by Coralee June
I dropped my eyes to the ground, trying to force the cravings at bay. If he saw the hunger there, he’d see my weakness. I had to get myself under control. I wanted to run in the other direction, but what good would that do with a supernatural who had super-speed? I should’ve stayed in the attic with Reed. Shuffling my feet, I followed him into Mistress Cock’s office and flinched when the door slammed shut behind us.
I took a steadying breath and clenched my teeth, trying to get my intense cravings under control. He tsked under his tongue like he found me lacking. “You don’t seem nearly as impressive as everyone claims. Are you shaking?” the smooth voice asked with a chuckle, making me snap my eyes back to his. He regarded my face with a hum before his nose picked up my scent. “You’re bleeding,” he said with a scowl, not giving me a chance to even take in his appearance. He flashed forward toward me, quicker than I could blink, invading my space with his cinnamon smell. His nose was on my neck in an instant, sniffing me as my pulse thudded.
What the fuck was my mother doing sending a godsdamn vampire?
I finally lifted my head. “Looking for this?” I asked while holding my hand up. The blood was still freshly flowing from my palm, coating my skin with sticky warmth. This was a risk, testing his ability to hold back despite the treat I offered. There weren’t many vampires that could restrain themselves. It would make any vampire instantly hungry. I understood hunger all too well. I was constantly starving. But unlike vampires, it wasn’t blood that my immortality craved. It was power.
“You like tempting vampires?” he asked while eyeing my hand. I recognized his disgust at his own cravings, had even felt the guilty hatred within myself more times than I could count. I didn’t like that my hunger took over my better judgment. I craved control, and the darkness was something uncontrollable. “Too bad you’re just a dirty Void,” he sneered before grabbing my wrist and flicking his tongue out to lick the wound. Vampires had healing properties in their saliva. It allowed them to drink from humans without leaving a mark. Their venom had other abilities...like the ability to induce mind-numbing lust and pleasure.
“Can’t handle the temptation?” I grimaced as his tongue traveled over my skin.
“You don’t tempt me,” he replied, as I watched the puncture in my palm seal shut. He quickly pulled away and wiped his mouth with his hand, like he wanted to erase the taste from his lips. I’d never been tasted by a vampire before. Even though he hadn’t used any venom on me, the sight of him licking my palm had been almost sensual.
I swiped my hand on my sweats, trying to act nonplussed. He made his way across the room to the roaring fireplace which was crackling with warmth. He wanted more, I could tell. But to him and every other supe, I was like a disease. He wanted nothing to do with me. He fought his basic instinct to sink his fangs into me and drink more of my blood because of what I was—deadly.
My eyes moved to take in his appearance, and I looked at his angular face. He was about my age, maybe a bit older, with a sharp nose and steely eyes filled with loathing. Thick eyelashes cast shadows along his hard cheeks and dark scruff covered his jaw. He was taller than I was. The cloak he wore hid his body, but I sensed he was just as chiseled as every other vampire in existence. They were always painfully strong. A perk of their power. The man was hot and dangerous. I could feel his power in the room like a heavy blanket over my shoulders.
“Who are you?” I asked, reaching up to grab my amulet.
“Render Tillson, Vampire Paragon for the council and now, your babysitter,” he said with a frown while looking me over. He ran a hand through his dark hair before casting his gaze on the amulet perched between my breasts.
My blonde brows shot up in surprise. There are only four paragons in all of America, chosen by the council leaders, one of each: vampire, shifter, elemental, and necromancer. The four most powerful supernatural breeds. As a paragon, he was being groomed at Thibault Academy to one day take over as a council member and lead the other vampires. The fact that he was even here was a big deal, and dread filled me like a boiling pot of water.
