The Vampire Prince's Toxic Consort (BL)
Chapter 11 Feeding

It was early summer, but the night was still chilling, and Lucius’s red satin blazer and the silk shirt were not very practical attire in such circumstances. He clumsily sat down on the bough as the tree’s height made him dizzy, pulling his jacket tighter and cursing Dorian for leaving him there.

He patted his pockets and couldn’t find his phone, which probably drooped when the car exploded. He sighed in unsettled frustration and stared into the elm leaves and darkness, trying not to freak out at the two headless, mutilated, and yet still twitching bodies under him.

For fuck sake, they looked just like regular humans...

He tried to think over the whole situation. Why would werewolves attack them if they agreed to a negotiation? And how did they know their itinerary as it was all supposed to be classified?

He had never seen so many dead bodies. Was any of the guards still alive? Why was it so quiet...

And...what if he escape now?

What if he just took his chance and disappeared into the forest?

No...no...that was suicide. Lucius had zero knowledge about surviving in the wilderness and probably couldn’t even make a mile without becoming some werewolf or vampire’s dinner.

Waiting was probably his only option. But what if Dorian never came back? What if he was killed or wounded?

What if he decided to use the chance to get rid of him?

No...Dorian wouldn’t do that to him...he could have just not done anything when Archie was on top of him. Or he could not have saved him moments ago. There were millions of ways to make him disappear without consequences if he chose to.

Just as his thought ran rampage, a scuffling in the thickets caught his attention and evoked another rush of disquiet. He held his breath and didn’t dare to move even a hair.

A very long thing crawled out of the shadow. It moved erratically but very fast, almost similar to the movement of an insect. It had long, spindly limbs resembling spiders, and at the end of the limbs were long, human-like fingers and toes and black pointy nails. Its torso was scrawny and ashen in color, the spine arched high, and the shape of ribs protruded from the thin, wrinkly, and slimy skin. It had no hair, wore no cloth, yet still possessed a sliver of human features.

Lucius couldn’t see its face, but he wasn’t sure if it was a very skinny human or a strange animal. The way it moved gave him goosebumps. And a foul rotting smell deeply revolted him.

It sniffed at the dead bodies and began to lick and suck the still-fresh blood oozing from the opening of the neck gluttonously. And as it sucked, something under its’ skin moved and writhed as if some worms lived underneath the thin layer of flesh.

And soon, another two similar creatures appeared. One twice bigger in size and the other one smaller and thinner. Lucius had a boding feeling as all three tore and chewed the corpses, sucked the blood dry and spit out of the meat.

Were they orges?

Lucius had only seen the images and some video clips of orges online when he was in Anthor, mostly from some horror channels. They often move gregariously and hide in dank and murky corners like sewages, underground tunnels and deep lightless caves, and only came out to hunt at night. They drink any blood they can find, including from animal cadavers that have yet to rot, unlike higher-class vampires who saw drinking from corpses as a distasteful and degenerated behavior.

These creatures act purely on their instinct and wouldn’t even hesitate before sinking their teeth into anything that has blood. It was a miracle that they hadn’t detected Lucius, probably thanks to Dorian’s illusory gift.

Lucius stayed very still, held his breath as long as he could, and prayed for Dorian to return. His heart thumped so loud that he worried those orges would hear him, but it seemed the illusion hid him well. Unfortunately, he didn’t notice a fuzzy spider size of a palm and possibly venomous surreptitiously descent with her silver silk and land soundlessly on his back collar, and as her hairy leg touched Lucius’s chin and he noticed the horrifying creature, he reflectively let out a startled cry and jerked her off his shoulder. He soon realized his mistake and covered his mouth, but it was too late.

Several orges raised their head, and what faces did they have! Their nose was like two black holes, and their mouth was a laceration in the middle of their face, with their two long fangs protruding. Their eyes degraded due to their lightless living environment and appeared to be two murky white marbles stuck in a pile of loose skins. Numerous lesions and abscesses festered their pale face and neck skin.

It was hard to imagine at some point, some of them might be regular-looking humans and were only slowly transformed into horrifying creatures like this after being bitten and turned by neophytes. Would it be luckier to be born this way, as they never knew what they once were?

The orges’ noses twitched as they tried to capture smells and sounds through the illusion net, and some of them probably picked up something as they came closer to the tree Lucius was on and began to climb like giant geckos.

Lucius panicked. They moved too fast, and before long, they would be too close and would definitely detect his presence. He had to move!

He went to the climbing gym regularly, but climbing a tree was a different story, not to mention he had no proper equipment. One slip and he would fall for thirty feet and likely break his neck. He held on to a strong bough and managed to pull himself up higher and further from the orges, but it made too much noise and attracted all orges’ attention. They swarmed around the tree like a crowd of rats.

