Billy came 30

Thirty – A Shift in the Natural Order

“You must not doubt my love for you, Perveen,” I said, this time daring to take her cheeks between my palms, pointy fingernails (the first time I’d noticed them) making dimples either side of her lips, as she had done to me so often already.  It was my turn to try to instil confidence, take the burden of responsibility from those lithe, olive-skinned naked shoulders.

When we looked into each other’s eyes this time around, with me peering down upon her never-to-be-fully-grown height from a seemingly taller perspective than I had been used to, with the blood of Vlad Țepeș still coursing through my veins, there had been a very definite shift in control.  I knew it, she knew it.  And it affected her a great deal more, which is why I had to convince her now that whatever trial lay ahead of us our wedding would proceed as planned.

Billy came 28

Twenty-eight – Revisited: an old trick from my bride’s head

“Sebastian,” Perveen implored, talking through my sister’s oh-so sweet blood to me, implementing the same method by which she had broken into Billy’s thoughts as they had drunk from her mother all those years ago.  I looked up, across my sister’s belly, to see Perveen drinking directly from the same vein in my sister’s opposing forearm.  She was beckoning Marie to join us.  Anger flashed again, but, feeling my sister jump as if charged with a powerful defibrillator, I reined the emotion back in forthwith.

As Marie sank her teeth into my sister’s neck, Perveen started up the blood conversation again.

“Sebastian, I can save your sister, but it will have to be in exchange for you taking the life of your brother,” she said.