The arched wooden doors opened and closed. When he turned to pace back towards them, Bleu was leaning against the closed doors, looking casual. Also not a good sign.
“Do not start.” Loren swept his hand out in front of him for emphasis. He didn’t need Bleu pushing him right now, not when he was having difficulty locking down his emotions.
The distance between him and Olivia meant that they were less affected by each other, but he could still sense a fragment of her feelings. They were there in the background, drowned out by his own, but still there. If Olivia focused, she would be able to feel his too.
She felt as confused as he did, and as torn up by the distance between them. He hadn’t anticipated this. He had thought only completed bonds would awaken this sort of connection, a link that tied them together so deeply that it felt as though part of him was missing now that he was away from her.
Bleu’s steely purple gaze tracked him as he paced.
Loren could sense he wanted to say something about Olivia and how Loren had behaved tonight, acting very differently from the man he was used to being around.
He ached to return to her.
He couldn’t give in to that need though, not until he felt less on edge and more like his normal collected and composed self. The time apart might weaken the growing bond between them too, keeping it under control. If it worked, then he would endeavour to spend short amounts of time in Olivia’s company before retreating to be alone, stopping the bond from growing stronger.
Part of him rebelled against that plan, railing at him and crying out for Olivia.
Loren curled his fingers into fists, clenching his hands so tightly that the claws of his armour dug into his palms.
“You need to kill something.” Bleu’s deep voice lacked emotion.
He was right. He needed to kill something, and there was a rogue vampire on the prowl in London.
Loren had a deep dislike of all vampires. They were wretched, evil, cruel and an abomination. They were a constant reminder of the dark and terrible path an elf could tread, one that ultimately led to the destruction of everything noble, good and beautiful in them.
When the first elves had become tainted, their souls twisted towards the darkness so deeply that they had begun to lose much of their powers and their ability to withstand the light, Loren and his father had despaired.
His father had searched for a way to save them, to bring them back into the light, in harmony with nature, restoring their goodness and eradicating the evil in their souls. It had been impossible and they had lost so many elves to the darkness by the time his father had passed on that Loren had done the only thing he could to protect his people. He had withdrawn them from the mortal world.
The tainted elves had continued to lose their powers, gaining terrible new ones in their place, and for centuries they had ravaged the mortal world, spreading their wretched blood to others.
Loren, Vail and the council had discussed sending their legions to the mortal world to destroy the creatures they had termed vampires, but the vampires had bought themselves a stay of execution without ever knowing it. They had begun to form a society, complete with rules and a hierarchy.
The presence of this social structure and rules tempered his desire to eradicate them like the vicious pests they were and had saved them from his wrath over the past four thousand years. Vampire society didn’t condone killing humans during a feed because it increased the risk of the general population becoming aware of them. Instead, those vampires chose to use their remaining psychic gift to place the host under a thrall, giving them pleasure through a mental link while they took only enough blood to satisfy their hunger. If a mortal were accidentally killed, they disposed of the body in a discreet way, keeping their kind under the radar of the mortal population.
There were other vampires though, a dangerous subset of the species, who didn’t care about the rules and often drained humans to the point of death and left the body where it fell, or turned them and invariably left them to handle the transition from human to vampire alone, without instruction or support. Those vampires were a menace to mortal and vampire society alike, and had been present ever since the vampires and elves had evolved into two separate species.
Loren despised the vampires who sought to murder mortals, making them suffer and feeding off their fear and distress, eventually killing them or turning them against their will.
A long time ago, he had taken great pleasure in tracking and destroying such vampires. Perhaps it was time he rekindled that passion.
Loren focused and called his weapon to him from the Archangel facility. The air before him shimmered and his black blade materialised in his hand.
“Let us hunt.” Loren tied the belt around his waist and settled the sword at his side.