ago.”

I just had to speak my confusion. “I don’t understand. Why did they hunt us 600 years ago?”

Jaggen looked at me as if I should know by now, but then shrugged looking at Vexel. I guess Vexel had been thinking for a while to be my Ahikar. Vexel asked, “Have you ever heard of the Salem witch trials?”

Thinking outloud I replied, “I haven’t been to school that much to know, but I know little of it.”

“Well about the 15th century, people in early America began hunting down beings of the night, not just witches. It had been the work of a couple of woman vampires rogues with human females that had caused the stirrup. We had to lay low for many years because the humans lived in too much fear. Those years caused great starvation in to us in those times, but none of us could feed very much even if we didn’t kill humans when feeding.”

“But it wasn’t us. It was the rogue vampires.” I was beginning to think like I was of the vampire of those time, but my mind was still a human in a few ways. “Couldn’t we have told them, or left a message?”

Vexel chuckled. “In what? Blood? We couldn’t just go up to a human and say we were vampires that didn’t kill when we fed. They wouldn’t have believed us. Besides, many of us had been born many centuries ago, so we did not have the schooling opportunities that children have today. We didn’t know how to read or write much, and even if we did, we were too scared to go up to them.”

“It’s not fair. We don’t even kill anyone, and we take the blame.” I sat back in my chair, my arms over my chest.

Jaggen smiled at me. “Perhaps, but they seem to think we do with all the legends and stories humans right about us. Even so, they think drinking the blood of others is evil.”

“They might as well be evil as well when they kill animals for themselves,” I argued back, feeling offended.

Vexel said one sentence that stopped all the argument. “They are not animals.” That was it. So, did they think they were so much better than animals that they shouldn’t be killed? I don’t understand and its all so confusing.

Standing up, I felt a sort of fear creeping up my spine. Looking around, I looked for an opening or something to tell me the time. It was probably nearing dawn, so I probably needed to rest. Vexel and Jaggen hadn’t said anything for they were deep in thought, but when I said, “Shouldn’t we be going under anytime soon?” they snapped out of it. Jaggen saluted a wierd movement with his hands at Vexel and left the dark room.

I was about it walk out alone, but my guardian stopped me. “As much as I think you can walk to your room safely, I wouldn’t hear the end of it from the other vampires if I let our Valkieral waltz out in the open wherever and whenever he pleases.” Shrugging, I continued walking to my room, basically the whole theater across from the room where I was at.

“Will you be sleeping in here as well?” I asked of Vexel as he closed the doors behind us. I raised eyebrows when he went into the closet.

“Do you have objections? Something I shouldn’t see? Something private? Something secret?” He was looking for something and when he found it, a part of the empty wall all of a sudden slid open to show a door to another room. I had been wondering about the wall because there was nothing covering. It was so . . . well, blank. Now I could see why.

He went in the room, leaving the door ajar, leaving me alone, which was enough for me. Geez, I have no clue why I didn’t want Vexel to see me changing when he’s a guy too, but I’d felt something that made my spine shiver. It was a good kind of shiver that shocked me.

There was a black cloth on one of the chairs in the room with a long, thin silver sash around it. From one of my mentors, this was the sleeping attire for Princes that was required. Believe me, I argued that I would so not wear a skirt to bed and that I’d rather go naked or at least with jeans. Their glares were enough. So, I learned how to put it on. While I learned, they told me that it was an old custom for their princes since the Egyptian times, and that should anyone other than my true guardian barge into my rooms, that I would only be half covered, not showing all of my “ultimate” beauty. Okay, they didn’t say ultimate, but they made it sound like I was so beautiful that the sun should revolve around me.

I wrapped the black cloth around me as if it were a towel and tied the silver sash around my waist to hold the cloth up. I rolled my eyes. Geez, I might as well have been naked, but when Vexel came back with only his leather pants, no shirt, and some weapons, I took my comment back. I think....I think.....I was pretty sure where Vexel thought he was going to sleep, and I was glad there could be something between us. for when the sheets mysteriously disappear one night in the future. Vampires don’t feel the cold, but I shivered. “Aren’t we safe enough?”

“No,” he answered with ease, walking up to the bed and setting one sword under the pillows, one under the matress, and the rest under the bed. Then he looked up at me as if expecting me to do something.

I stood there looking back at Vexel like an idiot, deeply afraid of being alone with him for once. The bed was in the middle of the bed with poles at the corners and see-through cloth wrapped at the top of each pole, connecting them. The chair I was standing near was in a corner of the room with a large mirror to look at myself. The magical door was on the side of the room near Vexel, who was standing on the right side of the bed. The door was straight ahead of the bottom of the bed, close to me. There were other things in the room, too, but I wasn’t really looking at them now. “Uhn...”

“Should I carry you to bed?” He tried to make it sound funny, but there was a seriousness to it.

Mortified and forgetting my fear for the moment, I replied. “Hell no.” I went up to the left side of the bed, pulling the thin black sheets away so I could slip in. When I felt my face the blood I had recently fed on go into my face as I looked up at Vexel still standing, looking at me funny, I turned my back towards him. Awshit. Awshit. Awshit. His hair, gawd, I wanted to run my hands through his shoulder-length black hair. I wanted...

No. No. Must not think about that. I’m not like that. I shouldn’t have those thoughts. I don’t like guys. I don’t. His eyes.....No! Dammit. Must....not.....

