Vampire's Embrace: A Vampire Queen Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  She’d done it. The final test passed. When she went home this time, for her birthday, it would be the last time she would do so as a student of the Inherited Servant program. She would go straight from home to Lord Alistair’s household.

  But she was headed for Sydney first. Her sister had said she couldn’t come home because of her work schedule. Sher wanted to see her one more time before she became Alistair’s servant. Her mother would only speak generally of Nina’s life over the past couple years. She’d moved out, she was working in Sydney, she seemed content. Nina’s letters, though fewer than before, had been cheerful enough.

  She was her twin, though. Sher knew something was wrong. For years her training had underscored in myriad ways that an InhServ must let family conflicts be resolved without her direct input. Her first priority was always serving her Master.

  After assignment, she would be even more aggressively discouraged from family contact, weaning herself and her family completely from that connection. For two reasons. First, she would outlive all of them, by decades. When Nina was a very old woman, hopefully with great-grandchildren at her knee, Sher would still look in her twenties, and have a couple centuries of life left to her. Second? Serving her Master’s will would determine every moment of her daily life. Any distractions drew her away from that prime directive.

  But remembering how often her sister had looked so desolate when she left her, Sher wanted to give Nina this one more moment. She wanted to put her arms around Nina, tell her she loved her. She hoped that one day her sister would understand how much Sher truly wished for her to find happiness and the family she wanted. And how very much Sher cherished the bond between them, even if she could give nothing to it that Nina desired.

  She might not be able to be part of Nina’s life, but Sher would never forget her. She wanted her sister to be sure of that.

  The strength of her resolve to see Nina one more time made her feel a little discomfited. To reassure herself and center her mind, she recalled her core training.

  My Master’s will determines my life’s path.

  I surrender to that.

  Confirming it, Sher called his name to mind with deep reverence.

  “Alistair.”

  In sleep, Nina’s lips moved, saying it. She moved restlessly again as she imagined strong hands on her, stroking her. Lifting her arms, pinning them above her on the bed as his head dipped, fangs flashed. Her body would rouse to his if he had the slightest need of it.

  She imagined herself kneeling, meeting him for the first time, presenting herself as his in the formal ritual. His gaze slid over her naked body, studying, assessing. She straightened her back, hands clasped behind it, even as she kept her eyes lowered. She would be an asset. Would make him proud to have her in his service. She would do anything he needed. Be his. It was what she’d been born, bred and trained to do. She would do it well, love her vampire master with everything she was.

  The car wobbled on the blind curve, and suddenly it was facing a squadron of Japanese soldiers. They’d set up a machine gun right on the center line. They were gesturing fiercely, speaking in angry voices, pointing over the ledge, toward the water below.

  “No!” Nina’s scream in the dream was loud. In the quiet darkness of the boarding house, it came out a strangled gasp, a whimper, her hands tearing at the covers then letting go, to reach out and grasp nothing.

  The car spun, the loose wheel rolling away as the vehicle skidded, flipped as if tossed carelessly by a giant. It somersaulted over the edge of the drop, plummeting toward the water. Gunfire followed it, and Nina was holding Helen’s hand and Nate’s, only they were dragging her down into the water. She glimpsed Alistair on his boat, but he had the engine running, churning the water, and he was moving away swiftly. He didn’t hear her, see her, because she wasn’t there. She didn’t exist. She was below the water’s surface, dropping deeper and deeper, her dreams of being an InhServ lost forever.

  More gunfire, harsh language, rapid syllables. The taste of blood, the rush of water over bobbing bodies. There were no hands to pull her out this time, only the sheer will to survive helping her claw her way out of the dream.

  Nina gasped for air in the suffocating stillness of her room. Despair gripped her. This was never going to get better. It felt like her life was ending.

  Had ended, in the water.

  An hour later, when the phone rang, waking the landlady and sending her to Nina’s door, she realized it had. But the life she’d felt ending in her dream wasn’t hers.

  It was Sher’s.

  Then she learned it was both.

  Chapter Six

  No. No, no, no.

  It was the most useless word in the English language, capable of stopping nothing, except the helpless human compulsion to fire it off in the subconscious like a machine gun toward an undefeatable foe.

  Having her twin ripped from her consciousness was bad enough. Waking to that shrill middle-of-the-night message from her brother to learn Sher had died in a car accident had merely confirmed what Nina already knew.

  Numb from that, from all of it, she wouldn’t have expected anything else to cut as deeply, or shatter her heart further. She was wrong. When she’d come home, her father had waited exactly one day to tell her.

  We are still required to comply with the InhServ requirement, Nina. We must provide our next oldest child, which would be you.

  The two days that followed had vacillated between screaming fights, aching silences. Her brothers lived elsewhere now, but had come home for the funeral. They’d wisely fled to the homes of friends. Nina had made countless turns around the neighborhood, walking miles in circles. She slept under a tree in a park, was brought home by a police officer and treated like some poor wobbly mental patient by her parents, who’d ushered her up to her room. Her mother had offered the policeman tea. Offered Nina tea.

