**Trigger warning for non-con, not explicit**

Ludo – The Horror of Our Love

Jevin was a horrible master, not that I cared, not that it mattered. I couldn't leave even if I tried. I hated him though, for his tricks, his smooth words, for his control. He loved it, pulling my strings, making me his pet. The Clan had never been an ownership, but there was no doubt that this was, he made that explicitly clear. I didn't care though, not really, I didn't care about anything.

That was the good that came from feeding from Jevin, nothing mattered, nothing hurt, nothing even seemed real. I was in a dream, one that was all grey, empty, free, from my emotions at least. I was his, but that seemed a small price to pay for the void I felt, the numbness. I couldn't call it peace, not really, it was merely nothing.

I could think of the Clan, my time with them, my training, my old life, all of it and I didn't feel a thing. I still couldn't think of him but that wasn't because it hurt or brought back some kind of feeling. I just didn't want to. I didn't want him to exist, and though I had been too weak to stop his existence in the world, I could at least stop him from existing in my mind. If I ignored him, it was almost like he wasn't out there somewhere, living on with his lies.

It had been almost a month since I gave myself to Jevin and he had been keeping me busy. His blood gave me refuge from my emotions, but it also gave me a need to serve him, a hunger to do what he asked of me, to please him. It was like I was a puppet and the moment his blood touched my tongue I handed him the threads. The worst of it was that I had come back, every week, sometimes more frequently. I had to come back to him to get more. It was the strongest drug, the worst addiction I could imagine.

But even if I hadn't been hooked, I would have gone back, I had to, the crushing pain, the anger, the self-loathing and betrayal began to leak back from the corners of my mind if I didn't. I would feel my emotions marching towards me, filling me, and I would panic and be back at his door the same hour.

If I had to choose between being owned by a creature I hated but feeling numb, feeling nothing, or being free but tormented by my past, my memories and demons, I would choose slavery every time, it was the only way I could survive. Not that I could leave even if I tried, the pull of his blood, my addiction, was too strong. I always came back. It was the perfect trap, Jevin knew I couldn't, and wouldn't, leave.

Mostly I was Jevin's hit man. I suppose I was James' long-awaited successor in some capacity, because every few nights he would send me to take out an enemy or threat as he called them. He knew how his blood bond worked and always made the target sound like an urgent attack on his safety, stoking the fire in me to protect my master at any cost.

My errands were my favorite part of my debt to him, since it mirrored my own desires as well. I continued my tally with each target I killed, with each man or Darkling or Vampire. I wished they were all worthy hits, with darkness in their hearts, but I was sure that wasn't true. Sometimes I could tell, sometimes I just knew they weren't guilty, that they shouldn't be killed, sometimes I wasn't sure, but I didn't have a choice, I had to do as Jevin ordered.

Not all of my tallies were targets from Jevin. I often found my own street thugs and muggers, abusers and murderers. It eased my mind to know that when it counted, when it was my decision, I only killed monsters, people and things that deserved death, just like I had said I would. I could see the guilt in their eyes, in their souls, just by letting wisps of my Gift into their minds, their pasts. It was sickening what my city sheltered.

The city was full of the guilty, full of sin, and depravity and filth. I rarely came home empty-handed. It was almost disgusting how easy it was to find the criminals and demons on the streets I had used to find so boring. I often wondered how I hadn't seen them, how I had never noticed the seemingly boundless flow of living trash that welled up in every bar, every dark alley, every shadowed corner of the city. Where were the police? Where were the people whose jobs it was to catch these men and women? It was like the darker places in the city, the lower areas, had been left to their own depravity, left to fester into whatever they may, as long as it didn't spread into the respectable areas, the rich places where civilization and morality still pretended to hold their ground.

