Chapter 2: The Sun's Judgment
The air was silent with Prince Yaw’s accusation.
The words hung, poisonous and perfect. Witch. Yaa’s eyes were wide. No. No, she wasn’t a witch. The family’s secrets, of grandmothers and great-aunts practicing the old crafts, those had stopped with her mother. With King Kwesi’s own generation. It was a buried shame, a whispered history none outside the innermost royal circle should have known. And now her uncle was presented with the horrifying dread of that secret being dragged into the sun and plastered onto his niece, onto this scandal. The Kumasi kingdom was an ally, was to be the alliance to fortify them against northern pressures. But with this? A witch consorting with a blood-drinker? All of it was crumbling.
The court was a tableau of frozen shock.
Prince Kwame’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. His voice was calm, logical, a surgeon explaining an amputation. “A strong kingdom cuts out poison, King Kwesi. No matter how dear the limb. You know this. The poison is twofold. The creature. And the woman who feeds it. If you wish Accra to stand, you must be seen to cleanse your own house.”
Yaa stood frozen, trembling, a small, defiant shield against the sun that cooked the man behind her. Simon groaned, a low, animal sound of pain and impotent anger. The sizzle of his skin was a continuous, sickening whisper.
Time stretched, thin and cruel. All eyes were on the King. Kwesi’s face was a landscape of conflict—dynastic duty warring with a lifetime of affection for the fiery girl he’d helped raise. She saw the calculation in his wet eyes, the terrifying weight of kingship pressing down. For a breath, she saw him truly contemplate it. Truly weigh the value of an alliance against the value of her life.
“Uncle, please,” Yaa pleaded, her voice cracking. “I am your blood. I have only ever served Accra.”
King Kwesi closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were filled with a terrible, resigned grief. He stood, his royal robes heavy. He looked at his niece, at the girl who argued over grain yields and translated old texts, and he shook his head.
“I cannot,” he said, the words a hollow rasp. “Not Yaa.”
It was a whisper, but it was a king’s decree. Relief, sharp and dizzying, flooded her. She almost sobbed.
Prince Kwame growled in frustration, a sound of pure, thwarted fury. The diplomatic solution was denied. So be it.
He moved not with royal grace, but with the brutal efficiency of a soldier. In one fluid motion, he drew his sword and stepped forward. The court, still processing the king’s mercy, was a beat too slow. Yaa’s own eyes were still locked on her uncle’s pained face.
She didn’t see the blade until it was punching into her side, just below her ribs.
The world inverted. The noise of the crowd vanished, replaced by a roaring silence. There was no pain, not yet. Just a profound, shocking pressure, a sensation of invasive cold spreading through her core. She looked down, saw Kwame’s jeweled hand on the hilt, the ornate metal buried in the bright fabric of her dress. It looked absurd, like a misplaced ornament.
Then he wrenched it out.
The pain arrived then, a white-hot explosion that tore a gasp from her lungs. Her legs buckled. She fell backwards, colliding with Simon’s searing, bound body before sliding to the hot marble tiles. The warmth of her own blood spread rapidly, a startling contrast to the sun-heated stone.
The courtyard erupted. Screams, shouts, the scraping of benches as people leapt to their feet. King Kwesi’s bellow of “NO!” was lost in the tumult.
For Simon, the world snapped into a single, crystalline point of focus. The scent—hibiscus, amber, and now the rich, coppery perfume of her life gushing onto the stones—drove into his brain like a spike. The agony of his burns folded into a background hum. The ropes around his wrists, woven with charms of strength, strained as every centuries-old muscle corded in ultimate exertion.
With a sound like snapping bones, the ropes burst.
Freed, his burned hands shot out, catching Yaa as she slumped. He dragged her into the scant shadow he cast, cradling her against his ruined chest. Her amber eyes were wide, confused, staring up at him. Her lips moved, but only a bubble of blood emerged.
“Simon…” it was a wet whisper.
The sight of her blood on his blistered hands, the feel of her life seeping away, shattered the last vestige of his control. The predator took over, vast and ancient and insane with grief. He threw his head back and screeched, a sound not of this earth, a frequency of pure rage that shattered clay goblets on the tables and made everyone clutch their ears.
He laid her down gently, a final act of tenderness. Then he rose.
The sunlight was a torment, each beam a branding iron on his open wounds. He no longer cared. Kwame was backpedaling, raising his bloody sword, shouting for his warriors. They closed in, spears leveled.
