Thinking Adano’s name left a sour taste in my mouth, and it was made worse when Ednis adjusted my legs and probed the sensitive flesh of my vulva. This couldn’t end soon enough.
“Are you in charge of the reproduction center?” I asked to distract myself.
“I oversee all medical areas of Silver Hollow. I’m sure you knew that already,” she replied. “On your back. Lift your knees and spread them.”
I did as I was told and Ednis slipped something hard and vaguely cold inside of me. More metal. I resisted the urge to wince and ignored the burn in my eyes. I’m a slayer. This is nothing, I reminded myself.
Out loud, I asked, “Why me? Why Adano?”
“As I explained before, your genes are complementary. You aren’t related in any way, and you’ll produce a fine scamp. With as few males as we have, that isn’t often the case. You’re a rare opportunity.”
“You also said something about needing a warrior, about Adano being rambunctious?”
Ednis rotated the metal stick inside of me, and this time I did wince. I could make her stop. All I had to do was kick her in the face.
I breathed and commanded my body to remain still.
“Indeed,” Ednis said.
I swallowed. “But I’m a slayer. You don’t want me to cripple him.”
“You won’t. You’ve had some discipline issues. You’re the type who acts first and asks for forgiveness later, but you’re loyal to your kingdom. You’ll do your duty, and you’ll do it well. Most importantly, from now on, you’ll leave the thinking to your superiors.”
I didn’t speak another word. Ednis said all I needed to know. This was a test through and through. With this, they’d finally beat out the spark of autonomy I’d carried since I was a scamp. A lethal warrior was trained to act, not think. Using thralls during our free time was acceptable and safe, but it was dangerous to take home a comrade’s corpse. I didn’t pretend to understand the logic, but the words Fyefa spoke to me last night replayed in my head. “If you do anything like this again, where everyone can see you acting… strange, I’ll kill you.”
More than “disobedient,” I was “strange.” For some reason, that scared everyone around me.
I could curb the strangeness. I could and would. Getting back to White Team, to Fyefa, was the most important thing to me, and I’d do it no matter what the cost.
CHAPTER 9
LISETTE
WHEN Ednis had finished her invasive examination, she led me to another room on the opposite end of the reproduction center. A classroom, to be exact. I had attended classes as a scamp. They had usually taken place in the coliseum, and they were always about honing our bodies in one way or another: the best blood choices, efficient blood digestion, basic combat training, first aid, and much more.
This was not that.
I sat at a metal desk with a pactputer resting on top of it. I was logged in to my account on the Silver Hollow system. The keyboard was attached in case we wished to type our own notes. While the account was something I had as soon as I was old enough to navigate through a pactputer, it wasn’t something I often used outside of the occasional typed reports. Usually, slayers didn’t have to do that sort of thing manually. We gave the accounts orally and someone else took care of the tech side of our operations—outside of missions. On missions, White Team left Claire in charge of our tech. How someone so lazy could be so productive as well as a proficient slayer, I didn’t know, but Claire claimed that laziness made efficiency nonnegotiable.
I glanced to my left. The baby face of a scamp met my gaze with a smug smirk. The vessels in this classroom were thirteen years old. Thirteen. To say I felt old at twenty-four would have been an understatement. I didn’t belong here. Every passing moment inside of the reproduction center made that clearer and clearer.
Fyefa, don’t you dare give up on me. I’m coming back.
When Ednis walked past me on her way to the front of the classroom, I kept my voice low and asked, “How old is Adano?”
She didn’t stop and replied loud enough for the adolescent scamps to hear. “Eighteen. That is the youngest we allow our vampires and vampyres to couple. Why is that? Can anyone tell me?” She set her pactputer on the desk in front of the large screen taking up the entirety of the classroom’s front wall.
A heavyset scamp raised her hand.
Ednis pushed her round glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Mendi, please tell us.”
“At eighteen we’ve reached the highest rate of reproductive success. We’ll maintain this peak until we turn two hundred and fifty, which is when our fertility declines. This is true of our vampyres as well.”