Most kills were easy, the subtly of my nature made Darklings think I was Human, so surprising them was simple. I rarely dawdled with my kills, afraid the enjoyment I got from their pain, their fear, was just proof I was walking ever closer to losing the last of my humanity. I denied myself the pleasure of a slow kill, even when they deserved so much more than what I did to them. Usually I just dealt a single deadly blow before the target even knew I was more than Human. I never actually got to fight, to feel the dance, the adrenaline at calculating a worthy foe, at blocking and punching and predicting someone. I missed it, but I still didn't allow myself the bliss of toying with my targets.

My self-deprivation only made me crave the kill more though, wanting quantity since I wouldn't allow myself quality. Luckily, Jevin had no short supply of marks for me, sometimes cities away, sometimes only miles, but always there was someone. A Vampire, a Darkling, a Shifter, men and women and creatures I didn't even know existed, whole Clans, it didn't matter. I killed them all.

When I wasn't on the streets, I was in Jevin's library, reading anything I could get my hands on, anything that taught me about the world I knew almost nothing about. With the Clan I had felt like I was learning so much, but in reality it was foolish of me to think a few months was enough to learn a lifetime of information. Now, I devoured any book Jevin owned that could tell me about the world, the real world. I read over all the creatures that Hell could spew out, all the variations of curses and beasts and things I had always thought were myths, everything I could that would prepare me for the life I had planned. It was an overwhelming task, but it kept me busy, every waking hour.

Jevin's blood gave me strength too, and sped up my healing, so now the cuts that climbed halfway to my elbow usually turned to scars within days. I had just shy of twenty. Twenty dead in under a month. Just the sight of my tally made me smile, my teeth's jagged points digging into my lips. The city didn't even know what it was harboring, what was lurking along its streets at night. It was strange to think the humans lived so blindly, missing so much of the world around them. It seemed impossible that a few months earlier I had been just as blind.

Jevin said things were changing in the city, that more creatures were appearing, as if gathering for something, drawn by something. He often wore a little smile when he'd speak of such things, as if he knew a great secret. He seemed to know a lot of things, though he still didn't know my percentage, or what had happened the night I came to him. He had never asked.

The worst of my debt to Jevin was when he'd call on me personally, not for a target. It started when I returned the third time, needing more blood to feed my addiction, to numb my mind. He had stared down at me with that little smile on his face, something scheming in the look he gave me. I saw his teeth lengthen but instead of biting his wrist like the first times, he bit down into his lip, blood blossoming quickly where his fangs sunk in. I didn't want to kiss him, but it didn't matter, I needed his blood, my fix, and I didn't have a choice anyway. That was when I truly started hating him, but that emotion was quickly dulled, just like all the others.

I tried to enjoy my nights with him, or at least find them tolerable, but I hated the feeling of his cold skin on mine. It was like sleeping with death, with winter, like a snake who hadn't found the sun in days. I hated the cold, but still every time he called on me I went, I had to. I spent close to every night in his room soon, in his bed, unless I was out doing his bidding, or holed up in the library. During these nights I began to practice diving into my own mind, daydreaming deeper, learning how to contain myself there, block out the world. I sharpened the skill over the weeks with him, trying to ignore the world around me, Jevin mainly. I knew my mind felt different, like it wasn't the old friend I had always had, always known, but that didn't matter, nothing did, it was just an escape.

Eventually, I hardly even minded the nights I spent with him, hardly even noticed them. I could close my eyes, or even just stare out, but I wasn't really there, I was in my woods, or at the manor, or anywhere I wanted to be. In the beginning he could tell when I would do that, when I would retreat into my mind, and it made him angry. He thought of his affections as a privilege, a gift to me, a reward for a good kill, or following an order satisfactorily. Those were the only times he ever bit me.

The first time I thought he was Turning me, but he wasn't, he just bit me for his own sick pleasure, some form of passion I didn't understand, or maybe punishment. He had a perverse appetite for torture. He did it to pull me from my mind with the pain, to try and draw my focus back onto him. But I quickly learned to mask my face so I didn't seem to be as far away as I was, to make noises or move when it was expected of me. Soon it was an easy act, he wasn't difficult to fool, he saw what he wanted to. Soon it didn't even take a conscious thought.

