Vampire's Embrace: A Vampire Queen Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  She’d been brought to Killara’s presence, been told to kneel. The Mistress had blindfolded her, then that caressing, strong hand had cradled her arm. Nina’s brow creased as something wet was brushed onto the inside of her wrist. The smell was familiar, and yet not, as if it should have been a disagreeable odor but wasn’t. It was something that made her want to touch it…taste it.

  Then she heard a clank of metal, smelled a whiff of fire and smoke. Steele’s large hand clasped her forearm, close to the elbow, his other gripping her shoulder, holding her fast.

  “Be still,” The Mistress said, and then pain exploded in Nina’s arm.

  She’d cried out, the agony making it impossible to be silent, and she gagged at the smell of her own flesh burning. A smell she knew all too well. She fought Steele’s hold, but he was far stronger than her, and she couldn’t get her arm free. Not until it was done.

  The brand was taken away, and The Mistress’s hand was on her head, stroking her hair. “You did well,” she said. “You have been given the InhServ mark, over your Master’s blood, so when you get his third mark, it will remain for some time. When it must be refreshed, after you are third marked, it will be permanent.”

  Oblivious to the scenery passing outside the car window, Nina stared at the symbol. In the center of the circle of reddened flesh was the brand that had been marked by Alistair’s blood. A fleur-de-lis.

  “The mark of the InhServ, a symbol that you belong to another, forever.”

  Her gaze passed from her arm to the rest of her. She was dressed in a white silky blouse and a snug dark skirt that stopped just above her knees. Shoes with pencil thin heels that made her glad she’d been given instruction in how to walk in them. It felt odd to be wearing clothes.

  Her driver, Mr. Coleman, was part of Alistair’s staff. He was a stocky man in a black suit. He had no hair, and his face was shaped very much like a block of wood. It was also equally as expressionless. Was that a requirement for working for a vampire? He had a scar running from his ear to his jaw and some pocking on the opposite cheek she knew were burn scars. His eyes were a clear color, reminding her of shallow water over a bed of ashes.

  Alistair had not come. The Mistress hadn’t said he would. But of course a Master wouldn’t come and get his servant. She would be brought to him. She cleared her thick throat.

  “Did you get the scars in the war, Mr. Coleman?”

  The driver glanced at her briefly in the rearview mirror. “No, miss.”

  “There’s a poultice that we used in the hospital in Sydney to help the skin feel less tight and uncomfortable. It was a concoction one of the nurses created from her herb garden and can be put on the face at bedtime. I will send away for some, if you like.”

  The driver made a noncommittal grunt and returned his attention to the road. That had been the pattern of their conversations for the past hour. He would answer a direct question, but wouldn’t elaborate. If she was looking for some casual conversation to help her feel less nervous about what was ahead, he wasn’t in the mood to oblige.

  So she decided to make it worse. The Mistress had given her a sealed envelope, to be opened upon her arrival. Mr. Coleman had one, too, sitting next to him on the seat. Rationalizing that now or later didn’t make much difference, Nina opened her letter and let her gaze fall on The Mistress’s flowing script.

  The communication started out innocuously enough. Mr. Coleman would deliver his letter, which would formally present her to Alistair, certify her credentials. She wondered what kind of creative wording The Mistress had used to make those sound like more than they were. But she really wouldn’t have to dress it up for Alistair. He already knew Nina didn’t know what the hell she was doing.

  Then you will kneel before him as you have been taught, bow your head. You will say, “It is my honor to serve you, my lord. How may I attend you first, or would you prefer me to familiarize myself with your household until you have direct need of me?”

  An unexpectedly simple ritual. After that, what was the maxim?

  What will please him?

  What will please him?

  What will please him?

  Pretty much all vampires who deserved the privilege of an InhServ already had household staff, who could fill in the blanks on the minutiae, like where she would sleep, what the daily schedule was. Normal, straightforward things. If she wasn’t so worried about the wide range of unlikely things he could demand from her, she could pretend she was entering his home as a new housekeeper. Sadly, she was even less prepared to be his household help than she was to be his InhServ.

