“I wasn’t reading anything…much,” she said. “Children’s stories, mostly, to Carrie. Most books were forbidden to us.”
I saw the spark of a lie. “Is that all?”
“Mostly.” The pink in her cheeks was like a blush on a pink-white rose. It made me want to touch her skin, to kiss the lips that she was chewing nervously.
“I bet you read Twilight,” I said, with a savage smile. That blushing guilt hinted at something like that.
“What is Twilight?”
“Is that how it is? You might be hopeless, Tulip. What was it then? Anne Rice? The Vampire Diaries?”
“A Discovery of Witches,” she said.
“Oh?”
“And then there was a—um—there was one some of the girls passed around. But I never read it. I knew that one was too wicked to touch. It had a vampire right on the cover grabbing a girl’s neck.” She shot me a quick look of anger, as if she had just remembered that I’d already defiled her in some way.
“A bodice ripper?” I asked. “Ah, if only you had read it.”
She had no idea how much control I was exerting not to rip her bodice at this very moment. She was so nervous and distrustful of me. If I hadn’t tasted her blood last night I don’t know if I could have controlled myself at all. That assuaged my raw, cruel hunger but not the needs of a husband who missed his beloved wife.
Something in her had enjoyed it. She had not fought me off even when I stroked a hand between her legs and just that brief, tantalizing moment when my fingers met her tender flesh still made my fingertips tingle when I thought of it. It was only when she felt my cock that she activated the spell that fought me off.
Every leather chair and sofa in the library looked like a good place to fuck her. I imagined draping her hips over the curved arm of the chaise lounge while her hair cascaded over the elongated seat, her arms reaching behind her, her face blissful.
Patience. My god, patience.
“It sounds like we might need to go to the bookstore and find this particular tome,” Silvus said. “You should probably acquaint yourself with your new lifestyle. They might teach you to enjoy it, pet. We can’t be patient forever.”
“I’ll never enjoy it,” she whispered. “But I can endure it. If you save my family.”
We were too close. She was getting panicked again.
“We will save your family,” I said. “And you will certainly enjoy it. Every moment of it. I swear to you that.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Alissa
“Not Thai curry, but this is what I could whip up as is. I really need to go to the store now that you’re here.” Jie put a bowl in front of me, noodles with peas and bits of pork in a fragrant sauce. It smelled delicious, especially for something he had just whipped up in no time. They were good cooks for blood-drinking monsters who could only consume blood, wine and tea. Silvus had quickly set the table with a white tablecloth, candles, crystal goblets of wine and fine china and silverware.
The vampires had soup bowls with blood that also seemed to be flavored with some sauce. That made it seem a little more normal. Plus, they all drank the wine.
They were still watching me like I was the main course.
They were vampires, after all, so I knew that they were thinking about blood all the time. It was part of their nature. That urge would eat at them at all times, and I would be the focus of it for the rest of my life.
I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around the idea that this was my new normal.
A thrall.
I was a thrall.
Whenever I thought of that, the horror of my situation slammed into me. A blood slave. I would not be saved when the end times came, and Father Joshua said the entire eastern seaboard would be destroyed. It was safe back in the deep woods of Pennsylvania, like a cocoon, hidden away.
“So how do we help Lisbeth’s family?” Jie asked, after seeing that I was eating his food without complaint. I didn’t actually compliment the food, although it was good. I was wary of giving off the impression that I was happy to be here.
“The wards they have put up around the compound won’t be broken easily,” Silvus said. “I think we might have to ask a favor of our neighbors…”
“Those old witches?” Rayner pulled his mane of golden hair to the wrong side of his part. “If you’re sure they will have a way to break the wards…”
“They will,” Silvus said. “But you know what they’ll ask in return…”
Rayner looked resolved to do something very unpleasant.
“I will do anything to make our dearest thrall happy,” Rayner said.
“What will the neighbors want?” I asked.
“You don’t need to worry about it.”
“Is it something very awful? Tell me.” I had a burning need to know. I guess it was because the discomfort in Rayner’s face almost reminded me of the way I felt around Father Joshua.
“Vampire blood and semen,” Silvus said. “It is a spell ingredient for Sinistral witches, but it’s more potent when they have recently drank from a human virgin, therefore, Rayner will be especially useful to them right now, thanks to you.”
“What? You mean you have to—“
“Tulip, don’t worry about it!” Rayner snapped. He was actually a tiny bit flushed.
“Are they beautiful?” I asked.
“No. God, no. They’re lesbians in their eighties. I swear to you, I would never get near them if they were beautiful. I save all my affection for you.”
Jie and Thom were trying to suppress laughter now.
“How does going first taste now?” Jie asked. “Rayner always insists on drinking your blood first and the rest of us won’t get to taste you for another week or three, so now he’s the only one who gets to have fun with Mimi and Wanda.”
“On the bright side, you won’t be so lustful for Lisbeth when you’re thinking about their wrinkled old claws grabbing your cock!” Thom spat that out and then slapped the table.
Rayner stood up. “One more word out of your mouth, Thom—“
“Oh, you want to fight now?”
