So they just had bulk sex. I’d never pegged Angie for a sexual deviant.
Wait, wait, wait. “You guys are born? But you’re dead.” Weren’t they?
She stopped in front of the elevator.
I eyed it.
Bingo. My escape route.
“Not dead,” she replied, expression serene even though I’d essentially just called her a corpse. “Vissimo exist on the brink of death. Our hearts beat very slowly. We can conceive, but it is rare.”
“Why?” I blurted, before wondering if that question was as insensitive as in the human world.
Ding!
I hadn’t missed that piece-of-shit sound. Should have taken the ding for the bad omen it was when I dropped off my résumé.
The elevator doors opened, and I entered after her.
Level 61. I’d been right.
“Humans find it harder to conceive when their bodies are under undue strain—obesity, malnutrition, stress. Nothing is more intense than existing on the brink of death—more stressful to the body. No matter what our minds yearn for, our bodies are in constant state of battle. You’ll find that most Vissimo traits can be explained if you remember we continually exist in those frantic moments before death.” She pushed number fifty and we descended.
I saw a hole straightaway. “Kyros is strong.”
“We are never stronger than when our lives are threatened,” she said. “Nor faster. Our senses are heightened, every part of us ready to fight.”
“I’m following you,” I said after a beat. “But there has to be an element of magic. Like, how do you guys exist?”
The elevator slowed and dinged again.
Angelica’s delicate laughter rang like chimes as we left the lift.
“How do humans exist?” she challenged.
“Depends who you ask.”
Angelica gestured down a wide hall to the right. “There is a Vissimo clan whose existence is dedicated to exploring our origins. But alas, nothing concrete. However, it is really no more of a mystery than the presence of humans. A mouse looking at you would think you possessed magic too.”
If a mouse could think like that. And I’d been demoted from monkey to mouse.
“I guess so,” I mused aloud. My mind needed a few minutes to process that. “How many clans are there?”
“Twelve.”
“How many vampires?”
“More than two hundred thousand during our last census.”
They had a census. “Is that a clan thing then? To have a purpose? You mentioned a clan who is interested in Vissimo origins.”
She smiled as we entered a cafeteria. “Correct. Each new clan forms around a powerful alpha male who is titled king when he has more than five thousand Vissimo under his care. When Vissimo join his clan, they also join his cause.”
What was the reason for Kyros Sky then? What on earth did their cause have to do with rolling dice and owning a real estate agency that only purchased properties and didn’t appear to sell them?
“Are there queens too?” I frowned. “How does that work with the harems?”
“If a king chooses a queen from amongst his harem, she gains royal status. Any young she has born of the king gain automatic royal status too. With regards to children from his harem, a king can choose which babies he wishes to grant royal status to. These royal children enter into the king’s care and that of his queen.”
“Whoa, mothers give up their children just like that? Are they still allowed to see them?”
Angelica’s lips twitched. “Their offspring become royal, Miss Tetley. The granted status announces to everyone the child is extremely powerful. It’s considered a great honour—but only a king has the power to separate a mother and child. A few decades after harems became the mode, another clan released evidence that it was best for the birth mother to remain completely apart from the royal family. It was easier for her, the queen, and most importantly, the child, in the long run.”
That seemed so cold. My human mind couldn’t compute. “So in general, babies stay with their mothers?”
“They do. And the mother declares who the father is.”
I exhaled slowly. “Right. Sounds like drama waiting to happen to me.” Wouldn’t everyone just fight over the babies?
Angelica glanced at me. “It’s not. Usually. Her word is law.”
The hall opened into a huge space dotted with hundreds of tables.
“If you are hungry, come to Level 50 to eat,” she said. “The food is free and available twenty-four hours. Though everyone is at their work stations upstairs right now.” She pointed out how everything worked, but I barely listened, my mind on our previous conversation. Which was saying something because I hadn’t eaten since the world imploded around me.
My situation stole away every speck of my appetite though I did eye a rack of wine with longing.
Wine, I could go for.
“Don’t worry about laundry or cleaning,” Angelica was saying. “Our Indebted handle that. Just leave any dirty clothing out. It won’t get lost and will return clean.”
Her showing me all this stuff was nice and all. That she’d take the trouble to do so surprised me—especially because I didn’t think guilt was the only thing driving her to reach out. I mean, I doubted I could repeat anything through the constraints of the compulsion, but she was practically pushing a Vissimo guidebook into my hands. Was the guidebook Kyros-approved? He was in control here, and while there might be a faint strain of favouritism for Angelica, she answered to him with sir, not Kyros.
“Angelica?” I asked her softly in the hopes two thousand other vampires in the tower wouldn’t hear. “How long will he keep me here?”
The corners of her mouth turned down, her expression grim. “You’ll return to work the day after next. Once the effects of the thrall fade.”
Return to work. Escaping from there would be easier.
“Will I get my phone back then?” I asked.
“You will. I told your friend that you went camping with work colleagues for a long weekend.”
Tell me she didn’t. Tommy would be fucking frantic. Me? Go camping?
