Cake: A Blood Nation Novel (Volume 1)

by Derekica Snake

  “Yes.” He nodded his agreement. “You can wear whatever you want…from your own closet.”

  I shook my head. “That is not what you said. You said whatever I wanted, and I don’t want this! After we’re done talking to Armanita, we are going shopping.”

  “But you have clothes. They are new and have never been worn,” he argued.

  “I have fuck-me-now clothes that you picked out for me. If you like them so much, why don’t you wear the damn things?”

  “They are too small, and I would look ridiculous in them.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “No!” both vampires answered in unison.

  I paused and looked at the two of them. “I don’t care that I’m nothing but a bad lay or a, a, a…wet blanket here,” I stuttered, fishing for words. “I don’t want to be groped or stared at by everyone. Geez, even Chesterton couldn’t wait to get the hell away from me.”

  Claudius piped in his two cents worth. “That was not the reason why Chesterton fled. He found you irresistibly attractive, Xavier.”

  “Does everybody want to fuck me?” I asked with exasperation, holding my free hand up to the bridge of my nose to try and pinch away the tension that had slowly been building.

  The gruesome twosome responded in the same unanimous way. “Yes!”

  GAH!

  Taking my cup of blood with me, I started barefoot down the stairs. “We are going shopping,” I called back up into the room.

  “Who said you were a bad lay?’ Marcus asked from the top of the steps. I shot him the finger and decided to wander the lower level. I hadn’t really got a chance to look at it when I’d been stumbling down the stairs and eating cabbies and suits. As I reached the bottom of the steps, Claudius’s voice drifted down to me.

  “Somebody said that our little Xavier was a bad lay? Well, I most certainly did not. I quite enjoyed him.”

  Oh God. I covered my ears and hurried a little further down the corridor from the stairs. Marcus and Claudius being cute together, that was just too much.

  As I walked, I could sense the house staff moving around. It was weird. It was sort of like seeing the heat waves rising off the pavement in the middle of summer, but this was air waves radiating around the area where a person was standing, maybe one or two walls over. The funny thing was, they seemed to know I was close, and buggered off the other way. That was cool. I got it. I was an unknown quantity, and I had tried to eat the head butler yesterday.

  “Master Xavier. Can I help you, sir?” Chesterton was suddenly standing there, and he couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “About upstairs…”

  “Please, sir, think nothing of it. I apologize for my behavior.”

  “If you are sure?”

  “Positive, sir. Would you like to see Councilor Armanita now, sir?”

  I guessed I should get this over with. “She got spikes?” I asked. He looked at me with a blank expression. “Please, tell me, does she still have the hole in her shoulder?”

  “No, sir. She was given a transfusion.”

  “What the hell is that? It can’t be the same as what they do in the hospital,” I remarked, sipping at the blood in my mug.

  “No, sir. It simply means that a member of the household volunteered to feed the councilor,” Chesterton explained.

  “Oh? So why did Claudius have to go get take-out for me and Marcus then?” I frowned, catching myself doing so and arching my eyebrows up. Oh, look at me. Geez.

  “Truthfully, sir?” Chesterton stopped and turned toward me.

  I halted and looked up at him, taking another sip of that hot steamy redness from my mug. “Honesty is the best policy,” I quipped.

  Chesterton nodded in my direction, and then he hit me with the brutal truth. I could do nothing but stand there and reel because…it was the truth. “You’re too young. You have no control of your fangs or your gifts, and you are a security risk. If you had drunk too deeply yesterday, it would have been easier to bury the body of a stranger than a friend.”

  That really stung. “Point taken,” I said, feeling abashed. “Keep my hands and fangs to myself.”

  He heard the hurt in my voice, and hastened to appease me. “No, Master Xavier, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Chesterton, I’m not exactly Einstein at the best of times, and right now, there’s so much going on up here, I am not thinking straight, and the fact that I know I’m not thinking straight is scary. Just, spit it out. Say what you do mean.”

  “Yes, sir. Please keep your fangs away from my staff, sir.”

