Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6

by V M Black

  “As long as we control the technology,” Elizabeth said shrewdly. “Are you sure your labs are secure?”

  “The laboratory is inside Dorian’s house, and we prove every worker weekly,” Hattie said in a tone that said they’d rehearsed this argument many times before. “Every phone and computer belonging to any of them is bugged. Every home, too. I don’t know what more we can do.”

  “We’ve foiled three attempts since Cora’s introduction,” Dorian said. “But you are correct. The Kyrioi probably will eventually gain control of the technology, too, likely within five hundred years. Not even the silkworm was kept a secret forever. We must use the time until they do to persuade more people to our cause.”

  “Hearts and minds,” Svetlana’s cognate said.

  “Indeed,” Dorian agreed. He looked over at me. “But we didn’t come here to discuss such weighty matters.”

  “Every conversation with you turns into a weighty matter,” the long-haired cognate said, nestling against the side of her agnate. He hushed her, and she gave him an impish smile. “Señor,” she murmured at him and subsided.

  The third male agnate shot his cognate a significant look. They had both been silent so far. The green-eyed woman looked back at him for a long moment before turning a timid gaze my way.

  “Are you from the area?” she asked. Her voice was so soft it was almost a whisper.

  “Yes, I’m from Glen Burnie,” I said. “That’s where my grandmother raised me.”

  “It’s such a...lovely area,” the cognate attempted.

  “Oh, Marie, you could at least try to sound convincing,” the long-haired cognate broke in.

  “No, it’s quite all right,” I said. “It’s not a great part of the state, but it’s not downtown Baltimore, either.”

  The stewards returned to collect the plates and wineglasses, and then a man entered in hospital scrubs, pushing a cart loaded with medical-looking supplies.

  “Oh, Dorian, you never can just enjoy yourself, can you?” said Jean, rolling his eyes. “Every time you get us together, it’s research, research, research.”

  Dorian spread his hands. “You know we’re out of samples again. We seem to be near another breakthrough—we just need a little more.”

  “Now that you have your own cognate, I hope you don’t suck her dry,” said Marie’s agnate.

  Svetlana waved gracefully. “Keep watch on Dorian, Cora. He’s prone to bit of...hyper-focus.”

  The long-haired cognate looked up at her agnate through her eyelashes. “Why don’t you all run along? Keep you away from temptation.”

  Because of the blood, I realized, remembering Dorian’s reaction to my blood on another occasion.

  Elizabeth chuckled throatily. “Wish to keep the gathering rated PG?”

  “We are supposed to be welcoming Cora, not frightening her, and having you drool over me while I’m getting blood drawn is not the way to do that,” Will said crisply.

  “We’re going,” said Dorian. Standing, he looked down at me and explained. “The phlebotomist is collecting blood for my research. You don’t have to participate if you don’t care to.”

  I shrugged. At this point, it was hard to get too worked up about a needle. “I’ve donated blood before. I guess this is for a worthy cause, too.”

  His lips curved. “The worthiest.”

  I watched Dorian lead the rest of the agnates from the room as the phlebotomist approached the first of the consorts.

  “Well, that got rid of them,” the long-haired cognate said. “I’m Francisca, by the way, in case you missed it. But everyone calls me Paquita. My other half is Raymond.” She flopped against the back of the sofa with a kind of gamine unsophistication that was, I decided, entirely conscious, pushing up her sleeve to bare the crook of her arm.

  I wondered if it had to do with how long the agnates and cognates lived, that they had enough time to decide not only how old they wanted to be but how they smiled, how they walked, how they waved their hands. Or maybe it was just because so many of them came from an age when posture and deportment was drilled into middle and upper classes from birth. Either way, I wondered if they were now capable of a genuinely graceless movement.

  “I have heard all about you, of course,” Paquita said as the phlebotomist set up a blood collection bag and inserted and taped the needle on her arm. “It’s probably rather unnerving to have everyone you meet already know your background, but your conversion is such a milestone for all of us.”