Simon moved. He was a blur of smoke and raw meat. He caught the first spear and used it to pull the warrior into the sun, shoving the man’s face against his own smoldering chest. The warrior screamed as his flesh fused to Simon’s. He grabbed a second spear, snapping the shaft and driving the splintered end through a throat. Blood arced, and he was in it, letting it spray over him, the salt and iron a fleeting balm.
He reached Kwame. The prince swung his sword. Simon caught the blade in his bare, burning hand. The metal bit, met bone, and he held it. He yanked, pulling Kwame close. He saw the prince’s terror, the sudden understanding of what he had truly awakened.
“You,” Simon rasped, his voice the grind of tombstones, “took her from me.”
He didn’t bite. He tore. His head snapped forward, and his jaws closed on Kwame’s face. It was not a feeding. It was an obliteration. Bone crunched. The screaming stopped. He flung the ruined thing aside.
Chaos was absolute. The court fled in a stampede. King Kwesi was a statue of horror. Simon turned back to Yaa.
He dropped to his knees. The sunlight was weakening, a cloud finally passing over the sun. He gathered her up. Her breathing was shallow, each exhale a gurgle. The light in her fierce eyes was dimming.
“Don’t you dare,” he begged, his lips to her temple. “Don’t you fucking dare leave me. You are my blood. My only light.”
He did the only thing he could think of. He bit his own wrist, tearing the skin open with his teeth. Dark, potent vampire blood, a paradox of death and sustained life, welled up. He pressed it to her lips. “Drink, Yaa. Please. Take it. Stay with me.”
Her body, instinctively fighting for life, swallowed. She choked, convulsed, but she swallowed. He fed her his blood, drop by desperate drop, as the courtyard emptied around them. He saw the wound in her side, the horrific gash, begin to… not heal, but to change. The edges darkened, the flow of blood slowing to a seep.
But her human heart was failing. The transfusion was an alien, violent shock to her system. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her head lolled.
“No. NO!” He shook her, gently, then desperately. “Yaa!”
Her breath sighed out, and did not return.
A silence fell, more profound than any scream. Simon Riley held the lifeless body of the princess, the clouds gathering thick above, his own blood and hers mingling on the tiles. He had survived the sun. He had slaughtered a prince. But he had failed.
The first cold raindrop hit his neck. Then another. A sudden, weeping downpour erupted from the sky, as if the heavens themselves mourned. It hissed on his burns, washed the blood into pink rivers across the courtyard.
In his arms, Yaa’s body grew cold. The connection, that brilliant, terrifying thread of light she had cast through his eternal darkness, was severed.
He threw his head back and wept blood-tinged tears into the rain.
Four hundred years later, the rain in Brighton was a feeble imitation. It was a constant, grimy drizzle that misted the neon signs of the lanes and slicked the black pebbles of the beach. It held no cleansing power. It only made things damp and more miserable.
Simon “Ghost” Riley moved through the midnight crowd outside The Volks, a seafront club that thumped with soulless bass. He wore the mask now, the black skull fabric a familiar second skin. Beneath it, his face was sharper, more haunted, if that were possible. The scars remained. The eyes were voids.
Centuries of this. Feeding on the willing, the drunk, the desperate. Fucking them in alleyways or their own sad beds, feeling the press of flesh, eliciting moans and screams, feeling absolutely nothing. It was a routine. A hunger management system. The numbness was total, a frozen ocean inside him.
He spotted a prospect: a young man with glazed eyes leaning against a wall, looking for adventure. Ghost approached, his movement a silent glide. A few low words, the offer of something darker, a thrill. The boy nodded, eager. They slipped into a narrow gap between buildings, the smell of urine and damp brick replacing the sea air.
Ghost pushed him against the wall, hand on his chest. He didn’t bother with kisses. He unbuckled the boy’s jeans, pulling them down roughly. The boy gasped as Ghost’s cold hand gripped him, already half-hard from anticipation and drugs.
“You want it?” Ghost’s voice was a flat drone behind the mask.
“Yeah… fuck, yeah.”
Ghost turned him around, bending him over a discarded pallet. He spat on his hand, slicking himself, and pushed into the tight, unresisting heat. It was a brutal, rhythmic piston motion. The boy cried out, a sound of pain and pleasure, his fingers scrambling against wet brick. Ghost fucked him with a detached, mechanical precision, chasing not pleasure but the brief, distracting pulse of another heart racing against his own. He felt the boy’s body tighten, heard the choked sob as he came. Ghost followed, a shallow, unsatisfying release that was purely physiological. He withdrew, fastening his own trousers.
Before the boy could slide to the ground, Ghost’s hand was on his neck, tilting his head. He bit, quick and clean, drinking just enough to take the edge off the eternal thirst. The boy shuddered, moaning again, mistaking the euphoric rush of the bite for an extension of the sex.