  “I’ll work on it,” I promised. “Why aren’t you running away like the rest of them?” I asked him, gesturing to the moving shimmers around us.

  He looked at the walls and frowned, arched an eyebrow my way, and then turned to lead me further down the corridor. “Lord Claudius has asked me to chaperone you,” he said as he walked.

  “Meaning, stop me from doing something stupid. How would you do that?” I was curious. A year ago, I would have really liked to have known how to take down a rampaging vampire. I blinked now as Chesterton showed me a stun gun he had clipped to his belt. “That thing works?” I asked, not really wanting to test him to find out.

  “I know that it has brought Master Marcus down when it was required. I don’t know if it would affect you though, sir. In fact, it just might enrage you even more. In all my years of service, I have never seen a vampire with wings, and you are so small and so young.”

  “Don’t look at me for explanations,” I told him. “I’m in the dark myself. And for future reference, I am not small.”

  “Of course, sir. Shall I take you to the councilor?”

  “Lead on, MacDuff,” I answered, catching sight of a slight smirk on his face before he turned back into being the proper vampire’s butler. I think I liked him a lot for that smile.

  I had been right in thinking that Marcus was rich. While the halls and corridors weren’t lavishly packed to the gills, the items decorating the lower levels below Sanctuary were classy, and elegant, and sparse, therefore…expensive. I continued to sip at my mug of blood as we walked, me barefooted, padding along behind the well-dressed, well-shod man, and then a chilling thought passed through my mind as I stared at him.

  “Chesterton, did you know that Marcus had me up there, before he called you on the intercom that first time?”

  “Sir?” His shoulders stiffened, but his stride didn’t falter.

  “What did we say about honesty, Chesterton?”

  “Yes, sir, I knew you were up there,” he admitted, his reply low and reluctant, almost apologetic.

  “And you knew what Marcus was doing to me?” My hands tightened around the mug.

  “Yes sir. The upper level is wired for surveillance.”

  I was horrified. “You watched what he did to me?”

  “Oh, no, Master Xavier!” This time Chesterton stopped in his tracks and looked at me, his face clearly upset. “We were instructed to only use surveillance when Master Marcus was not present, to make sure that you didn’t harm yourself, like you tried to in the beginning. If the truth be known, sir, there were many times that I and the other staff wished to intervene when Master Marcus was…ahem, training you. We took our concerns to Master Claudius, but he assured us that you were dead to the outside world, and it would be your decision if you wanted to be dead in this one as well. Many times I, personally, could not listen to your cries, and I would turn the sound off.”

  I was pissed. He had known that a rape-fest had been going on upstairs, and he’d just turned off the monitor so he didn’t have to witness it. “Thanks for the comfort,” I grumbled.

  “But you are happy now.”

  The way he’d said that made it sound so simple. Yeah, I thought as he began to lead the way again, I survived a year of sexual and psychological torture, and now I am deliriously happy that my rapist has decided to ask permission before fucking me. Whoo hoo. Oh, and by the way, thanks for eight hundred times of nothing.
I sucked down to the dregs of my mug of blood. Bitter, Xavier, you’re getting bitter.

  “Here you go, sir.” Chesterton gestured towards a set of closed doors. “You are happy, sir, are you not?” he pressed, uncertainty playing in his eyes.

  “Honestly?”

  “It is the best policy, sir.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered with a resigning sigh.

  Chesterton’s master butler expression faltered at my admittance, and turning away from him, I looked down at the empty mug of blood. A couple of days ago, it would have been simple coffee that filled it. Now it was blood that I had just drunk. Blood, which I had swallowed down as if it had tasted like Columbia’s finest mountain grown. Maybe it was. I didn’t really care where the blood had come from. I was trying to cope with the feeling of being a little annoyed about the news that no one had tried to rescue me, despite knowing what was going on.

  “Marcus has trained me to be his lap dog,” I said slowly. “Am I supposed to be happy with that? Aside from those two big vampires upstairs, I haven’t had much experience in anything else here. I don’t know if I’m happy. I really don’t know. Maybe I am, as long as Marcus wants me. A dog can only have one master, right?”