  “Dorian said that it’s a justification of his research,” I said.

  “Oh, certainly, and more—it is the first conversion to ever be studied with any scientific accuracy. The data that was collected could really be a breakthrough.” She laughed. “Of course, that’s more Hattie’s domain than mine.” She nodded to the blonde cognate, who was already lying back as well.

  “Dorian didn’t tell me that his research team included cognates,” I said. “Before we met, I mean.” It occurred to me for the first time that maybe Dorian’s offer to give me one of his businesses to run was more than just a bribe meant to buy my acceptance of our bond. If Hattie had a vocation in addition to her position as Jean’s cognate, perhaps he really meant for me to lead one of his ventures, not just pretend to be the CEO.

  “Don’t let Dorian fool you,” Hattie said. “He likes to play at the amateur gentleman or wealthy patron, but he gets his hands dirty, too. He’s unusual among agnates. So few of them ever make anything at all. The first few years, he barely stopped to eat or sleep. He was a man possessed.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. And I could. It fit neatly into my growing picture of him—a driven man who clung to his scruples, haunted by old angers and old griefs. The rising demon....

  I realized that every person in that room likely knew more of Dorian than I did, despite our bond. I had met him not even six weeks before, but Hattie and probably several of the others had known him before I was born.

  It was an unsettling thought. I was closer to Dorian than I ever had been to any human in so many ways, and yet he was still so much a stranger to me. A phrase from somewhere came swimming out of my mind: The past is a foreign country. Dorian’s past spanned empires, and I could never visit there. No matter how well I came to know him, there would be parts of him that remained far beyond my reach.

  The phlebotomist moved to Hattie’s side as Paquita’s collection bag slowly filled with blood.

  “You probably didn’t get all our names the first time,” Hattie said then, perhaps misinterpreting my silence for shyness. She went around the circle again, and with the three women now clear in my mind, I only had to assign Oleg’s name to his long face.

  “How are you handling it?” Will asked. He was the only one other than Svetlana who bore a recognizable accent, an upper class British drawl. “The conversion, I mean.”

  “It’s been very...strange,” I admitted.

  I thought of my desire and fear, my struggle to keep myself intact and my driving attraction to Dorian that had somehow turned into something more. I didn’t know how to put any of it into words, not even with these people, who should be able to understand if anyone could.

  The cognates were looking at me expectantly, so I continued. “As I’m sure you’ve heard, I agreed to a medical procedure because I was terminally ill. Dorian...well, you know...and I woke up nearly a week later to realize that I’d just been bitten by a vampire and turned into...something else,” I finished lamely. “I don’t hardly even know him, still, and I don’t know what I feel about everything—what I should feel about it.”

  The phlebotomist moved on to Will, who just rolled up his sleeve without bothering to lie down like Paquita and Hattie had.

  “You mean you don’t know if you should love him. Oh, you spoiled modern children,” Paquita said, smiling at me affectionately. “For me, conversion was a gift from the Holy Mother, nothing less. I never deluded myself that I would choose the man I was to marry.”

  Hattie ma
de a slightly offended clicking sound, but Paquita ignored her.

  “I was terrified that it would be old Bermudo Barrientes, who would give me saucy looks every time my ama took me to church,” Paquita continued. “Raymond was young and handsome—which Señor Barrientes most certainly was not. And Raymond didn’t have foul breath or indigestion. And he was kind and generous beyond every expectation. And most of all...he loved me, and I could love him. I wasn’t afraid of whether I should love him. He is my husband. Of course I should love him. I was afraid that I would be married to someone I couldn’t love.”

  “It was easier for you, Paquita. You’re a woman,” said Oleg with cheerful chauvinism. I wondered why his agnate had such a heavy accent when he did not. “Now me... I was in a carriage accident. Leg crushed, turned to gangrene, not expected to survive. This amazing woman comes to the room in the inn where I’m put up, and the next thing I know—well, there are certain things you don’t think you’d be doing at death’s door with a crushed leg, but let me tell you, I do my best. I wake up days later, and my bachelor life was over. It’s in the worst taste to be devoted to one’s wife, and yet I found myself driven to satisfy her—and only her. It was a shock to my system, as the phrase now goes.”