Now that the temptation of blood was gone, he was taking me in. Hot brown eyes lingered on my bare stomach and fluttered up to my chest where dried blood sat on my cleavage. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to come back over and lick that too, and that image set fire in my body. My desire for power wasn’t limited to the Void apparently. My libido craved it too.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“Your particular skills are required. There’s a vampire in my community that got cursed with bloodlust. She killed forty people. The council has ordered for you to take her vampirism away.”
I frowned while clutching the necklace around my neck even tighter. Render eyed the large piece of jewelry with disdain and distrust, his grayish eyes growing dark at the spelled orange gem nestled in an ornate silver design. My father found it the year after my Void powers came out. It kept away my urge to feed, but every time I took it off, the hunger came back with a vengeance. Last time, the pain of it had nearly knocked me out. Suppressing my shadowed powers had consequences, but not wearing the necklace was worse. I was a danger to any supe I came across. One brush of my skin and I could ruin them, suck them dry of their powers and leave them as empty husks. Last time I just had to stand near my victim. My powers were growing more difficult to contain, and I didn’t like to test its boundaries.
“You heard what happened the last time, right? I stripped a shifter of his feral wolf and nearly killed him. What you’re asking could potentially kill her too.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do. I don’t want to let you anywhere near my people, but she’s important to the council, and they don’t want to put her down.”
I rolled my eyes. “Important to the council” probably meant she was fucking someone important.
“And what if I refuse?” I asked before crossing my arms over my chest.
Render surged forward with his super-speed and wrapped his hands around my neck, shoving me against the wall. My eyes widened in surprise at the contact, my head smarting where I’d hit. His muscular body pressed against mine, and I shivered as his hot air feathered down my neck. Being told I was the most powerful supernatural in existence didn’t eradicate my fears. Unless I ripped off my necklace and drained him dry—which I did not want to do—I was helpless against him.
“You don’t get to refuse. You’ll help me, or it’ll be you in supernatural prison.”
My eyes widened as his whispered words sunk deep into my bones. His threat wasn’t something to take lightly. Supernatural prison was worse than death. Once you went there, you usually didn’t come back out. And if he really was a paragon, then he had the power to send me there.
I turned my head to face him, straining against his grip. My lips accidentally brushed his jaw when I moved, and I felt him stiffen against me. Loosening his tight hold, he allowed me to speak while still holding me in place.
“Fine,” I hissed. “Now get off of me.”
He held me for a moment longer, pushing his knee against my thigh and positioning his forearm between my breasts, the tension of the threat settled between us, hatred zinging back and forth between us. This close, I couldn’t help but notice how ridiculously good looking he was. There was nothing worse than having to be stuck in the proximity of an attractive supernatural who hated my guts.
“We leave in an hour. Get changed and go pack,” he said in a raspy voice before pulling away, releasing his hold on me.
I sunk back against the wall, trying to catch my breath. “Why do we have to leave so soon?”
“Why is your mouth moving when it’s your feet that should be doing the job?” he shot back.
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
He blinked at me, visibly taken aback. I guess most people didn’t call mister hotshot vampire on his shitty attitude. I smirked, counting his silence as a win, and turned the handle to the door, letting myself out. Mistress Cock wa
s nowhere to be seen in the hallway, so at least I didn’t have to deal with a lecture from her tonight. I turned and headed toward the dorms, my feet carrying me down the long, dim corridors. The bottom half of the walls were wooden paneling and above that was blue and gold wallpaper that reeked of pretentiousness. I made my way up the stairs, taking my sweet ass time as I went. I might have no say about my summoning, but I could make the asshole wait.
At the top of the stairs, I veered off to the right and passed the first few doors. I opened it, the darkness in the room matching my insides. I looked over at the perfectly clean desk to my right and then to the messy one on my left.
One of the things this school boasted was that the “troubled” girls who attended would be taught to socialize as proper ladies—i.e., we were forced to share a room. My roommate was a London socialite who was sent here after her father remarried and her evil stepmother shipped her off. She was an anal perfectionist and had no time for me. She was working hard to win back daddy’s love. I usually made her eye twitch every time I left clothes on the floor or toothpaste on our shared sink. Her bedroom door was closed tight for the night as usual. She followed the lights-out rule to the minute. She and Poppy were best friends.
