by Sofia Daniel
My gaze traveled down to my face, which the knockers had plastered in nude shades. They had lengthened and thickened my lashes with mascara and added a pink gloss to my lips, making me look like a natural beauty in the peak of health.
The dress was… breathtaking. A strapless garment with padded cups that pushed my breasts into a plump cleavage. The bodice squeezed my waist, flared out over my hipbones, and ended in a sheer skirt consisting of silk chiffon encrusted with tiny sequins and diamanté clusters. Two slits ran down the garment from thigh to ankle, exposing the entire length of my legs. I glared down at the nude, open-toed shoes that made me look barefoot.
Micalla sniffed my neck and purred, “I knew you were gorgeous, but this exceeds my expectations. With that blood oozing from your pussy, Lord Lilin will have you over his throne as soon as you walk into the ballroom!”
Panic seized my lungs, and I pictured a wicked, vampire king with sixteenth-century facial hair trying to look modern in a centuries-old tuxedo. My fevered imagination depicted him with red eyes and fangs that reached his jawline.
Juno, who wore a black Morticia Addams dress, clapped her hand over her mouth. “You look yummy!”
“Keep your fangs to yourself This one belongs to Lilin.”
Juno pouted. “I haven’t fed on a girl since Zarah. Can’t you—”
“No,” Micalla snapped. “She’s going to be untouched and untasted.”
My breaths stuck at the base of my windpipe, and I reeled back and forth on unsteady feet. This couldn’t be happening. I was about to offer myself to one of the oldest vampires in existence. Lilin was said to be so powerful, even Dracula feared him.
Micalla rubbed my back. “Breathe. Lord Lilin likes a strong woman, not a fainting fancy.”
Nodding, I gulped a mouthful of air. This performance was for Mom, Daniel, and Steve. I’d do anything to keep them safe.
Juno and Micalla linked their arms with mine and marched me down the hallway. Orchestral music drifted toward us, increasing in volume with each step. My mouth dried to the consistency of dirt, and my heart galloped with the horsepower of a thoroughbred. If the two vampires weren’t holding me up by the arms, my legs would have collapsed. This Lord Lilin had to be horrific if Micalla went to such lengths to avoid becoming his consort.
Vampires, both students and visitors, milled through the hallways, dressed in their finery. Most wore modern tuxedos and ballgowns, but a few donned beautifully preserved clothing that I’d only seen in old paintings or museums like the Victoria and Albert. I tried not to make eye contact with those vampires, even though most heads turned to look at me.
“What’s he like?” I asked.
“You’ll find out for yourself when he sweeps you on to the dance floor,” said Micalla.
Juno snickered. “Don’t worry about clumsy footwork. Lord Lilin’s prowess in the mind arts is legendary. He can turn a stubborn mule like you into the most graceful of unicorns.”
Dante’s insult rolled to the forefront of my mind. Back when Micalla had fixed me up like a doll, he had called me a sow. Regret knotted my insides, crushing the butterflies into a writhing, tormented mass.
If I had known how things would end up, I wouldn’t have resisted the Stryx Brothers. I wouldn’t have given Micalla a chance to wedge her claws into me and cause a rift between the boys and me. If I had kept my mouth shut that day Kat had asked me which of the boys I liked best, Dante wouldn’t have made that scene and tried to force me to kiss his feet, and I wouldn’t have made myself and Zarah targets by publicly resisting him.
My shoulders sagged with the weight of my self-condemnation. I lived in a world of the supernatural, not science fiction, and there were no time machines to bring me back to the start of the nightmare that was the Sanguine Academy of Vampires. My only choice right now to save my family was to offer myself to Lord Lilin and hope he didn’t treat me too badly.
We turned a corner where a crowd of people in formal dress waited in line, and a tall vampire herald announced each person who stepped into the ballroom. The academy’s House of Draculesti coat of arms was carved into the mahogany doors amid swirling patterns I could barely make out with the dark spots waltzing before my eyes.
