Court Of The Damned

Alaric.

The night was young, the bourbon low, and I, unfortunately, was still alive.

Three centuries in, I had every right to stroll under the moon’s waning glow like the fallen prince that I am; my usually meticulously-styled hair now wild, shirt askew, hands jammed into the pockets of slacks I’d probably slept in.

Once. Or twice.

Maybe three times.

To be perfectly fair, I had spent the last forty-eight hours trapped in a lavish, suffocatingly dull penthouse apartment, fending off a trio of high-society heiresses who desperately wanted to claim a piece of the Crimson Court. It was exhausting. The entire process of mortal seduction has become entirely too repetitive, a predictable choreography of batted eyelashes and desperate flashes of cleavage.

Look, I have seen them all. The large, the small, the remarkably saggy, and the virtually nonexistent. I used to appreciate something of everything, but now…

The women looked precisely the same, and not a single one of them managed to pique my interest in the slightest. Out of sheer, unadulterated boredom, I had resorted to drinking myself into oblivion just to survive the evening, before practically fighting my way out of their ever-craving hands. I still smelled faintly of cheap perfume, expensive gin, and uninspired sex.

I paused, wondering momentarily if it had been forty-eight hours. It might have been longer, or perhaps shorter; only the devils in hell would know. It’s difficult keeping track of time when your liver’s decorative, and I was due a proper snack.

Tonight’s snack was sitting on a park bench, bathed in the pale light of his phone screen, earbuds in, head bobbing to some noise so vile, it could only be described as the symphony of nocturnal scavengers having a meltdown in tin armor.

He didn’t notice me at first. That was always the way, wasn’t it? Humans never paid attention to their surroundings until it was too late. You’d think it would be common sense—sitting out in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, completely deaf to an approaching threat.

Leaning my back against the base of a massive oak tree, I tilted my head and studied him. He was in his late twenties, had an average build, and was wrapped in what the modern brood referred to as a hoodie, zipped to the throat. He clutched his little plastic rectangle as if it were the only thing that mattered in his world, his eyes glued to the screen. It was a pathetic sight, really. Humans and their devices. I’ve yet to uncover what manner of dark compulsion they’ve imbued those things with, but I suspect it’s stronger than mine.

I let out a long sigh and smirked. He was a bit stringy for my taste, but blood was blood, and mine was running terribly low. Besides, I wasn’t in the mood for aristocracy tonight. I just wanted something warm, human, and breathing.

I sauntered forward, bourbon sloshing in the bottle I hadn’t quite managed to discard yet. “Good evening,” I purred.

He didn’t look up.

“Lovely night for a stroll,” I added, louder this time. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Still nothing.

I rolled my eyes and stepped directly into his line of sight. His eyes flicked up, mildly annoyed. One earbud came out. “What?”

“I said,” I smiled, “it’s a lovely night for a stroll. Or a bite.”

He frowned, giving me a quick once-over. “Are you, like, okay, man?”

“Never better,” I replied, wobbling slightly. “I am Alaric James Bloodborne, third son of the Crimson Court, heir to—”

“Yeah, okay.” He put the earbud back in. “Buzz off, man. You reek.”

Charming.

I gave him a tight-lipped grin. “How disappointing. I came here hoping for a conversation. Or at the very least, consent.”

“What?”

I didn’t give him time to repeat it; hunger surged, my fangs descending with a quiet click as I pounced.

He let out a strangled yelp, scrambling backward on the bench, but I was faster. I hit him like a falling boulder. The wooden slats of the bench groaned violently under our combined weight as I drove my knee deep into his middle, pinning him flat. He opened his mouth to scream, but I slammed my hand over his face, hard enough that his teeth cut into the inside of his own lip.

Right then, a sudden, cold wetness bloomed across my lap.

I froze, staring down. The bourbon bottle had shattered against the iron armrest of the bench. Alcohol was rapidly soaking through the fabric of my very expensive, very white Egyptian cotton trousers.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Now I looked like I pissed myself.