Ghost let him slump, unconscious but alive. He stepped back into the alley, wiping his mouth. Nothing. Not even a flicker.
He moved back towards the club, a spectre in the mist. He needed a drink that wasn’t blood. He needed the noise to drown the silence in his head.
Inside, the air was thick with sweat and pheromones. Strobe lights cut through the haze. He leaned against the bar, ordering a whiskey he wouldn’t taste. That’s when the scent hit him.
It punched through the stale beer and cheap perfume, a phantom blow that stopped his dead heart.
Hibiscus. Amber. Warm skin.
His head snapped around, scanning the crowd. It was impossible. A synaptic ghost, a memory so deep it had mutated into a hallucination.
Then he saw her.
At the edge of the dance floor, arguing with a tall man in a pretentious bomber jacket. She was small, curvy, wrapped in a vibrant green dress that clung to powerful thighs. Her hair was a magnificent crown of intricate braids, piled high. Her skin was the rich brown of dark earth. And her face… her face was fury and intelligence, her amber-brown eyes flashing as she poked a finger into the man’s chest.
“You’re a fucking waste of space, Darren. I said no. That means my legs are staying closed, to you, forever. Now piss off.”
Her voice. The cadence was different, the accent modern South London, but the rhythm, the fearless music of it… It resonated in a chamber of his soul he thought had collapsed.
The man, Darren, sneered. “You’re always such a frigid bitch, Yaa. No wonder you’re alone.”
He grabbed her wrist.
Ghost was moving before he decided to. He crossed the space in a blink, his large hand closing over Darren’s. The pressure was immense. Darren yelped, releasing her.
“The lady,” Ghost said, his voice low and gravelly through the mask, “told you to piss off.”
Darren took in the skull mask, the broad shoulders, the aura of palpable danger. He paled, muttering, and slithered into the crowd.
Yaa Mensah rubbed her wrist, looking up at the masked stranger. Her eyes held no fear, only sharp assessment. “Cheers for that. But I had him. A knee to the bollocks was coming next.”
“I have no doubt,” Ghost said, and the words felt strange. He was engaging. He never engaged.
She stared at him. “Nice mask. Halloween come early?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, thanks for the assist, Skeletor. I’m getting air. This place is full of pricks.” She turned and began pushing her way towards a side door that led to a smoking area overlooking the rain-slicked promenade.
He followed. He had to. It was an addiction older than time.
The terrace was mostly empty, buffeted by the cold sea wind. She leaned on the railing, looking out at the dark, churning water. He stood beside her, the silence stretching.
“You following me?” she asked, not looking at him.
“Yes.”
She finally turned, a wry smile on her full lips. “Bold. Usually creeps try to be subtle about it.”
“I’m not a creep.”
“You’re a grown man in a skull mask in a Brighton club. The jury’s out.” She pulled a vape from her clutch, took a drag. The sweet cloud of it mixed with her scent. “What do you want?”
You. Your blood. Your soul. Everything I lost.
Everything I lost.
The thought was so vast and sudden it left him silent. He just stared at her, this impossible echo leaning against the railing, the wind tugging at her braids. The hum of the club bass through the walls felt like a distant, failing heartbeat.
Yaa raised her eyebrow at his lack of an answer. Was he okay? She had no idea Simon, now Ghost, was still processing it. Why would the universe give him this after 400 years? He had lost hope that hot afternoon when his beloved Princess Yaa bled out in his arms. Why did this woman look so much like her? Have an attitude like her? It was disorienting and for a moment he thought this could be a dream or nightmare. Her scent was as powerful and familiar as those centuries ago. He needed it, his fangs ached for a taste. He couldn't freak her out and lose this.
He kept it cool, told her he liked the attitude, like someone he knew.
She chuckled, a rich, warm sound that cut the tension. "Sounds ominous. Was she a crazy ex?"
His gaze softened for a fraction, a crack in the mask’s facade. "Nothing like that."
She studied him, those amber eyes missing nothing. "Right. Well, you owe me a drink, mister. For intervening when I was being an independent woman. I was savoring that knee-to-bollocks moment."
He gestured back inside. "Name your poison."
And so began the night of flirting. It came natural, a forgotten script from a previous life playing out in a Brighton club. His deep, ancient need for her, and her fresh frustration with Darren, made the sexual tension creep in fast. Their conversation was a dance of sharp wit and loaded glances. He learned she was a school psychologist. She learned nothing concrete about him, which only intrigued her more.
"Your mystery man routine is strong," she said, sipping a gin and tonic he’d bought. "But everyone breaks character on the dance floor."