  Yet in the vampire world, the third marked servant was unquestionably in charge of the household, no matter what other staff worked it. Her word could be overruled only by that of her vampire master.

  One of the training mistresses had explained the ranking system among a vampire’s human staff. “You are considered the elite. Because you embrace a level of servitude that shames a nun or priest. Unquestioning, anticipating everything your Master or Mistress needs. Never with an ounce of pride, always grateful to be of service to your vampire.”

  She wondered what the current housekeeping staff would think of her being placed in charge of them. She barely knew how to boil an egg.

  Whereas, from the first day of her nurse training, Nina had known that was what she was meant to do, what she wanted to do.

  Don’t do this to yourself. Not now. She tightened her hands on one another, realized how cold her fingers were, and loosened them. But with every mile the car put between her and the InhServ training school, she was returning to the real world in her head. The absurdity of what she was being mandated to do, the fantastic nature of her role.

  Yeah, girls, can’t help our boys anymore. Have to go be some vampire’s property for the next three hundred years.

  The Mistress would have known a month’s worth of training, no matter how immersive, couldn’t stem the flood of a lifetime of other wants and beliefs indefinitely. The dam could break in the time it took to drive to Alistair’s home.

  Maybe she’d thought that last little intimate share the night before would help her keep things together. Which meant maybe it had been a straight manipulation, and that wasn’t her name at all. But Nina thought it might be.

  She dropped her attention to the last part of the letter, and her fingers shook on the paper.

  You will leave the clothes you are wearing in the car and they will be returned to me. You cross your Master’s threshold with nothing but what belongs wholly to him. If he is not home or ready to inspect you, you will kneel inside that threshold in submissive posture until he is ready to do so.

  “Bugger that,” she muttered. The Mistress wasn’t here. She wasn’t doing it. She glanced up at the mirror and met the driver’s gaze. It was steady, cool. Unsmiling.

  It reminded her of Steele’s implacability. If she tried to escape, Mr. Coleman was prepared to stop her. She was sure of it. She had no idea what the consequences for trying to run would be. To her, or to her family. But she could guess.

  Was the driver prepared to tear the clothes off her body if she didn’t present herself the way it was expected? Dump her unceremoniously in the entranceway? Was that what was in his letter?

  She was clutching her hands again. Taking a deep breath, she turned her mind to other things in an attempt to quiet the surge of panic, the renewed sense of being shut up in a coffin before she was dead. Oh God, why had she had that thought? It was far too close to the truth.

  Everything closing in. Salt water. Always the salt water. Followed by those eyes. Dead eyes, apathetic eyes…the staccato firing of the gun. The screams.

  It was too difficult to breathe. She kept going under. No, she wasn’t in the water. She was in a car. She was here. In the present.

  It was a very near thing, but she pulled herself out of it, even though she surfaced shaking and sweating. For the next few moments, she focused on breathing.

  Steady, old girl. Steady. She
imagined the hospital in Singapore, those times when there’d been a mob of lads brought in all at once and it seemed so overwhelming. She’d focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Getting through.

  But she’d been saving lives, making a difference. Helping. Not being an unpaid whore some man could treat however he wished. Sher, her roommates…they thought it was some great honor. Maybe they were just like the boys who thought it was such a romantic, amazing thing, running off to war, until they faced the godawful reality.

  You think you have been stripped of all control.

  She didn’t think it at all. She bloody well knew it.

  But Steele had the reality of being a third marked servant, and seemed to embrace it. He and The Mistress seemed very reserved toward one another, but that was to someone who wasn’t paying attention. The connection between them was as strong and constant as the ocean tide. Everyone involved in this insanity seemed to buy into it, except her.

  Everyone involved in this insanity had trained for years for it. Or, like Steele, had come to it willingly.

  When would Alistair mark her? When would she reach the point of no return? Immediately? She’d been told that some vampires made a big ritual of it, offering the marks over a period of weeks, as an InhServ proved themselves. Others did it within the first twenty-four hours.

