by Addison Cain
Just because I was tired of being quashed, because I felt like being a dick and was bored of politics, games, and a life I had no control over, I took my grandfather’s wrist. But only to pull him closer so I might go for the throat. Suit jacket pulled aside, I sank in my fangs so the wool might remain unblemished. The same could not be said for the crisp, white undershirt he wore like a Fortune 500 executive. It would be stained. Others would see that someone had fed from Vladislov as if he were food and not ambrosia.
I’d expected my brains to be dashed against the wall for such gall. I’d anticipated pain. I’d known better!
But he was far more clever than I. One mouthful and I saw eternity. A single gulp and I was forever changed. Horrified. Blessed. Unworthy. Pure.
As I drank, a God whispered in my ear, “You don’t have to live your life without love. Have your Pict. Take him from me. But you can only keep him if you take this throne. Otherwise, I’ll exercise my right to send him where you’ll never find him no matter how long you search.”
I couldn’t imagine surviving a single night without Malcom. So I took the ugly deal, already feeling the building shake around me from my growing temper.
And then Malcom was there, hand to my shoulder, sweet words at my ear. Foundations stopped their rumbling. My heart beat again… full of ichor and swampy darkness that left my eyes an even brighter crimson.
Drawing my teeth from the throat of an eternal, terrible thing, I buried my face in the shirt of my husband.
And married him that night beside the River Seine.
The gown fit to perfection.
The veil made me feel new.
Our bloodthirsty kiss after vows spun by some random priest sent the terrified mortal running back to his church.
Few were invited, yet many arrived. With little notice, the new Queen of the Americas’ wedding became an event for those with rank enough to dare show their face. But there was one there who troubled me. A woman, overwhelmed in appearance, who clung to my grandfather like a tick.
She had dark hair. Blue eyes an exceedingly familiar shade that had once been mine. And stared at me with a mix of awe and horror.
She refused the passed goblets of the finest vintage of human blood. And my grandfather cooed over her, her awkwardness, her impropriety. Her total lack of manners.
My dress was lace, it was white. But my feelings toward that creature were black.
Though I was given no time to explore them. One moment we were before a crowd of undead playing at ceremony, the next I was with my husband in a room so laden with rose petals it was cliché.
Cliché and adorable.
“Tell me you love me.” There would be no absolution should I answer incorrectly.
God, how I adored when he commanded me so. “I love you, Maelchon of the Pict.”
“You might be queen, but know that I am your king.”
He was, so much so that just to hear him speak in that tone had my pussy dripping with need. “I have no king, no husband as yet. Not until you give me what you’ve denied my body for so long.”
And I was speared with such recklessness, that it broke our bed on a single thrust. In that moment, I think I died.
He fucked me raw, over days and nights in a windowless room. Took more than I might give until he filled me with child.
And I came so hard, I swore allegiance to my slave. Gave him my very soul. Felt each thrust of his cock so deeply that I swear it changed my spirit into something new.
A virgin. A husband.
Too rough, biting and vicious, and everything I might ever want.
Utterly in love, ruined by it, I took that throne as Malcom directed the rebuilding of my Cathedral, belly swollen with our firstborn. Who kicked like a fiend.
I was not a biddable queen. I was not amenable. I reordered with violence yet could be gentle as a lamb. Marie brought me cake. To her, I offered grace.
Eventually friendship, even with her despicable mate, Gustavo.
Hating that throne, I kept to my husband, his council, and his attention. He lavished me with far more than wisdom and pleasure.
Malcom made me new. Made all of it bearable.
Until it began to fit. And the Cathedral began to glow with more than electric light.
Internal peace, a thing my people had been starved for.
I gave birth on a Sunday, in the beautiful room Malcom had designed for me. We named our daughter Eithne—Pict for princess. Our ruby. Her eyes a far brighter red than mine.
And as her father slept, I took her out to see the sun.
