“I did not bargain for you,” the Dracule said in a voice that was warm with agitation.
Renata’s hand swept across my ass and I shivered.
“I am not for you, Dracule,” she said, turning an icy stare on the Dracule beneath me. “Do you not want Epiphany to writhe betwixt us? To watch her, trapped, a prisoner between our bodies?”
The Dracule licked her lips.
“When you put it that way, half-breed, it does not sound so bad.”
I felt Renata move up behind me, felt the olisbos we had abandoned the night before pressing against my lower back. She buried her hand in my hair and jerked my head back, forcing an encouraging whimper from me.
Her breath at my ear made of my name a command, “Epiphany.”
I lowered myself, trying to hold the Dracule’s gold and black eyes while Renata sheathed herself inside me. Renata guided me upright, tickling her nails down my back. Her hands anchored at my hips and I lowered myself, guiding my sex over the Dracule’s mound. Renata followed, burying the olisbos inside me. The Dracule pressed against me, catching me by the shoulders and pulling me down on top of her. I caught myself and was about to suggest a better position when Renata took me by surprise. Withdrawing the olisbos, she thrust her hips, impaling me with it. I gave a startled cry, body arching.
The Dracule seemed to pick up on some unspoken command, for her flesh rubbed my clit and the pleasure was so intense that I squirmed.
Renata held me by the hips, held me still by turning her supernatural strength against mine.
Trapped between the two of them, one like a wave of the sea and the other like the wild night breeze, it was no gentle lovemaking. I am vampire. I do not see shame in the acts of love between women and what they desired, I gave eagerly. When they pushed, I yielded. What they demanded, I surrendered. With their bodies connected to mine, I gave every inch of myself in passionate abandon.
Renata found a rhythm, pounding between my legs as if she would leave her mark etched deep within the flesh of me. I tightened around her, full, so full. The orgasm felt as if it would burst, tearing me apart in a finale of bravura rapture.
The Dracule found her own rhythm, something slower and more sinuous than Renata’s exquisite force, but no less dominant, no less as claiming. Caught between their shining bodies, between the forces of them, I came screaming, body tightening like an arrow ready to fly free of its bow.
When the orgasm passed, I felt the Dracule writhing against me, beneath me, her pale and slender body stretching under my face and torso. I swept my hands across her ribs and cupped her breasts, driving my nails into her skin.
Her body went rigid as she cried out.
On the edges of her cries, Renata’s laughter followed, thrumming through me.
Chapter Seventeen
Afterward, we lay across the bed. Renata discarded the olisbos and climbed in to rest her body against the line of my back. The Dracule stretched out in front of me. She started to rise and I caught her wrist, pulling her back down. Her tail brushed my leg, curling around it. In human form, her tail was as white as her skin. Renata reached out, idly stroking that alabaster tail with her fingers.
“Whose deaths would you have me spare? We bargained the rules of the bedroom, but you’ve yet to give me the names of those lives you seek to protect,” the Dracule said at length.
“Did I please you so little as to only warrant the protection of three of our people?”
I raised my eyes and found the Dracule staring at me. Her expression was not a light one. I scooted forward, moving closer to her. I nestled my knee between her thighs, brushing the love knot between her legs.
Of course, she could’ve gotten angry with me for invading her personal space, especially after the bargain had been fulfilled. However, I did not think she would. There was more to the Dracule than anger and killing. So much more.
“If I ask the gender of the vampire who summoned you,” I said, “will you tell me?”
Asking the gender would narrow down the possibilities. I wondered, in the back of my mind, if Lucrezia had done it. She was power-hungry and mentally unstable enough to pull such a stunt. The Donatore, though stronger than normal humans and somewhat immortal, did not have any magic by which to summon the Dracule. If it were not so, I would not suspect a vampire had done the summoning.
The Dracule seemed to consider it. Slowly, she dipped her head forward and said, “I will grant you that.”
I traced the line of her jaw with the tip of my index finger. “And will you still grant the protection to three of those I care about?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
I felt Renata’s body tense next to mine. Her fingers stopped idly petting the Dracule’s tail.
“Will you extend that protection to the clan?” I asked. “What do you gain by killing our people?”
The Dracule’s eyes flickered nervously, as if she wasn’t sure how to answer the question.
“I will spare all of your people…at a price.”
Renata gave an abrupt laugh. “At a price,” she said, “that comes as no surprise, Dracule.”
The Dracule shot her a displeased look.
I traced the slight swell of the Dracule’s shoulder, trying to distract her from her anger.
“What be the price?”
Ignoring the fact that Renata’s arm was draped across my waist, the Dracule snaked an arm around the base of my back, lower than Renata’s. She pulled me closer to her and whispered, “I will spare your people if you agree to bear my sigil.”
“Sigil?” I asked. I knew a sigil had somewhat to do with magic, but I did not know what it meant for the Dracule. “What does bearing your sigil entail?”
Renata’s cheek brushed my shoulder, her lips pleasantly and distractingly grazing the slope of my neck. “She is offering to bind herself to you. If you bear her sigil you will be able to call upon her whenever the whim strikes your fancy.” She was silent for several seconds. “The only reason a Dracule would offer to bind themselves to a vampire is out of love. Truly, you have not fallen in love with my Epiphany so soon?” The words themselves were serious, but her tone held a thread of light amusement.
