Thanos felt a stab of longing, a punch of jealousy at the sight of them. For all he didn’t have, and all he never would, as Vasilios addressed them. “Not now, Leonidas.”
“You’re hurting him.”
“That is the point, agori. And trust me, if anyone likes it, it is he.”
Thanos watched with incredulity as Leonidas moved by the vampire who had him up and off his toes. I’ll be damned, he thought. This one has spine. That’s for sure.
“Hasn’t he been hurt enough already?” Leonidas’s eyes then trailed up to connect with his, and Thanos was baffled by the compassion there. It wasn’t as though he’d done anything to deserve it. Then Leonidas’s lips twisted into a sad kind of smile as he looked back to Vasilios and laid a hand on the Ancient’s arm. “Let him go.”
Thanos’s mouth fell open at the male’s audacity to give an order to Vasilios. But what was more astonishing was the withdrawal of nails from his flesh, and the fact that Vasilios actually put him back on his feet.
Holy hell. It seemed the oldest and most arrogant of them all had finally found his conscience, and it came in the form of a male with eyes the color of storm clouds.
The room fell deathly quiet as every occupant waited for whatever was to happen next. This was a first. No one besides Alasdair had ever been able to get through to Vasilios when he was in a mood, and sometimes even he had difficulty. This, however—this moment was unlike any before, because even though he’d suspected the connection Leonidas had with Vasilios and Alasdair, it was now one hundred percent confirmed—he’s bonded to them.
“Yes, he is,” Vasilios said, immediately answering his thought. “Is there something you wish to say about that?”
A whole lot, Thanos thought, but since he had Leonidas to thank for his life right then, he decided for the moment to let it go. Best to deal with one thing at a time, and right now, Eton was the biggest problem. “No.”
“Good. Because we do not have the luxury of time, and I need you to think of other, more pressing matters. Like where would Eton go?”
He had no idea. His and Eton’s relationship had been anything but stable the past few months. Hell, years, really. He barely remembered a time it was anything else.
“Think,” Vasilios said, now employing a more suggestive tactic than a violent one. “Where would he go if he were hurting? You are the one who has seen him at his worst. I can see the wheels turning, agori. Surely he said something at one point or another.”
Thanos thought back to that first meeting when Eton had indeed been at his very worst, and as he stared at Vasilios, the Ancient reached for him and placed his palm upon his chest, allowing their memories to mingle as he shoved into his mind: Remember that feeling you had the first night I took you to him. It was strong, even before you went inside to meet him. This life, the one he gave to you, it called to you, Thanos. He called to you even when you did not wish him to. Remember that and you will remember more…
Thanos closed his eyes, hoping Vasilios was indeed correct, and then he reached inside himself and located the very first time he met Eton—his Ancient.
Somewhere in Ancient Peiraieús—20 BC
“I WISH TO go in alone.”
Thanos wasn’t sure why he made such a request as he and Vasilios approached a heavy iron door that was locked with a metallic chain. But it felt imperative that if he were to meet the one inside, the male he was supposed to tame, then he must do it on his own.
After all, if he said yes to the offer, he would be spending much time with this…thing.
“Very well,” Vasilios said, as he reached for the lock, freed it, and then unraveled the chain. It must’ve weighed a ton, but he held it as though it was nothing. Yet another thing to add to the weird pile. “He is restrained against the far wall by silver manacles. He will not be able to break free or reach you. No matter how he may threaten to do so.”
Thanos licked his parched lips and nodded once as he took his first step forward.
“Be of care, Mr. Agapiou. And remember, looks can be very deceiving.”
Thanos’s eyes narrowed as he walked by Vasilios and entered the dark space. As the door shut behind him, it sounded much like he imagined the door to a tomb would sound. Final.
He spotted a lit torch secured to the wall, and headed down three steps toward it. And once his sandaled feet hit the floor, a voice emerged from the opposite end of the room and stopped him in his tracks.
“State your name before you come any closer.”
The tone was rich and raspy and floated across the airwaves to reach him, and Thanos found himself doing as he was told.
“My name is Thanos Agapiou.” He walked closer, wanting to see to whom the voice belonged. But all he could make out was a cloaked figure with its arms shackled to the wall by its hooded head.
“Thanos…” the figure said, rolling the name smoothly from his tongue, and it was as though the words themselves were drawing Thanos near. His feet moved of their own accord, and he found himself across the cell much quicker than he would’ve imagined.
“I like that. It suits you. You are taller than the last one. I thought you might be.”
The last one? What happened to him?
“I killed him.”
Those three words had Thanos’s feet coming to an abrupt halt. But before he could backtrack away from the lure of death, it sprang toward him off the wall, and the manacles secured to a long length of chain clinked through the steel rings so the one they held prisoner could easily move about.
Vasilios had lied.
This thing—male—whoever it was, wasn’t restricted. He could move about easily enough to grab Thanos, and before he knew what had happened, the chain links were around his neck and a mouth was by his ear.
“The last one was weak and slow and offered nothing more than a half-decent meal once all was said and done. I had high hopes that you would be different.”
