‘You are Samael, the ancient one, he who fell, head of the Castus Sanguis, the creator of the noble race of vampires.’ And, she thought gleefully, mine to command.
He seemed mollified by her acknowledgment of him. ‘Why do you summon me?’
‘Power,’ Aliza answered him.
He laughed. The glass doors rattled and something in the house shattered. ‘All beings want power. What do you want from me?’
What they had originally wanted and what they wanted now had changed since the night Evie had been restored. ‘We want the ring the vampiress Tatiana seeks. The ring of sorrows.’
Samael laughed a second time. ‘You are not equipped to command such a thing of power. Release me and I will teach you how.’
‘I summoned you, didn’t I?’ She’d expected this response. Known he’d want to be released. No demon wanted to do the bidding of a mortal. It only made her want the ring, whatever its power, that much more. ‘And because of that, you must give me what I want and answer my questions.’
His smile vanished. ‘I do not have the ring.’
‘Then who does?’
‘A blood whore. One of the comarré. The one Tatiana seeks.’ He growled, the sound like thunder. ‘Release me!’
‘You mean the girl with the gold tattoos?’ Evie asked. She nudged her mother.
He nodded, eyes like fiery slits.
Aliza smiled. ‘Then give her to us.’
‘I can’t.’ He scowled. ‘I cannot touch her. Why do you think I sent the vampiress after her?’
Evie stepped forward. ‘What is the ring’s power?’
‘Bring it to me and I will help you rule the world.’ He leered at her. ‘All you have to do is release me.’
Aliza shook her head. ‘Not enough, demon. What does it do?’
He raged, arms outstretched, clawed fingers splayed. ‘Mortal fools! With that ring, you can raise an unconquerable army. Now, free me.’
An unconquerable army was far more than Aliza had ever hoped for. Plans began to form in her head. Why rule Paradise City when she could have the world?
‘Not yet, demon. Not yet.’
Glossary
Anathema: a noble vampire who has been cast out of noble society for some reason.
Aurelian: the comarré historian.
Castus Sanguis: the fallen angels from whom the othernatural races descended.
Comarré/comar: a human hybrid species especially bred to serve the blood needs of the noble vampire race.
Dominus: the ruling head of a noble vampire family.
Elder: the second in command to a Dominus.
Fae: a race of othernatural beings descended from fallen angels and nature.
Fringe vampires: a race of lesser vampires descended from the cursed Judas Iscariot.
Kine: a vampire term for humans, archaic.
Kubai Mata: an ancient secret society designed to protect mankind against othernaturals should the covenant be broken.
Libertas: the ritual in which a comarré can fight for their independence; ends in death of comarré or patron.
Navitas: the ritual in which a vampire can be resired by another, to change family lines, or turn fringe noble.
Noble vampires: a powerful race of vampires descended from fallen angels.
Nothos: hellhounds.
Patron: a noble vampire who purchases a comarré’s blood rights.
Remnant: a hybrid of different species of fae or varcolai.
Sacre: the ceremonial sword of the comarré.
Signum: the inlaid gold tattoos or marks put into comarré skin to purify their blood.
Vampling: a newly turned or young vampire.
Varcolai: a race of shifters descended from fallen angels and animals.
Acknowledgments
I must thank my editor, Devi; her assistant, Jennifer; Alex, Jack, and the entire publishing team at Orbit for making this book a reality. You’re an awesome group!
Big thanks to the folks who provided me with translation help: Alessandro and Kimberly Menozzi for their Italian translations; Bob Rivera for his Latin translations; Ahmed El Anjanar for his Arabic translation. Any mistakes are mine.
And then there is the crew that supports me, reads for me, gets me writing, helps me brainstorm, talks me off ledges, and keeps me encouraged: Richie, Matt, my parents, Jax, Laura, Leigh, Carrie, Carolyn, Briana, Dayna, Emily, the staff at Romance Divas, my truly amazing agent, Elaine, and the two writers who inspire me daily with their dedication, their work ethics, and their skill with words, Rocki and Louisa.