Hands wrapped around my waist. I stiffened. When the hell did he slip in? Ohnoohnoohno. Please, no. This can’t be happening. I’m a guy and.....It’s not right. I was taught that it was wrong. I mean....I did notice other guys, but....but it was not like that.

His breath, the faint smell of blood still there, was near my ear, followed by Vexel’s lips. The strong body spooned against my back, and I could feel something hard near my....

I tried to move away, but Vexel’s hands hald me against him, well, they actually pulled me closer. I couldn’t get my hands to pull his away. I looked down at them. They were dark, which was weird as a vampire because they are pale. I guess Vexel was darker when he was human and being a vampire just paled the darkness of his human skin to some color like chocolate milk. “Uh, V-vexel, I....I...” Smooth. Real smooth. I couldn’t keep my voice reserved in a situation like this.

“Ari,” he breathed. Part of that hair I had wanted to run my fingers through touch my ears. It tickled, but I would rather die for real than giggle like I wanted to.

Gawd, gawd, gawd. Vexel, please, let me go. I can’t do this. The words were there, I just couldn’t say them. No, that’s not true. I didn’t want to say them. I wanted this? Asking myself that question, I realized that deep in my heart, I did want this. I gasped quietly to myself at this revelation.

Vexel turned me onto my back, his arms at either side of me, so that he could look down at me and not touch me much except for my legs. The heat there made me turn my face. I couldn’t do it. I was too scared, my heart pumping my blood double-time. “Look at me, Ari.”

Reluctantly, I did.

That black hair went around my face when he let himself down on top of me, his lips on mine, chest to chest, heart to heart. His fangs nipped my bottom lip to draw blood. Vexel lapped that up with his tongue.

I wanted this. I wanted this so badly, but I was afraid of giving Vexel that much power over me. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but that was a stupid thing to do. His tongue went into my mouth, exploring my own fangs, my other teeth, the roof of my mouth, and finally my own tongue. I was reluctant at first, but the taste of him was intoxicating. I wanted to more, and so my tongue played with his, head going up, reaching for more of him.

Vexel pulled away, but his mouth only went down to my throat. He licked a line down my neck, tasting my skin. At the part between the left side of my neck and shoulder, his teeth bit down lightly, making me gasp. The bite hadn’t made a lot of blood run, only a little. It had hurt a little, but it felt so good. Was this supposed to be right? “No....Vexel....stop.” Between each word I said, there had been a bite that lead to pain. Vampires didn’t have to breath to live, so don’t think I was short on breath.

Of course, Vexel didn’t even stop. His mouth had gone down to my chest, to my nipple, while his left hand went down my chest to the tie on the sash. The elder vampire somehow untied that with one hand and was pulling the black cloth down to each side. That left hand grabbed my hard length. I groaned, my back arching slightly.

Stop....please....stop. We can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t let you do this Vexel. Well, that’s what I was trying to say, but the words were only mouthed, no voice to go with it, as his hand was going up and down my length, squeezing here and there, while his mouth took one of my nipples lightly between his front and bottom teeth.

With all my will, all the remaining strength that had left me, and all the sense I had, I pushed Vexel away from me with my hands, grabbing the black sheets and wrapping that around me, so I could walk away from the bed to sit at the chair.

For a few moments, neither of us said anything. I didn’t even look at him since the chair was turned away from the bed to look at the mirror. I had to say something because I had been the one to pull away. “Vexel, we shouldn’t . . . we can’t do this.”

“Don’t you mean YOU can’t do this?” He was angry. The heated energy of him scathed me in the back, physically. It had been unconscious on his part, I was guessing.

I nodded, giving him truth. Pulling my feet up, I held my knees against my chest, my arms tightly around them. My forehead rested against my knees, long hair wrapping around me like a curtain. There was a small shaking in me when I had sat down, now it was full blown that shook even the chair. “I can’t,” I whispered. Fear. I was truly and deeply afraid.

Vampires have super keen senses, so Vexel heard my whisper. He could hear my body and the chair shaking. He could see me shaking in the dark. The hot anger dissolved from the room.

Silence. Vexel hadn’t said anything back. I turned my head a bit to see the bed. Vexel’s back was turned to me, his body on the far right side of the bed. The scene hurt me for some reason. I expected an apology or an explanation for his behavior, but he gave none of those things. I stayed on the chair for a long time in the night, even though my body was draining rapidly in energy when I needed sleep. My eyes were going down of their own accord. I was slipping into darkness even though I was fighting it as best as I could. Vampires did not “die” during the day, we merely slept. It was like the sun was our curse to sleep, the Medusa of the vampires. Then, my body, my mind, stopped fighting. I was going away from the realm of reality.

---- End Chapter

AN: Mm...going through my stories sometimes makes me want to continue 'em. I created this story last year, but I had only written half of chapter one. I finally finished the first chapter. Yipee. Lol. I don't know if I'll continue with this story much. I have a few stories with vampires, but this one was the one that I had an actual complete plot thought up. *shrug* Naw well, I just wanted to share a this story a bit even if I don't continue it...well, maybe in the future-future. Heh.

Angelos Theasthai means 'Angel Theater.' Huh, at least if I remember right.

As you can so tell, apparently I'm obsessed with princes. ^^;