Fabien Read online
Fabien
a paranormal novel by
Sarah Michelle Lynch
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SECOND EDITION
Copyright © 2017
Sarah Michelle Lynch
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Sarah Michelle Lynch
The moral right of Sarah Michelle Lynch to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. You must not circulate this book without the authority to do so.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
For more information about SML visit: http://sarahmichellelynch.wordpress.com
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
http://author.to/sarahmichellelynch
A Fine Profession
A Fine Pursuit
Chambermaid: Pocket Sized
The Radical
The Informant
The Sentient
Unbind
Unfurl
Unleash
Dom Diaries
Angel Avenue
Beyond Angel Avenue
Fabien
They Say I’m Doing Well
Tainted Lovers
Christmas Lovers
The Contract
The Fix
The Risk (coming soon)
Break The Cycle
CONTENTS
AUTHOR NOTE
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
JAIMIE
LOUIS
FABIEN
JAIMIE
A DREAM
LOUIS
FABIEN
JAIMIE
FABIEN
JAIMIE
FABIEN
JAIMIE
FABIEN
PART TWO
FABIEN
FABIEN
JODIE
LETICIA
FABIEN
JODIE
FABIEN
JODIE
FABIEN
JUNIPER
FABIEN
PART THREE
FABIEN
FABIEN
FABIEN
FABIEN
THE PAST
FABIEN
FABIEN
FABIEN
JOHN
JOHN
JOHN
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR NOTE
Please note, Fabien was originally published as three separate novellas and has now been bundled into a more uniform novel. The story is essentially the same with a few minor edits to produce one, flowing story.
I’ve often been asked if there is more to add to this story. At the moment, I don’t have plans to write anything else paranormal… but I never say never. Fabien was tremendous fun to write and goes a little outside the box of the stories I normally tell. Which is why for the time being, I’m really happy with this story as it is. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Sarah x
PROLOGUE
321 years ago
A COVEN GATHERED in the vast and imposing throne room of Krill Castle, hidden deep within the misty hills of Valdoria, a small country protected and owned by vampires. It was a land nobody knew existed; its bloodsucking queen held magical powers that enabled easy boundary control. People would one day identify Valdoria as somewhere between Ukraine and Romania, though the vampires had no care for each other’s country of origin, just whether visitors to the multinational Valdoria had the capacity to keep a secret.
“You have betrayed me, Fabien. How could you have fallen… in love?” The vampire queen Leticia spoke so slowly, the last word slid from her tongue with as much difficulty as black treacle from a cold, wooden spoon. The acoustics of the room also gave her voice elevation, especially as she sat on her high and mighty throne.
Her luxurious blood-red, velvet robes heightened her flawless, porcelain skin. Her shiny black hair fell to her feet and there was no beauty that compared to hers. Her voluptuous breasts needed no lift, her legs stretched further than any other woman’s and her powers of mind control made lovemaking exceptional.
Sat on her marble throne amidst the court of her palace, she clung to the arms of her seat so hard the room warbled with the physical power she threatened to unleash. The floor-to-ceiling drapes behind her, which were at least sixty-foot long, were of a heavy embroidered material the same colour as her dress, yet they also tumbled about as her fury swept around the windowless, airless room, which protected the vampires from the outside world at all times.
“I have betrayed nothing. You, do not love me,” Fabien insisted, his head down, bowing before her.
Unlike Leticia, Fabien wasn’t showy or fancy. His life as a human had been humble and somehow the memory had remained imprinted. He wore nothing but a pair of leaf-green breeches over faded socks, an undershirt, well-worn bucket-top leather boots and a neckerchief, the only decoration about his person. He had not the need to keep himself warm and only dressed in shoes if he went outside into the human realm.
“No. I do not love you. I, however, reserve the right to have you. When I please. It never pleased me to know you had other lovers… other lovers who might take what is rightfully mine. Now that love, ugh… love has entered the equation… well, this development quite disgusts me.”
“You. Do. Not. Love. Me,” he repeated like a mantra, as if his protest might stand up in her court. Love didn’t. Couldn’t. Leticia’s rule, law.
Decades before, at the turn of the seventeenth century, Fabien was deemed the greatest male lover amongst the Krill vampires and nobody had emerged to rival him yet.
Leticia reserved the right to enjoy the best, even though neither she nor Fabien loved or liked one another. Her shocking green eyes lifted and drew his to hers. Suddenly in disbelief, she changed tack to appear light-hearted. She giggled and chirruped, “Hast thou really fallen in love, dear Fabien? Hast thou?”
“You do not love me,” he repeated, as though a proclamation might help.
It wouldn’t.
Leticia rose from her seated position and glided toward Fabien, reaching him in a flash. He couldn’t avoid her eyes, she was so powerful both physically and telepathically. He felt her reading his mind as she drew closer.