He showed me parts of his past sometimes, memories and snapshots, but I learned this was just another way he could control me. Physically, mentally, it didn't matter to him, he loved it all. He still believed my partner was dead and he thought the pain of that loss was why I had come to him, asked to become like him, because of this he assumed showing me memories of James would hurt me further, though I didn't think that was possible.

Jevin started by showing me memories of James' kills, how brutal he had been when he was young, how depraved, hoping to tarnish his memory, but it didn't affect me. I knew James was a monster. I didn't need any further proof. Eventually Jevin chose his favorite form of torment and showed me James' punishments most often, when he had been disobedient. James could have refused, could have fought back, but he never did, the threat that Jevin would abandon him always hanging over him, the risk that he would be alone and deteriorate again always holding him to do as Jevin commanded.

It was never anything compared to his father, even Jevin wasn't that twisted, and so James allowed the abuse, almost not seeming to mind. Usually James took his punishments with a small smile, a cruel smirk, which only angered Jevin more, as if he couldn't hurt James in any substantial way, in any way he would fear, as if he enjoyed it, but I figured that was the point. The only times James didn't smile was when Jevin would use his guns. Then he would stare straight ahead, standing or kneeling like a statue, not a muscle moving, his face hard, his eyes empty, until the trigger was pulled, then he would flinch, almost jump, no matter how he tried to stop it. Something about the visions, the memories, called to me, but my dulled mind didn't reach for them. It didn't matter.

I didn't have dreams anymore either, yet another side effect of Jevin's blood warring with mine. Sleep was just a dark void until morning unless Jevin forced his mind inside my own. Soon my daydreams were all I had left, all I could use to step away from the life I found myself chained to. I never thought I would miss my dreams, even my nightmares, but I did, and I felt a special loss for my prophecies, a loss for a Gift I had hardly even experienced. If I could have still felt hate, real, true hate, some part of me knew I would have hated my life, myself, what I had allowed myself to become. A pet, a slave, a whore. How far I had fallen.

The apathy his blood gave me helped my pain, my losses, every emotion was dulled, as if under anesthesia, but I knew the changes in me were more than that. By the end of the first month Jevin had continued what the cemetery started and broken me. And I didn't even care. Nothing mattered but getting the power I wanted, needed. Just two more months and then I would be out of the trance he had put me in, just two more months and I would be free. Until then, I'd make my payments. Just two more months.

One night as I laid in bed next to him, he spoke to me, which was rare for us. That was one of the reasons I could slip so easily into my mind when he would call on me for these kinds of visits, there was no speaking, no connection. Instead I could immerse myself in my own mind, my daydreams, lose myself from the scene unfolding around me. I learned to fear the rare times we spoke, nothing good ever came from our conversations.

He idly trailed a finger down my side as he spoke, giving me goose bumps from the clammy cold.

"Will you stay with me after I Turn you?"

His words were a purr in my ear, his cold breath rustling my hair like the snowy wind rattling the grand windows on the far wall.

"No," I answered flatly, staring up at the ornate ceiling of his master room.

"What if I don't let you leave?"

He slid one of his icy nails across my stomach, just hard enough to leave a red line of irritated skin.

"I'll kill you," I replied calmly, silently cursing my mouth for spilling my thoughts. I hated not being able to hide anything from him, another reason I feared each discourse we shared.

"Hm," Was all he said before pulling me on top of him once again.

The next time I went to him for blood he wouldn't give it to me. He waited three days, three days of my emotions growing, my pain and the emptiness of where my connection to James should have been. Three days of feeling betrayed, hated, hurt, discarded. Three days of his ultimate torture. Three days of contemplating suicide, just to make it all go away, just to make the pain stop. He waited until I begged, both from the pain, the emotions I desperately needed gone, and from my addiction, the hunger for his blood that made me feel like I was grasping at the edges of a mind long lost. He made me beg half-crazed before he finally laid back on his bed and beckoned me forward. He didn't bite himself that time, he made me do it, a hungry glint in his eyes. Afterward, he spoke to me as I reached his door.