  Chesterton’s face looked alarmed. “Sir!”

  “Sorry, Chesterton,” I said, forcing my tone to take on a lighter note. “Marcus changed the routine today. I didn’t get fucked this morning, and that’s probably what’s gotten me in this melancholy mood.” I handed him my empty mug. “Don’t worry about me…I’m a survivor.”

  Pushing past him, I opened the doors and entered the drawing room, looking for the blonde-haired woman. I saw her leaning against the mantle, her eyes immediately flicking towards me as I came in, and she flinched at the sight of me, though she tried to mask it with a welcoming smile. But she had, she’d flinched. And I felt better for seeing it. I hadn’t gotten the etiquette required from Marcus on how to address a council member, so I winged it. Hahaha, I could still make a funny.

  I bowed slightly in her direction. “Councilor Armanita.”

  “My Lord Emperor.”

  We watched each other from across the vacant room. This was just awkward and weird. I mean, what do you say to someone that recently tried to kill you?

  “You seem to have recovered quickly,” I said politely.

  “And you.”

  Awkward, awkward, awkward.

  “Marcus said that you would be the best one to talk to about…these things.” I gestured to the lack of wings.

  “Yes. I would be an expert on that subject.” There was sadness in both her face and her voice, and for a moment she looked lost in far-off memories. Then, shaking her head she asked, “What would you like to know, My Lord?”

  “Where the hell did they go?” I blurted.

  “The wings you have are a sign of the Royal House, as is the Hand of Light you displayed. You are descended from the Emperor’s House…Von Drachenfeld. You are of Royal Blood,” she told me.

  “That still doesn’t tell me where my wings went.”

  Armanita stepped towards me with her hand outstretched, as if to touch my face. I backed the hell away from her. She’d gotten all the coppy-feely she was going to get from me, yesterday. Her arm stilled, and regret slipped down over her young woman’s features.

  “The wings have been absorbed into your body through the dual scars on your back. Once the Emperor’s wings have emerged, the scars become like wing flaps. When you call on the wings, they will emerge from those scars easily, and you will never again bleed such as you did on that first occasion,” she began, explaining. “In time, and with lots of practice, your wings will obey your command, but until you gain mastery over them, they will, just like your fangs, continue to respond to strong emotion, such as anger or fear. When you are calm or at rest, the wings will dissolve, returning to their original dormant form inside your body, waiting for your call.”

  “Are they functional?” Even though this was the bitch that almost took both Marcus and me down, I was as excited as a kid at Christmas by what she was telling me.

  “Explain, please.”

  “Flying. Can I fly?” Isn’t it every boys wish to fly like Icarus, without having the inevitable crash and burn and death awaiting him?

  “Yes. You can fly with the Emperor’s wings,” Armanita admitted, adding, “Though I would recommend lots and lots of practice first. The ground is still very hard. You can get…hurt.”

  There had been a deliberate pause. She was obviously waiting for me to make some sort of remark about yesterday. She probably wanted an apology for taking a spike through the shoulder. I narrowed my gaze. She was the one that started the stabbing. She could be the one to kick in with the apologies first.

  “So what happens now?” I asked. “You believe I’ve got a Blue Flame, and you think I’m Royal Blood. From the little I understand, that’s not a good thing, since all the Blues were wiped out centuries ago.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest, trying to look intimidating. But it’s hard to look like that when you’re dressed in fuck-me-now clothes, with boy-toy Rapunzelesque style hair, and showing bare toes. I still tried, though.

  Armanita gestured to one of the leather sofas, and crossing from the mantle place, she went and sat down. “Not all Blues were lost to the cull, just most of them. The few Blues that have survived are in hiding. However, they are not of the Blue Line.”

  Ignoring her offer to join her on the sofa, I sat myself down on a wingback chair across from her instead. It was far enough back that I would be able to scramble out of her way if she started getting stabby again. At least, I hoped I could. I mean, she had been fast. Really fast.

