by Sofia Daniel
Predators never gave up after failing the first time. Could I risk having him strike again? The next time, I might not be so lucky to have Miss Margolyes watching over me. I shook my head and snorted. That woman had enjoyed seeing me at the captain’s mercy.
I pushed myself off the bed and stood.
“Where are you going this time?” Zarah asked.
Pulling back my shoulders, I strode to the door. If I didn’t put myself under the protection of the Kingdom of Stryx, anyone who felt like it could paw at me at any time. This would be disastrous to my escape attempt.
I flung the door open and strode into the hallway.
“Alicia?” said Zarah.
Giving her the coldest glance I could muster, I said, “There’s a contract I need to sign.”
Chapter 3
After returning to the headmaster’s office to sign the concubine contract, the gong sounded for lunch, and I ate alone at my usual table close to where the faculty sat. Fortunately, Captain Tanar wasn’t present, but Miss Margolyes’ eyes tightened with disapproval.
Professor Proust flicked his head toward the middle table where the Stryx brothers usually sat, but I shook my head.
I’d only agreed to sign the damned document to stop the captain from accosting me on future occasions. Now that I was contractually the property of another vampire kingdom, most level-headed vampires would keep their distance.
Lunch was a mix of blood builders, such as liver and orange paté served on wholewheat bread, steak tartare with parmentier potatoes and steamed greens, followed by a tangy, lemon mousse. All the better to help us replenish our hemoglobin levels while the vampires were away.
I glanced around at my fellow frumosi. Even with the vampire students gone, the boys sat separately from the girls.
My shoulders slumped. I missed Gates. Not that I’d gotten much of a chance to know him, and I probably wouldn’t, now that he’d transformed into a werewolf, but I imagined we would sit together and strategize ways to escape.
I slathered a good amount of paté onto my bread and took a huge bite. If Gates hadn’t shoved me aside to dash out into the full-moon night, the werewolves would have bitten me.
Kat stood at the side of my table with her hands on her hips. “Don’t think you’re going to be popular because the Stryx brothers have chosen you for a concubine.”
“I don’t.”
“Good, because we all know you used trickery to get them.” She made a show of looking from side to side, which was ridiculous considering a table of full-grown vampires sat behind us. “I’m keeping my eye on you. So are all the others.”
“Thinking of learning from my example?” I muttered. “Not recommended unless you’re a masochist.”
Red blotches appeared on her cheeks, which clashed with her auburn hair. Maybe I’d touched a nerve. The world was a vast and exciting place, and I was guessing the realm of the vampires, including those who loved them, was even more fascinating to girls like her.
Kat leaned forward and hissed. “You’ll pay for this!”
I rolled my eyes and was about to ask her if she was trying to take Micalla’s place, but good sense held my tongue. As far as anyone was concerned, Micalla would return to take leadership of the Coven of Bitches.
Instead, I took another bite of my paté and bread then moved onto the chunks of raw steak arranged around the plate to look pretty.
“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” she spat.
A tiny voice in the back of my mind whispered that I should be getting Kat on my side. The girl had never warmed to me in the past, and she clearly had her eye on one of the Stryx brothers. If I offered to make an introduction and confided that I was using my position as a concubine to upgrade to one of their consorts, she might decide I wasn’t so bad after all.
I gazed into her hate-filled blue eyes. Befriending her would mean one more person around the castle wondering where I disappeared to during the day. Or another person possibly following me when I went to see the onion woman.
With a sigh, I said, “Sorry for calling you a masochist earlier. It was just a reflex from the last place where I studied. As for the Stryx brothers, I’m not sure what I did to attract their attention, but they’re quite cruel under those pretty faces.”
Her lip curled. “They can’t be that bad if you signed the contract.”
I bit my lip. This was one of those situations where if I spoke up, I would make another enemy. Besides, if I explained to her that Captain Tanar had offered me the chance to become his consort, she’d probably laugh in my face. With all the vampire staff within spitting and hearing distance, I couldn’t dare humiliate the captain and turn his interest into hate.
“Have you finished?” I asked.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“There’s no point in continuing this conversation, is there? Anything I say will be twisted and used against me.”
“You think too highly of yourself, Stephens.”
My brows drew together. I could have sworn she’d referred to me by my first name in the past. “Well, you’re the one who approached my table. Whatever threats you’re about to spew, I’m no longer listening.”
To emphasize my point, I scooped up a forkful of steak tartare into my mouth and chewed. Maybe it was the annoyance, but it didn’t taste like raw steak mixed with herbs and raw eggs. It was actually quite refreshing.
I missed dinner to stay in the library, which I found on the top floor of the castle. It occupied an entire wing and was a triple-height space of shelves that stretched all the way to the roof. Two mezzanine levels provided walkways, but a person still needed to climb a ladder to reach the books at the top.
A dozen knockers wearing the usual black uniforms milled about the library, dusting shelves and putting books back into place. There was even space behind the counter for restoring books, where two petite female knockers wearing white gloves re-stitched ancient tomes with the precision of conservationists.
