Chapter Four - Angelus
Angelus sighed, steepling his fingers as he surveyed the Vampire Morgan had brought to him. She was blonde and shapely with a power radiating from her that would have caused lesser Vampires to quake in their boots. Tall even for this time, she was a giant when she roamed the Earth as a living goddess, preying on the Norsemen who prayed to her for protection.
"Freya, you know quite well that the creation of new Vampires without my prior consent is forbidden. The only exception is a case where the human being turned is bonded to the Vampire and the near-death is an unexpected event."
The Vampire rolled her eyes, tossing her hair. "Your rules, not mine."
"I am the King."
"And I think that the humans have the right idea when it comes to democracy." Freya smiled sweetly. "It's not like I was making an army. No harm done."
"No harm except your victims are children, and you killed their parents! Vampire hatred is on the rise and actions like yours, slaughtering innocent people and stealing their children, are just making it worse. We need to live in harmony with humans."
Freya scoffed. "Always so concerned with what the humans think."
Angelus pursed his lips as he considered the woman. Freya had been giving him trouble ever since he refused to make her his Queen a hundred years ago. He really ought to have her killed before she started putting Vampire lives in more danger than she already had. Yet, since she had witnessed such history, he was reluctant to end her life. He turned to Morgan. Perhaps a more severe punishment would change her ways.
"Take her to the courtyard and nail her to a post."
Freya laughed, her eyes flashing. "Nail me to a post? What sort of punishment is that?"
"You will also shave her," Angelus added, his anger spiking. "Leave her golden hair at her feet. Three days of humiliation, and then she will be sealed in a coffin for a hundred years."
"You cannot be serious!" Freya's face paled. There was no worse fate for a Vampire than to be cut off from the world, unable to retreat into sleep or death, alone with their thoughts in the blackness.
Angelus stood, nodding at Morgan to deliver the sentence. He disliked using violence to get his point across, but when dealing with ancient vampires with no moral compass like Freya… sometimes it was necessary.
Distancing himself from the unpleasant situation, he headed for the library. Rosa was feeling better these days and they were studying the culture of ancient China together. She was so eager to learn, so receptive to all knowledge. It warmed his heart. He had made the right choice in the mother of his child. She hadn't spoken about the possibility of becoming a Vampire again, but it weighed on his mind. He would very much like to have her with him forever, but she would have to risk death first. That was a risk he didn't want to take.
Rosa wasn't in the library. Angelus frowned. She was never late to one of their study sessions, even when she was so sick that he had to carry her back to her room.
Angelus ran from the library, books rustling in his wake, and headed for her apartment. As soon as he entered her parlor he could smell her and his shoulders relaxed. He had feared something had happened to her… but she was here, safe. No harm done. Walking at a more human pace, he went to her bedroom.
She was laying under the blankets, her head hidden. Angelus heard soft sobs ripping through her body and his lungs seized. He wanted to rush over to her and find out what had happened and destroy whoever had harmed her. Yet, he made himself move slowly.
"Rosa? Are you okay?"
She flinched when he put a hand on her back even though the touch was indirect, buffeted by blankets. Angelus' eyes widened and he withdrew. She never recoiled from him, not even on that first night when he scraped his fangs along her collar. It had happened once when he first touched her, but she assured him it was because she wasn't expecting his skin to be so cold. What had happened that she was withdrawing from him now?
"Is it the baby? Are you hurt? Let me see you, Rosa."
She pulled the blankets tighter.
Did she think he would hurt her if she had miscarried? His heart felt like it might collapse at the idea, but he pushed aside his worries about the baby. Rosa came first: her health, her safety. Angelus gripped the blankets, peeling them down.
Her dark eyes shone with terror when he finally saw them. Terror of what?
"Tell me what happened. Please."
Rosa swallowed audibly. "You were late for our studying, so I went to see you. I heard you... Nailing a woman to a post…?"
Angelus blinked in surprise. "That's it?"
He had said the wrong thing. Rosa's eyes widened and she shifted away from him, trembling. Angelus shook his head. He couldn’t expect her to understand the Vampire ways or the history of infractions that Freya had committed to warrant such a punishment.
"That woman is a dangerous criminal."
Rosa's hands clutched the blanket as she nodded. She didn't believe him. It was clear as day that she thought he was making up excuses for what she saw as an act of barbarism. He sighed. He'd have to introduce her to the children Freya had turned, then. There was the slight risk that one or more of them were psychopaths, but even child Vampires were usually able to control their newfound desire to drink blood–unless they actually liked hurting people.
They had a long adjustment ahead of them, though. He shuddered, thinking about the other children Vampires he had met. Just imagining being an ancient being stuck in a body that was, for all intents and purposes, defenseless made him feel sick.
"I can see that you're still frightened," Angelus said, trying to be gentle. "We can talk about this later. Freya deserves the pain she gets, and I hope I can help you understand why. I'll see you at supper."
Rosa disappeared back under the blankets. Repressing a sigh, Angelus left the room. He would give her some time and then try to explain his reasons. She was human, though, and despite the atrocities he had seen humans commit, her morals were fundamentally different from his. Maybe it was just because of the centuries between them. Humans these days were generally less violent than those in the days of yore.
He returned to his office and called Lucilia to join him. She looked grave when she entered, though Angelus ignored it, pacing from one end of the room to the other, deep in his own thoughts about Freya and Rosa.
"I want you to bring one of the children from Freya's… 'experiments' to Rosa's room. I don't want any talk about what Freya did to the child, just some interactions. She heard Freya's punishment and is horrified about it… I need to get her to understand, or else—"
"Uncle, you have bigger problems than whether your human girlfriend likes you or not."
Angelus turned on Lucilia. "Excuse me?"
"She'll come around. You just need to give her a little time to adjust to the differences between Vampires and humans."
"I will not be spoken to—"
Lucilia's eyes narrowed. "If she survives."
"What?" he snarled.
"I'm not threatening her," Lucilia replied. "But she is being threatened. I was sorting through the normal death threats that you receive and I found some directed towards Rosa. Somehow, the humans know that you have her here, Uncle. There was more than one letter declaring that they are going to kill her and the child. Some go into quite gruesome detail about it."
Angelus' vision tinged red, but he forced himself to stay calm. He always took threats seriously but never believed that they could actually hurt him. After all, he was a King, and he had more security than even the President of the United States. It wasn't as though the humans that hated him could just waltz into the palace and cut off his head. Even their silver bullets wouldn't kill him, though they did slow his natural healing abilities.
Yet, threats against Rosa were an entirely different matter. She was so fragile, so human. All it would take to end her was a knife. Less, even. She could be killed by a man's bare hands. He couldn’t just tell her that her life was in danger. She would be even more terrified than she already was, and that wasn't good for the baby.
"Contact the human authorities. We will have to work with them on this." Angelus considered for a moment. "Tell Morgan to double security around the palace and have the sniffers take a look at the letters. I want those people threatening my Rosa to be hunted down. They will not get away with this."
Lucilia nodded, bowed, and backed out of the room. Angelus moved to the window, struggling to keep himself under control. If he let his anger get the best of him, he would end up in bloodlust. If that happened, what he had done to Freya would seem merciful as opposed to what he would do to anyone who threatened Rosa and his child.