The music inside had shifted to something with a deep, percussive throb. She took his hand, her skin warm and electric against his permanent coolness, and pulled him into the crowd. He moved with her, his predatory grace fitting the rhythm effortlessly. Her body was a responsive curve against his, her back to his chest, her hips rolling in a way that was pure challenge.
It didn’t take long before she turned in his arms, her face inches from the mask. The smell of her, the heat coming off her neck, was an agony of temptation. His hand rested on the dip of her waist, thumb pressing into the softness just above her hip bone.
He leaned down, his voice a rumble only she could hear over the music. "Come to mine."
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Her eyes held his, a daring spark in the strobe light. "Just like that?"
"Just like that."
She held the stare for three more beats of the bass. Then she nodded, a single decisive dip of her chin. "Yeah. Okay."
They left the club, the cold sea air a slap after the sweatbox heat. They didn’t speak in the taxi. Her hand rested on the seat between them, and he watched it, the elegant structure of it, remembering those same fingers tracing the scars on his chest in another life. His flat was in a converted warehouse near the marina, all exposed brick and bleak, expensive minimalism. It was a space for existing, not living.
The door clicked shut, sealing them in silence.
She turned, leaning back against the cold steel of the door. "So. The mask. Does it come off, or is that part of the deal?"
He reached up slowly. The fabric peeled away, revealing the sharp, scarred planes of his face, the ash-blonde hair, those hollow grey eyes now burning with a intensity that had been absent for centuries. She didn’t flinch. She examined him, her gaze travelling over each scar, each stark feature.
"Warrior," she said, the word not a question.
"Once."
She pushed off the door and closed the distance. Her fingers came up, tracing the longest scar, a cruel line that jagged from his temple to his jaw. "Who gave you this?"
"Someone who is dust."
Her mouth found his then, and it was not soft. It was a collision of present need and ancient hunger. The taste of her—gin, tonic, and the underlying, devastating sweetness of her—unlocked a chaos inside him he’d kept chained for lifetimes. He groaned into her mouth, his hands coming up to cradle her face, then sliding down, gripping her waist, lifting her.
She wrapped her legs around him, her heels digging into his lower back. He carried her to the large, low platform bed in the center of the room, falling onto it with her beneath him. Clothes became obstacles to be destroyed. His hands ripped at the fabric of her green dress; the sound of tearing cotton filled the room. She gasped, arching, helping him shove it down her body. He peeled her out of her underwear, and then she was bare, her rich skin a stunning contrast against the black linen.
"Fuck, look at you," he breathed, the filth falling from his lips with a reverence. He was on his knees between her legs, his own clothes discarded in a heap. His cock, thick and hard, lay heavy against his stomach. He lowered his head, his mouth on her breast, sucking her nipple deep, teeth grazing the peak. She cried out, her hands fisting in his hair.
He moved down, pushing her thighs wide with his shoulders. His tongue laved a hot, slow stripe up her centre. She jolted. "Oh, God—"
He ate her with a single-minded fervour that had nothing to do with technique and everything to do with reclamation. His tongue plunged into her, fucking her with it, before circling her clit with rough, demanding pressure. He lapped at her gathering wetness, drinking her down, the flavour of her arousal a sublime torment. She was bucking against his face, swearing, a stream of "yes" and "fuck" and "right there."
She came with a shattered scream, her body convulsing under his mouth. He didn't let up, licking her through it, until she was pushing at his head, oversensitive.
Before the tremors had even stopped, he moved up her body. He notched the head of his cock at her entrance, slick with her climax and his saliva. Her eyes, blurred with pleasure, found his. She nodded, biting her lip.
He drove into her in one deep, merciless thrust.
She yelled, her nails scoring his back. She was so tight, so impossibly hot and welcoming. He sank to the hilt, buried in her, and for a second he couldn't move, pinned by the seismic shock of sensation. It wasn’t just sex. It was a homecoming to a place he’d been exiled from for four hundred years.
Then he fucked her.
It was raw, piston-hard, and desperate. The bed slammed against the wall with every drive of his hips. He gripped her hipbone with one hand, the other tangling in her braids, angling her mouth to his. Their kisses were messy, biting, shared gasps. The wet, slapping sounds of their coupling were obscene and perfect.
"Harder," she demanded, her voice ragged. "Don't you fucking hold back on me."
He obeyed, slamming into her until she saw stars, her legs locked around him like a vise. He could feel another climax building in her, her inner muscles fluttering around his length. He changed the angle, grinding deep, and her eyes flew wide.
"I'm gonna—Simon—"
Simon. His name, his real name, from her lips in this century. It broke him.