I walked into my bedroom, flipped on the light, and nearly screamed at the shadow sprawled out over my bed.
“What the fuck?”
I had one hand over my heart and the other reaching out like I’d been planning on grabbing the lacrosse stick propped against my bed frame to attack my intruder with it.
The vampire looked at me cockily from my bed, his arms propped under his head and his ankles crossed. “Do you always walk that slow, or was it a talent reserved for me?” Render asked.
Fucking vampiric speed. He must’ve gone around to the other staircase. How he knew which bedroom was mine, I had no idea.
I dropped my hands and replaced the shock on my face with irritation. “Get off my bed and get out of my room,” I hissed. I didn’t like having him in my personal space.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and to my horror, I noticed the journal he had clasped in his hands. He flipped open the leather-bound book and started thumbing through the handwritten entries. My hands curled into fists.
He cleared his throat and started reading one. “June sixteenth: My mother wrote to me after the first time in eight months. She asked fuck-all about my life and instead informed me that she didn’t approve of the minus that I earned beside my A. She said that if I didn’t get that mark up, she’d be cutting my clothing allowance for new uniforms. She’s real maternal, that one. She even signed her letter as Council Liaison. Thank fuck I don’t have to suffer through Christmases or birthdays with her. Even though she stopped the pretenses of actually visiting me back when I was twelve. At least I have Dad. He doesn’t visit as often as I’d like, but at least he doesn’t hate me.”
My chest burned. My teeth grinded. I saw furious red awash with devastating blue. “Give that to me. You have no right to read that,” I snapped, moving forward.
Render’s smirk turned into a full-sized grin like he relished in yanking out my personal turmoil. Everything in there was deeply personal. Every time I had raged or grieved, I’d written it down in that book. It was my way to get it all out since I couldn’t tell Reed about the supernatural aspects of my life. It might be stupid and juvenile, but it was mine, and it was utterly private.
Render flipped a few more pages, and I rushed forward to yank my journal away from him, but it was laughable how easily he dodged me. He was across the room and leaning against the wall before I’d even made it a single step.
“October fourth: Mistress Cock caught me out of my dorm after lights out, but only because she was in the kitchen feeling up the janitor. That pretentious bitch always goes on and on about the importance of purity. Guess she liked to get her own purity scrubbed down by Mr. Longhorn. I’d just wanted to sneak some pumpkin pie, dammit. Now I’ll have that image of them all tangled up together burned into my retinas forever. Oh, and I didn’t even get the damn pie. I got two demerits and bathroom duty instead. And to make it all worse? Katie Jones started a rumor that I’m bulimic, and that’s why my head has been in a toilet bowl all week. I keep getting old food shoved into my bag and crushed into my assigned seats for class,” he read, a smirk on his pale, horribly beautiful face.
I hated him so much.
I hated his smooth, deep voice, and the way he read my personal words like they were amusing to him. “Render. Put it down, or I’ll scream and wake up the entire wing.”
He just laughed at me. “Go ahead. Scream, Void,” he said with a twisted curl of his lip. “It wouldn’t be the first time I had a woman screaming in the bedroom.”
“You’re disgusting.”
He cast a critical look up and down my body. “Believe me, Void, you’re the last person I’d ever take to bed,” he said, making embarrassing heat stain my cheeks. “And the longer you stand there, the more entries I’m going to read. So I suggest you hurry.”
Turning on my heel, I marched into my closet and threw open the door, grabbing my duffel.
“December twenty-sixth,” Render’s voice rang out, making red haze fall over my eyesight and my mouth fill with bitterness. “My mother sent me a pair of socks for Christmas and a note that she’s extended my stay here for another year. Looks like I’m not getting out of this prison when I’m sixteen like my father offered. She called him and ripped him a new one for even suggesting it. Merry fucking Christmas to me.”