  Because tea would solve all the world’s problems, wouldn’t it?

  Her whole future had been turned upside down and been put on a one-way track where she had no choice to get off the train. She was told she would be “allowed” to attend her sister’s funeral, bloody fucking, buggering hell.

  Her father had said her language had become far too rough. He had no idea how much Nina restrained herself.

  Later that night, she was sitting on her bed, staring at a wall she couldn’t see, when her mother came into the room. She was carrying a suitcase, and began speaking quickly as she entered, not meeting Nina’s gaze.

  “I decided it’s best to go ahead and pack your things.” She gestured with a piece of paper as Nina stared at her blankly. “I…uh, didn’t realize I’d kept this, from when Sher went off to the program when she was sixteen. The Mistress told me to use it to help you pack, and gave me some additional notes. It says what things you can take with you. You’ll be taken to the InhServ training school first, to get you oriented.”

  Her mother spoke too fast, and then rattled off the list as she bustled around the room. No items that were too personal. No pictures, no childhood stuffed toy for comfort.

  Nina rose, picked up the picture of Sher that was by her bedside and put it in the suitcase. Her mother watched her, biting her lip. When Nina sat back down, her mother approached and put trembling fingers on the photo. Looking up, she met Nina’s eyes for the first time. “I’m so sorry, love,” she said softly, and tears shone in her eyes. “This would be one of those things.”

  Davinia. Her mother’s name was Davinia. It was easier to think of her that way than as her Mum as she took the picture out of the suitcase. Nina noted how gently she set the picture on the shelf, before she wiped her eyes.

  “Are those tears for me?” Nina asked coldly. “Or because she’s dead?”

  Davinia’s attention snapped to her, her mouth tightening. “It’s for all of it,” she said shortly.

  “Do you have any idea how cruel this is?” Nina demanded. “Do you even care?”

  “The purpose is not cruelty,” Davin
ia corrected. She was back to that steady, logical voice that Nina hated so much. She wondered if the woman who bore her was really human, or a robot that had been created in some laboratory to raise her and Sher. “It’s to help you fully embrace the InhServ life. Facilitate your rebirth as a member of the vampire world.”

  “As a slave of the vampire world,” Nina picked up the picture, put it back in the suitcase again. “I’ll pack my own things. After the funeral, I’m returning to the hospital. I won’t do this. I’m not Sher.”

  She sounded rational, firm. She’d detach herself, treat her parents the way she’d treat a patient who couldn’t make sense of things, who was suffering. Though those two qualities might just as easily describe herself, Nina wasn’t oblivious to the fact her mother was suffering.

  “You can’t go back to the hospital, Nina. If you try, they will go to collect you.”

  “I’ll go to the constables.”

  “Then you will get people killed.”

  Nina collapsed into a chair, staring at her. “Why am I worth so little to you? And what they give you worth so much?”

  Her mother flinched, but when she spoke again, her voice was lower, as if she was holding onto strong emotions with both hands. “Serving the vampire world is a great honor to this family, Nina.”

  “For generations, I know. You’ve told—”

  “You will listen to me,” her mother snapped. “For once, will you just…listen.”

  Nina started at the tone. Her mother closed her eyes. When she spoke again, she was calmer, but Nina could still hear the frayed edges. “This family has been bound to their world for over two hundred years. If a promised InhServ candidate refuses, the family’s loyalty to the vampire world must be questioned, as to whether the existence of vampires is a secret that will be safe with them anymore. If the Council deems it is not…”

  Nina swallowed. “So they’ve blackmailed you, threatened you for decades. Fear. That’s why—”

  “No,” her mother said decisively. She laid a hand over Nina’s, gripped. “It never happens, Nina, because those bonds are deep. They are formed and based on many exchanges, precious favors owed and given. There has never been a situation where a family was sacrificed because of an InhServ candidate betrayal, because it simply never occurs to any of us to desire the ending of that link. I know you don’t understand. This is so unfortunate, all of it. I wish more time could be given to help you see…”

  “Yeah. It’s so unfortunate that Sher died.”

  Her mother’s hands clenched. For a moment, Nina thought she might slap her face as she’d done when she was little and wasn’t minding.

  “I can’t talk to her about this. Sher was better at it.”

  Her mother’s voice cracked, and she started folding up a shirt as if her life depended on it. Looking up, Nina saw her father in the doorway.

  He also was grieving; she could see it in the deep lines of brow and around the mouth. But there was a distance that she couldn’t bridge, that made her grief for Sher seem unshared.

  “Please, Nina,” her father said, and there was a harshness to his tone, suggesting he was holding onto control of his emotions by a thread. “Please, for once, try to understand. Don’t tear this family apart. Don’t dishonor us. We wouldn’t do this if we knew it wasn’t for the best. You’ve always trusted us before in that.”

  “No,” she said slowly. “I didn’t. I never did. Sher did. I never understood, and I never will. I don’t even know who you are.”

  There’d always been a chasm in the path of love she bore for them, one growing ever wider by the moment. She was losing everything.