“That is correct. Lisette, what do you know of sex?”
All the scamps in the room turned toward me. Their eyes were aglow, and their twitching cheeks were a sign of held-back laughter. My memories of being a scamp, a novice, had faded. Now I was reliving them.
“A vampyre’s erect penis penetrates a vampire’s vagina,” I said. I knew that much, and I’d heard many other things among the warriors and slayers bragging, but I assumed this, specifically, was what Ednis cared about. The reproduction center’s sole purpose was to create more scamps.
“And ejaculates inside of her. Essentially.” Ednis tapped her pactputer’s keyboard and the screen behind her came to life with diagrams of vampire anatomy, female and male. “Age thirteen is usually when a vampire’s or vampyre’s sex drive spikes. It’s common for a vampire’s sex drive to activate when in the presence of a vampyre, or even a male thrall. Some argue a male human might evoke the same reaction, but they are weak and therefore poor specimens to practice on.
“A vampire won’t be able to conceive until a vampyre’s semen has been introduced to her body. Sometimes it will take more than one attempt, but eventually a vampire will bleed. She’ll bleed for a day at most. As soon as she’s stopped, her thirty-day cycle begins. Give or take a few days, this is the time when a vampire can conceive. If she goes those thirty days without conceiving, her body resets, and the bleeding must be started again to create another thirty-day window.”
This, I didn’t know. There was no reason for me to know. Because I’m a fucking slayer, dammit.
“Vampire reproduction can be tricky. While we’ve learned how to store a man’s sperm by freezing them, we’re unable to do the same with a vampyre’s. They die as soon as they leave his body unless inside of a vampire’s, and even then they are quite fragile. Likewise, penetration is necessary for conception, whereas a man could technically impregnate a woman by only wetting her vulva. Since we can store a man’s sperm, we can also artificially inseminate a woman. Obviously, we can’t do the same to a vampire, though we continue to try.
“This is why we have such a strict system in place for breeding. To keep our kind strong, we must pair vampires, their genes, wisely. Inbreeding can be a problem as not many vampyres are born compared to vampires. About one vampyre is born per every hundred vampires, though that statistic has been made worse by the Prime War. Werewolves have the opposite problem we have. We target their wereas and they target our vampyres whenever the opportunity arises. Our vampyres are kept safe inside of this facility, and that’s why none of you have ever seen one. Until the time you are paired, that will remain true.” Ednis eyed me. “We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”
Once again, I hoped my training wouldn’t take over and result in Adano’s death when it came time to couple. The queen would never let me return to White Team if that happened. She’d sanction my death. Our vampyres were too precious, the most precious things we had.
Then another thought popped into my head. If conceiving was so fragile a thing, couldn’t I find a way to fake my infertility?
I’d get out within two months. That was what Ednis had said. Maybe I wouldn’t be a participant in the Schengs’ ultimate demise, but I would get out of here.
However, there was one problem I could see straight away: this trickery would require Adano’s cooper
ation.
“Lisette, your eyes please,” Ednis tapped the large screen behind her with a metal stick. “You’re meeting Adano tomorrow, and you’re expected to perform.”
CHAPTER 10
LISETTE
THE room I had been assigned was small, a perfectly square concrete box aside from the miniature lavatory. The bed was centered, firm and supportive. Beyond the bed and lavatory, there wasn’t much to this room. The comms panel was the only tech outside of the usual commodities. I was allowed to request a pactputer, but I had no reason to. Also, there were no cameras, a potentially useful piece of information I logged away for later. I slept almost as soon as Ednis was done with me for the day. I knew I’d need my strength tomorrow.
I woke up past midnight, much earlier than the rise of the sun. The last of my cooldown aches had faded. I had fully recovered, and I was restless. So, I did what I could to maintain my slayer routine. I stripped out of the gown but kept my underthings. First, I warmed up my muscles with some easy stretches and then slowly worked my way up from there: strength builders, barakor forms, anything that didn’t require machinery. By the time I was finished, my black hair was plastered to my face with sweat. I wondered if I could request a hair tie. My hair was much too long without one.