Commander Shanks and the guard who had tormented Gates stood by the doors, both dressed in tuxedos. If my heart wasn’t already laden with despair, I might have felt embarrassed by the spanking incident.
Juno sniffed my neck. “If you want, I can meet you afterward and help ease your wounds with my bliss.”
I couldn’t even muster the panic to consider the implication that Lord Lilin would hurt me. If suffering a monster’s perverted ministrations was what I needed to do to keep the family safe, I would endure.
A doorway opened on the right. Dante stepped out, followed by Raphael and then Nero. Each wore identical tuxedos with different color waistcoats. They stood in formation, blocking the hallway, each as devastatingly gorgeous as the other.
Raphael stepped forward. “Don’t go in there.”
“I…” My voice broke. “I have to.”
“Why?” asked Dante through clenched teeth.
My brows drew together. What did he care? He’d only been interested in possessing and breaking me for my insolence. Lord Lilin would probably do that the moment I stepped through the door. My gaze dipped to the marble floor, and I shook my head. “I-it’s complicated.”
Micalla sighed. “You boys don’t understand that an ambitious frumosi wants to latch onto the most prestigious vampire she can find. Not the most deserving or the ones with the most potential. Alicia has a gift with an expiration date, and she’s making the most of it while she’s still in demand.”
“In other words, she’s a gold digger,” said Juno.
A rush of anger flared through my veins, making my head snap up. I could have kicked her in the shin if it didn’t jeopardize the life of my family.
Nero narrowed his eyes. “A girl who dislikes vampires has made such an effort for the biggest vampire purist in the Supernatural World? I don’t buy it.”
“Alicia doesn’t even look like she wants to go in there,” said Raphael. “You’ve done something to her.”
My breaths came in shallow pants. He was right about one thing. I didn’t want to step foot in that wretched ballroom or meet centuries-old monsters that had fed on thousands of human lives. But despite my wishes, I had to walk through those doors.
“P-please,” I gasped out. “Let me pass.”
“Rejection is a hard pill to swallow, gentlemen,” said Micalla. “Step out of the way. Once Alicia is in the arms of her future master, I’ll return to stroke your sore egos.”
Nero reached into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and pulled out a smartphone. “What did you threaten her with? Zarah Peridot’s life?”
I kept my gaze straight ahead. He was close, and I didn’t want the answer to show on my face.
“No,” Nero said. “Even Alicia wouldn’t go so far for someone she’s known for less than a term. You threatened her family.”
Drawing in a sharp breath through my teeth, I snapped my gaze away from Nero. He couldn’t know the truth. If they acted against Micalla, my family would die.
“She threatened them, didn’t she?” he said, his voice soft. Nero placed a firm hand under my chin and raised my head, so I met his obsidian-black eyes. For once, they shone with compassion and not calculation. “Alicia, there’s something you need to know.”
“Don’t listen to him.” Micalla stepped forward, pulling me toward the ballroom, but Dante blocked her path. “Get out of our way, or I’ll tell—”
“Everyone associated with carriers of the frumosi gene is eliminated,” said Nero.
My stomach dropped, and all the blood drained from my face. I whispered, “What do you mean?”
“He’s lying,” snapped Micalla. “Your family is still alive.”
Nero’s lips pursed. “Vampires don’t need the close families of frumosi meddling in their business
, trying to find missing loved ones. If your father was alive, they would have moved him into a noble house. Your mother, half-brother, and step-father are dead.”
Micalla grabbed me by the chin and turned my head toward her. “They’re not.”
I dipped my eyes, so they wouldn’t make contact with hers.
“Don’t let her use your dead family as leverage against you,” said Dante.
I shook my head. My pulse pounded in my ears, muffling the strains of the orchestra. “There’s a video of them—”
“When was it taken?” asked Nero.
“I… I don’t know.” My gaze darted to Raphael, whose brows drew together, his face a rictus of pain.
