Blood Trial: Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers Book 1)

by Kelly St Clare

  Puppies, puppies, puppies.

  That just made me think about Angie snacking on a sausage dog. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of my neck.

  We continued between the grey standing stations. Ahead, the work stations stopped short to make way for a giant glass tube set in the centre of the walkway. It reminded me of those inside skydive places where people could fly around.

  No one stood near the tube, but Angelica led me to stand directly before it. She shot a look over her shoulder to a glass room and her lips curved.

  I tried to peer into the meeting chamber as well, but she squared her shoulders, blocking my view. Huh, what was she up to? Knowing dark-horse Angie, something shady.

  I glanced back to find Vissimo were leaving their work stations to gather around the huge glass cylinder. The male vampires clearly visible around the other side shifted their attention from mine as soon as our gazes met.

  … Okay.

  Angelica set her eyes on the smooth concrete floor inside the tube. I did the same. This was where they rolled the dice? Did the dice fall from the ceiling or something?

  Angelica said in a whisper, “There are nine sub-clans in our clan. Each is ruled by one of the nine royal children.”

  Cutting her an incredulous look, I said, “You’re telling me Kyros has eight siblings? I thought you guys had low fertility.”

  “Remember that not all the king’s children are born of his queen.”

  Oh, right.

  She continued. “Each of the sub-clans controls an industry within Bluff City—entertainment, agriculture, food, education, retail, finance, health, and manufacturing. Kyros handles the largest industry—real estate, renting, and leasing.”

  Ingenium was far more complicated than I thought. When she said the winner had to own the city, I assumed she just meant the houses. This was a contest of economy on an immortal scale. I couldn’t even fathom how fucking complicated all the pieces had to be. Complicated enough that two thousand vampires worked in just one of the industries.

  “I don’t get why you need dice,” I said. “If you go every second day, what’s the point of them?”

  She arched a perfect brow. “There are two minutes to go. Watch and see.”

  I faced the tube along with everyone else, swallowing several times to control my leaping heart and surge of nausea. Before, the vampires had kept their attention on the monitors. Some had to be looking at me now.

  Murmuring broke out at my back and fresh beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. Something was happening back there, but instinct told me that if I turned around to face the Vissimo behind, things would go from bad to worse really quick.

  I refused to piss or vomit.

  Heat swept over me. A heat I couldn’t fail to recognise.

  “Fuck!” I choked. Shoving one instinct as another tried to force its way in, I spun on the spot, eyes searching for him.

  He leaned against the glass wall of a meeting room—the one Angelica had smirked at before. The door sat wide open, and I tore my eyes from Kyros’s black three-piece suit and matching tie as a string of vampires filed out after their boss. They halted, peering at Kyros and then the glass tube in confusion. One by one, their eyes fell on me.

  Each of them scowled, and I gasped as my chest seized in terror.

  I only recognised the male with the sandy hair from their midst. He was in the torture room on the first night.

  Kyros took a step forward, and I automatically edged sideways as the heat between us crept higher.

  “Where are you going?” Angelica murmured, eyes downcast.

  Shooting a glare at her, I said, “Are you shitting me? You knew he was up here. The thrall is still going. What were you thinking?”

  Angelica wasn’t stupid. Which meant she had her own agenda.

  I fucking hated being part of political games.

  “You’re perfectly safe with this many Vissimo,” she said under her breath.

  Sure.

  I kept edging around the glass tube until I stood on the opposite side to Kyros, where the heat was manageable.

  I stared back through the glass at him. He’d left the wall and stood just outside the glass across from me. The yearning to jump him was a simmer deep in my stomach, but even that had me feasting my eyes on the sloping angle from the tips of his shoulder to his hips. He was just so damn symmetrical. I couldn’t say that I’d ever had that thought before—because it was a pretty weird one—but shit, I bet a protractor could prove me right.

  I let my gaze roam over his chest to his full mouth, and higher to his eyes.

  The vampire’s lashes were downcast, his meadow greens on me. Well, part of me.

  Kyros lifted his focus from my breasts to my face after a few seconds.

  Such a charmer.

  Fuck you, I told him with a narrowing of my eyes.

  His green eyes blazed, and I recognised the flaring anger as the desperate longing clawing at my insides. I blinked as his eyes shifted over my shoulder.

  Movement erupted behind me.

  Jumping, I glanced back and watched as the Vissimo who’d stood directly behind me ran.

  I stared at Angelica.

  What’s happening?

  “Males,” she said, the amusement plain in her voice.

  Oh, right.

  They were putting space between me and them. Because of Kyros.

  Sigh.

  I peered to the other side of the glass tube where Kyros loomed, realising that side contained only female Vissimo. I’d been there just a minute ago, so the males had purposely arranged themselves far away from me to accommodate their boss’s… mood.

  Oops. Guess I went and messed that up.

  The females filed to my side without a word, rearranging themselves so the male Vissimo running around the level so they didn’t get too close to me could gather behind their boss.

  Not a single one stood closer to me than Kyros. I rolled my eyes and, too late, saw the man himself was perusing me again.