  Her mother raised her dark brown gaze to her father. “Call The Mistress. Tell her Nina needs to be brought to them now.”

  “Before the funeral?” Nina demanded, surging off the bed. “You’d deny me the right to say goodbye to my sister?”

  “If I think giving you that chance will provide you time to put together a futile escape plan, yes.” Her mother nodded her head, her jaw set like brittle granite. “Which is what you are thinking.”

  Nina stared at her. “I should have died on that beach. I wish I had.”

  But she didn’t, she knew she didn’t, and that made this all worse. She swayed suddenly, and when her mother started to rise, she shook her head, backing away. “Don’t,” she said in a terrible voice. “You have their eyes. Don’t come near me.”

  Her parents didn’t ask who she meant, and perhaps that was just as well. They wouldn’t want to hear that she was remembering the soulless eyes of the Japanese soldiers before they fired the machine gun. Before they shot down a row of women walking with clasped hands into the water.

  The memory swamped her, as it sometimes did, taking over all her senses. She broke out in a cold sweat, and when her parents came toward her anyway, she started screaming and crumpled, her room and their presence swallowed.

  It was poor but undeniable evidence of their love for her that, when she surfaced, she was on her bed, her head being bathed by a wet cloth, her mother’s scent close. She stroked Nina’s hair, her shoulder. Her voice was soft as she sang a soothing lullaby she’d sung when they were young.

  Davinia’s mother had sung it to her, Nina remembered her once saying. “The Night Nursery.” The song was achingly appropriate. Though instead of the sleeping children being visited by a dead mother, she could well imagine who her mother was thinking about.

  For when the sun has gone to sleep

  and all the world's in bed,

  then someone comes to see us here,

  whom Nursey says is dead…

  Her mother faltered over the next stanza, tears choking her voice, and then she managed to rally enough to make the next two more coherent. Nina kept her eyes shut, allowing herself this moment with her mother’s touch on her brow, her hand clasped in hers. She needed to believe in this small evidence of her love, even as she knew she’d never understand the shape of it.

  She comes in thru the skylight

  for the door is not allowed

  Her eyes are bright as little stars

  Her dress is like a cloud.

  She holds me very kind and tight

  and talks about her land,

  where all the flowers are boys and girls

  with mothers close at hand…

  Nina opened her eyes. She and Sher had their mother’s brown eyes, the shape of her face, but they’d gotten their height from their father, because their mother was barely five feet and he was just under six. She looked even smaller today.

  They said nothing, just held gazes. Eventually, her mother took her touch from Nina’s face, but clasped Nina’s hand. When Nina finally turned her head, she saw the suitcase had been packed and was by the door. Her mother quelled her abrupt panic with a squeezing of her fingers and quiet words.

  “You will attend the funeral, Nina. I did put Sher’s picture in the suitcase. The Mistress permitted it, for the time being, given the special circumstances. But…”

  She swallowed, the hesitation drawing Nina’s gaze back to her. She realized her father stood in the doorway, watching them, a faceless silhouette. It was dark, the only light from the hallway.

  “You’ll be picked up from the graveside,” he said, when Davinia didn’t say anything. “No sense in drawing it out. We know this is hard, Nina.”

  You don’t know anything, she wanted to say. They’d never seemed bothered by the requirement that Sher be turned over to the vampire world, trained for it like a monkey since birth. The surge of anger was too easy to fuel, though, and she was too weary to go there again. At least right now.

  She made herself focus on her mother’s face. Remembering how she herself had dealt with what had happened to her in Singapore, shutting down, living life behind a pleasant mask, Nina wondered what emotions lived behind her mother’s facade.

  She didn’t want to know, she realized. She simply couldn’t deal with finding out if what she wished was there was genuinely
absent.

  “We hope that, once you’re there, at the InhServ campus, you’ll understand more and find it in your heart to forgive us,” Davinia said at last. “If you write, I will answer. I promise, Nina. Until they don’t let me anymore.”

  When Nina said nothing, Davinia looked toward Willem. Thinking of him by his name was easier, too. She remembered Sher had been required to call them by their names after age six. No more Mum or Da.

  “Let’s let her rest,” he said quietly.

  Davinia nodded. She rose, her hand slipping away from Nina’s. When she moved to the door, the two of them paused there, looking at her. She turned away, faced the wall, and closed her eyes. She heard the door close, the light reduced to a mere sliver along the white wall.

  Numbness set in. This was it. Her future supposedly no longer her own to determine. The only way to get away was to come up with an amazing, daring escape, and she had no resources for that. Ironically, the only one who came to mind with those talents was the male to whom she was being given like some feudal tithe.

  And yet… Was that the solution she was overlooking? She couldn’t dissuade her parents, and appealing to the Vampire Council was like being a sacrificial sheep petitioning the Old Testament God for mercy. So that left one person who might hear her appeal.

  The one who now owned her.

  No diplomatic language, no prettying it up, because in the InhServ world, it was an honor to be a vampire’s property. For up to three hundred years, the natural lifespan of a third marked servant.