His hair was loose, pooling around his shoulders. It looked like straw, Edwin could not help but think. Without the rune, it even refused to curl these days.
His glance fell on his chipped nails, with their purple skin underneath. Once, he had joked that the only thing he needed to get out of a scuffle were his nails.
He doubted that he could even scratch butter with them now.
Edwin took a deep breath, looked at himself in the mirror once more. He was dead. He should not want to go back to being alive, he should want to rest.
Orion would never let him rest, he realized with a start. Sure, the demon could not visit him in his dreams anymore, and last night, Edwin had slept like a babe in Seraphin's arms.
Lying to himself that Orion won't simply find him again and force a mark on him was not something he could do to himself.
He was still lost in the snowstorm of Orion's gray eyes. With a soft light by his side, or was it just black fire?
How could he describe Seraphin? The man had taken the curse into himself, yes, but had taken something in return. Edwin did not lie to himself. How could he? Seraphin's mark was there, over Edwin's dead heart.
Making the rotting organ colder, even more desolate. Being a black rose suited the incubus. Oh, it suited him perfectly.
He heard as someone knocked on the bathroom door. Without thinking too much on it, Edwin activated the rune. His hair curled up; his skin got the breath of life.
His blue eyes remained dead, though. No rune could fix something like that.
Only the soul could.
"Edwin, are you coming out of there today?" Seraphin's voice was smooth, like the daydreams Edwin used to have about his future.
How long, Edwin asked himself, already knowing the answer, until Seraphin bores of me, and wraps his fingers around my throat?
"The vampire wants to talk to you. Says that you are bonded to him," a hitch to the voice, a hint of displeasure.
It won't be long now, Edwin thought calmly. He had died once; how would it feel to die once more?
"Edwin…" Seraphin said, as Edwin heard as the man tried to open the locked door. "Just come out when you are ready."
The brunette heard footsteps, but did not turn towards the door. When he was ready? And when was that going to be? When was he going to stop running?
"Never," the image in the mirror was not his own, snowstorm eyes looked at him with amusement. "You are such a sweet thing, my lady. And ladies don't fight."
Edwin looked into the eyes of his murderer. Was Orion, right? Did Edwin not have it in himself to fight for his own life?
"You cheated on me," Orion said, no hint of anger in his voice. "Honestly, if you really wanted to make it hurt, you should have picked someone who was stronger than I."
Edwin remained silent, the soft breeze came through the window, brushed a stray curl off its place on his shoulder. He did not even care that he was naked, the cool air hugging his form.
This was just Orion. He was going to see it all, eventually.
"You have gone back to being a brick. Should I come over?"
Orion's smirk was like a dagger between Edwin's ribs. Why had he accepted the deal with Seraphin, if Orion could just snatch him like it was nothing?
"Fuck you," the words came out just as Edwin picked up the soap container and smashed it against the mirror. Glass shards flew everywhere, but his breathing was calm.
No, things could not continue on like this. He was a Lich. One of Death's favored sons.
It was high time he started acting like one.
0000
When Edwin made it down the stairs, freshly dressed in the robes Seraphin had left for him on the bed that morning, he saw that John the Slime was in a cage, Damon had a chain around his ankle, and Seraphin was eating popcorn.
The picture should have unsettled him, but he had promised himself that he would start acting the way a Lich would act.
And Lich did not care when something like that happened. They did not care when the vampire who had gotten them out of a bind got in a bind. And they most certainly did not care when some slime ended up in a cage.
Besides, John had tried to eat him more than once. Karma, Edwin wanted to say with more than a little satisfaction, was a bitch.
"Oh, all dolled up, I see?" Damon was calm, but Edwin could see in the man's eyes, that he was fuming. The man was a lover, not a fighter.
Edwin had realized that while living with him. All the men who tried to kill him while Edwin had shared the house with him had left with a smile on their faces.
Edwin did not know how to feel about that. He did not want to go down that way. His pride would not let him. Still, he refused to judge the man who had saved him from Orion.
He owed Damon a goodbye and gratitude. Nothing more, nothing less.
Edwin felt as a spell tried to take a grip on his soul. During his year as a free spirit, he had done everything he could to keep himself free of such things. It hurt to scourge the mana from his system with his own, but as Damon's eyes widened, Edwin's lips twitched.
What was a little pain, but the proof that a person was alive?
Seraphin looked up from his popcorn bowl and raised an eyebrow at Edwin. Edwin did not care one bit that he had done something that surprised the man.
The only thing he cared about was getting free from Damon and hitting the road. For Damon knew Orion, was probably his friend, if a vampire could even have friends.
Damon's house was no longer a safe heaven.
Edwin already missed these weathered walls. Heck, he even missed the brown water he had used for cooking so many times before.
"Damon, just undo the bond," Edwin said. He bent down, took the shackles which held Damon prisoner, and snapped it in half. "Let me go."