No, get out, he tried to tell her, but she had already seen his thoughts. He knew it.
Her eyes flashed red when she realised… “You want just one lover now? Worse… a human!! A peasant girl from a town on the perimeter I see! Not one or two or three lovers? Just one? A human at that! This is worse than anything else you could have done,” she sneered, looking intently into his eyes and mind. “Oh, she’s positively brimming… so you haven’t even bitten her yet!”
“One, yes, and n—no, no, I will not bite her. I love her,” he said out loud to the gathering.
I do love her. I really do, he tried to protest to Leticia privately, hoping his mind might show her he really meant it.
“How unfortunate,” she said sadly, though he knew she relished this.
She snapped her fingers and using her mind, she projected the image of the girl in question from Fabien to everyone else. “Lupo, Lars, bring her to me.”
Two guards dressed in dark robes left the oval chamber immediately. Fabien tried to stop them, but couldn’t. Leticia’s powerful mind had him rooted to the spot. Beneath his dark cloak, Fabien’s muscular limbs strained w
ith the impulse to move, but she had him at her mercy, stuck to the spot like a magnet to metal. His long black hair fanned around him as he remained stunted as long paralysed or floating midair.
“You’ll regret this…” he protested, his physical strength brutal, but not nearly as powerful as her mind.
“Not as much as you will. I rule here, not you. You will pay for this and not just with her life.”
He read her mind and even as she prepared to torture and punish him, she languished on the things she found innately attraction about Fabien, such as his cock, his imposing physique and his ability to read her during sex so he knew exactly what she wanted. But hadn’t she known that if she starved Fabien of love, he would one day rebel? Didn’t she realise that though she were stronger in every way, he could still refuse to harden for her? That was the only thing she couldn’t interfere with.
It took the guards only minutes to locate and capture the peasant girl, then bring her to the queen’s court. Juniper was thrown at Leticia’s feet but refused to look into the eyes of her accuser, didn’t even beg or plead for her life. She was brave and refused to cry or scream whilst Leticia dictated a list of crimes she was guilty of—punishable by death.
Fabien was forced to watch while Leticia drained Juniper, his beloved angel, allowing the servants to feast on the leftovers until she was dead and most certainly unable to become one of them. Juniper was brave to have loved him at all and it made Fabien’s soul ache with regret, with hatred and a desire for revenge.
FABIEN vowed he would never lie with Leticia again. For that, she threw him out of Valdoria and cast a curse upon him. On pain of death she forbade he ever bite a woman again, thus preventing him ever enjoying sex as he once had done. Feeding and sex went hand in hand for him. The only woman he had ever been able to stop himself biting was Juniper, his one true love, the one girl he would do anything for. He knew Leticia hoped to use this curse to force him to eventually return to her once he got bored of feasting on men, but she didn’t know the power of love. He would rather have died a thousand deaths than return to that duplicitous, unloving, cold heathen—his warm, tender angel dead because of her.
Only true love could save him from a lonely and dangerous existence, now he was out in the cold without the protection of his kin. That meant waiting until his true love’s reincarnated form rose again. The chances were one in a million or worse, he knew.
Juniper could reincarnate at any time, in any place. He might never find her.
Fabien was also well aware the soul never returned quite the same… he might not even recognise her…
Part One:
Christmas
JAIMIE
York, 2013
WORKING AT PATISSERIE Valerie had its pros and cons. I got to grind really good coffee beans all day long and enjoy that bitter, delicious taste of cocoa wafting through my nostrils until I got high enough on it not to care my feet ached like hell. I got to make little patterns in the creamy froth on top and dust everything in chocolate. It wasn’t like other coffee shops where you poured black gold in a bucket and hoped for the best. Pat Val’s made an art of the café experience and the cakes were to-die-for—sometimes I even got to take a box home!
After long shifts, though, I often had to wrench my ballet pumps from my feet, ungluing the leather from my tights. This day was no different.
Finally, I can go home. In the staffroom, I sat on a bench and assessed the blister on the sole of my foot that had resulted from new footwear… it hadn’t got any better. I’d been sweating like a bitch all day, running through the place non-stop. It’d been so taxing, the café packed with shoppers or foreigners in town for the holidays… people gossiping with friends, lovers or families. You name it—the human race. They poured through our doors during Christmastime and never more fluidly than in the week prior to the main event.
“See you tomorrow,” I shouted at Hales as I walked back through the café toward the front door. The assistant manager, Hales always left last and was still counting the last cash register. “Go home, we’ll sweep in the morning!”
“Gah, I may as well sweep up, I have no husband to get back to! He’s pubbing it tonight with his rugby mates,” she complained.
