by Cate Corvin
The door opened for Mater Dolorum’s hourly check, but this time it remained opened. I held back the need to snap at whoever was there.
Victoria broke away reluctantly, but she didn’t release my shirt. “Mater Dolorum.” She sounded nervous again, but she never needed to be nervous as long as I had her. I would protect her against any of her former kind. “Headmaster.”
The lanky figure appeared behind the hooded slayer. “Victoria Holmwood.” The Headmaster walked into the room, his hands clasped behind his back as he surveyed her. He wore an enormous silver crucifix around his neck.
As if that would stop me if he raised a hand against her.
“I see you’ve gotten yourself into a spot of trouble again.” Victoria looked surprised when he gave her a kindly smile. “As well as Will Godalming.”
Her hand rose to her mouth, and I knew she was remembering his blood, the taste of it as she sucked him dry. She had to be thirsty again. Her hand moved down to her throat, confirming my suspicion. “He gave his blood for me.”
“He’s made a full recovery.” Burns let out a little sigh. “There is a problem on my hands, Miss Holmwood. I must send word to your legal guardian of what has transpired here, but students who find themselves in your brand of trouble rarely go on to survive.”
Victoria had swung her legs over the side of the bed. She winced when the wooden bed frame cracked under her grip. “Oops.”
Burns wasn’t amused. “Lord Godalming is a notorious vampire-slayer. If I tell him you’ve survived, you may find that he has a mind to hunt you down.”
It was my turn to be surprised. He was giving her a choice?
“I know your mother has had some difficulties. If I tell him you died…”
“She wouldn’t survive that,” Victoria whispered. Her face fell as she thought.
“Nor can we keep you on a student. This is an academy for slayers. You belong to the Shadowed World now.”
Pain crossed her features and my anger rose again. They were kicking her out like she was nothing, into a world where Thraustila wanted her dead, where her own adoptive father would hunt her like an animal.
Luckily, she had me.
“I can go,” she said, trying to hide the tremor in her voice. “But first, I need you to summon a Mater Memoriae.”
“Why is that?” Burns asked, only a touch above a whisper. His body was tight with anticipation for her answer.
“The King of the Clouded Court is involved with Apolline Moreau,” she said clearly. “He’s imported hellhounds and… and something else, some sort of drug, through a Cerberian Gate.”
Burns simply nodded. The lanky bastard already knew. Victoria had been killed for nothing.
But for all that, I wasn’t sad about the change. I wondered if I should feel guilty that she’d just been kicked out of her school, that she was no longer human.
I simply couldn’t feel any guilt at all.
“I will summon a Memoriae,” he said decisively. “We’ll have a look at what you’ve seen. In the meantime, you may stay here… in the infirmary. All student halls and the library have been warded against you.”
Hurt flashed through Victoria’s eyes.
“Godalming and Enver will be permitted to speak with you, if you agree.” Victoria nodded, her lips set. “Very well, then. I will speak with you soon, Miss Holmwood. We will send donated blood. If you lay fangs on any students here, you will be exterminated immediately. Same goes for you, White Wolf.”
Sure. I could drain half this school before they landed so much as a scratch on me, but I nodded for Victoria’s sake. She was my only priority right now.
When Burns left, she buried her face in my chest. “I’m so thirsty it aches,” she gasped.
“You can feed from me.” As if this possibility hadn’t occurred to her before, she took a deep breath and looked up at me.
“I can do that?”
“Do I not smell delicious to you?” She still smelled delicious to me.
“Well, I mean, sure, but I thought vamps needed human blood to live…”
“We do, for the most part.” I cupped her face. “But we can feed each other, too. It will link us more strongly the more we share blood. Every once in a while, you will need to feed on a human to replenish yourself.”
She eyed my neck and licked her lips. My cock stirred to life, imagining her writhing on me as those pretty lips sucked my neck…
“Tori.”
Will, that traitorous, life-saving bastard, interrupted a very vivid fantasy of introducing Victoria to vampirehood the carnal way.
She froze, her hands still gripping me. “Will. Sura. You didn’t kill each other.”
The fucking incubus was right behind him. Two was a party, four was a crowd, I believed the saying went. One of her hands rose to her temple and she winced.
Sura pulled the door shut behind him. The motion sent the perfume of their warm blood wafting across the room, and Victoria sniffed the air. She’d be so stuffed with blood from her transformation, she wouldn’t hit the point of agonizing thirst for another day, at least. “We decided it was in our best interest to keep each other alive. For now.”
Will crossed the room and dropped in front of Victoria on his knees, gazing up at her with total devotion. It was sickening.
I clenched my fists, fighting the urge to snap his neck. Victoria chose him. Her choice, her right.
“I didn’t think you’d live,” he breathed. “I didn’t think it’d be enough.”