Nero pressed a button on his smartphone. “I’m sorry.” He showed me a picture of carnage that looked like something out of a movie set, but it was my house — the dining room. Its table lay upturned, and Mom, Daniel, and Steve were sprawled on the ground with their heads at strange angles. “They would have been murdered the day you were taken or shortly afterward. It’s customary.”
A boulder of shock battered through me, and all the air left my lungs in a single outdrawn breath. This image couldn’t be right. Someone had photoshopped the background to make it look like home. Nero swiped across, showing closeups of each person lying on the ground with their necks twisted and blood leaking from their throats.
Mom.
Daniel.
Steve.
They were all dead, and the vampires had killed them.
The last thing Nero showed me was the house on fire, flames filling each of the windows and smoke blackening the brickwork. Even if they had survived the first attack, there was no way they would survive the arson.
Horror seeped through my being, sucking every bit of warmth from my body and stealing the last of the strength keeping me upright. I must have fainted because the next thing I knew, Juno propped me up by one arm, and Micalla wedged my eyes open. Her face twisted with rage, and her lips moved, but grief and shock and anguish had formed a wall around me no-one could penetrate.
One of the boys threw Micalla against the wall, and another scooped me into his arms. Mom. Daniel. Steve. Killed by vampires. Just like Zarah’s aunt.
The air shifted, and moments later, I lay on a chaise in what looked like the white and marble lounge of a hotel suite.
Raphael stood over me, his red hair glowing like fire in the chandelier light. “Alicia?”
Stabbing pains wracked my body and pierced through my guts like giant icicles. Vampires had murdered Mom, Daniel, and Steve because of me. A clawed fist of guilt seized my heart and squeezed so hard, a pained gasp escaped my lips. They’d been dead all along, and I hadn’t even known. Hadn’t been with them. Hadn’t been given a chance to say goodbye. My breaths reached the base of my throat but went no further. They were dead.
Raphael knelt at the chaise and turned me onto my side. The movement let oxygen travel down my windpipe and skim the top of my lungs. I curled into a ball and moaned.
“I’m sorry Nero had to show you those pictures.” He rubbed my back with his large, warm hand. “This isn’t the first time Micalla has controlled someone with threats to have an already dead family killed. We didn’t know if she’d mesmerized you or just held the threat over your head. It was the only way to break you free.”
His words sent a wave of raw grief that penetrated me to the marrow. I couldn’t think about anything but Mom and Daniel and Steve. Their broken necks. The burning house. They swirled around my mind like demonic specters, jabbing at me until I thought I would die.
Through a throat hoarse from unvoiced screams, I rasped, “T-take my memories away.”
Chapter 19
Raphael’s hand stilled between my shoulder blades, and he brought his forehead to mine. “I can’t do it,” he murmured. “Erasing your family will erase part of who you are. It would make you no better than a knocker.”
I grabbed at the silk lapel of his tuxedo jacket. “Then make me forget they died.”
He jerked his head away. “And have another Micalla use them as leverage against you?”
“What do you want from me?” I croaked. “To see me suffer? Don’t you people know what it’s like to lose someone you love?”
Pain-filled, green eyes met mine. “One of my earliest memories was the execution of my mother for a misdemeanor she didn’t commit. I’m no stranger to loss.”
“Then why won’t you—”
“They deserve better than to be forgotten.” He ran warm fingers over my temple. “You deserve better. I can alter your memory so that Nero only showed you a newspaper report of their deaths, but anything else is a step too far.”
“Do it.” I pushed myself up and sat on the chaise.
Still kneeling in front of me, Raphael rested his hands on my bare thighs. His pupils dilated, and his irises contracted into the tiniest rings of green.
My spirit lurched toward him, jerking my body forward. I gripped his forearms, trying to keep my balance, but it was no use. My entire being spun within the vortex of his non-existent soul, until I couldn’t tell up from down, right from left, dark from light, or truth from lie.