I walked past them, wondering what on earth they had done to offend the vampires. Knowing how things worked around here, it was probably nothing.
Most of the books were in languages I didn’t understand, and the only two I recognized were Latin and medieval English written in a script I couldn’t decipher.
There was a final gong that indicated lights out, a final warning for vampires to shutter their windows or get out of the sun. I waited for the knockers to leave before venturing out of the library and making my way back to the kitchens.
As I left the darkened pantry and entered the kitchen, I found the onion woman stepping out of the room that held the pigs with two empty buckets in her hand. I itched to ask her more about the hybrid pigs and the other ingredients of sangria, but there were more pressing matters.
“I signed the concubine contract.”
Her shoulders drooped, and she tilted her head to the side. Closing her eyes, she gave her head a little shake. “Why on earth would you do something so stupid?”
“Captain Tanar accosted me in the stairwell.” I strode across the room with my hands curled into fists, still not quite believing the reaction of Miss Margolyes. “He thought I rejected the boys because I wanted to be his consort.”
The older woman’s brows drew together. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, dear.” She blew out a breath and stared at a spot on the floor.
Stomach tightening with trepidation, I stopped at a steel worktable and rested a trembling hand on its cold surface. “What?”
The onion woman placed the buckets on the ground, rounded a bank of stainless-steel tables, and grabbed me firmly by both arms. “You’re in more trouble than I thought.”
The grip was so tight, I winced, and the urgency in her eyes made my mouth fall open. “Why?”
“You signed up to become the Stryx boys’ concubine. Yes?”
Panic galloped through my heart, but I still managed to nod. “What’s this all
about?”
“Captain Tanar sees our kind as tools.” Her lips tightened. “He’s like Dracula but without the sex appeal.”
Revulsion rippled through my insides at the thought of anyone finding the old vampire with the oversized, silky mustache attractive. It wasn’t just the facial hair but the hooded eyes that seemed to penetrate a person’s soul even from behind the canvas. He probably spoke with a thick, commanding accent, too.
The onion woman let go of my arms, leaving unpleasant tingles in place of her fingers. She went back to her usual station and picked up another bulb of garlic.
Something in the hunch of her shoulders told me I’d screwed up by signing that contract, but the harshness of her breaths indicated that I had spooked her with the mention of the captain.
I settled beside her and picked up a bulb of garlic. “I’ve made a mistake, haven’t I?”
She shook her head. “You have a better chance of surviving with those three boys. At least one of them might be gullible enough to fall in love. The captain has ice in his veins, much like Dracula.”
“Do you know him?”
The onion woman shuddered. “Tanar is one of Dracula’s most powerful enforcers and a bloody amazing hunter of hunters.” Her hard eyes bore into mine. “Tanar is the vampire sent out to fight the hunters that no one else can handle.”
“So, you know Dracula, too?”
Her shoulders relaxed. “He’s the bastard who had me turned into a knocker. Just because I wanted to leave with our son.”
The bulb slipped from my fingers and bounced on the stainless-steel surface. I turned around and gaped at the onion woman. “You were his consort?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t commit to our type. Too paranoid. Instead, he doses frumosi with enough of his blood to make us love him as much as he loves himself.”
I stared down at the table surface, trying to make sense of things. Captain Tanar had once mentioned a powerful sorcerer in Hunters 101 who used dark magic to enslave vampires. It had gotten my mind racing, but a bottle of hydrolat of garlic disguised as holy water had fallen out of my bag, and then he’d ordered me punished.
My gaze darted to the onion woman’s, who stared into my eyes with an expectant expression. She wanted me to piece things together for myself.
Licking my dry lips, I said, “Your parents were hunters.”
“Correct.”
“And you’re a frumosi like me.”
She nodded.
“That means that frumosi are also hunters.”
Her face tightened with annoyance. “No.”
My posture slumped. Every instinct in my body screamed to grab the woman and shake the truth out of her. But if she had tussled with Dracula and still retained her faculties, it would take more than a whining seventeen-year-old to make her spill her secrets.
“Okay. All hunters are frumosi,” I said.
“Correct.”
I chewed my lip, careful not to annoy her with my next idea. “And all frumosi have the potential to become hunters?”
“Exactly!”
“Hunters don’t want us dead,” I said.
“No.”
“Are the vampires keeping us here to stop us from becoming hunters?”
“That’s part of it,” she replied. Before I could ask her the other part, she said, “Your priority is to unlock enough of your magic to open the wards.”
“Can you do it?” I asked.
“Of course. But if I let you out, they’d track you down in an instant after sundown and interrogate you on how you managed to leave the wards.”
I lowered my head. Despite her harsh demeanor, the onion woman was the only ally I had in this castle. Poor Gates was now a werewolf, too dangerous to leave the confines of the wards. “What do I have to do to unlock my magic?”
She reached into the pocket of her black dress and pulled out a bracelet. “I made this out of garlic skin. The magic is weak, but once you accept it, the garlic’s power will eat away at the natural barrier around your heart.”