“Sit the hell down,” Silvus said. “There is nothing to brawl about. Thom, stop goading Rayner or I’ll curse your tongue for the rest of the night.”
“I didn’t do nothing.” Thom shrugged. “How’d a five hundred year old man stay so shy that he can’t handle getting jerked off by a witch once in his life…”
Silvus drew out a wand and smacked Thom’s hand with it the way our teachers flicked our hands with rulers in school. “Silent until sunrise, so Thom’s tongue will go, what his thoughts are this evening, we never shall know.”
Thom scowled, getting hit with the spell, and then gave Silvus the finger.
“Stop it!” I said. “All of you, just— Is that true? Is that really what happens?”
“It’s fine,” Rayner said. “Thom’s right. It is a very small price to pay for a spell that will let us sneak into the Order. There will be no pleasure in it for anyone.”
My thoughts had been consumed with the vision of the priestesses looking miserable while Father Joshua gleefully forced them to touch him, but now I was confronted with the opposite. Rayner subjecting himself to the touch of these old witches just to help my family. He would still be putting himself at risk to go back there. He didn’t have to do it. He already had me.
I caught myself.
He’s only doing this to trick me into thinking he is a good man who really loves me.
“Thank you for trying to help my father and sisters,” I said.
“I would not think of abandoning them,” he said. His eyes were back to looking over me hungrily and I knew I was right. He would make me pay him back a hundredfold for this.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Paola Garcia
As I walked into the council meeting room that afternoon, I could tell something was horribly wrong. I was the youngest member of the witches’ council, and my appointment had been widely praised an
d I felt on top of the world as I took on the esteemed robes.
It was a great moment of triumph for me. As a little girl, I thought my sister would wear these robes, but ten years ago, she was killed by a werewolf. I had never hated Sinistrals before, but after that, I was consumed with a sense of justice. I wanted to work for the Ethereal council.
But I also wanted women to learn offensive magic. If my sister had trained with fire and lightning, instead of just enchantment and healing, she might still be alive today.
My attempts to bring a more ‘modern’ approach to the council were often met with dead silence.
I must have done something wrong, and I immediately guessed it had something to do with my trip to visit the Order of the Blessed’s leader and his community.
“Good afternoon, Madame Garcia.” Madame White nodded me to a chair and then folded her hands. “I have just finished speaking with Councilman Nicolescu and Councilman de Georgel about your visit to the Village of the Blessed. We sent you there in order to obtain the new magic that Father Joshua has developed—the rose bullets.”
“Yes. I obtained them. I brought them to the council vault, of course, but wasn’t my purpose there also to check on the village?”
“Check on the village?”
“Yes. Their file folder is…full of past concerns,” I said. “About the well-being of the citizens. The girls and women, especially, although a few of the boys have also been forced into marriages and they have subjected more boys to their purification process.”
“Well, boys are more trouble,” Madame White said with a shrug.
“None of them are getting sufficient education or access to modern medicine. Even their magical medicine is mostly handled by just one midwife and one male healer, which certainly isn’t enough for a community of five hundred people! Sisters, I know the warlock council usually pays them a visit instead, and I’m not sure why we keep allowing this to stand! We’re all women here. Do you realize women are being forced into marriage and pregnancy? That their ‘Father Joshua’ is using his so-called holy status to—”
“Shhh shh shh.” Madame White sounded impatient. “Is it really our business what the man is up to?”
“Well, yes! We’re the council! We’re the authority that protects our kin!”
“I told you not to send her,” Madame de Georgel muttered, tapping her quill pen into an inkwell as she took notes on our conversation. They were both twice my age and I felt my sense of adulthood melting away at their dismissal. I was thirty years old. They made me feel like a stupid little girl.
“I wanted to send her so she would see,” Madame White said. “This is what we’re dealing with, Paola dear. Yes, we know there may be some abuse and neglect in the Order. But—Father Joshua did give you the rose bullets, yes?”
“Well, I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“You don’t?” Madame White raised an eyebrow at me.
“I mean—I do…but…”
“Who developed the purification spell that has helped us cleanse and banish so many Sinistrals from our community?”
“He did, but—“
“But but but. That’s all you can say. But but but.” She wagged a finger at me.
“I talked to a girl there who was in tears, confessing to me in complete terror that Father Joshua was forcing her to marry him and—“
“Alissa Johns,” Madame White said. “Is that who you mean?”
“Yes. That was her name.”
Madame de Georgel took off her reading glasses, rubbed her head, and walked over to offer me a glass of wine. “Sweet Paola. I know you want to help these girls, but Father Joshua is not wrong. The entire magical world is in peril. The Sinistrals have more territory than we do, and we all have less territory than we did. If we don’t take desperate measures, we’re going to die. Father Joshua believes that Alissa is…well, have you heard the legend of the Blessed Thrall?”
“Of course.”