  “If you’re hungry or thirsty,” Coleman said, bringing her back to the present, “there are some things in the cooler.”

  For lack of anything better to do, she opened it. Her brow lifted. Soda, water. Cheese and fresh bread. And a couple bottles of wine. Perhaps to settle her nerves? She’d take it. Another basket produced cups, a bottle opener, napkins. Traveling in style, she was.

  One pampered and turped sex slave, coming right up.

  Maybe a little more than turped. In her cups, really, but that was what happened when you drank a whole bottle of wine yourself and ate only a couple pieces of cheese. When the driver turned into the entrance to Alistair’s place and drove along another half mile, her first sight of the house was enough to bring the worries surging up again, a heaving sea in her lower belly.

  Bloody hell. It was a bloody estate. It was also beautiful.

  She’d been told he kept a place in Brisbane as an office of sorts for more formal Region Master duties. But this was his primary residence, outside Brisbane, in a quieter, exclusive section of the beaches making up the Gold Coast.

  His home rested in a spot of grand isolation, a jewel that overlooked the shore. It was a sprawling Victorian with iron lace framing the triple layer of terraces that wrapped completely around the structure. A whimsical array of parapets broke up the lines. His landscaper was worth his weight, because there were enchanting layers of flowers and plants that folded in toward the pathway to the door and followed the drive around to a garage.

  Was this place a perk of being Region Master, like a governor’s mansion of sorts? Or was it his? If so, what had he done to earn the money to have it built? He’d said he was three hundred years old. She expected that was plenty of time to earn the quid. Since Australia wasn’t colonized until the 1700s, she expected that meant he started life in some other part of the world, no matter that his accent and mannerisms were solidly Australian.

  She remembered Charlie and Rigby discussing him as if he were some type of aristocrat. The way he’d acted had only reinforced it. So yeah, he’d had money a while. Even if he’d been born dirt poor, a couple centuries were enough to refine a man’s manners, and money could teach him to put on airs.

  He really hadn’t put on airs with her, but that sense of command…he was used to being in charge.

  A gilded cage, but still a prison. The size of it, the power and money it represented, only reiterated how locked into all of this she was. She felt sick.

  Oh, bollocks, she really did. As Coleman brought the car to a halt on the circular drive, she scooted across the seat and shoved open the door. She made it two steps before baptizing an arrangement of ornamental grasses and nodding purple flowers with regurgitated wine and undigested cheese. Since she’d gotten lots of practice with target vomiting when she worked at the hospital, she felt a mild sense of accomplishment at keeping it all off the driveway. Until she looked down and bit back another curse. Crimson drops were sprinkled over the front of her ivory-colored blouse, quickly setting in to stain.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. She wasn’t alone.

  She’d vomited on the far side of the car, not in direct view of the front door. That had mattered not at all, for when she lifted her gaze, she met the appalled expression of a man dressed in a black suit. Even the tie and shirt were black. He was tall, rangy, like a colonel she’d seen visit their hospital a few times.

  He had remarkably steady eyes in a craggy face with bushy eyebrows. One had a slight cock to it that made him look perpetually caught between austerity and disapproval. He had big ears, and a receding hairline compensated with lots of fine silver hair along the sides. His blade of a nose made his piercing eyes look as if they were sighting down the bore of a weapon.

  His age might have been anywhere from forties to mid-fifties. She saw no evidence of arthritis in his big hands, but they were somewhat gnarled, like an older person or manual laborer. Yet the nails were manicured, and his impeccable appearance suggested a gentleman’s gentleman.

  He’d obviously come down from the front veranda to open the door for her. She could have claimed car sickness, but first off, the strong odor of the wine would eradicate any sympathy for that, and second, one had to care to make excuses. He could just sod off, couldn’t he, with his disapproving looks and his monochromatic dress theme.