Lastly, thanks to all the readers out there for taking a chance on one more vampire series.
extras
about the author
Kristen Painter’s writing résumé boasts multiple Golden Heart nominations and advance praise from a handful of bestselling authors, including Gena Showalter and Roxanne St. Claire. A former New Yorker now living in Florida, Kristen has a wealth of fascinating experiences from which to flavor her stories, including time spent working in fashion for Christian Dior and as a maître d’ for Wolfgang Puck. Her website is at kristenpainter.com and she’s on Twitter at @ Kristen_Painter.
Find out more about Kristen Painter and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net
if you enjoyed
FLESH AND BLOOD
look out for
SOULLESS
by
Gail Carriger
CHAPTER ONE
In Which Parasols Prove Useful
Miss Alexia Tarabotti was not enjoying her evening. Private balls were never more than middling amusements for spin sters, and Miss Tarabotti was not the kind of spinster who could garner even that much pleasure from the event. To put the pudding in the puff: she had retreated to the library, her favorite sanctuary in any house, only to happen upon an unexpected vampire.
She glared at the vampire.
For his part, the vampire seemed to feel that their encounter had improved his ball experience immeasurably. For there she sat, without escort, in a low-necked ball gown.
In this particular case, what he did not know could hurt him. For Miss Alexia had been born without a soul, which, as any decent vampire of good blooding knew, made her a lady to avoid most assiduously.
Yet he moved toward her, darkly shimmering out of the library shadows with feeding fangs ready. However, the moment he touched Miss Tarabotti, he was suddenly no longer darkly doing anything at all. He was simply standing there, the faint sounds of a string quartet in the background as he foolishly fished about with his tongue for fangs unaccountably mislaid.
Miss Tarabotti was not in the least surprised; soullessness always neutralized supernatural abilities. She issued the vampire a very dour look. Certainly, most daylight folk wouldn’t peg her as anything less than a standard English prig, but had this man not even bothered to read the vampire’s official abnormality roster for London and its greater environs?
The vampire recovered his equanimity quickly enough. He reared away from Alexia, knocking over a nearby tea trolley. Physical contact broken, his fangs reappeared. Clearly not the sharpest of prongs, he then darted forward from the neck like a serpent, diving in for another chomp.
‘I say!’ said Alexia to the vampire. ‘We have not even been introduced!’
Miss Tarabotti had never actually had a vampire try to bite her. She knew one or two by reputation, of course, and was friendly with Lord Akeldama. Who was not friendly with Lord Akeldama? But no vampire had ever actually attempted to feed on her before!
So Alexia, who abhorred violence, was forced to grab the miscreant by his nostrils, a delicate and therefore painful area, and shove him away. He stumbled over the fallen tea trolley, lost his balance in a manner astonishingly graceless for a vampire, and fell to the floor. He landed right on top of a plate of treacle tart.
Miss Tarabotti was most distressed by this. She was particularly fond of treacle tart and had been looking forward to co
nsuming that precise plateful. She picked up her parasol. It was terribly tasteless for her to be carrying a parasol at an evening ball, but Miss Tarabotti rarely went anywhere without it. It was of a style entirely of her own devising: a black frilly confection with purple satin pansies sewn about, brass hardware, and buckshot in its silver tip.
She whacked the vampire right on top of the head with it as he tried to extract himself from his newly intimate relations with the tea trolley. The buckshot gave the brass parasol just enough heft to make a deliciously satisfying thunk.
‘Manners!’ instructed Miss Tarabotti.
The vampire howled in pain and sat back down on the treacle tart.
Alexia followed up her advantage with a vicious prod between the vampire’s legs. His howl went quite a bit higher in pitch, and he crumpled into a fetal position. While Miss Tarabotti was a proper English young lady, aside from not having a soul and being half Italian, she did spend quite a bit more time than most other young ladies riding and walking and was therefore unexpectedly strong.