The Blessed Thrall—a girl born into Clan Walvis of the Dutch wizard clans four hundred years ago. She was bewitched by a vampire who vowed to pursue her soul to the ends of the earth, summoning her back to earth by unholy rites, but saved by the blessing of the good witches of Amsterdam. She would always be protected so they could never turn her into a vampire and would ultimately go to heaven. The legend had worked its way through the witches worldwide, with Christian witches believing that her soul would live seven lives and then would be called to Christ, while eastern witches believed she would find enlightenment, and the Celtic and Norse witches leaned toward the idea that she would choose her own destiny. The story grew quite muddied, as stories do over time, until some people swore that the Blessed Thrall was Princess Anastasia of Russia and Rasputin was the vampire hunting her, or that the vampire was now a clan of seven to twelve men who hunted her all over the world, kidnapping and raping her and murdering her family.
“Alissa is the Blessed Thrall,” Madame de Georgel said.
“What?” I scoffed.
“Father Joshua swears that not only is she the thrall, but this is her seventh life, and if he kills her, she will go on to the afterlife and her blood will cleanse everyone who drinks a single drop of it.”
“Well, that sounds like something he made up!” I said. “Ridiculous!”
“I would have said that…but he said he had created a purification spell, and he was right. He prophesied many of the fires and hurricanes of the past ten years. And now, he has given us these precious rose bullets that can kill a Sinistral from afar. How would you like to go werewolf hunting, Paola? Then come back and tell us what you think of this man. We don’t like him—but we need him.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alissa
“Does Silvus get to sleep with her tonight?” Jie asked. “If we have to treat her gently, we could at least…keep her close.”
“Yeah, Rayner already had a night with her,” Thom said.
“No. I spent the night with Silvus,” Rayner said. “She’s afraid of us.”
“Well, just because you forfeit doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”
“If you lay a hand on her, they will be cut off tomorrow. Whoever spends the night with her has to be gentle.” Rayner ground his teeth.
They were having this conversation as if I wasn’t even there. “I can’t sleep alone?” I asked.
“No extra beds.” Jie shrugged.
“The couch,” I said.
“Then I call dibs on the winged chair next to the couch,” Thom said. He grinned at me. “We’ve been waiting so long, you will indulge this much. No touching. Just let us hear you breathe.”
“Ahem. I am the second, so I believe it’s my turn,” Silvus said. “She is mine tonight and Jie’s tomorrow.”
“I’ll share if you will,” Jie said.
“You know I will,” Thom said.
I swallowed. Clearly saying no wasn’t an option. It was already beginning, my body traded between beds.
By now, I knew Silvus wasn’t as gentle as he seemed, but he gave me a kind look when I appraised him with bolts of terror streaking through my belly. His shoulder-length hair softened his face, which had some fairly severe lines, although handsome ones. His eyes were clear as a young man but pained and wise as a much older one, and he had a few very fine wrinkles that only seemed to appear when he smiled and actually made him look more kind. His broad chest and shoulders filled out his black suits so well that I knew he had some muscle under the genteel layers. His hands were slender, with tapered fingers, his nails chipped and stained with ink.
“Enjoy your dessert,” Silvus said. “I will give Mimi and Wanda a ring.”
Thom took my noodle bowl and gave me a bowl of ice cream instead, covered in hot fudge, sprinkles and peanuts. He winked at me.
“I think you’re trying to fatten me up,” I said.
“Fatten you up? We’re a long way from witches stuffing you with gingerbread. You could use a little flesh on your bones,”
Thom said. “Just looking at you makes me want to rip somebody in two.” He took out a pack of cigarettes.
“Not here,” Rayner said.
“Tch. Sorry, darlin’, I forgot my manners. Last time I saw you, every boy smoked and nobody knew it was trouble.” He stepped out.
“Mimi and Wanda took a trip to the Chesapeake Bay,” Silvus said, stepping back inside. “They will be back next Thursday.”
“Damn,” Rayner said. “Did you ask if they have a number where they can be reached?”
“Dee said they are ‘off grid’,” Silvus said. “At a queer witch festival.”
“Where?”
“Rayner, I am not driving you to storm a queer witch festival,” Silvus said. “They are likely to stake us and toss us in the Bay, I daresay. We will wait until Thursday.”
“Thursday? I—I hope my family is okay. I worry that Father Joshua is punishing my father because I escaped.”
Rayner looked antsy, ignoring his dinner despite the famed hunger of vampires, and tapping his fingers. “I’m doing what I can, Tulip. We have no way of communicating within the Order. Hopefully he can take care of himself until we get there. So your father is the one who told you to go?”
“Yes. He insisted that I must.”
“Better late than never, I guess,” Jie said. “He let you grow up in that place.”
“It’s all right, Jie,” Rayner said. “Her father is likely as brainwashed as the rest.”
“Well, he didn’t know Father Joshua would insist on marrying me. As soon as he realized how upset I was, and that Father Joshua had killed my mom, he knew I had to go.” It was strange that my dad seemed to know the vampires would be waiting. I wondered how he could have possibly known they would be waiting for me. None of the vampire clan seemed to know anything of the Order.
I had been ignoring my ice cream. I’d never eaten it before. The way it was melting looked a little gross to me.
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