My stomach growled, announcing my thirst. Blood was my current craving, but I would have taken water too.
A beep answered my stomach’s cry. I pushed my hair out of my face as a quiet voice came through the comms panel. “Lisette? Are you awake? It’s Hireh.”
The room is soundproof too, then, I noted.
I twisted the metal handle and opened the door. Hireh skittered back like a frightened mouse into a metal cart and another thrall. “I’m to prepare you to meet Adano,” she said breathlessly and with her head bowed.
“What’s first?” I tugged the gown over my body. My hair clung to my face again, and I thought about demanding scissors to chop it all off.
“Breakfast.” Hireh opened a sliding door on the cart’s side. Cold oozed out of it, and there was a decanter of blood inside. Hireh poured a glass of blood and offered it to me. I took it and drank, but it was barely a couple of sweet swallows. When I returned the glass for a refill, Hireh placed it on top of the cart where other dirty glasses sat.
“That’s it?” I asked as the second thrall took the cart away.
“It’s merely an appetizer, Vessel Lisette. Most of your blood will be direct from now on—which you will be allowed to indulge in after you’ve met Adano.”
I bristled at the use of “vessel.” I was no longer White First. You’ll get it back, I told myself.
Taking blood directly sounded obnoxious. I’d have preferred the rest of that decanter. While in Silver Hollow, I had always taken blood from our stores, not straight. I could have taken it straight. It was a privilege, one I could have exploited as a slayer but never had. Just as other warriors took thralls to indulge in sex, drinking the thrall’s blood during or after that indulgence was also an option.
Many had called me uptight because I never partook in any of the frivolities. Because I’m a slayer. I took my duty more seriously than anyone—except for Fyefa.
“If you’ll come with me, please.” Hireh bowed lower. The scrub suit she wore was too large for her. It made her round as a ball when her natural shape was curvy.
“Lead the way,” I said gruffly. There was nothing else for me to do here.
I followed Hireh down a couple of quiet halls until the sound of water zipping through pipes filled the area. The thrall pushed open metal double doors and steam consumed us like a rolling fog. The opaque white cleared, revealing vessels and various extensions of what seemed to be an ever-growing bathhouse. It was still part of the reproduction center, but its existence and size explained the absence of a shower in the room they had provided me.
Where Hireh led me, Vessels sat on metal stools or stood up against the concrete wall lined with mounted showerheads. Their thralls stood at their sides, giving them a thorough wash. Water poured out in excessive amounts and fell through the various drains planted on the ground to keep the place from flooding. When a free space with a dry showerhead presented itself, Hireh gestured to it and the empty stool waiting below.
“I’ll take your clothes,” she said while bowed in half. With how much time this thrall spent hunched over, I hadn’t looked her in the eye once.
I stripped off my gown and underthings. Hireh took them away and returned with a bucket containing bar soap, shampoo, and a scrub brush. I moved toward the showerhead, twisting the handle below. Water flowed at a set temperature, and Hireh hovered behind me with her arm extended and mouth slightly parted.
“Soap.” I held out my hand. “You don’t have to wash me.”
“Actually, I do.” This was the first time Hireh didn’t bow in deference. I caught the defiance in her dark brown eyes. I had seen that look in many Schengs before I killed them. This thrall wasn’t as passive as she’d have everyone believe. And so I gave her a second look.
Coal-black skin with that vivid colorful undertone revealing her human origin, thick hair shaved down to an inch from her scalp, curvy but made round by her dingy scrub suit, several inches shorter than me, once human, and now a product of vampires. I didn’t see her brand. I doubted I would have recognized the teeth pattern, but I searched for it anyway. All thralls had a mark left by the vampire who had turned them. I had never seen it done, but I had heard how it worked.