Thank you for reading Cathedral! Jade and Malcom’s love story was a pleasure to write, and I hope you loved them as much as I did. Ready to #freepearl? Vladislov and Pearl’s dark romance awaits! Full chapter teaser ahead!
Preorder THE RELIC now!
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Now, please enjoy an extended excerpt of THE RELIC…
THE RELIC
Vladislov
All thrones, all palaces, all places in this world where creatures of the night lingered—every corner of every continent where hunting grounds might exist—all of it bored me. I couldn’t even recall what state the world had been in, the borders of countries, the wars fought, when I’d last sat as king. Others were placed to carry out that work in my stead. To lord over the night’s denizens and keep our kind in line.
Keep my children thriving, learning, adapting, bringing pride to our race.
Darius had been my favorite son, hand-plucked from the Persian court. So much potential… and the ultimate disappointment. Thousands of years were no excuse to forget one’s duty and where one came from. Namely from me, who’d chosen him, raised him, taught him, granted him power far beyond what others of our kind possessed.
Power that was abused.
How soon they forget.
So there I sat, on my dismembered son’s throne, aghast to be reorganizing a disrupted hive full of Darius’ more evil creations. Their minds were… fascinating. Their inability to answer my questions, clever. My son truly believed his gifts set him on equal footing with his creator. Yet all he did was make a mess. What I was seeing was little more than his extreme selfishness, even for our kind.
There were secrets buried here, in tunnels that spanned the entirety of this city. Thousands of humans trafficked and kenneled, disposed of with none the wiser. That, I would give my boy, was clever. Vampires weren’t even a myth in the new world. They were fodder for television shows and movies. Yet thousands lived in this city, hunting, breeding, bickering, and surviving right under the noses of millions of humans.
The evolution of my kind had been curious to observe. From vicious night predators who’d ransack entire towns in one moonlit night, to subtle and stealthy, wiser, monsters.
Yet, still a bother. Even with all their new rules and new technology and endless opportunities, some just didn’t deserve the gifts they were given. And some were not given enough.
Such as my descendent, Jade. Daughter of my dismembered son Darius with so many remarkable talents for our kind, all stripped from her by dear old dad until she was weaker than the lowliest servant. Until her mind was broken, scarred, and required more blood from my veins than, in my long, long history, I had ever given another.
A soft spot I had for my grandchild, though I imagined in ten thousand years, I’d be dismembering her too.
The beautiful imp looked every bit her father’s daughter, no denying the resemblance. But only the fates could say what time and power would make of her. Darius was not the first of my creations I’d been forced to handle.
He would not be the last.
A flutter. A single unusual heartbeat at that thought.
I’d rather not see Jade fragmented physically. Not after she’d already been so fragmented mentally. I’d see her rise.
Yet now she played house with her strict lover. Now she recovered, her people recovered, the throne recovered, because I sat a throne for the first time since humans traveled over oceans.
Listening to petty squabbles, culling an overripe herd. Being gracious to my grandchild while simultaneously contemplating war—a mass extinction across all vampire civilizations. The rapture.
Kings and queens all over the world were failing in their rule, chasing pleasure and forgetting to parent. Tithes became poorer, greed was on the rise.
Which could be partially blamed on modern times, and the infection of selfishness that reigned in all society, human and vampire.
Perhaps a World War was just the thing? Set back this mania, remind all life that death hovered and whispered in their ear.
Without great loss and suffering, what was there to remember to treasure?
Shiny objects? Bit coin? Art?
The only art I admired these days was the portrait of my granddaughter. Painted myself, and perfect. Life-size, dominating the throne room. A testament of millennia of practice with a brush and the old way of mixing oil paints.
A reminder to the few I had let live of just where their allegiance best rest. The first who had scoffed at it, I ripped in half. Careful that none of their blood might mark the canvas. Purposefully drenching all in the room with bits of dead vampire juice.
Baptized in the blood of a fool. Their one and only warning that she was held in my esteem.