I packed as fast as I could. Every entry he read was worse than the last. My father missed one of the school’s family dinners. My mother wrote to tell me she was disappointed in my grades. Again. Reed was bullied. I snuck out for a date with a human guy, but he’d stood me up. The girls at the school picked on me. I complained about how I was unwanted. Unloved. Hated. Feared. One after the other, the blows kept coming until my eyes were burning, and I was so humiliated that my hands shook.
Render followed me to the bathroom, still reading, and I simply pulled out my drawer and dumped everything inside the duffel. “There. Done,” I said, my hand outstretched. “Now hand it over.”
“What a sad, lonely little life you’ve lived, Void. It seems no one likes you at all.”
I knew he was purposely being a dick because of what I was. He didn’t really know me. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
I said nothing, my eyes refusing to blink in case a tear fell down. After a long moment of him watching me, he finally closed the journal and slapped it down onto my open palm. I shoved it into my duffel and zipped it shut.
“Let’s go.”
Reed turned on his heel and walked out, and I was forced to follow behind him. I looked back at my bedroom, feeling slightly forlorn. He was right. I did have a sad, lonely little life. But at least within the walls of my bedroom, I was somewhat shielded. At least living here with humans had allowed me to hide away from the hateful looks and wishes for my death. It was exactly why I didn’t put up a fight when Mother stayed away. There was nothing out there in the super world for me except for a controlling council who liked to use me when they needed and then shove me away in a drawer when they were done with me.
“Let me just say goodbye to my friend,” I asked, though I didn’t know why I even bothered.
Render sneered at me. “That’s funny, I seem to be feeling a bit thirsty. Maybe saying goodbye to your friend isn’t such a bad idea,” he said, the threat obvious.
“Never mind,” I mumbled. I hoped I’d be back before Reed even knew I was gone.
“Smart choice,” Render replied, flashing his fangs. “Now, we’re taking a portal to the vamp community in LA. I hope your little amulet is prepared to work overtime,” he called over his shoulder with a smirk.
My heart drummed. Portals were powerful magic that made it hard to hold back the Void. I didn’t just crave supes, anything with power had me salivating.
“I
got it under control,” I gritted.
“For your sake, I hope you do.”
Chapter 2
I’d never been to a vampire community.
They didn’t always play well with elementals, and my mother had been an elemental before… Nope. I refused to think about that.
I’d only heard stories about the tall, black skyscrapers in the hidden city with blood banks on every corner. The whole place was spelled to repel humans, and even other supernaturals had to have permission to visit it. I was probably one of the few non-vampires to see it. Vamps were notoriously reclusive, and they rarely interacted with the other communities. But that was true for most of the supernatural races. They didn’t play well with each other.
“Close your mouth. You look like an idiot,” Render snapped while brushing stray magic off his suit.
I didn’t pay him any mind, openly gawking at the city before us. I’d managed to travel through the portal without passing out, but I’d nearly gnawed a hole through my lip from the nothingness pushing to be let out.
“Where are we going?” I asked while struggling to keep up with his long strides on the stone streets.
I was busy taking everything in. I’d been in the human world for so long that it was jarring to be in the presence of other supernaturals again. All this power...it was intoxicating. My amulet was working overtime so that I wouldn’t drain everyone dry.
I looked up at the grayish, dusty hue of the sky. The city was spelled to block the sun, so only the bright lights of the billboards and skyscrapers lit up the streets. It was a modern-looking city, designed with sleek, contemporary elements. Everything looked pristine and polished, from the black steel and mirrored glass of the buildings to the expensive cars and unblemished sidewalks.
“Everything looks so expensive here,” I mused as we passed by a store window that was digitized to advertise what they sold inside. Based on the photos of beautiful men and women with prominent veins, I thought it was a safe bet that it was one of the notorious blood banks.