“You could just stop…” He trailed off, the argument weak as he looked away, his shoulders hunching.
“Why should I?” I asked bluntly, grabbing his face and turning him back to me again, refusing to let him turn away from what he was asking. “Why should I go to my people and tell them that they must refuse to eat and bathe? That they and their families, their spouses, their children” —I taunted him with his own words, my lip curled up so he could see my fangs flash in the light around us— “must all die in agony for your kind? What makes your humans that much better than vampires, pet? Humans murder. They cannibalize. They torture. They rape.” I threw each word at him, letting them hit like the strokes of a lash, my hold unflinching as I snarled at him. “Yet you expect me to inflict a genocide on my entire population to save yours because you consider yourself better than me simply because you’re a human. Because you don’t need blood to survive, that makes you better than me. Because you can’t condone the fact that I’m higher up the food chain than you are, you would condemn my entire species to death.” I thrust his chin from my hand, his hair falling to cover his face.
“You claim I should be a martyr, sacrifice myself because it’s the right thing to do, yet where were you tonight, Sebastian?” I flung the words at them, letting them strike with the force of a blow. “Where were you while my family and I were eating? If you seek to save others of your kind, shouldn’t you have offered yourself up on an altar instead? How many have died in your time in service here while you walked the other way, content to let them be the meals in your stead?” I scoffed when he paled, his hands shaking as he stared at me in horror.
“I’m trying to find a way to help them.” His words were a broken whisper torn from his throat.
“Liar.” I sank my fingers deeply into the thick comforter, preventing me from holding him against me, forcing him to hear me. “You may be trying to help them, but you’re also trying to keep yourself alive. I don’t resent you for it. It’s something I’m proud of, in fact. It’s smart. It’s nature, Sebastian. You’re a survivor.” Haunted eyes met mine, his shoulders trembling as he clenched and unclenched his hands, his jaw gritting tight as he fought back his emotions. “You call me evil and tell me to martyr myself for your kind when your own sense of self-preservation won’t let you sacrifice yourself for them. You call me a monster for what I must do to live, but you would gleefully watch an untold number of children, of families, die screaming in agony for your belief of what is right. Not for people who are good. Not even for people that you love. But simply because of who we are. What does that make you if not a monster?” Sebastian gaped at me, his skin so pale it was nearly translucent as he attempted to find a way to defend himself, to reject the truth I’d planted in his head. “I’m done with you tonight, pet. Be back here in the morning to work.”
Sebastian pushed himself stiffly from the bed, etching a small bow, never raising his eyes to mine before striding from the room. Exhaustion beat at me, begging me for another meal as my skin began to itch, but that was tomorrow’s problem. For tonight, I would let sleep claim me and hope my handsome pet could find no peace in his own nightmares.
Chapter Ten
Draven
“That bitch!” I threw the eyeball I’d been holding against the wall where it made a squelching noise before falling to the floor. My chest was heaving and my hands were shaking as I turned back to Crowe. He had been trying to distract me with a game, but even Eyeballs and Toes wasn’t helping now.
“I take it you did that because I was winning?” Crowe’s voice was frosty as he added another severed toe to the board, indicating his three in a row, and I snarled at him.
“It’s a stupid game.” It really was stupid, but I hated to lose as well, which Crowe knew. It had been hours since Elsie had kicked us—gloriously naked—out of her room. “Did you see how brazen she was?”
“I saw everything.” There was a quirk at the side of Crowe’s mouth, though his tone was icy. My temper flared with fire, but his was ice. He hadn’t appreciated the knife that had been held to my throat. Honestly, though, that part wasn’t what bothered me. I enjoyed the pain, and a woman who was strong enough to hold a knife to my neck would normally have been one I’d have been busy getting into my bed. But she wasn’t really a woman, despite what her body looked like. She was a vampire. And she’d taken my damn knife! That knife had been one of Bran’s, and come hell or high water, I would get it back. Unfortunately, the knife was solid silver, and my conjuring spells would be of no use.