  “Believe me, with the month I’ve had, it’s a miracle I didn’t arrive in worse bloody shape,” she said crisply and straightened. “Nina. I assume I’m expected, though you’d be my hero if you said he’d changed his mind and wants me to go home.”

  “Nero, miss.”

  “Seriously? Nero the hero.” She stifled a giggle. The wine was definitely not out of her system. She was going to bollocks this up beyond recognition. What had The Mistress said about not shaming her? Well, that train had left the station.

  Nina dove back into the car on hands and knees, crawling across the cushion to find the little toiletry kit that had also been helpfully provided. She leaned over the seat, pressing against Coleman’s boulder-sized shoulder for balance and because being straight upright was too much effort. She used his mirror to tidy her hair and touch up her makeup, just as she’d been shown. Light touches, to highlight her “natural beauty.” Right-o. Though she wished she had a bright red lipstick, because she’d lay it on thick, make her lips look macabrely blood-kissed. A vampire should appreciate that.

  Why the hell hadn’t The Mistress accompanied her? She’d been told, There is no need. You are his now. But that was the normal process for someone like her roommates, who’d done this for so long it was practically the only life they knew.

  Was Nina really wishing for someone to babysit her through this? “Pull it together,” she muttered.

  She backed out. The skirt rode up, leaving her frowning as she put her teetering heel on the gravel drive. She wiggled, tugging down the hem before she faced Nero. His expression brought to mind her father, when she was eight and had turned up at the church social in her knickers. She’d been covered with mud and toting a basket of frogs to show him. She couldn’t remember why it had been so important to show those to him, then and there. She’d explained she was in her knickers so she wouldn’t get her church clothes dirty, but she’d left those by the creek.

  Though he’d initially had a very disapproving look, she remembered seeing some twitching around his mouth when she delivered her solemn explanation. A little twinkling to his eye.

  She’d made him laugh, she was sure of it. She’d seen love in his eyes. But it hadn’t been enough. She’d never been enough. She wouldn’t be now. Nero’s expression, devoid of any amused twitches, said it as clearly as
a shout in her face.

  She collapsed onto the car seat and put her head in her hands, her feet on the drive. “Bloody hell, I’ve a headache,” she said, her voice suspiciously thick.

  She lifted her head at the silence, and found Nero was no longer there. She looked over her shoulder. “He went back inside,” Coleman said.

  “Course he did. Probably telling the rest of the staff that they sent a reject.”

  “They are expecting that.”

  She sent him a sharper look, despite the pain that increased in her temples. “What does that mean?”

  Coleman rubbed at his smudge of a nose and lifted a shoulder, as if he was already saying too much. Nina lifted the other bottle of wine. “Tell me, and I give you this and cop to drinking both bottles. It’s good stuff.”

  Coleman eyed her and sighed. “Bribery isn’t necessary, or appropriate to your position, miss. Lord Alistair is the first Region Master appointment who’s a made vampire. Not a born one. Many vampires oppose made vampires ascending to positions of power in the vampire ranks. So, when Lady Lyssa said he should be accorded the honor of an InhServ, a privilege reserved for vampires of power and influence, but always born vampires of power and influence, there was speculation that they would send the bottom of the barrel.”

  Coleman served Alistair. She might have questioned why he was being so forthcoming, but it was obvious. He was letting her know up front they were prepared for her to completely cack this up.

  She didn’t care. She didn’t want to care. For once in her life, she wanted to be like so many others and not strive to exceed expectations in every way, as if it were mandated in her blood and bone.

  She tuned into her surroundings to find Nero standing before her again.

  “Miss.” He offered a new blouse, to her surprise, and a bottle of mouthwash. “I brought them from your room.”

  “Nero, you may be a hero after all.” She jerked open the buttons of her shirt, shrugged out of it and tossed it into the back seat before putting the new one on, tucking it into her straightened skirt. She swigged some of the mouthwash and spat it into the abused flowers. Only when she was done with that and had handed Nero the mouthwash back did she register his faintly horrified look. Coleman looked like he’d choked on a bark of surprised laughter.