I would have preferred to start fresh with this entire court. Donate some of my own dear flock, augment it with new blood. Find young prodigies with modern tendencies and acumen. But darling Jade had been given the option to choose the fate of this flock. So, I left her a few hundred. Though, to be true, in a year or two I might return and kill them all if I found myself displeased with how things had progressed. Once I deemed her recovery sufficient and forced her to take the throne.
And I would come back, I always came back to this Cathedral, and had every year for near a century. I’d thought it was my son that drew me, that his inevitable end whispered in my ear. But now he was gone from this place in all the ways that mattered. Yet still I heard the call.
Which made sitting a throne a bit more bearable.
“My lord.”
Ah yes, the one who loved my grandchild. Shining head bowed, manners impeccable, I found I liked Malcom… a very little. “What has she done now?”
These tales were always amusing. His weekly reports while she slept something I looked forward to in this endless slog on the chair.
“She is… perfect.” Rushing through his speech on her recent accomplishments, shaking his head, the man changed topics. Clearly nervous. “I didn’t come here to discuss Jade. There is something… I remembered.”
It was unlike this one to trip on his words. Which widened my eyes in anticipation, and left me leaning forward, fingers steepled and smirk on my mouth.
“Something”—glowing eyes met mine, concern, a touch of fear as if he might not leave this conversation with the borrowed heart in his chest—“that I must show you.”
I smiled broadly, standing from the throne, amused by something different. Anything different. “By all means. Lead the way.”
***
Long ago, blocked off and forgotten, this area of the Cathedral should not exist. Not on any schematics, not in the memories of those left alive here or stumbled upon in their excavations. But there it was, hidden behind so many layers of random, unused rooms, barred doors, spiraling ancient stairways so tight one had to bend in half just to navigate the descent.
Any recollection of this place had been ripped as violently as Darius might from every last mind who had ever known of it. There weren’t even rats, so tightly it had been sealed. Only damp, and cobwebs, and an utter lack of light.
Even eyes like mine could hardly see in this type of dark.
And I found I loved it. The vibration of the walls, the desolation.
It was a prison, once the burial chambers of the clergy this ground had been stolen from. Cells with iron bars where the dead inside had long ago gone to bone, or desiccated to the point a strong wind would blow them apart like paper.
Other cells had been fully bricked over, whoever left inside trapped for eternity, and I had a strong suspicion I might know a few missing vampires of a certain age who, by chance, might grace a cell or two.
&nbs
p; And had no interest in relieving them from their box.
Not when I heard something I might only describe as singing, not when I felt drawn forward through that nightmare. Following the siren song, I became impatient of the debris, crushing what I might, tossing it haphazardly behind me for Malcom to dodge.
I moved without his direction straight to a wall where the bricks didn’t match and the mortar was sloppy and thick.
And knocked three times for good measure.
At my back, Malcom confessed. “I put her in here. Ordered the masons to brick it shut… and forgot that very night I’d ever laid eyes on the waif. Everyone forgot. This whole area just… disappeared.”
Ah. Perhaps dear Malcom was worthy of my granddaughter after all.
As if to soften what he thought to be a disappointing blow, the male muttered, “There is no guarantee she’s still inside. He could have taken her anywhere…”
Oh, but Darius had not. Not if he’d gone to such trouble to have something so unusual right under my nose. “I can hear her, singing an old tune. Not asleep and not awake.”
And ready to be uncovered. Brick… something as inconsequential as brick was all he’d needed to cage a true daywalker. Breaking through the mortar with black extended claws, pulling apart a wall that whined with the removal of each stone, the whole slab having settled and grown accustomed to its missing support, I found a door like any other prison door. Unremarkable and built to make the prisoner know they were there to suffer.
Moments later, that wood was dust, fragments crumbling, with little more than a swipe of my hand. And on the other side? The back of a massive gilded, gaudy, ornate, and hideous mirror. A huge monstrosity of a mirror that completely covered where the door had been.