“Oh, for fuck sake,” I muttered, rolling my eyes, while keeping my heavy knee planted directly onto the human’s sternum, utterly indifferent to the way the poor bastard gasped and choked for air beneath me. “Absolutely perfect. Bloodborne, you divine bastard, you’ve really outdone yourself.”

The man beneath me paused his thrashing for a fraction of a second, his wide eyes swimming with a mixture of agony and sheer confusion.

“Oh, never mind. You won’t remember any of it.” I pressed on, ignoring how the man trembled beneath me. He clutched his phone like a crucifix, holding it up between us as if that thin slab of glass and metal might save him, a small red light blinking silently from its corner.

I peeked at it for a moment, genuinely curious.

Was he trying to scare me? Did he think that blinking thing was some kind of weapon? A laser, perhaps? I’ve seen those. One particularly bold fool once attached one to a gun and fired it at my chest. He learned quickly that bullets don’t do much to the undead.

I, however, was barely fazed by the gesture.

With a low snort, I reached out and casually crushed his fingers around the device, forcing his hand down against the bench with enough cold, effortless pressure to make his knuckles pop. I dragged my gaze away from the harmless light and bared my teeth with a slow, deliberate smile. By now, the man was wailing like a common coward, tears mixing with the blood on his mouth.

“Shhhh,” I whispered, my voice dropping into something ancient and heavy. “It’ll be over soon.”

Then I bit.

I didn’t just take a polite sip. I tore into his throat with a vicious, starved desperation. Hot, sweet, metallic ecstasy flooded my mouth. It hit my bloodstream like sin itself, buzzing, golden, thick with adrenaline and pure bliss. The human went entirely rigid beneath me, his hands clawing weakly at my shoulders as I drained his strength, taking far more than a simple snack required. I drank until his pulse fluttered like a dying bird under my jaw, stopping only when the thrill of the kill nearly overtook my senses.

When I finally pulled back, I licked a heavy smear of crimson from the corner of my mouth and smiled down at his glazed, unseeing eyes.

“You won’t remember a thing,” I murmured, placing two fingers heavily on his bloody forehead, forcing my power into his fracturing mind. “Sleep, little mortal. Forget me. Forget all of it.”

I felt the energy slip between us. The familiar push. The press of compulsion.

And then I stood, completely unbothered by the state of the broken human on the bench. I brushed the remaining glass shards and bourbon from my ruined lap, and vanished into the shadows.

Blissfully unaware that, for the first time in nearly two hundred years… it didn’t work.

***

Meanwhile…

Kellan Green’s (park victim) POV.

The man was gone. he just dissolved into the midnight mist.

But the agony was blinding.

My neck felt like it had been ripped open by a wolf, and a horrific, crushing pressure was hammering inside my skull.

What the hell just happened?

My body was trembling violently as I rolled off the bench, landing hard on the pavement. My phone was lying a foot away, its screen badly cracked from where that psycho had slammed it down.

But the little red recording light was still flashing.

Instinct or dumb, blind luck, but I’d hit the shortcut record button right when he started talking. Because he had smashed it face-down, the camera had been pointed directly up at his face the entire time he attacked me.

Through the spiderweb cracks in the glass, I could see the night-filtered video preview: a perfect, clear, terrifying recording of a pale, aristocratic lunatic baring elongated fangs, boasting about being a prince and literally drinking my blood. The teeth had to be prosthetics, surely. Except the heat pooling on my collar was entirely real.

He didn’t just bite me. He drank from me.

Panic exploded in my chest, hot and suffocating. Fuck. My fingers were slick with my own blood as I snatched up the shattered phone, my thumb frantically hitting the stop and save buttons.

“Come on,” I sobbed, looking wildly into the dark trees, terrified the deranged man would return and finish the job. “Come on, come on…”

Blood was trickling heavily down my shirt. The world was spinning. The loss of blood was pulling me under fast.

I swiped wildly, bypassing my contacts, and smashed the emergency call button.

“911,” I whispered into the mic, my vision going completely black as a dispatcher’s voice finally cut through the static. “I need… help… I was attacked… I think I’m dying…”

The phone slipped from my limp fingers, clattering onto the concrete as I completely passed out.