"Remember you need me. Remember I can take away your pain, or I can leave you with it, whenever I want, for as long as I want. Remember who you belong to."

Some buried part of me wanted to fight, to challenge him and say that no one owned me, but I knew it was useless. He was my master and his cruelty of the last three days proved just how badly I needed what only he could provide. It was then that I realized I wasn't just his for a few more weeks, I was his forever. He wouldn't Turn me, he would keep me like this, addicted to him but too indifferent to care, to fight, forever.

I had made a deal with the devil and lost, and now I had what seemed an eternity to suffer for my foolishness. My only small grace was that his blood dulled my emotions, sunk them so far into some corner of my being that I no longer even felt them. The numbness made my situation not seem so bleak. It didn't matter anyway, nothing did.

» ✦ «

Six weeks and I was no closer to finding my father as I had been for the previous six years of my life. He wasn't an easy opponent to track, to predict, to hunt. I had hoped he would be more active since Juda's appearance and death, but instead he seemed to be waiting.

I stayed in one of Chimarah's warehouses most nights, one of the old ones even the homeless stayed away from. The moment she had seen me, standing in her doorway, my Shift clear on my face she had gone pale, or as pale as someone of her coloring could. She had thought I was there to kill her. I thought of burying my Shift to ease her mind but her fear would serve me better. She wouldn't try to get information, to ask questions if she was terrified of what I was about to do.

I had first met her only two years earlier, when she was still deciding what role she would play in the world. She wasn't an apt fighter, though she had her tricks, but I had had a vision of her death. She was so young in my vision, so small and frightened. She didn't deserve to die. I went and stopped the attack, killing the entire Clan that had been about to murder her for sport.

She had never seen someone fight like I did, seen someone's Shift run so deep, consume them so completely. She didn't keep company with Darklings like me, or I suppose Darklings like me simply didn't keep company. The horror I saw on her small face when I saved her was still branded in my mind, and though I knew she would be a valuable asset to me in the future, an ally I could rely on, I also knew she would always fear me. Sometimes I couldn't tell which emotion her loyalty stemmed from, gratitude for her life or fear for it, but that didn't matter, not anymore.

I rarely asked favors of her, knowing she was too weak to protect herself against the kind of enemies I had, but when I did go to her, it was always in secret. Even my Clan hadn't known of my connection to this little girl. I had never even told her my name, though I'm sure she had figured it out, that was her specialty, her currency: information. I suspected the entire city was unaware of her or her Clan's presence, of their very existence. They weren't warriors, they were spies, their purpose wasn't to fight but instead to blend in, their worth not measured in strength but in secrecy. So who better than them to provide me with a safe house?

Chimarah had many hideouts, abandoned buildings she had claimed and used for various purposes all over the city, but she made sure the one I stayed in was private, would leave me completely undisturbed. I had made it explicitly clear that she knew the importance of that fact. And in the past six weeks I hadn't dealt with a single unwelcome guest. I silently thanked her for that. She had never let me down. I had always known her art of staying in the shadows, skirting any's radar would turn out to be her best use to me.

I didn't tell her why I needed a secluded place to stay, I hardly spoke to her at all, rarely even saw her, but I knew she wouldn't turn me away. I knew she wouldn't spill any information on me. Her own Clan didn't know I was staying in one of their leaders' properties, it was better that way. The fewer who knew of me, the fewer to ask questions. She knew that as well as I did, and I imagine she wanted her Clan as uninvolved with me as possible. Unpleasant things often happened to those associated with me, and with her vast intel of the city, I was sure she was aware of that fact.