“Will it hurt?”
“It’s more irritating than anything.”
“How do I accept it?”
“Can you meditate?”
I raised my shoulders. “Sort of.”
“Close your eyes and picture the garlic skin around each chakra. You know what that is?”
Picturing an image of a person meditating with different colored circles at strategic points of their body, I nodded. “Is that why you asked me to peel the garlic?”
“Without the help of one’s parents, it’s the fastest way for a hunter to unlock their powers.”
I would have asked her the difference between a hunter and a frumosi with powers, but I held my tongue. The onion woman was in a talkative mood today, and I wouldn’t do or say anything to make her clam up.
“Anything else?”I asked.
She prodded the space above my breasts with her index fingers. “Unlocking the heart chakra gives you access to your rudimentary powers.” Then she prodded the center of my forehead. “And there is where you’ll be able to see magic.”
I rubbed my forehead and frowned.
“Be careful. Once you’ve opened up your third eye, you might not like what you see.”
“The vampire’s true form?”
“Amongst other things.” Her gaze flicked toward the door that led to the pantry. “Meditate in sunlight and return in a week. For best results, balance your sunstone on your head. I’ll see whether you’re ready to crack open the wards.”
“I have another quest—”
“Leave now if you want to see me again,” she snapped.
Pressing my lips together, I blew out a frustrated breath. I’d already taken up her time, and it was obvious that she wasn’t just here because Dracula sent her away. “Thanks.”
She turned back to her garlic and continued stripping off its papery skin.
For the next week, I went to bed after lunch at midnight, skipped dinner, and awoke at seven o’clock, just in time for the December sunrise. I sat in the storage cupboard I’d used before to power up the sunstone and alternated between meditating and reading library books.
The knockers at the library helped me find accounts of vampires’ narrow escapes from hunters. I sat in a stream of light on a small pile of sheets and read through the hand-written passages. The worst of the stories detailed the hunters incinerating vampires with a single thought. These old vampires seemed to believe that hunters held the power of the sun in their bodies and could wield it at will.
“Much like me and the sunstone,” I muttered.
If hunters were frumosi and frumosi all descended from Dracula’s brother, Radu, why were both branches of the same family so different?
One morning the following week, I walked down to the kitchen for my appointment with the onion woman. She wasn’t at her usual station, but about six-dozen bulbs of garlic stood in a pile, indicating that she would soon return to her work.
I walked into the room where they kept the pigs. The scent of lemons assaulted my sinuses, and I clapped a hand over my nose to stop myself from gagging.
A large knocker filled their troughs with green vegetables mixed with raw meat and cut up pieces of citrus fruit. I stepped out of the room, blinking hard to stop my eyes from watering and gazed around the kitchen.
The onion woman wasn’t in any of the other storerooms, so I stood at her station and peeled garlic bulbs, separating the cloves from the roots and skins until I’d gotten through the pile.
“Where is she?” I whispered to myself.
A pair of short knockers shuffled past, each carrying pails of porridge.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
They didn’t acknowledge my presence. Perhaps they weren’t programmed to respond to commands. The knockers I had met in the beauty salon and the library seemed to have a rudimentary understanding of anything related to their tasks.
I glanced around for something else to do, but the k
nockers had left the room and taken their porridge. With a heavy heart, I returned upstairs and meditated a few hours, determined to see her the next day.
Every day was the same routine. Breakfast, lunch, verbal sparring with angry frumosi, sleep, meditation, and a fruitless search for the onion woman. Not always in that order.
Each day, I would peel the garlic bulbs on her station and each day after finishing, I would return to my room to sleep. Either something had happened to the onion woman, or she was avoiding my questions and leaving me the garlic to handle as part of my training.
One morning, I awoke to the scent of perfume. Zarah stood in front of the mirror, already dressed and applying layers of lipstick. She had styled her hair into a high ponytail and put on hooped gold earrings. Since we weren’t really talking to each other, I didn’t bother to ask what she thought she was doing.
After dressing, I walked down to the dining room. All of the faculty, including Captain Tanar, sat at the head table. Knockers stood at both sides of the room, and a lead ball of dread rolled through my belly.
The vampires were back.
Dante, Nero, and Raphael had returned.
“All rise, please,” said Professor Proust.
On legs that wouldn’t stop trembling, I walked to my usual seat by the head table, stood behind the chair, and held onto its wooden back for dear life. The past few days, I’d been so preoccupied with meditation and the missing onion woman that I hadn’t even thought about Christmas, New Year’s Day, or the beginning of term.
As the first years trailed into the room to applause, I stared down at the white table cloth, trying to blink the black spots out of my eyes. I don’t think I’d even once spared a thought for Mom, Steve, or little Daniel.
More and more vampires entered the dining room and took their seats, and a panicked roar in my ears muffled the applause. What the hell was wrong with me? My whole family died, and I had sex with Raphael. What kind of sick person did that?