  The phlebotomist approached Marie.

  “But you were okay with it?” I asked. “I mean, with her changing you?”

  Oleg shrugged. “Well, I would not say that it was easy at first. And she had to keep the chambermaids away from me for a year or two. But I realized that I was happy with her, and that’s what really matters.”

  “But are you really happy?” I asked. “Or is she just making you think that you are? She could erase your mind, twist your desires, change who you are inside.”

  Marie cleared her throat, and everyone turned to look at her. She was a slender, pale woman with a froth of red-gold hair, as insubstantial-looking as her soft voice. “I was married before...before Dalton. It was not a happy union. Any husband could beat me, insult me, practically imprison me, if he were so inclined. How could I hope to challenge a man’s strength?”

  Her liquid eyes were dark with remembered pain. “When I was young, a husband would have the strength of law behind him, too, to do most of those things. But just because Dalton could do terrible things to me doesn’t mean that he will. There are good agnates and bad ones, just like human men. I have a good one, so I don’t concern myself with what he is capable of. I care about what he actually does, and he is good and true.”

  The room went silent, and Marie dropped her gaze to the spot just above the crook of her arm, where a bond-mark in the shape of a tiny, lopsided heart lay.

  The phlebotomist was at my side now. I rolled up my sleeve, half-stunned by Marie’s words. I had never really considered what Geoff was capable of doing to me if he wanted to. I knew he wasn’t abusive, so I’d hardly considered that his athletic height meant that he could hurt or kill me, and I would be defenseless against him. It just wasn’t something that I worried about, because I knew it wasn’t in his nature.

  So why did I fear Dorian? Was that any less far-fetched, really?

  Except that I could sense the darkness in Dorian, could feel how badly he wanted to change me—and I knew how much easier it would be if he did. Geoff could hardly accidentally beat me, but Dorian was capable of making profound changes while not even fully recognizing what he had done. Dorian always seemed to be at the edge of the night, while Geoff stood squarely, safely in the sunlight.

  I winced and looked away as the needle slid in. The phlebotomist taped it and moved on to Oleg.

  “So none of you ever wanted to break the bond,” I said, risking the words.

  “Well, I told you about the chambermaids,” Oleg said, waggling his bushy eyebrows suggestively. “But that was long ago.”

  “No,” said Paquita firmly.

  Marie shook her head.

  “No,” said Will. “I would not commit adultery for any reason, much less to be free of a bond that is no burden to me.”

  “I would not be faithless,” Hattie agreed.

  I looked at them all, feeling painfully alone. “You could be human again, couldn’t you? Live a normal life. And nothing would happen to your agnates, would it?”

  “A normal life would have had me making babies for Señor Barrientes until I was old and fat,” Paquita said. “And I would have died many years ago.”

  “There is much happiness I never would have seen. Besides, he is my husband, and a good one. Why would I throw all that away?” Marie asked in her small voice.

  “But he really isn’t your husband,” I said. “I mean, you weren’t married.”

  “Some of us are,” said Will. He held up his left hand, displaying the ring on his finger. “And those who aren’t—well, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ are the human terms, so they still do well enough.”

  I shrugged uncomfortably. I certainly didn’t feel married. Bonded—yes, that I definitely felt, far more keenly than to my liking. But it was a world away from what I imagined when I thought of the word marriage. I had always expected an egalitarian relationship, the kind that most of my friends’ parents had and I imagined my Gramma and grandfather, my mother and father had enjoyed, too.

  But this—there was never any doubt in this relationship where the power lay. The bond was both more complete and more terrible than I ever imagined a marriage could be, a true joining that blurred my edges while his remained bright and distinct. If two people had become one, it was perfectly clear that the “one” would have to be him.