I swallowed back dread over that tidbit. “The thrall doesn’t affect me unless Kyros is too close, right? I’ll be okay with my phone now.”
I had to do damage control ASAP.
We returned to the elevator and she pushed the call button.
“Miss Tetley, you just sang to a television with a bottle of shampoo in your hand for three hours straight. Females experience the aftermath in a different way to males—often symptoms mimic those we experience during PMS.”
She had to be screwing with me.
Her earnest expression didn’t fade, and I considered her words. I didn’t get bad PMS, if truth was told. Tommy said I was always a moody bitch and that didn’t worsen during my period.
“And males?” I asked, wondering if asking for my phone a second time would make her suspicious.
“Protectiveness, as you have seen. Violence, if another male draws too close. Extreme lust. He won’t think of anything else but you for the full seventy-two hours of the thrall.”
I lifted my brows. “I see.”
Angelica had used the word protective. I knew of another P word that could describe Kyros.
Possessive.
But I was haunting his every waking moment, which was good to know. Except that fucker wasn’t allowed to fantasize about my body.
She slid a look at me. “Kyros emptied your level and sent all male Vissimo to rooms on the first ten floors. Some are sleeping five to a room for the duration of the thrall.”
Ding!
We entered the lift again and my heart pounded as she jabbed Level 66. The top floor.
“You said that existing on the brink of death explained most things about your kind.” I ventured. “How do you explain the compulsion thing?”
“Very good,” she murmured. “That is what the clan researching our origins centre their research
on. It is considered the anomaly in our make-up. There are those of us who liken compulsion to human hypnotists, a skill heightening by the constant adrenaline coursing through our bodies. Others say that because blood is our life force, we have greater control over it.”
Humans needed oxygen, food, and water to live and we had no magical command over them.
She spoke again. “My personal thought is that Vissimo simply evolved that way. Snakes have venom, birds have flight, some animals can change the colour of their skin to camouflage with their surroundings. Each of those qualities is magical, really—a physiological change which enables them to survive. In my mind, our compulsion is an extension of that concept; we evolved in such a way to protect ourselves or to secure a meal.”
Sure, a massive fucking extension.
Though I would no sooner compare humans to a shark, so perhaps I shouldn’t compare humans and Vissimo—no matter that we looked similar.
“Why do you guys have a cafeteria when you drink blood?” Oh my god, did they serve blood down there? Was that even wine I saw?
Angelica laughed at my expression. “Brink of death, remember? We have large appetites. However, we cannot survive without blood donors. How much depends on the age of the Vissimo.”
Ding!
I stared between the doors as they slid apart and gaped at the multitude of blurring vampires on Level 66.
“Are you ready to learn about the cause of Clan Sundulus?” Angelica asked. She stepped out of the lift and turned with a grace I’d never possess.
Her head tilted as I lingered in the elevator.
There was a challenge in her eyes. Something I’d never seen in her expression. Then again, I had a feeling a lot of people underestimated this woman. She was one of those quiet people who somehow always got what they wanted.
The question was: What did she want?
The last time I entered an area filled to the brink with vampires, I’d nearly pissed my panties. Seeing vampire Kyros in his full glory might have put the weaker vampire into perspective, yet I knew the coming moments were about to be very uncomfortable.
Did I need to know what happened on Level 66 to escape? Probably not.
Did I need to play along until I escaped?
Absolutely.
“Why not,” I replied, smoothing my skirt before stepping out of the elevator.
14
A cold wall of fear slapped me the second I entered Level 66. Knowing my reaction to their group presence was natural made things much easier—in that I could take a moment to acclimatise without someone sending me off to the looney bin.
The elevator doors whooshed closed at my back—my exit gone—and my heart rate tripled. I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing in rhythm with the thundering in my ears. I remained this way until the pounding faded, and then dared a look at my surroundings.
In the staff room, I was the sole focus of one hundred Vissimo, but on this level, none of the several hundred vampires in sight paid me any mind.
“What the…” The words left my lips as the vision before me registered.
“From 10:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m., you will find most of Kyros’s sub-clan on the top three levels of Kyros Sky,” Angelica said. She’d waited quietly while I tried to avoid a survival meltdown.
The floor was circular, obstructing my view of the whole floor. Kyros Sky was one of those towers that had a disc up the very top before the steeple. Now I knew the space ship appearance wasn’t for the 360-degree view—but to accommodate the masses of Vissimo up here each night.
A huge monitor covered the wall in front of me. A rectangle image with different coloured blocks filled it. Some of the blocks were flashing—whatever that meant. The monitor occupied the only wall I could see. Otherwise, glass-walled meeting rooms filled the outer perimeter of the level. The glass rooms were filled with small groups of vampires who appeared to be in the midst of animated conversation.
The wide expanse between the inner wall of the tower and the outer glass rooms was arranged into rows of compact work stations. Each station contained a monitor set upon a dark-grey standing desk. Vissimo occupied every single one, their eyes fixed on the screen, fingers typing in a blur.
I’d barely given the appearances of the staff at Live Right a thought beyond their bright eyes, but I looked closely at the monsters surrounding me.