“Your blood?” she asked. “It was enough. Yours and Sura’s. Thank you both. I think we can just about call ourselves even.”
Will’s hungry gaze ate her up, lingering on her fangs, the smaller, more subtle changes vampirism wrought. There was no disgust in his expression. “The Headmaster said they’re expelling you.”
“They are.” She leaned into me, almost subconsciously. “I can stay until a Mater Memoriae examines my thoughts, but that’s it. I don’t know where we’ll go from here.”
I was gratified at the darkening of Will’s expression when she looked up at me instead of at him. Eat that, motherfucker.
“I made you a promise,” Will said, still with eyes only for her.
“You have my autonomy on a chain around your neck,” Sura added, but he was eyeing Victoria in a much more considering way, a hint of lasciviousness in it.
Fuck, I was going to flay them both before a week was out. The irritation was already setting in, but nothing could cut through the joy that Victoria was like me now. Eternal. Immortal. My bloodsinger.
If the lover I’d waited a thousand years for could tolerate them, so could I.
She rubbed her temples again. “Oh, don’t think you’re getting off easy. Just because you didn’t kill each other doesn’t mean I like you. Will… I’m holding you to that promise. Mom won’t trust a vampire, even if I’m still me. You’re still going to help me save her.”
Victoria leveled her sharp gaze on Sura. “And you’re going to help me kill Thraustila.”
Both slayer and incubus stared at her. Victoria stared back.
“And what’s he going to do?” Sura demanded, nodding at me.
She laced her fingers through mine. A purr shivered through me, the bloodsong humming in my veins. Mine, mine, mine.
“Càel’s going to fuck me, feed me, and make sure you do what you’re goddamn told.”
Lilith’s Sacred Tits, I loved this woman.
The End
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BONDS OF BLOOD
DIRTY DEEDS: Book 3 of Victoria’s Trilogy
Things I've won in Libra Academy: An expensive education. A vampire sworn to me forever. An incubus on a leash. A man who'd give up everything to save me.
Things I've lost: My dignity. My honor. My mortality.
My blacklist has been narrowed down to two: the king of the vampires, and the slayer who helped him. I'm no longer welcome as a student in Libra Academy, but I can't leave New York until I save my new home: the Clouded Court. I've promised my stalwart knight I'd do anything to destroy his Maker, and I've got plans to put a new queen on the throne.
I have Càel. My new sisters. A demonic Prince's infernal spy. And the son of a man who might have a far darker soul than I ever imagined.
We're a crew of misfits, but sometimes that's who you need for dirty deeds.
And against all odds, those deeds might just be the way to my newly-immortal heart.
THE CIMMERIAN CAGE TRILOGY
Kissed by Wildfire
Kissed by Moonlight
Kissed by Midnight
THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS, set in the Cimmerian Cage world
Roses and Revenants
STANDALONE REVERSE HAREM ROMANCE
Pet
I already had to leave college once to care for my sick mother. Thanks to the Second-Chance Scholarship, I have one last shot to finish my degree at Bourdillon University, a prestigious academy for the arts.
But the three professors who control my future don't see a student, or an assistant librarian. They see prey.
The Dean of Students, gentleman on the outside, beast on the inside.
The Scholarship Committee Chairman who bends me to his will.
And my former tutor, now my blackmailer, who holds my secrets over my head.
They've got me wrapped around their fingers, and how the rest of my year will go depends entirely on how much I'm willing to obey them.
They're the teachers.
I'm the pet.
Stoneheart
A heart of gold for a heart of stone.
As a cop, my motives are clear: uphold the law, preserve justice, and protect innocent lives, but when you throw gargoyles into the mix, all bets are off. Add in grieving your past mistakes, and it’s nearly impossible.
I should’ve known better than to find solace in the arms of Damien Viridios, an Emerald gargoyle known for philanthropy and his huge… helicopter.
Sure, he showed me a good time. Then he cut out my heart and replaced it with a chunk of living stone, making me a gargoyle, too. Worst. Hook-up. Ever.
Now my skin is almost bullet-proof and I can lift a car overhead, but there’s a huge target painted on my back. That’s the last Ruby stoneheart of House Kyrillian beating in my chest, and one of the gargoyle Orders wants to crush out its magic. Permanently.
Gio Onyarai, an Onyx bodyguard assigned to me by Damien, is sworn to defend my life, but it’s impossible to get anything done while he’s taking over my apartment in his birthday suit; my partner on the force, Sawyer Hawkins, blames himself for my new inhuman heart, refusing to let go of the mortal I once was.
I never asked to be made a gargoyle, but now that I have a stoneheart of my own, I’ll do anything to defend it from those who want to destroy it… I’m just not sure if I can stop these three from stealing it.