Miss Tarabotti leaped forward – as much as one could leap in full triple-layered underskirts, draped bustle, and ruffled taffeta top-skirt – and bent over the vampire. He was clutching at his indelicate bits and writhing about. The pain would not last long given his supernatural healing ability, but it hurt most decidedly in the interim.
Alexia pulled a long wooden hair stick out of her elaborate coiffure. Blushing at her own temerity, she ripped open his shirt-front, which was cheap and overly starched, and poked at his chest, right over the heart. Miss Tarabotti sported a particularly large and sharp hair stick. With her free hand, she made certain to touch his chest, as only physical contact would nullify his supernatural abilities.
‘Desist that horrible noise immediately,’ she instructed the creature.
The vampire quit his squealing and lay perfectly still. His beautiful blue eyes watered slightly as he stared fixedly at the wooden hair stick. Or, as Alexia liked to call it, hair stake.
‘Explain yourself!’ Miss Tarabotti demanded, increasing the pressure.
‘A thousand apologies.’ The vampire looked confused. ‘Who are you?’ Tentatively he reached for his fangs. Gone.
To make her position perfectly clear, Alexia stopped touching him (though she kept her sharp hair stick in place). His fangs grew back.
He gasped in amazement. ‘What are you? I thought you were a lady, alone. It would be my right to feed, if you were left this carelethly unattended. Pleathe, I did not mean to prethume,’ he lisped around his fangs, real panic in his eyes.
Alexia, finding it hard not to laugh at the lisp, said, ‘There is no cause for you to be so overly dramatic. Your hive queen will have told you of my kind.’ She returned her hand to his chest once more. The vampire’s fangs retracted.
He looked at her as though she had suddenly sprouted whiskers and hissed at him.
Miss Tarabotti was surprised. Supernatural creatures, be they vampires, werewolves, or ghosts, owed their existence to an overabundance of soul, an excess that refused to die. Most knew that others like Miss Tarabotti existed, born without any soul at all. The estimable Bureau of Unnatural Registry (BUR), a division of Her Majesty’s Civil Service, called her ilk preternatural. Alexia thought the term nicely dignified. What vampires called her was far less complimentary. After all, preternaturals had once hunted them, and vampires had long memories. Natural, daylight persons were kept in the dark, so to speak, but any vampire worth his blood should know a preternatural’s touch. This one’s ignorance was untenable. Alexia said, as though to a very small child, ‘I am a preternatural.’
The vampire looked embarrassed. ‘Of course you are,’ he agreed, obviously still not quite comprehending. ‘Again, my apologies, lovely one. I am overwhelmed to meet you. You are my first’ – he stumbled over the word – ‘preternatural.’ He frowned. ‘Not supernatural, not natural, of course! How foolish of me not to see the dichotomy.’ His eyes narrowed into craftiness. He was now studiously ignoring the hair stick and looking tenderly up into Alexia’s face.
Miss Tarabotti knew full well her own feminine appeal. The kindest compliment her face could ever hope to garner was ‘exotic,’ never ‘lovely.’ Not that it had ever received either. Alexia figured that vampires, like all predators, were at their most charming when cornered.
The vampire’s hands shot forward, going for her neck. Apparently, he had decided if he could not suck her blood, strangulation was an acceptable alternative. Alexia jerked back, at the same time pressing her hair stick into the creature’s white flesh. It slid in about half an inch. The vampire reacted with a desperate wriggle that, even without superhuman strength, unbalanced Alexia in her heeled velvet dancing shoes. She fell back. He stood, roaring in pain, with her hair stick half in and half out of his chest.
Miss Tarabotti scrabbled for her parasol, rolling about inelegantly among the tea things, hoping her new dress would miss the fallen foodstuffs. She found the parasol and came upright, swinging it in a wide arc. Purely by chance, the heavy tip struck the end of her wooden hair stick, driving it straight into the vampire’s heart.
The creature stood stock-still, a look of intense surprise on his handsome face. Then he fell backward onto the much-abused plate of treacle tart, flopping in a limp-overcooked-asparagus kind of way. His alabaster face turned a yellowish gray, as though he were afflicted with the jaundice, and he went still. Alexia’s books called this end of the vampire life cycle dissanimation. Alexia, who thought the action astoundingly similar to a soufflé going flat, decided at that moment to call it the Grand Collapse.