“She needs to be taught a lesson,” I growled, flipping the board over, heedless of the eyes and toes that scattered around the floor. “She can’t keep treating us like this.”
“Or you could just shut up and research so we can get our information and get out of here,” Crowe challenged, pushing to his feet. “I hate being here as much as you do, but if you keep wasting time on these petty bickering matches with her, you’re going to paint a target on our backs. I thought you wanted answers. We had a plan, Draven.” There was a warning in Crowe’s voice now, and I strode over to kick the wall.
“She took Bran’s knife,” I reminded Crowe gruffly. “We can’t let that stand.”
“You shouldn’t have had it with you.” Crowe lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug, but he couldn’t hide the fury in his eyes, not from me at least.
“You can’t mean you’re going to let her keep it!”
“Of course not.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder, reassuring me. “I know what that knife means to you, Dray. But she’ll expect it if we come for it immediately. It’ll be better if we wait and focus on our goal for now. It’s more important.” He squeezed my shoulder tightly, leaning his head against mine. “The knife’s just a knife. This could mean everything.” His words were a whisper, almost a prayer, and I clenched my eyes shut, pushing my own belief into the universe. We would find answers. We would be able to change things. I pulled away from him, flopping down onto my bed.
“I can’t believe she stripped,” I grumbled. Normally I could weave my words as easily as a spell, binding women to my side and having them begging for me. That she had not only withstood the mild flirting I had done, but thrown it back into my face, was something I hadn’t been expecting. Already, several of the female vampires here panted after Crowe and me. It had been one of our most efficient weapons when we began searching for answers. Not that we actually fucked any of them, nor any of the servants who had offered. Just as some servants hoped to join the vampires, others hoped to join covens—the more powerful the better. In their minds, it didn’t matter that they had no magic. If they could ensnare someone who would claim them as a mate, they could make a place, magic or not. Crowe and I weren’t foolish enough for that, but it did make for a useful tool.
Crowe hissed through his teeth, righting the table I had knocked over. “That was unexpected.” For Crowe, that was nearly as good as admitting she’d held a blade to his throat. Crowe was never outsmarted. He always thought thirty steps ahead, planning and seeing every angle in a way I knew would make my own head ache if I had to handle it. It wasn’t a gift, at least not a magical one, it was simply the way he was, however, it didn’t make him any less bloodthirsty. I had seen his eyes when she held that blade against my skin, felt the magic build inside him. He’d wanted to lash out, to tear into her, to see her bleed for threatening me. Even as he had remained cool and calm, that violence had brewed within him, seeking a release. I might kill in the heat of anger, but Crowe, he would plot every last detail out and ensure that not only was his prey taken down, but that they felt every moment of it in the most intimate, excruciating means possible. “I knew she could move at that speed, but I hadn’t expected her to go for your blade.”
That made two of us. I had made my wounds for a reason. Partly because I enjoyed the pain, enjoyed the sensation of my blood falling across my skin. But I’d meant to tempt. To tie my sexual words to the blood, to draw her in. I would have thought she’d
react like other vampires we had seen. She’d go for the open wound, unable to resist the lure of fresh blood when her control snapped. If she’d gripped my arm, I’d have been able to put my blade against her throat and have her under my control. The pain of her teeth would mean nothing to me if she managed to bite before we incapacitated her. It was a move we had pulled on numerous occasions, always with the same pattern, the same success. Yet she managed to surprise us both. Not only had she not gone for the wound, she’d actually wrapped it.
“Do you think she covered it to avoid the temptation?” Crowe questioned from his own bed. His boots thudded as he kicked them to the floor, and because it sounded like a good idea, I did the same with mine, flexing my feet to push blood to them.
“Maybe?” At this point, I was hesitant to say exactly what her motivations for anything were.