It was the venom in our fangs that did it. We could release our venom at will, a good thing, perhaps, or any human we buried our fangs into would have become a thrall. Oddly enough, our venom only affected humans this way. For any other creature injected with our venom, they simply became sluggish and docile, helpless prey until it wore off. A vampire’s venom affected other vampires too. Since each vampire’s venom was unique, it could affect the receiving vampire in a variety of ways. Apparently, this was also true for thralls. Often biting and exchanging venom was part of foreplay—or so I had heard before coming here and then again in greater detail after attending Ednis’s class.
I ignored the batch slave that I had no part in creating and took the bar soap from the bucket. Then I stepped into the warm water spray.
“Vessel Lisette, please let me wash you.”
I bared my teeth. I had let Ednis probe me yesterday, but I didn’t have to let this thrall do anything. She was a slave, my slave while I was here.
Hireh didn’t move toward me. Good. She realized I was serious.
Why would anyone want a slave to pester them all day? At least they weren’t allowed in White House. A slayer had to go to her slave to enjoy him. It spared the rest of us.
I turned to the wall so that I wouldn’t have to see Hireh anymore and so that the water sprayed my front. I scanned my nails and scrubbed away the dried blood underneath them. I had missed cleaning them before, during the quick shower Ednis allowed before bringing me here.
“Vessel Lisette.”
An orderly had joined Hireh behind me, a vampire like myself. “Yes?”
“This thrall is your personal slave while at the reproduction center, but she’s under Ednis’s orders first. You must let her do her job or there will be consequences.”
Fuck it all. “Understood,” I replied. The little rat tattled on me.
Hireh wouldn’t meet my eyes, but she was bold enough to snatch the slippery bar soap from my hand. I restrained myself well enough to let her. I escaped the lukewarm water cascading down on me so Hireh could scrub every inch of me. I didn’t complain, didn’t fight, but my hands stayed fisted through it all. Hireh scrubbed my skin so hard red showed more than gray. The sting didn’t last long, however. Whatever blood the thrall had given me as an appetizer this morning had been very nutritious.
“Rinse off,” Hireh said.
Some slave. It’s more like I’m the slave, I thought.
I stayed under the rhythmic water spray longer than necessary. Eventually, I turne
d it off, figuring the thrall wouldn’t fault me for that, and was met with a fluffy towel. Hireh patted me down. Head to toe. She even stood on the stool to bridge the gap in our height. Several vessels were enduring the same treatment. Though they wore relaxed expressions that suggested they enjoyed it more. We were like an assembly line.
The towel was large enough to cover down to my knees. Hireh wrapped and tied it around me to do just that, and then she took me to a mirror-lined table where vessels sat to be pampered. She brushed my hair and used a hairdryer at the same time, adding unnecessary volume to my already-thick hair. But it wasn’t unpleasant.
Fyefa had brushed my hair when we were scamps. I had forgotten how nice it could feel, and it surprised me that it felt nice now; Hireh’s touch was gentle when it needn’t have been.
“Why clean me when I’ll be dirtied soon enough?” I asked when she turned off the noisy hairdryer.
“I’ll wash you again when you’re done.”
Wonderful.
Hireh shuffled away without an explanation. I didn’t bother calling after her. I stared at my reflection. Violet-red eyes stared back at me. The towel fit snugly just under my arms, showing my shoulders, biceps, forearms, wrists, hands. I had trained every inch of my body, and it showed. I didn’t match the smooth vessels at either side of me.
In a physical competition, I could beat any of them in a heartbeat. The only way they might defeat me would be if I had been malnourished while they had been drinking highly nutritious blood. Even then, it was nearly impossible. Fighting and winning was about much more than brute strength. I had experiences they couldn’t fathom, and my body could withstand strains theirs couldn’t. If anyone here took a single vial of condensed blood, her body would reject it.
And for what? All of those precious skills I’ve taken years to master and I’m here.
Vampire Captives (From Blood to Ashes Book 1) Page 5