“I’m meeting my sister for a swifty, come with,” I tried to convince her, pulling a woolly hat over my ears and straightening the belt of my coat.
“Go have fun Jaimie. You kids these days,” she grumbled, trying to get rid of me.
Well, I tried…
I laughed to myself. I was hardly a kid. I was 27 and already married two years. Granted she was pushing 40 and had four teenagers at home, but still!
The bell over the door chimed as I left and outside, an almost invisible sleet drifted from the sky and melted as soon as it touched the narrow cobblestone lanes. I shivered and to keep warm, I started walking through the fairly empty city streets, heading to the oldest part of town where I usually met my sister every Friday night.
It was three days before Christmas and I had so much left to do, like wrap gifts (and buy gifts!), pin Christmas cards up that still lay in a pile on the coffee table, bake mince pies and all the usual. Stuff a good wife does.
I walked in through the door of The Punch Bowl, the Tudor front lost on me as I dashed in for warmth. I found my twin, Jodie, parked up in a corner with her files and folders spread around her, a phone and a tablet no doubt somewhere amongst it all. Unlike me she was a planner and she’d planned her whole life out, getting herself through her Law degrees, practicing Family Law before she was even 25.
Buried in her work, she hadn’t even noticed me walk in so I stopped by the bar to order half a pint of chocolate stout and a gin and tonic for her—her glass already empty, I spotted.
As I walked to her little makeshift desk—a table and two rickety stools—she tried to smile but I saw the usual look that meant, I am so stressed out right now. Why did I choose this career?
“Here,” I said, handing over the drink.
“How are you?” she asked, subtly gesturing at the usual crowd of onlookers commenting on a set of twins sat together in a corner. As if we might be an apparition. Were we identical? Yes we are twins you perverts, I often thought but never said out loud. One of us was in a suit and me, well, I was in my bog-standard café uniform. Twins we were, but chalk and cheese too.
“It’s been a long day. I hardly know if my feet will carry me home,” I groaned, “stupid shoes. Stupid feet.”
She nodded while writing notes in a book. “How’s Louis?”
There was no eye contact when she asked me that but I knew what she was thinking. It was always what our meetings like this boiled down to. Jodie was single and happily unattached yet flighty. She thought I was insane for marrying my university boyfriend and settling down so young.
“He’s fine,” I said, repeating my usual response.
“Hmm.” She looked up and chewed her pen. “He’s not mentioned anything more about having a baby then?”
I found no comfort on that stool and wriggled my bum, wanting a couch and my husband’s arms around me instead. If only it were that simple…
“Nope. I think he got the hint. How can we have a baby when I’ve not even found my perfect job yet?”
Jodie dropped the pen and folded her arms. “Is this about having a baby, or having his baby?”
I drank more of my stout and mumbled over the top of my glass, “Bit of both.”
“Married people are clinically insane in my experience,” she muttered, jotting down something else in her notebook.
“Yeah, like you get the best insight into all that, don’t you? Working in your field…”
She nodded quickly. “I reckon I do, yeah! You see what can happen and you know not to let it get like that… you see it’s not worth it, any of it.”
I could see where she was coming from; our parents had split when we were teenagers and it was the worst timing. Jodie wouldn’t admit it but I think she would agree, we’d have
swapped all the duplicate presents from stepparents and real parents, just to have our old life back.
I’d always thought what I had with Louis was it. The Real Deal. However, things had been tough. In two years of marriage, we hadn’t met any of our goals. The only thing we knew for certain was we had each other, but I wasn’t sure if that was enough for him. I wanted to tell him that I thought he only wanted a baby because we didn’t have anything much else going on.
Jodie drank up and cleared her stuff away quickly. “Sorry I can’t stay but I’ve got a date with a hot waiter from the racecourse. His abs are like concrete! You’ll be okay?”
“Yeah.” I sank further on my stool. “I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry.”
“See you Chrimbo day,” she said, and kissed my hair as she left.
I watched her leave and decided to get myself another drink. I had a sexy husband at home but I was putting off facing another argument. He had taken it personally when I said I didn’t want a baby and ever since, every little thing was an excuse for a fight that always led back to the original gripe.
“Don’t you want my baby? Am I not good enough for you?”
We barely spoke and sometimes didn’t even talk during sex. Often sex consisted of him spooning me in the middle of the night. Then in the morning, he left for work and I waited until he was gone before I got up. Yes the physical need was still there, but what about the rest?
I wanted him as desperately as ever but I didn’t want to admit that. I also didn’t want to admit that I had failed to achieve a proper orgasm, ever since we argued about the baby thing and he took the hump with me. Lack of orgasm was the least of my worries but imagine how that would add to his grumpiness…
“Yeah babe, you haven’t given me a good time in the four months since I ‘callously’ threw out the idea of us having a baby!”