She had stood in front of us gloriously bare, uncaring that we were all able to see her. If anything, she had seemed to take pride in that, in the automatic response of my body to hers. When she’d pressed her body against mine, her soft breasts molding to my back as she held that knife to my throat, I had gone hard as iron. When she’d nicked me lightly, not enough to draw blood, but enough to enforce that she could kill me in moments, I could have come in my pants like a teenager. I’d wanted to beg for her to press harder, to let the blood dribble down my neck, to let her scrape the blade across my body until I screamed with pain and pleasure. I’d wanted to know if her voice sounded that breathy in my ear when she came or if she would be the type to scream my name. I’d wanted to see our blood smeared across each other’s skin. Even now I was hard, shifting myself to ease the strain. This couldn’t be happening. I’d never touched a vampire female. I never would. Not after what had happened before.
“Do you think she has some kind of magic of her own?” The words were out of my mouth before I could process them, and I could have sworn when Crowe almost fell from his bed.
“What do you mean?” he snapped, darting over to my side to assess me for damage. “I didn’t sense anything from her, did she do something?” He was patting my neck now, my arm, as if searching for any sign she had marked me in some way.
“Stop, Crowe, damn, that’s not what I meant.” I wriggled away from him. It was just too weird to have him patting me down when I’d just been thinking of Elsie, but at least it had gotten rid of the hard-on I’d been sporting.
Crowe’s eyes glowed, the red nearly neon. “Then what did you mean?” He spoke through gritted teeth, his body nearly vibrating. I hadn’t meant to scare him, and as much as I didn’t want to tell him, I knew he wouldn’t let it go now.
I couldn’t meet his gaze, digging my nails into my palms, letting the pain balance me. “I’ve never been tempted by a vampire before,” I admitted, shame coating every word. Pain pierced my chest, but I knew it was no wound or spell. It was the guilt of betrayal, and it acted better than any knife. That I’d been tempted by that monster was sacrilege of the highest order. “Yet when she was behind me like that, I would have happily pulled her to the floor and taken her. The past, our mission, everything else be damned.”
Crowe didn’t seem to be breathing when I met his eyes again, though the red had begun to leach from his irises. “Fuck,” he breathed, reaching up to pull at his hair as he squeezed his eyes closed. He was silent now, thinking, and as much as I wanted to beg him to answer me, to reassure me, I couldn’t. I could only hope he wouldn’t turn to me with disgust when he had come up with a plan. “Add it to the list to research,” he finally declared. “I’ve never heard of one holding that kind of magic, but if it’s possible, we need to know.” He hesitated, his gaze on the wall. I didn’t dare move, worried about dragging those eyes to me. He was my brother, my best friend, and if he looked at me with the same betrayal I felt inside myself, it might truly be enough to destroy me this time. “I felt it too.” His quiet confession had me reeling before shock gave way to fury.
“It has to be a spell then,” I snarled. “Something in her lotions maybe? A rune on her skin we didn’t notice?” She hadn’t been wearing any jewelry, I was positive of that. Her body was imprinted on my mind, and I would have seen any gold or silver against her skin. It was the kind of body made to be draped in jewels. I shook away that errant thought with a grimace. “Do you think she’s a caster? Or that she had someone from a coven do it for her?”
A small number of covens were willing to work with the vampires and provide them with magics such as cloaking spells or other potions. If she had a coven loyal to her who would put some kind of enchantment on her, then we needed to find out who it was. If she was a caster…
“I didn’t scent any magic on her,” Crowe assured me, though a hint of doubt remained in his eyes. Few knew of casters—vampires with the ability to weave their own spells. Fewer still knew of those of us who hunted them. Vampires were never meant to hold magic, and those who did were the worst of the worst. Sebastian had been right when he’d said witches didn’t have enhanced senses.