She intended to waltz directly out of the library without anyone the wiser to her presence there. This would have resulted in the loss of her best hair stick and her well-deserved tea, as well as a good deal of drama. Unfortunately, a small group of young dandies came traipsing in at that precise moment. What young men of such dress were doing in a library was anyone’s guess. Alexia felt the most likely explanation was that they had become lost while looking for the card room. Regardless, their presence forced her to pretend that she, too, had just discovered the dead vampire. With a resigned shrug, she screamed and collapsed into a faint.
She stayed resolutely fainted, despite the liberal application of smelling salts, which made her eyes water most tremendously, a cramp in the back of one knee, and the fact that her new ball gown was getting most awfully wrinkled. All its many layers of green trim, picked to the height of fashion in lightening shades to complement the cuirasse bodice, were being crushed into oblivion under her weight. The expected noises ensued: a good deal of yelling, much bustling about, and several loud clatters as one of the housemaids cleared away the fallen tea.
Then came the sound she had half anticipated, half dreaded. An authoritative voice cleared the library of both young dandies and all other interested parties who had flowed into the room upon discovery of the tableau. The voice instructed everyone to ‘get out!’ while he ‘gained the particulars from the young lady’ in tones that brooked no refusal.
Silence descended.
‘Mark my words, I will use something much, much stronger than smelling salts,’ came a growl in Miss Tarabotti’s left ear. The voice was low and tinged with a hint of Scotland. It would have caused Alexia to shiver and think primal monkey thoughts about moons and running far and fast, if she’d had a soul. Instead it caused her to sigh in exasperation and sit up.
‘And a good evening to you, too, Lord Maccon. Lovely weather we are having for this time of year, is it not?’ She patted at her hair, which was threatening to fall down without the hair stick in its proper place. Surreptitiously, she looked about for Lord Conall Maccon’s second in command, Professor Lyall. Lord Maccon tended to maintain a much calmer temper when his Beta was present. But, then, as Alexia had come to comprehend, that appeared to be the main role of a Beta – especially one attached to Lord Maccon.
‘Ah, Professor Lyall, how nice to see you again.’ She smiled in reli
ef.
Professor Lyall, the Beta in question, was a slight, sandy-haired gentleman of indeterminate age and pleasant disposition, as agreeable, in fact, as his Alpha was sour. He grinned at her and doffed his hat, which was of first-class design and sensible material. His cravat was similarly subtle, for, while it was tied expertly, the knot was a humble one.
‘Miss Tarabotti, how delicious to find ourselves in your company once more.’ His voice was soft and mild-mannered.
‘Stop humoring her, Randolph,’ barked Lord Maccon. The fourth Earl of Woolsey was much larger than Professor Lyall and in possession of a near-permanent frown. Or at least he always seemed to be frowning when he was in the presence of Miss Alexia Tarabotti, ever since the hedgehog incident (which really, honestly, had not been her fault). He also had unreasonably pretty tawny eyes, mahogany-colored hair, and a particularly nice nose. The eyes were currently glaring at Alexia from a shockingly intimate distance.
‘Why is it, Miss Tarabotti, every time I have to clean up a mess in a library, you just happen to be in the middle of it?’ the earl demanded of her.
Alexia gave him a withering look and brushed down the front of her green taffeta gown, checking for bloodstains.
Lord Maccon appreciatively watched her do it. Miss Tarabotti might examine her face in the mirror each morning with a large degree of censure, but there was nothing at all wrong with her figure. He would have to have had far less soul and a good fewer urges not to notice that appetizing fact. Of course, she always went and spoiled the appeal by opening her mouth. In his humble experience, the world had yet to produce a more vexingly verbose female.
‘Lovely but unnecessary,’ he said, indicating her efforts to brush away nonexistent blood drops.
Flesh And Blood: House of Comarre: Book Two (House of Comarre 2) Page 34