  I watched the collection bag fill slowly with blood and wondered how many of those cognates could even make the decision to break their bond—how many were left with the ability to want to. And if they couldn’t, was it really love? Or was their contentment merely a reflection of what their agnates wanted them to feel?

  Was there ever an end to the circle?

  “Have other cognates done it?” I asked. “Broken the bond, I mean.”

  Hattie and Paquita exchanged long looks.

  “There was Sarah,” Hattie said after a moment. “She was married when she was converted. She had children, too, young ones. And she wouldn’t give them up. Like you, she had been dying—tuberculosis, which wasn’t treatable back then—but she returned home the moment she had a chance and pulled her husband into their bed...and that was it. She gave it all up.”

  “And there was Johann Bauer, too,” Oleg put in. “Two hundred years, he’d had, and then, when he was as drunk as a pig, for a moment’s lust for a bit of skirt at a tavern.... I don’t know whether Madeline was more devastated or infuriated by his betrayal.”

  “It happens,” Marie put in. “Not often, but it happens.”

  “Do they regret it?” I asked.

  “It hardly matters if they do,” said Will. “Once converted and returned to humanity, there is no going back again.”

  But it did matter. I needed to know. Had Sarah cried over her agnate? Or had she rejoiced to be free of him and his demands?

  But the cognates had grown frosty with my questions, and I didn’t want to push any harder, so I led the conversation to a safe topic—other boats they had traveled on at other times—and the cognates relaxed again.

  After the collection bags had been filled and taken away, the agnates rejoined us, and everyone wrapped up against the cold and scattered across the deck of the yacht, going through permutations of conversational groupings to the backdrop of the shores of the Potomac. I watched the groups change and noticed how the couples seemed to gravitate back towards one another, connecting, if only for a moment, before shifting into new social constellations.

  I stayed at Dorian’s side. I couldn’t tear myself away. My thoughts of bonds and breaking them had frightened me again, reminding me how close I’d come to doing just that. Even though I still wasn’t sure that breaking the bond wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, any thought of losing Dorian was like a physical pain only his presence could soothe.

&n
bsp; Did I fear losing him only because the bond was still in place? Or would something of what I felt now linger, a canker of regret, for the rest of my life?

  Or did it even matter how I would feel if breaking the bond meant giving up so much, here and now?

  From the rail, I watched D.C. slip by—all the hurry and bustle and intensity of the capital seeming at once very immediate and far removed from the lazy progress of the yacht on the river. The afternoon turned to evening, and the shapes of the buildings grew more shadowy as the lights began to twinkle on the shore. The sunglasses came off the guests’ faces all around the deck, and lights strung on the railing and various parts of the superstructure of the ship came on. Music began to play, and I looked up a stair to the upper deck to see a band there, under a canopy of tiny lights. More hors d’oeuvres were passed on silver trays, and the drinks flowed freely.

  I’d been too distracted to notice when we turned around, but several hours after dusk had drawn on, we arrived back at the dock and the gangway was lowered.

  I looked up at Dorian. “That’s the party?”

  It certainly seemed understated for a vampire bash, not that I had much to compare it to.

  “Oh, no, it’s just beginning,” he said. “But we are going somewhere else.”

  He took my unresisting arm and wrapped it over his. The cold air already frosted from our breath and bit at my nose and cheeks, and it was still hours before midnight. As long as our destination was warmer than the open river, I wasn’t going to protest.

  “So you’re ditching your own party?” I prompted, walking with him down the gangway to the dock.

  “I have a more important place to go,” he said. “And even though these guests are my friends and allies, I don’t think you’ll enjoy an evening among even more strangers.”

  As we headed up the dock toward the parking lot, we passed several knots of revelers going the other way, toward the yacht. Several of them had the unmistakable agnatic force around them, but most did not.

  One group, already tipsy, roared out a greeting to Dorian. He raised a gloved hand in acknowledgement.