The Dracule narrowed her eyes. The look on her face made me shiver to the core. “I am not blinded by love of your Epiphany,” she said in a voice gone low and rough. “I offer because she pleases me.”
Renata sat up, nude and glorious and boldly facing the Dracule’s look of challenge. “You think to take Epiphany away from me?”
“Your claim runs deep in this one, half-bred Queen or no.”
“If you think to win Epiphany’s favor by referring to either of us as half-breeds, you are mistaken.”
“I can speak for myself, Renata,” I said, albeit softly.
The Dracule offered a triumphant look.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” I said to the Dracule, “as I haven’t agreed to anything yet, and my Queen speaks the truth. You will not gain my favor or my compliance by calling one I care for a derogatory name such as half-breed. I’ll not be wooed by petty insults.”
The Dracule didn’t look happy. I ignored it. “Why do you keep calling us half-breeds? She said that your kind were the beginning?”
“Would you like me to tell you a charming little tale?” the Dracule asked.
“If you wish.”
“Once, long ago, the leader of the Dracule fell in love with a mortal woman.”
“And?” I prompted.
“And the Dracule cannot love mortals,” she said. “We crave their blood, and to love them eventually leads to their death. Such is what happened with our King. He seduced his mortal lover and took her to his bed.”
“And killed her?” I asked.
“While they were making love the thirst for blood came over him. He bled her to death. When he realized what he had done, he wept. He tried to return the blood he had taken by slitting his wrist and holding it to his lover’s mouth.”
When Renat
a had taken my life and had given it back to me, she had offered her wrist. It was one of the major acts in the rite of death and rebirth, in the siring of a vampire.
The Dracule continued. “He tried to sacrifice his own life for hers, and when he did not die he screamed his fury and cursed God himself. Azrael, the Angel of Death, heard the King’s cries.”
“What happened?”
“Azrael took pity on him. He asked the King if he would give his immortal life for the mortal woman to rise again. The King agreed and Azrael took the King’s immortality and placed it inside the woman he so revered. Her name was Lilith. She was the mother of your kind.”
“The King of the Dracule gave his immortality to us?”
“Yes.”
It made me think better of the Dracule that once they had a king that had sacrificed his immortal life for a mortal woman he had loved and not meant to harm.
“That is why you call us half-breeds,” I said. “It upsets you that the youngest of us do not know our history and the eldest seem to forget. Your king sacrificed himself for our rebirth and none of us honor or acknowledge that, do we?”
Her eyes closed.
“Very few make the acknowledgement these days.”
“We did not withhold our history to shame your kind, Dracule. There are still those of your kind that regret your King’s sacrifice,” Renata said from behind me.
“But,” the Dracule said, “the vampires should know of their origins. Despite those of us who hold you in contempt, we are the beginning and deserve to be acknowledged as such. Your pretty little vampires would rather pretend they were not born of the King’s sacrifice than show lineage to us.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Monsters and demons, they call us. Did you know?”
Renata gracefully bowed her head. “I am not one of the vampires that agree with that, Dracule.”
“Neither am I,” I said. I placed my hand on the Dracule’s hip.
“Then will you bear my sigil?” she asked. “Will you honor my mark?”
I sat up, resting my back against the pillows. I started reaching for the gray coverlet and stopped myself, realizing why I was doing it. Surely it was not for modesty’s sake, for once you sleep with someone you lose some sense of that modesty. I had slept with both women, reaching for the coverlet was merely a thing to do to distract my mind and hide myself. I didn’t need to distract my mind or hide. I needed to consider my options and to comprehend what the Dracule was offering and what would happen if I declined that offer. It was obvious, looking back on their meeting in the hallway, the way that the Dracule had initially acted toward Renata and me, that there was bad blood between our kinds. I had not known then that the history of vampires was so tightly wedded with that of the Dracule. It was no small disrespect for the vampires to turn their backs on their true Sires.
“If what you say is true,” I said, “then should not the Dracule honor and respect the angel Azrael?”
Her expression told me plainly that she did not grasp why I would say such a thing.
“Azrael did not strip you of your immortality, no?”
She looked at me then, as if I were a spider weaving a cunning little web and she was wary of setting foot in it. “No, he did not strip us of our immortality, only the King.”
“Then should you not, as you expect our kind to honor and respect yours, honor and respect the angel Azrael?”
“What are you are saying, Epiphany?” Renata asked.
“I am saying only that the Dracule should pay their respects to Azrael, for he is the one who gave them, as well as our kind, the ability to bring mortal lovers over.”
“There is wisdom in your words,” the Dracule said. “You are saying that the vampires are not the only ones who have acted in slight and disrespect?”
“Yes,” I said, “that is what I am saying.”
I forced myself to hold her incisive gaze.
“You are avoiding answering my question.”
“You haven’t answered mine,” I said, “not fully.”
“And what question is that?”
“What does bearing your sigil entail?” I tilted my head to the side. “If you expect me to bear it, to allow you to mark me, then I need the details. I will be able to summon you, to contact you?”