As the words ghosted over Thanos’s skin and the constriction around his esophagus increased, he could feel his cock reacting to the danger, and, as always, wondered why he was wired the way he was.
What was it about torture and destruction that fascinated him and made him want to fuck until he could no longer walk? And how twisted was it that the imminent threat against his own life had him hard as a rock?
“Well. That is something different,” his captor said, and then laughed, making Thanos’s rage intensify not only at himself and Vasilios, who had deceived him, but at the one who was currently enjoying his state of confusion. “Ahh…for once I was right and Vasilios was not. How that will gall him to no end.”
As the chain loosened, Thanos turned on the one who’d just threatened his life and dared to take a step toward him. He didn’t give a damn how Vasilios felt one way or another. In actuality, he didn’t care about that male in any way at all. His sole focus in that moment was on the one who’d moved back against the wall, his cloak still in place. He wanted to see the face of the male who’d taken such delight in his fear. He wanted to know the one who’d reacted such as he to such morbid delights.
“Show yourself,” Thanos demanded, and the arrogance he’d once employed with the customers of Daidalous’s resurfaced. He didn’t dare let his attention stray from the figure as he waited, and when he took a menacing step forward, pale fingers took hold of the hood and pushed it back from the occupant’s head.
Thanos wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but after being told that this was the one who’d been butchering the pornes down at the wharf, the divine male now staring back at him was not it.
He was quite a bit shorter than Thanos himself, and had blond hair, wide blue eyes, a perfectly bow-shaped mouth, and high, round cheekbones that made his face appear cherubic in nature.
“An angel I am not,” the male said, obviously reading his thoughts, but Thanos did not care. He was enthralled by what he was seeing. Enamored, even. He swiped his tongue along his lower lip and continued to study the contradictio
n before him as he whispered, “You may not be an angel. But you are beautiful.”
“I am broken,” the male said so softly that Thanos almost missed it. And once he was within touching distance, the prisoner lifted his face up to stare at him, and Thanos felt as though he were looking at a kindred spirit.
His entire life he’d felt like an outcast. He’d been told by countless people how handsome a young man he was, and yet just beneath the surface lurked a part of him that didn’t quite match the shell he was born into.
It was a sinister part that always wanted to claw free just as it did now, and when his hand came out and he daringly took hold of this bewitching but deadly male’s chin, the risk to his own life only intensified his desire to get closer to one as damaged as himself.
“What is your name?” he ordered, and as those eyes sparked, Thanos’s cock throbbed.
“Vasilios already told you—”
“And now I want you to,” Thanos said.
The male’s nostrils flared as though scenting him, and Thanos tightened his hold, uncaring of any pain he was inflicting. This being was immortal, if he were to believe what Vasilios had told him. So it was likely he wasn’t even hurting him in the scheme of things—but he sure would like to.
“Eton is my name.”
Thanos muscled him back against the wall, and when he put up no resistance, Thanos asked, “Are you like Vasilios?”
Eton’s gaze drifted to his lips, and when his fangs punched free, Thanos had his answer.
“In some ways, yes. In others, I am nothing like my brothers. Something happened to me…a few months back. I do not know what. But now, the blood I spill isn’t merely because I require it to feed, but because I am unable to stop myself.”
Thanos let his eyes trail over the man’s features and down the body he had pinned to the bricks.
“I fear this appearance of mine is now just for show, Thanos Agapiou. And as you think of yourself as having a shell, I know for a fact that I do. This is it—pretty, is it not? I guess it has to be, because when it cracks and this new monster slips free, I become something else. A fiend who enjoys the fear of those I kill. I crave it in a way that makes me more destructive than I have ever been before. And I desire it in ways I do not understand. It makes me careless and blind in my rage. And it puts all of us at risk. I need someone to help me. Someone to control this thing that dwells inside of me.”
Thanos cocked his head to the side, understanding the male’s plight much more than he ever expected to. “And you have discovered what controls this monster of yours? How do you stop it?”
“I pleasure it,” Eton said, and when Thanos dug his fingers deeper into the porcelain skin under them, it sounded as though Eton growled. “I pleasure it by giving it the pain and destruction it desires. Much more pain than you are inflicting right now.”
The challenge there, the invitation… It called to his carnal nature in a way Thanos hadn’t known anything could, and before he knew it, he was asking, “How often does it happen?”
“At first, once, twice a week, maybe. Vasilios would lock me up and that would be that. But of late the desire has been more pressing. Which is why we had been searching for someone like you. And then, one night down at the wharf, I saw you through a window… You held a whip in your hand.”
Thanos’s pulse was racing, his cock ramrod hard at what he’d heard, and he wanted to turn Eton around and wreak havoc on him in ways that would calm whatever beast lay within him.
The lure was strong, but Thanos had to know. “If I say yes, we will be connected? Forever?”
“Yes. I have not ever sought such a union before. But you, you will be the first I have turned. You will be my first-sired. You will be mine and I will be yours.”
“I am nobody’s,” Thanos replied to the one looking upon him as though he were his savior instead of the one who would be tasked to do bodily harm to him.