But Crowe and I weren’t just blood witches. We were hunters. We could run faster and lift more than most of our brethren. Our senses were nearly on par with the vampires’, which was how I was able to scent her bed even from a distance. Other traits were more rare and varied between each witch. Some could see in the dark. Others were resistant to wounds or had a touch of premonition. My gift allowed me a far higher healing ability, even if the rest of my magic was drained dry. I was quite difficult to kill. It was a gift that both of my brothers had shared with me. Crowe’s senses were even better than mine, and if he said he didn’t scent magic on her, I trusted him completely.
“I guess that means it’s time to see what answers the other witches here can provide.” I pushed myself up, reaching for my boots, and Crowe began to pull on his.
“I heard the Willow Coven was working with the fangs,” Crowe told me as he got to his feet.
“Then Willow it is.” Nothing like a little bit of torture to ease a man’s mind, after all.
Chapter Eleven
Sebastian
Another night without sleep had my body aching. If I was honest, the only part of me that wasn’t in pain was where Elsie had fed on me yesterday. Hesitantly, I touched my fingers to the spot. Part of me expected it to feel different, but it was the same unblemished skin. I hadn’t been able to get the lecture Elsie had given me last night out of my mind. I wanted to rail against her, blame her for poisoning my thoughts, but underneath everything I was logical. Outside of emotional responses, I simply couldn’t refute the points she had made, and that, more than anything, tore into me. If she had just laughed at me, tried to say that humans weren’t worth anything, then maybe I could have simply moved on, treated her as another evil vampire out to destroy my race for her own pleasure.
How could I have expected her to actually argue with me? And after having spent time with her, how could I have anticipated anything else? Her mind was as analytical as my own, and that killed me. I didn’t agree with her purely from a moral standpoint, but if I was moderating an argument between a cat and a mouse, my stance would have been similar to hers. It didn’t mean I was willing to let my people die however. If research possibly held a key to saving them, then that was what I would do. I was just a no one really. The son of a witch who had been a failure when he had no magic of his own in his blood. But now, as the pet to the heir of the throne, maybe my voice could reach more than it had before. If she was telling the truth about not wanting to wipe out our race and simply ensuring the continuation of her own, was there a middle ground here? She had been telling the truth when she said humans held their own evil. I was optimistic, not a fool. Would there be an amicable way to have our species work in harmony, where only those who deserved their end were given over for feeding? The thought burned inside of me, a brand of betrayal on my soul, but I doused it quickly. We killed criminals as it was, there was no need to get picky about the type of death they endured. I had never killed a human and had n
o plans to do so. My fight was with vampires and witches, not my own species.
I headed upstairs toward the residence wings, my mind still churning over the problem. I’d never admit she was right, but I couldn’t convince myself she was wrong either. A shuffling noise drew my attention, and I instinctively ducked to the side to avoid the fist flying toward my jaw. I spun to face my attackers, knowing full well they were human. Vampires didn’t use fists.
A small group stood before me, and I nearly cursed. There had to be more than a dozen men and women here, not exactly odds that were in my favor if they were already throwing punches. “I’m late for my duties,” I stated, angling my wrist to show the claiming band. “Let me go.”
“You shouldn’t have been claimed.” I recognized the man who hissed the words at me as another servant from my wing, his ashy hair falling over his face in spikes as he spat at my feet. I searched my memory for his name as I held my hands up placatingly.
“I didn’t ask to be claimed, Clyde,” I told him, finally remembering his name. “You know that.” A quick look between them had me groaning internally. This was likely not going to end well. We were all servants, meaning that even the females were strong enough for physical work and would not be easy to get by, let alone take out if they came at me. Several of the servants began to circle around behind me, penning me in.
“That’s my point,” Clyde snarled, the sound echoed by several of the men and women who made up his side of the hallway. “You were claimed by the heir. Do you have any idea what the rest of us would give for that?”
“Clyde, I didn’t go looking for this,” I repeated. His eyes were manic even as a female beside him snorted her disdain.
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