Lucius forced his shaking limbs to move as fast as possible, but how could a human compete with creatures with preternatural speed? The orges were getting closer and closer, and soon Lucius found he had nowhere to go as all the boughs that were strong and thick enough to carry his weight were out of reach. He had to take a leap to reach the closest one, and even that was a bold gamble of his life. If he failed, he would either die from the fall or fall into the pound of writhing orges. The former was probably a better way to go.

But if he hesitated any longer, the orges climbing the tree would surely catch him. He took a deep breath, wiped his clammy hand on his pants, and jumped.

He touched the bough, but the momentum plus his weight was too much for his arm, and his hand slipped.

It happened so fast that he didn’t even have time to think what it meant as he was falling into the bloodthirsty crowd of orges. But before he hit the ground and those filthy hands could touch him, a dark shadow swooped in and caught him in the air.

Dorian tightly grabbed him by his waist, gliding for a short distance with his burned wings and landed on the ground with a powerful stamp, creating a shock wave undulating to every direction. The orges screeched in terror and fell back, clearing a space around them.

“I told you don’t move!” Dorian scolded as he let go of Lucius.

“If I didn’t move I would have become orge shit by now! Where the fuck have you been!“Lucius retorted.

“Saving our ass by killing werewolves, you are welcome!”

Lucius then noticed that Dorian’s face, hands and clothes were stained by blood, and his lips were crimson. Four deep gushes ripped his front shirt, which was surely created by a werewolf’s claw, and any human would have perished with such wounds. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Lucius immediately felt bad about talking back, but now was not the time to dwell on petty arguments. The orges were clearly scared of Dorian, but they didn’t disburse. Perhaps they noticed that Dorian and Lucius were alone and intended to try their luck of overwhelming the apostle with their greater number.

Lucius asked, “What do we do?”

Dorian looked around and said, “will you let me drink from you?”

Lucius blinked, “what?”

“I’ve lost too much blood from the explosion and the fight with werewolves. I can do something to eliminate all these orges, but it will weaken me further. If I don’t have fresh blood after, I may fall into an involuntary hibernation.”

Lucius grasped the meaning behind these words. Apostles could not be killed directly by high energy light and werewolf attack, but they could lose consciousness and fall into a coma-like sleep. And in that state, they were inanimate and extremely vulnerable. Anyone could burn their body into dust, destroying their life thoroughly.

To confess such a thing to Lucius was a lot of trust on Dorian’s side since he didn’t have to ask permission. He could have drunk from him by force right away. And now, with such information, Lucius had the option to pretend to agree to it, and when Dorian became too weak to attack, he could just leave him there and wait for him to hibernate and kill him.

The realization gave Lucius a strange satisfaction, and he quickly nodded his head, “just don’t kill me, ok?”

Dorian glanced at him, a hint of smile swiftly flet across his face. His deep-set eyes glowed an ominous red at once, and his silky raven hair floated as if underwater as the dark force emanated from him.

At the same moment, the orges decided to attack. They lunged at Dorian and Lucius, but their eyes flickered the same ominous red before they could touch them. All of them paused in unity, appearing to be confused by something.

And then, an orge let out an excruciating wail. Something was writhing violently under his skin, and soon his mouth opened big, and thousands of red threadlike fleshy things oozed out of his mouth, ears, and nostrils. His eyeballs were pushed out of the sockets by the same squirming things. Every inch of his skin was torn and cracked, and the same long, moving, red threads busted out. He lost his humanoid form rapidly as his skin fell to the ground, and his muscles, organs and bones were melted and integrated with the red threads.

It was an unreal and appalling scene to witness. Those threads spouted into the air and quickly interweaved and froze into a distorted eerie form that looked like some fleshy chrysanthemum or a meaty firework froze at the moment of blooming, beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

Lucius watched in disbelief as the orges exploded into those crimson “flowers” one by one, some of their organs interweaved in the middle of the tangles and still squirming and pumping as if they were still alive. Soon there were no orges environing them but an uncanny flower field.

Blood oozed out of Dorian’s eyes and trickled down his cheeks like tears. Lucius didn’t know how he killed the horde of orges without even touching them, but it was apparently a taxing task, and Dorian was exerting himself. As the last orge exploded, the vampire prince collapsed and panted heavily. His sun-kissed skin was ashen and dull, and his perspiration drenched his cloth.

Lucius had never seen Dorian in such a vulnerable state before. He looked so exhausted and could barely stay awake. The vampire couldn’t even speak for a moment, but then he raised his head and looked at Lucius gingerly.

Lucius could just leave him there and wait for him to fall into hibernation. For the first time, he had power over the vampire. But if Lucius gave him his blood, a starving Dorian might overdrink and accidentally kill Lucius. Dorian was aware of this. A glimmer of worry tinged his dark eyes.

And Lucius stood over him, his countenance hiding in the night’s penumbra.

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