"Orion will snatch you in seconds," Damon said, as he chanced a look at Seraphin. "And this one won't help you. Orion did kill him. You have no hope to…"
"The only thing I have is hope," Edwin cut in, as he sat on the love seat's armrest. "And I can assure you, it is making me bold."
Damon snorted.
Oh, he knew what such people like Edwin believed they knew. That they, and no one else, could get away from their nightmare. That it was something that could, and would, end up being just a memory one day.
Orion was right about his crush.
A glare from Seraphin made Damon numb the pity he felt for the poor Lich, as he traced the mark his fangs had left on Edwin's neck with his fingers.
A tiny jolt of mana later, and the contract was broken.
Damon did not want to feel the sorrow he was feeling, but he still did. Did this mean that he had been defeated?
Or had he still won?
And if he had won, what could he salvage from this?
"I will be taking John," Edwin said, eyeing the slime. "I have plans for him."
Damon snorted. Oh, did Edwin really believe that a slime could kill Orion?
"You are a dreamer, dear," Damon patted Edwin on the shoulder, as the man leaned in, and pressed his shoulder against his.
"That is better than being a brick, is it not?" Edwin's lips turned up.
Damon's dead heart would have skipped a beat if it could still even function. Oh, he could see what Orion had glimpsed now. This little spark of life, this youthful energy.
Edwin was bent, but he was not broken. Something told Damon that he might even end up setting himself straight, as time went by.
"Here," Damon did not know why he did it. It was not his style to help people who broke an agreement with him. Still, he took out the one thing he had vowed to never give to anyone and opened the box which contained it.
"This will make me look girly," Edwin protested, but his smile grew just a bit more. Damon would have given him the world if only to see the smile in full bloom.
Oh, if only he had not been so blind. If only he could see souls…
"True, but what does it matter? You are not going to cut your hair, are you? And it does the most damage, when it comes to people not knowing your gender," Damon allowed himself a chuckle, as he used mana to put a hole, painlessly, through Edwin's ear.
The blue earring looked at home on Edwin. Its blue gems glistering in the light.
"Besides, this could do wonders for your pretty face," Damon added, leaning in. Oh, if he could only get a kiss in exchange.
Just one…
"How so?" Edwin asked, but did not lean away from him. Damon's hand found its way behind Edwin's head, gently applying pressure.
If Seraphin cared about what was happening, the demon did not show it. No, he was just observing them, encroaching on their private moment.
Damon hated him for it.
"It will let your soul reanimate your body. If your soul remains the way it is now, then you will look just fine without the rune. If it darkens, then, well…" Damon's lips were just a breath away from Edwin's. Just a little bit longer. Just a couple more promises, and he could…
"Thank you," Edwin murmured, his lips pressing against Damon's forehead.
The earring was already working, Damon realized when he stopped smelling the faint stench of rot which had followed Edwin around like a vengeful spirit. It was already working, and the man's blood was calling out to him.
Damon did not think. He did not care what Seraphin could do to him. His fangs sunk into soft flesh, luxuriated in the feeling of warm blood.
A growl escaped him, he pulled Edwin into his lap. His free hand went to the cursed blue ribbon that Edwin still used for his hair. He pulled; the braid came undone.
Damon should not have done that. Oh, he knew it. The blue eyes were half-lidded, the cheeks a lovely color. Edwin was full of life again. His soul had not been marred to the point the earring could not function.
Damon might be a lover and not a fighter, but that was a choice he had made. More than once, he had killed rival vampires whom he could not romance. He knew what he could do to keep Edwin by his side.
Knew what he would have to give up.
He gave his allegiance with a smile and a kiss, this time on the lips. He wanted more, so much more, but he knew that he had to be careful.
Edwin was a pure spirit, Damon had found out as he watched the earring take so little mana to reflect the soul of the Lich, that it was laughable.
And such gems had to be protected.
As the three, plus one slime stuck in the blue sapphire where an Archdemon had once resided, looked at the house, which was even growing dungeon lines, they could not help but think that they had kicked a hornet's nest.
Orion will not be happy, Damon thought, as he righted his backpack.
Orion will be fuming, Seraphin thought, as he laid an arm around Edwin's middle, and brought him closer. More than a little gloating.
Orion will get what was coming to him, Edwin thought, yet the earring did not waver.
For he had a secret.
It was easy for a Lich to use other people's souls to power magical artifacts. His soul might not be black, as Edwin was assured during his long stay in the bathroom this morning, but it was not as pure as the way he looked now, either.
No, for that, he had the souls of animals to thank. For the rules of nature for those creatures were different.
They were not evil, not a single one of them. They lived by their instincts, they lived to survive.
Edwin, on the other hand, lived to break free.
That, he had realized, as he had fed the earring the soul of a lamb he had once absorbed accidentally as he had passed by a farm, could only happen if Orion was removed from the picture.
Once and for all.