ADAD Chapter 26: Blood

 Blood, so much blood, everywhere. 

Mate...where is the mate?

Danger! Vampire!

"Dari! Dari, can you hear me? He is dead now, please, wake up!" Anastasios's voice might have gone through water, for all the success it got with the demon. Darius was staring at him, with bared teeth. "Darius? You have to snap out of it. It is I, your soulmate!" 

Soulmate... Vampire soulmate.

Danger. 

Must protect soulmate. 

Darius was looking around wildly, fully lost to the rage. He didn't know where he was, just that he needed to kill someone to protect his soulmate. He stepped into something squishy, and looked down. An open rib cage. The insides missing from the stomach, where were the insides?

Darius looked around, and then saw them all the way across the room, by the window. The heart was still beating. The demon saw red. He ran to the organ, and took it in his hands, bringing it closer to his lips. 

"No, don't eat that," Anastasios tried to reason with the demon, but he was too far gone. Darius ate the heart, stopping only to chew, and then he was staring at Anastasios again. "Dari? Can you hear me?" 

Danger?

No more. 

Soulmate... must go to the soulmate. 

Darius went to the bed, and laid down on it. He snuggled into Anastasios, and fell asleep. Anastasios couldn't do anything, chained as he was. He looked at the gore that was drying on the walls, and wondered what the consequences could be, now that Darius had eaten the heart of a necromancer. 

Hours passed, and Darius slept. When he woke, it was bright and sunny outside. The rays of the sun peeked through the heavy curtains, and woke him up from his heavy slumber. He looked at Anastasios, who was staring at him in worry. 

"Are you ok?" Anastasios asked, and Darius's eyes snapped at the chains that held the vampire to the bed. With a strength he didn't know he possessed, he snapped one of the cuffs from around Anastasios's wrist open, then, he moved to the next. "Dari!" 

"I am fine," Darius said, as he worked on opening the other cuff. After he was done, he took Anastasios's hands in his, and inspected his soulmate's wrist. They had angry red lines on them, but the skin was not cut through. Darius smiled, and then kissed each wrist. "You don't have to worry about me." 

"How did you snap these cuffs open?" Anastasios asked, and Darius just shrugged. 

"I am a demon, I get the strength of those I kill," Darius told him, and then moved, so he could get Anastasios's legs free. When the chains were off, Anastasios sat in the bed, bringing his knees to his chest. 

"You shouldn't have eaten that necromancer's heart," Anastasios said, looking at Darius with worry. 

"Is that what I did?" Darius was calm. He knew that, as a demon, he had something that could turn him into a berserker. It seems, that Kilkreath had not been ready for such a show of rage. He looked down at his hands, and saw that his nails were almost claw like. "I will have to trim those." 

"Darius! You just went into a bloodlust, and you care about your nails?" Anastasios asked, and Darius just chuckled. 

"I am a demon, not someone you can call harmless. You have to understand that, as much as I love you, there are aspects of my nature that I can't change. Why are you even worried? The necromancer is dead, and you are fine," Darius said, as he hugged the vampire. "We should get you out of those veils, and into something comfortable." 

"Yes, that would be nice," Anastasios murmured into the embrace. "For a moment there, I thought that you will attack me as well." 

"I thought the same as well," Darius admitted. The red haze had been something that he hadn't wanted to be in, but he remembered, clear as day, that he had thought of Nastia not as a soulmate, but as a vampire. Even if that had only been for a moment. 

"You will need to train under a demon, to figure out how to control your bloodlust," Anastasios stated, and Darius sighed. 

"That means that we will have to go back to the academy, and cut our internship short," Darius told him, and Anastasios lightly punched him on the shoulder. 

"Do you know what the alternative is? That you end up as a wild animal, and kill an innocent one day, or me," Anastasios told him, and Darius shivered. 

"I'd recognize you," Darius insisted. 

"For a moment, you didn't," the vampire prince reminded him. Darius's shoulders slumped in shame. For a moment, he thought only about the danger. Had Anastasios not been chained, and thus deemed harmless long enough by Darius, for the demon to recognize him as his soulmate, then Darius might have ended up with two hearts in his stomach. 

 And a life of sorrow and regret. 

"You are right, I need training. Maybe, we can catch a mastery?" Darius suggested, but Anastasios shook his head. 

"The year already began. We can't begin a mastery from the middle. Besides, you need a private tutor," Anastasios said, and Darius chuckled.

"Your father didn't plan for me to have one," Darius reminded him. 

"You are rich enough to hire one. Don't think I don't know you have been making extra runes, and selling them to the other students at less than the market price," Anastasios said, and Darius gave him a sly look. 

"Is this the time when you scold me?" The demon asked, teasingly. 

"Are you... hard? Darius! We are surrounded by gore, you can't get hard under the circumstances," Anastasios could feel Darius's friend pocking him in the tights. The demon tugged at one of the veils, which was covering Anastasios's shoulder. He kissed the now free skin, and managed to lower them both down on the bed. 

"I feel this heat in me that I want to extinguish," Darius whispered, as he began to take off the veils, and pepper Anastasios's skin with kisses. 

"You are covered in blood," Anastasios whined, but Darius gave him a soft purring sound, that went straight to his groin. "Cheater." 

After that, there were no more protests. Just the joining of two bodies.