The vampires varied in hair and eye colour and ranged in height from a head shorter than me to well over six foot—both males and females. At the moment, with hundreds of them in the same straight-backed position before the computer screens, a new element of fear crept over me.
The only thing scarier than a mindless beast was a cultured one.
I pivoted to Angelica. “Some kind of illegal underground stock exchange?”
The nearest Vissimo scoffed.
Angelica rested her eyes on them, and they quickly smoothed their expression, returning to work.
Angie is totally a dark horse.
“Understand, Miss Tetley,” she said in a firm tone, “our clan prides themselves on obeying and operating according to human law. It is the difference between us and our… competitor. While they may commit crimes against humans to play the game, we do not sink to their level.”
She said competitor like I said dog poop.
Which I’d stood in by accident it seemed.
I clasped my hands behind my back. “I see.”
She couldn’t seriously be telling me that they were legit? Like, legally legit.
God, I needed wine in my veins.
“Shall we?” she asked, gesturing to the rows of work stations.
I glanced at the huge monitor with the flashing blocks of colour again, trying to connect the dots.
Nope, nothing.
Shrugging a shoulder, I weaved between the stations after my fanged tour guide.
“How old is Bluff City, Miss Tetley?” she threw back over her shoulder.
Her question surprised me. But everyone knew the answer to that thanks to the stupid Bluff City anthem we were forced to learn in primary school. “Ah, 149 years old.”
“Correct. One hundred and fifty years ago, my sister—then not yet a queen—had two kings in her harem. When she fell pregnant for the first time, both kings granted the child royal status, as is their right, and claimed the baby for their own line. The qualities of our blood make human DNA tests ineffective, and though my sister was adamant the child belonged to our king, her declaration held no legal weight in such an instance. When the child was not given up to him, the second king declared war on our clan.”
This was just like Truth Ranges—except vampires. My first observation would be that having two kings in your harem was always going to lead to this, but I remained mute.
Angelica paused outside an empty meeting room. “It is the creed of all Vissimo clans that vampire lives be protected. With our low fertility rates, we cannot needlessly kill each other. We would have long since been extinct if we had listened to our baser, violent instincts.”
Yeah, and they would have taken a chunk of humankind with them.
She faced me. “It was decided there would be no battle—of the usual kind—to resolve their dispute. Around that time, a game was popular amongst Vissimo.”
“Was it Yahtzee?” I said before thinking better of it.
A slight wrinkle appeared between her brows as my personal joke flew right over her head. “We live on through the ages, Miss Tetley. Games between friends and family help the decades go by.”
This was the part when she told me about vampire Twister afternoons each Sunday, I knew it.
I forced my urge to snicker away, clearing my throat. “Right.”
She narrowed her eyes on my twitching lips, and I pressed them firmly together.
“Please continue,” I managed.
Angelica quirked a brow. “The game was called Ingenium—a battle of intelligence and strategy. At its root, two or more vampires would purchase businesses on the same street and engage i
n a contest of commerce until only one business was left standing. This concept then extended to other things: circuses, apartments, car manufacturing—any industry you can think of.”
It sounded a whole heap like vampires were using earth as a game board. Honestly, the short span of my mortal life made that seem like a waste of precious time, but clearly Vissimo lived a long time. I’d assumed they were immortal, but maybe I shouldn’t. Hardly anything else had proved true. “The two kings decided to settle their dispute by playing Ingenium with Bluff City.” The words left my mouth as I had the thought.
“Well done, Miss Tetley.”
I rocked back on my heels. Holy shit. “Don’t tell me that Bluff City only exists because of this game?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “It was a small porting village when the battle first started. Due to its position, the village would have always developed into a city, but we certainly accelerated its natural path.”
Turning from her, I stared blankly around the bustling room. This section of the level was just like the area outside the elevator. The Vissimo worked at their standing stations—or in small groups within the glass meeting rooms. Were they all focused on tasks designed to help this clan conquer Bluff City?
“How does one of the kings win?” I asked after a full minute.
“When they own Bluff City.”
Of course. Stupid mouse question.
I took in a slow breath, exhaling just as slow. “That’s why you buy houses and never sell.”
“Yes, but it is not quite that simple. Follow me. The dice are about to roll.”
She’d said the same thing two nights ago—I only remembered because she stopped Kyros and I from bumping pelvises with the words. His need to witness the dice roll had overwhelmed his urge for an uncontrolled romp in the torture room.
I checked my watch. “They roll at midnight?”
“Every night, yes. Tonight is our turn. We can only move—make purchases and sign contracts—in the twenty-four hours after our king rolls.”
My mouth dropped open. This was incredible. Unbelievable. “That’s why you always try to get contracts signed on the same day!”
Angelica smiled, and I shuddered. Her teeth were too much with the sheer masses of Vissimo around. My palms broke into a fresh round of clamminess. If I was staying here, I had to get better at managing my reaction to them. Sure, pure exposure helped, but the sweating was kind of gross.
Blood Trial: Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers Book 1) Page 15