“You will be mine,” Eton said. “You will be mine to protect and mine to fight beside. We will carry each other when one’s burden is too heavy. And if your blood is ever spilled, I will be the one to avenge it.”
Thanos wondered just what kind of monster could possibly lie within this exquisite shell, and at the thought, Eton’s eyes flared at him. As they flashed from blue to a fiery red, Thanos was aware he was seeing his first glimpse, and that was when he knew his life was about to change and that his destiny lay with this male.
“That is what you want?” he asked.
“That is what I need. There is a difference, Thanos. But be sure, I will not be an easy Ancient. And this life I offer, it is not for the faint of heart.”
“Luckily for you, I do not faint easily, and have been told countless times I possess no heart.”
The charming smile that lit Eton’s face then was in stark contrast to the red-eyed fiend that Thanos somehow knew had been the one to greet him with a chain noose. And he recalled Vasilios’s words about looks and how deceiving they could be.
“He is right about that. And I was right about you,” Eton said, clearly reading his thoughts.
Thanos lowered his arm and took a step back, trying to get a handle on himself and all that he was contemplating.
“I can sense all of your rage and frustrations, but you control them so well.” Eton’s gaze roamed down to the knuckles Thanos had clenched into fists. “You are confused by all that you have learned. This I understand. The task that has been asked of you is not an easy one. But if you take it on, I will be forever in your debt.”
Thanos thought about that and everything that had taken place since he’d been taken from the alley by Daidalous’s. How he’d seen teeth—fangs, really—in the mouths of these men that could rival the fiercest of wolves. And the quick way they moved and could see into his mind.
They were vampires.
The creatures that lived and dwelled in the darkness of night, and they had come for him just as he’d always been told they would. His kind had finally tracked him down, and there was no longer a question as to where he belonged. Now it was just a matter of how.
“I believe you are mistaken about who would be in whose debt,” he finally said. “You are the one granting me eternal life, are you not?”
“That I am.”
Thanos nodded, then swiped his thumb over Eton’s lips and said, “Then let it be done, and gods help us all…”
“…WHERE THE BLOOD was spilled,” Thanos muttered, and barely recognized his own voice as Vasilios dropped his hand from where it had been resting on his chest.
He hadn’t thought about that meeting in years. But here he was unable to escape it. Unable to push aside how much that memory now hurt. He’d been fascinated by Eton that night. Curious about the beautiful man hiding the darkest of secrets. It was a memory that he’d long since buried under all the chaos and ruination Eton had brought down upon their lives since.
“Perhaps what you are feeling is your guilt manifesting. Knowing what your separation now means for the one you met all those years ago,” Vasilios said.
“Shut your mouth,” he barked at the Ancient, and when Vasilios prowled toward him, Thanos stood his ground.
“Tread carefully, agori. You are trying my last nerve.”
He swallowed and lowered his eyes, knowing he needed to get control of himself before he pushed Vasilios beyond his limits and the male ripped his heart out.
“I was outside your bedchambers, Thanos. Eton was nowhere to be found where the blood was spilled. Try again.”
Thanos shook his head. “No. You misunderstand. Not where he killed. Eton would go back to where I was attacked—where my blood was spilled. So he could avenge me.”
“Oh gods. Elias,” Isadora said, reminding Thanos that she was there. She had one hand flat over her heart as though someone had just made it ache, and she whispered, “Please. I know you’re angry, but Elias was only doing—”
“I do not care what he was doing,” Thanos said, cutting her words off as effectiv
ely as if he’d cut her tongue free.
“And no one could blame you,” Diomêdês said, touching a palm to Isadora’s shoulder. “But you should know that if these three males are who Elias says they are, if they were indeed sent here to carry out a specific destiny, then the likelihood that Eton shall be the one to return to us is slim to none.”
“Diomêdês is right,” Vasilios said. “I have seen the power in Leonidas firsthand. And that little friend of yours you left locked in the bathroom? He sucked the life right out of one of my own.”
“You’re saying that you believe this male of Isa’s could kill Eton. Even as he is now?”
“I’m saying it is more likely than Eton killing him, yes. You need to go to him. Find him and try to reason with him, otherwise…”
Thanos stared into Vasilios’s unflinching gaze as the Ancient shoved into his mind, and his alone: You know what needs to be done if you cannot reason with him. We cannot risk Eton’s form of vengeance at this time.
You really mean that. You wish for me to end him. Your own brother?
Do not appear so shocked, Thanos. Eton is aware of what he has done. He knew the second he did it the consequences. He’s known since what happened in London. That is why he made it his mission to regain your respect these past few centuries. It is why he has resisted his baser instincts, been the kindest of us all. Surely you realized that. But now he has a decision to make. A position he consciously put himself in.
“Otherwise what?” Isadora asked.
Vasilios looked to Diomêdês, who inclined his head ever so slightly, and Thanos knew he was on board with this decision as he said to his first-sired, “Nothing that concerns you, Isa.”
When Isadora turned to her Ancient, Thanos thought she would object, but Vasilios was quick to start talking, cutting off anything she might say.
“It is time for you to leave now, Thanos.”
Thanos ground his teeth together, but before he did as was asked of him, he had a question of his own.