I was back in the hallway, trudging to what felt like a death march flanked by Micalla and Juno. The boys stepped out from a doorway and confronted us.
We exchanged words, muffled by the pulse pounding in my skull and by the roar of blood through my eardrums. My gaze fixed on Nero’s hand, and my chest tightened in anticipation of what he would show me. He brought up the website of the Richley Gazette, with the headline, TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMILY IN GAS LEAK.
My breath caught, and my knees collapsed to the ground. Raphael picked me up and explained that they had died painlessly in their sleep. They’d only shown me the article because I was about to sacrifice my life for a futile cause. I tried to glance at the article again, but Nero slipped the phone back into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket, leaving me breathing hard.
My mind returned to the present. “I can’t believe they’re gone.”
“Were you close to them?” asked Raphael.
I tilted my head to the side. After Mom married Steve, everything changed. They did their best to include me in the family unit, but we had been drifting apart for years. “They were good people, but I felt more like an outsider.”
Raphael drew back, his eyes damp.
I reached forward and brushed a stray tear that had fallen on his cheekbone. “Why would you feel compassion for a lowly creature like me? Our lives are over in mere blinks of an eye compared to yours.”
“Which makes it all the more precious.” He cupped my face with both hands. “Who spurns the beauty of a rose because it blooms for a short time? Only a philistine. And you’re capable of giving vampires the biggest gift of all: freedom from the eternal darkness.”
A laugh caught in my throat. “I’m beautiful because one day I’m going to be old?”
His fingertips trailed down the sensitive skin on my neck. “It’s so hard to put into words, but you have this glow that’s addicting to watch. When you walk into the room, I feel like a cat mesmerized by a candle flame dancing in the breeze.”
“Oh.” What else could I say in response to such a vivid description of an inner beauty I didn’t even know existed?
Raphael wrapped his arms around me and sighed. “I’m so sorry you had to find out like this.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled his warm, masculine scent. “If Nero hadn’t shown me that report, I would have offered myself to Lord Lilin.”
Raphael drew back, taking with him the warmth of his embrace. “Stay here tonight and rest. Nobody will bother you here.”
I nodded. Right now, I couldn’t handle that empty dorm room.
When he stood, I grabbed onto his wrist. “Where are you going?”
His brows drew together. “Don’t you need time alone to process everything that’s happened? I’ll sleep on the sofa outside and make sure you have enough time to grieve.”
&n
bsp; “No.” I pulled him down, so he sat at my side, then I shuffled closer to him on the chaise. “Stay with me tonight.”
“But—”
I silenced him with a kiss. His lips were soft and unmoving, as though I was taking him against his will, but I knew Raphael. All his flirting, all his attention, all his forgiveness meant something. He wanted me… and I was now ready to admit, at least to myself, that I wanted him just as much.
“Alicia, are you sure you—”
“I want this. Want you.”
Raphael wrapped an arm around me and moved his lips against mine with gentle caresses. His kiss, his passion, his warm touch, filled a void in me that had existed since before I’d arrived at the academy.
His kisses traveled down my neck. Each press of his lips on my flesh sending shock waves of desire across my skin, around my nipples, and down to my awakening core. I wanted him. Needed him. And right now, I couldn’t exist without him.
Fisting the lapels of his tuxedo jacket, I pulled him close. “P-please.”
“Tell me what you want, Alicia,” he said, voice rough.
“M-make love to me.”
His green eyes bore into mine. Not in that mesmerizing vampiric way, but like a man staring into his lover’s soul.
“When you look at me like that, I feel the vibrancy of humanity,” he murmured. “Why is that?”
The corner of my lip curled into a bittersweet smile. “I don’t know, but maybe we can find out together.”
He leaned down and placed a kiss on the line of my jaw that set the nerve endings of my skin alight. “It won’t be just you and me.”
“What?”
“My brothers want you, too.”
My gaze darted to the door. “Are they outside?”