  Thankfully, the view of him was obscured as an image filled the glass tube. In the middle of the tube, two gorgeous men stood facing each other. A way behind each man, two women sat on thrones, and on the floor between the two beautiful men rested two dice.

  It seemed to be a live stream from wherever the kings rolled each night. The image was so clear I felt like I was in the room with them. Only the lack of sound reminded me that wasn’t the case. Creepy.

  “Each night, the kings and their queens gather to roll the dice,” Angelica murmured in my ear. “The dice are weighed and carefully checked by a member from an impartial clan each night beforehand.”

  That was a lot of effort. I guess the clans had no reason to trust each other. I’d paid attention to everything Angelica told me, but all the information was tinged with incredulity. I’d lived in Bluff City my entire life. If she was right, and I really was watching the kings of two warring vampire clans play a game that had spanned one hundred and forty-nine years, then I’d been part of a game my entire existence.

  I’d hated living within the elite world. But I’d merely existed in a rich game within a bigger, uglier game.

  Bile rose up my throat, and Angelica shot me a look.

  “Are you okay, Miss Tetley?”

  She could sense something was up. I shook my head, swallowing hard. “So did your king choose your sister for his queen after the dispute so all her children would be his?”

  Angelica nodded. “And fifty years ago, King Mikael also chose a queen.”

  I focused on the royals in the live stream. Kyros was related to one of them. Picking out his mother was too easy. She had the same meadow-green gaze, currently fixed on the Vissimo I assumed was her husband. The king had jet-black hair and blue eyes—like the bodyguard who’d gone head to head with Kyros in my first room. I could see hints of ruddy-brown in the king’s hair, too, a subtle likeness to Kyros’s toffee hair colour.

  He was larger even than Kyros by at least a head. Was
that an age thing, a blood thing, or a protein shake thing?

  I shifted to look at the other royal pair.

  The second king’s skin was olive, an obvious contrast to the other king’s golden brown. The main difference was the upward slope of his almond-shaped eyes. His queen had the same shaped eyes, though her dead-straight curtain of blonde hair and bright violet eyes were a stark difference to her lover’s hazel and dark-brown combination.

  “The kings aren’t related?” I asked for confirmation. They didn’t look it.

  The vampire beside me shook her head. “Kings rarely are.”

  The queens—both of them, took my breath away. The word exquisite came to mind. So graceful and untouchable. Like they’d break into a thousand pieces if I spoke too loud in their presence. But once I had a moment to blink through my initial response to them, I found my eyes continuously drawn to Kyros’s mother.

  There was something magnetic about her, even through the cameras capturing the dice roll.

  “They’ve done this each day for one hundred and forty-nine years?” I asked.

  Angelica didn’t tear her gaze from the tense scene. “No. We have two days off each month.”

  Their work standards hadn’t changed much in one and a half centuries—or their union sucked.

  “King Julius is about to roll,” she whispered.

  The female Vissimo at my back hushed. Even with my human ears, I could have heard a pin drop.

  King Julius stooped to pick up the dice, holding one in each of his massive hands; hands that could probably crush my little mouse head. I shivered. I never wanted to meet this guy face-to-face. He was one scary mothertrucker.

  He let his hands swing back and then whipped them up to shoulder height. As the dice left his fingertips, he bent over, adding a fierce backspin.

  The dice spun in the air, too fast for my eyes to track. I shook my head, refocusing as the two cubes started their fall to the stone flooring that the kings stood upon.

  Both kings zipped back to sit in the empty thrones beside their queens.

  It only took a moment to see why.

  The dice made contact with the stone floor and the vampire-strength backspin on them sent the cubes catapulting. They careened over the chamber, bouncing off the floor and furniture.

  I winced, imagining how loud it must be in real life.

  “If the dice hits a member of the royal family, there’s a re-roll. But King Julius has the best roll,” Angelica promised.

  A few females at my back murmured their agreement.

  I absorbed that, craning to watch as the dice slowed and eventually toppled onto their sides.

  “Seven,” I announced.

  Gasps rang out. Angelica shot me an amused look.

  I started as the live stream showing the kings and queens disappeared and a screen with the flashing colour blocks descended from the ceiling. Kyros was visible through the glass once again, and his hooded gaze held me in its grasp before he removed a small remote from his interior waistcoat pocket.

  Damn.

  I sucked in a ragged breath, pushing back at the growing inferno low in my stomach, but it was no good. The lusty embers were there to stay until either Kyros or myself had the sense to put more distance between us.

  Somehow I gathered that he wasn’t the retreating kind.

  Given the differences in our tooth length…

  I stepped back onto someone’s foot.

  I grimaced my apology to the glaring Vissimo and quickly shuffled forward again, biting down on my lip to withhold the yearning whimper that wanted to slip out.

  Kyros’s voice rumbled through Level 66, but I couldn’t miss the slightly strained undercurrent.

  “As our human guest has already announced,” he said, “today’s number is seven.”

  Was that his job? My bad.

  I glanced at Kyros, who had the remote lifted in the direction of the screen with the flashing blocks of colour.

  I concentrated on a shifting red dot. The dot moved seven times in response to Kyros’s command on the remote until it landed on an orange block. The entire orange block wasn’t flashing, just most of the squares within it. What did that mean?