“Yes.”
“Will it make me your slave?” I asked. “Will it take away my free will? Will you be able to hear my thoughts? Will you be able to communicate with me telepathically?”
Renata touched my thigh then, but not to distract me sexually, to warn me to tread cautiously.
The Dracule apparently caught the meaning of the gesture, for she said, “I know you have the death blade and I know that you are able to communicate telepathically with your Queen. I will not invade your thoughts unless you so wish me to. I will not take away your free will. I will not make you my slave.” Her dark brows furrowed thoughtfully. “Think of it as an alliance, if you will. If you bear my sigil and wear it with pride”—she placed her hand flat on my stomach—“and do not hide it from others of your kind, then I will not lay a hand on any of those you care for. I will spare them, Epiphany.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“You will have my protection,” she said, the pupils of her eyes expanding and shrinking as a wave of frustration emitted off her.
“And what will you have?” I asked. It was imperative to state specifics when discussing such a matter.
“You,” she said.
“But you said you would not make me your slave. Am I to be at your beck and call, then?”
“No,” she said, lightly shaking her head, sending the dark tresses slithering about her waist. “We will merely have an agreement. I would prefer that you come to my bed and body willingly.” She cast that gold and black stare at Renata. “There has not been an alliance between our kinds in many years. Would you prefer that your pet reject my offer?”
Renata’s eyes were full of intellectual calculation. “I would advise her to at least consider it,” she said very carefully.
“You think I should take it?”
Her shoulders rose in a shrug. “As she says, there has not been an alliance between our kinds in a very long time, and to have such an alliance on our side is not necessarily a bad thing. When considered, the price does not seem so very high.”
“And if the price was losing me to the Dracule?” I asked. “You have never been willing to share me, Renata. I remember that very clearly.”
Renata cupped my cheek in her hand. Her fingers stroked the hair at my temple.
“Would I lose you to her, Epiphany? Have the past two centuries meant so little to you that you would turn from me and give your heart wholly to the Dracule?”
It was almost the same exact thing I’d pulled on the Dracule. Had I spent too many years as Renata’s pet that I’d accidentally picked up some of her political maneuverings, her subtle manipulations? If so, had she noticed? I looked at the Dracule. She was beautiful in a heartbreaking sort of way. Then again, so was Renata. They were both dominant and powerful, both brunette beauties with porcelain skin and unrealistically magnificent eyes. I looked at them, really looked at them, and realized that out of the two, the Dracule was surprisingly the softer beauty. She was taller than Renata, which certainly said something of her height. Yet, in her human form, she seemed closer to six feet than seven. It was not the Dracule’s body that made her the softer one, for the spaded tail and leathery wings made her appear more like some dark fallen angel, but the bones of her face. Renata was feminine in every sense of the word, but her features were positively striking. Her beauty was sharper, more immediate. The Dracule’s was more subtle, slowly creeping over one.
Would my harsh and beautiful Queen lose me to the touch of the Dracule?
“You know me. Do you think you will lose me to her?”
Renata smiled gently. “No. You are attracted to her, intrigued by her. I would expect nothing less.” The gentle smile stretched into something more wry. �
��As I do know your type, Epiphany.”
“And what is your type?” the Dracule asked. “Do I not fit it?”
Renata laughed and leaned over, tracing the Dracule’s obsidian brow.
“If you did not, she would not have bedded you.”
“Is that true?”
I licked my lips, because she was staring at me, which made me feel strangely uncomfortable. “Yes. It is true.”
“Not many vampires would admit to such a thing,” she said, gold and onyx eyes so intense that I wanted to fidget.
“I am not one of them.”
“Prove it,” she said at length. “Accept my mark.”
“You will spare all our people?”
“Yes.”
“You will tell me the gender of the one who summoned you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me the gender first. Was it a woman?”
The Dracule began moving closer. “No.” She shook her head.
“A man?” I asked, as if there were any other options. If it was a man then obviously it was not Lucrezia. If it was not Lucrezia, who then?
“Yes.”
I bowed my head. “Then give me your mark, Dracule.”
I had no idea what to expect when the Dracule took my wrist. She raised my wrist to her mouth and before her lips touched my skin I knew she was going to bite me. I forced my body to relax. Fangs like oversized thorns sank into my skin. I gasped, eyes fluttering as the blood pumped out of my wrist. With her fangs sheathed inside of me, she locked her mouth around the wound and sucked at it, encouraging the flow of my blood.
It was, and wasn’t, similar to what Renata had done to my back. What was similar was that the wound began to burn. It burned with a power that was as hot and piercing as the fangs that had been driven into my flesh. The Dracule unhinged her fangs like a snake and I balled my fist in the blankets, fighting not to cry out in pain. She locked her mouth around the wound again, only this time the tip of her tongue darted out, dancing through the red blood on my white skin. I felt the wounds closing, felt the blood no longer flowing out of each hole every time my heart beat. It seemed as if time had slowed. I watched the Dracule back away from my wrist. Her eyes opened and her lips parted. She let out a breath that was as warm as a summer breeze.
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