  “So, why are you calling me Lord Emperor, when you know damn well the rest of the Reds aren’t going to like seeing something dead and forgotten resurrected?”

  “You are wrong in that regard,” she replied. “The fall of our Emperor was not done by vampire hands, and there are many who long for the return of the Emperor.”

  “How many?” I trusted her about as far as I could throw her, which yesterday proved to be only about ten feet.

  “Most of the Ancients, and older vampires, and the heads of the various Red Houses,” she informed me. “You would only need to proclaim your heritage, and you would have all the Houses swearing their fealty to you.” I thought I saw a glint of zealot madness in her eyes as she spoke.

  “You want to wage a Holy war while screaming my name?”

  “It is your birthright. You are a Von Drachenfeld!”

  This blonde, cheerleader-looking woman was freaking me out badly. I jumped to my feet, putting even more space between us. “I was born a human. I was never called Lord Emperor then.”

  Her head cocked to one side. “We should see if the rest of your family is of the Blue line as well then or find out if you are a genetic throw-back. It could be just happenstance. We will have to bring them in for testing.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but could get no words to come out.

  Leave them alone. Geez, aren’t I paying enough for their safety?

  “Xavier is an orphan, Armanita. That is why I chose him. No worldly ties and no police investigations.”

  Marcus’s voice preceded him as he came into the room, carrying socks and a pair of shoes. Since he was already wearing some, I assumed the ones he was holding were for me. “Come here, Xavier.”

  Crossing to the couch where he had taken a seat next to the councilor, I tried to take the shoes from his hand, but he narrowed his eyes and patted at the empty space beside himself pointedly.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  He shook his head and I flopped down, and as I did so, he grabbed at one of my legs and set it in his lap where he wrestled a sock over my toes and ankle before wiggling my foot into a shoe and tying up the laces. I felt like I was back in kindergarten as he set about doing the same to the other foot. I couldn’t look at Claudius, who had trailed in after him or at Armanita, who was watc
hing from her end of the couch. Blushing, I ducked my head and examined non-existent lint on the sweater I was wearing.

  “Are you trying to embarrass me, or are you just being kinky?” I whispered under my breath at him.

  Marcus frowned. “The floor is too cold to be barefoot,” he answered simply, dismissing my feeling of awkwardness.

  “And the discussion has been, up to this point?” Claudius inquired, easing himself into the overstuffed leather chair I had vacated.

  “The councilor is trying to convince me to let her start a holy war to restore the Empire,” I blurted out.

  Marcus stiffened at that remark. “Armanita, that I cannot allow.”

  “It is his birthright,” she returned calmly.

  Claudius had sprung back up out of the chair, his calm voice belying his anger. “You cannot publicly proclaim his lineage. If you do, you are sentencing him to death.”

  Death? What the hell is this death business?

  I tried to swing my feet down from Marcus’s lap, but now found myself being dragged over and sitting on it sidesaddle, his arms looped loosely around my hips. When I tried to move, they tightened, and as soon as I stopped, they hung loose again.

  Damn it.

  “Xavier is of the Blue Line,” Armanita was saying. “He has the wings. These cannot be ignored or hidden.”

  “Hello? Xavier is sitting right here listening to you discuss him,” I piped up. “I’m not some Lord Emperor. I can’t even control my fangs. You’ve got Blues around, why can’t I just be one of them?”

  Claudius hadn’t taken his gaze off Armanita. “There are still Blues?”

  Marcus’s voice rumbled to life behind me. “Why has the Council not informed everyone that there are still Blues?”

  Armanita turned and arranged herself on the couch so as to be able to watch both Claudius and Marcus as she spoke. “The High Council is aware of twenty Blues that have somehow survived the cull. All these fledglings were birthed after the Inquisition. Xavier is the twenty-first. Who those Blue Fledglings are is being kept secret. They are hidden throughout the Nation, and those who guard them are blood sworn to take the knowledge of their Blue charge to the grave. Those vampires who worked with the Inquisitionist were not all captured. That danger to the Blue Bloods is still there and is to be regarded as real.”