  Were the blocks specific colours?

  Oh!

  “Yeti schlong!” I pressed my nose against the glass. “It’s Bluff City.”

  The image was a simplified map of the city. The colour blocks were the various suburbs. And the squares within them must be the individual houses within each suburb.

  I recalled the path of the red dot as Kyros clicked on the remote. The dot hadn’t moved around the perimeter of the city, it zig-zagged. There was a set path the vampire clans followed with the roll of the dice, just like snakes & ladders or Monopoly.

  Shit!

  The humans here weren’t only unaware victims of some ancient supernatural game; our city was set up like a game board.

  “Fuck me,” I blurted.

  “Miss Tetley,” Kyros said.

  I glanced up and choked as a wall of heat slammed into my body. He’d taken a single step around the glass tube. That was all it took. Heat flashed in his gaze and he visibly shuddered.

  Yep, he felt it too.

  But the vampire didn’t retreat. Was he serious? A pissing contest?

  Kyros spoke from between clenched teeth. “Kindly keep your observations until after the debriefing.”

  Oh. “Yeah, sure. I can do that. Continue.”

  His furious snarl ripped through the level, and my knees nearly gave way. I’d swear to whoever was listening that Angelica laughed under her breath.

  She was fucking crazy.

  And so was I.

  I’d given Kyros an order.

  His body shuddered and he bent forward, looking ready to bolt straight through the glass tube to rip my throat out. Though he wouldn’t manage that with the pheromones we were putting out. Honestly, I wasn’t against humiliating Kyros in some way, but I really didn’t want to get hot and heavy with him on the floor of Level 66 in front of hundreds of vampires.

  Or at all.

  That ship had well and truly sailed.

  Except if he came any closer, that’s where we’d be going.

  “Continue, if you’d like to,” I forced myself to say, dropping my gaze to the floor. You bastard.

  His snarling cut off abruptly. Someone needed to introduce the fucker to meditation. Maybe he could hire someone to massage his earlobes full-time too.

  “I will,” he hissed.

  I hovered still and quiet like a good little human, while Kyros rattled through the debriefing. Most was hard to interpret, but his stream of orders made me realise just how intricate this operation had to be. Roll forecasts, statistical probability for future rolls and for the movements of the enemy clan, budgeting, rental price fluctuations, and population trends. My initial impression was closer than I intended. This really was somewhere between Wall Street and a real estate empire.

  “Begin,” Kyros announced.

  If I hadn’t felt the lust bordering on panic, too, I would have believed his cool and calm act.

  Organised chaos ensued as the gathered Vissimo beelined for their stations—their reactions had to be pretty automatic after one hundred and forty-nine years.

  Angelica turned to me. “At ten past midnight, team leaders strategize with their group for an hour. Between one and one thirty, Kyros meets with team leaders to hear their reports and recommendations for the day. Two until three, the nine leaders of the sub-clans meet here to discuss the group strategy. Three to three twenty, Kyros presents the final game strategy to King Julius for approval.”

  When she paused, I asked, “Then what?”

  Angelica tilted her head back, lips curving. “And then our turn really begins.”

  She made it sound like what I’d just witnessed was high tea compared to an ice-hockey match.

  “Angelica,” Kyros snapped.

  He’d been speaking to a small crowd. Which only went to s
how that I was completely aware of him. Dang it.

  I undid two of the buttons of my blouse, certain my clothing had somehow become smaller in the last hour. I was overheating big time.

  The horde of female Vissimo behind me was gone, so I slid a foot back, sighing at the instant relief.

  I took another.

  And a third.

  So much better.

  “Yes, sir?” Aunty Angie replied.

  At her innocent tone, I stopped my retreat and pinned her with a glare. The dark horse was up to something sly. Since her agenda clearly involved me, I very much wanted to know why she was pushing Kyros’s buttons by bringing me up here during the thrall. And when I figured it out, I’d derail her plan immediately to teach her not to involve me in the future.

  A growl slipped between his teeth. “My office.”

  I snickered despite myself. “You’re in trouble, Angie.”

  His green gaze snapped to me, and I froze, barely clamping down on a squeak. A fucking squeak. My grandmother would fix me with a quelling look over the rim of her teacup if she knew.

  “What were you saying, Miss Tetley?” Angie murmured.

  The quiet ones always came out on top. “I’m going to put space between me and the—” I cut off, deciding the word jerk-off may not be wise to use “—him before there’s a repeat of last time.”

  I shouldn’t have said it.

  The moment I did, the painful simmering surged to outright flames. I could only remember the joyous second we’d reached for each other in my hotel room the other day.

  My wing-woman hair slithered over my shoulders as I tilted my head to Kyros. A hooded look revealed that he’d walked farther around the curved glass, eradicating my small retreat.

  “Save me,” I hissed, shooing the woman toward her nephew with the last scraps of my sanity.

  She grinned but obeyed.

  I was wise enough to consider the two rules Kyros gave me down on Level 61. I’d already broken one rule tonight by delivering a direct order. I couldn’t turn tail and run. He’d be on me in a second.