“I’m only planning to do what’s expected of me,” she informed her confidently. “I am the Grand Duchess. It’s about time I started acting like one … instead of trying to be a politician. I shouldn’t be drafting pieces of legislation. I should be ruling by decree.”
She gestured for Olivia to stand, and she did so, though a little reluctantly. She seemed almost suspicious of the way Raina had so abruptly changed her mind, and how she now seemed just as confident about her new angle as she had been about her prior one.
“I hope that I have been of some help to you, you grace,” Olivia said uneasily.
Raina kissed her chastely upon the cheek. “Absolutely. You’ve made things much clearer for me now.”
As always, Olivia seemed almost embarrassed by that small bit of physical affection. Raina meant nothing overtly by it, and she would have instead been inclined to offer her a hug. However, Olivia had actually seemed to express more discomfort with hugs than with a simple peck on the cheek. The only other option would have been something along the lines of a handshake, and that was simply too formal for someone with whom she so regularly confided. Again, Olivia was a cold sort of personality, strictly an at-arms-length individual. Just as well, Raina had heard enough from others to know that Olivia hadn’t approved of Duvessa’s “two way street” orientation, nor did she seem keen on Raina’s very brief sexual history with Brenna and Duvessa. Raina simply did her best not to offend her advisor by tiptoeing around her conservative sensibilities whenever it was practical.
Olivia was as close to a perfectly straight vampire as Raina had ever personally known. Of course, Commoners did tend to be a bit less sexually liberal than other races, namely the High Court and Fallamhain races, so bisexuality was not so much a given rule for its members as much as a slight predisposition. However, Olivia was far, far from a prude – quite the opposite, really, although she did have a rather uppity, aristocratic attitude about her sexual escapades. Both of the male vampires that had previously been in the study moments ago were her shared companions, and she was not the least bit embarrassed to share with Raina (when asked) that she had what she liked to call her “stable of other studs” whom she would call upon from time to time to “service” her. No, she was not sexually repressed by any means; she simply was very conventional in her choice of mates, having come from a generation that saw same-gender relationships as a humiliating, evil, disgusting taboo. Besides … although she was attractive, Olivia’s personality was usually more than enough to put Raina off from even thinking about her in any context other than a professional one.
Olivia narrowed her eyes slightly, studying Raina for a moment. “May I ask you something rather personal, your grace?”
It was only then that Raina became aware of the fact that she had been staring at Olivia at almost point-blank range for several long seconds. She blinked and tried to shake off her own daze with a slight chuckle of embarrassment.
“Um … yeah, sure.”
“How long has it been for you?”
She raised an eyebrow at that. “How long has what been?”
“Since you last had a taste?” Olivia elaborated vaguely.
Her other eyebrow went up. “You mean …sex?”
“No,” she said, “but perhaps that as well.”
“Well … we did it last night.”
“We?”
“Loki and I.”
“And did he let you taste him?”
Raina stared at her for a moment and then looked away rather shyly with a small laugh. “Are you really asking me if I swallowed?”
“What? Oh, no, no,” Olivia chuckled, “I meant to ask if he gave you a measure of his blood.” She grinned, just barely showing her fangs. “No, as much as I admire your ravishingly handsome consort, I would never be so rude as to pry for details of what goes on in your bedroom.”
“Not that I would really mind if you did,” Raina confessed with a shrug. She looked away and considered the question for a moment. “Actually, I think it’s been a few days since I had a decent amount of blood … maybe almost a week.”
“Oh … oh dear,” Olivia gasped with genuine concern, “that just won’t do. I can’t have you going out tonight when you’re running so thin.”
“No, it’s cool. I can go quite awhile without…”
Olivia held up a hand as she began to back away. “Really, your grace, I must insist on this. I had thought that you were simply stressed, but this is far more serious.”
“No, really, I’m fine.”
“If I let you go out tonight so unprepared, I would be doing you and all of the House of Fallamhain a terrible disservice,” she persisted, backing away to the door. She opened it, peeked her head out, and quietly gestured for those awaiting outside to come in. As she stood back to allow the two Sabertooths and her Commoner niece to file back in, she said, “I wish to offer you a full measure, your grace.”
Raina stared at her for a moment before she turned to look at the other three. There was not a person in that room whom she would have minded a bit in tasting, either in blood or of the flesh. Of course, she would not think to ask such a thing from Olivia herself, not only because of the nature of their association but also because it would have seemed wrong for her to feed upon her own advisor. But the remaining three choices were simply too exquisite to deny, not just for their visual appeal but for the relatively guilt-free liberty in feeding from them. She never took blood, she only accepted it when it was freely offered to her, and she absolutely refused to accept a drop of human blood on the grounds that it would violate her own personal ethics – and because she worried it would trigger a new and terrible instinctive craving that she could never legally satisfy.
“Are they willing to offer?” Raina asked, more to the other three than to Olivia.
While all of them nodded, Olivia replied, “They are yours by right for the taking, your grace. You have their consent by default.”
At that, she looked to Olivia. “You know that I have rules about this.”
“Of course, dear,” she agreed, “as do I … although, naturally, your rules supersede my own.”
“Refresh my memory,” Raina said as she took a moment to meet each of her three choices’ eyes. “Exactly what are your rules?”
“I do not feed from children, females, animals, or my own blood,” she replied simply as she folded her arms, lifting her chin rather proudly. Whether she meant to or not, she seemed to be presenting her own guidelines as though they were in some way superior to Raina’s, though she naturally would never directly state such a holier-than-thou sentiment to her.
Raina had been keeping down her ever-present thirst for quite awhile, always knowing it was there but always managing to find a reason or a means to avoid actually satisfying it in some way. She had been trying her best to supplant her blood addiction with lovemaking, but as she was beginning to find, even frequent couplings with the likes of Loki could not leave her completely satisfied when the most basic of her urges was left unfulfilled. She could never completely escape the fact that she was a vampire … especially when her skin had a tendency to glow in the dark on some occasions.
Seeing these three, feeling their own desires within herself as her own, she felt her own genuine thirst spring to the forefront of her attention in the same moment as the sudden flare of her lust. Raina did not vainly think of herself as irresistible or stunningly beautiful – in fact, she still thought herself to be rather plain. But whether due to her standing as Grand Duchess or perhaps her physical appearance, there were few within the House of Fallamhain (and elsewhere) from whom she did not sense an intimate attraction. Even Olivia seemed strangely drawn to her at times, though only in passing, and only in a few rare awkward moments.
“A full measure, though?” Raina went on, now stalling for time in her relative shyness. “That’s an awful lot. I wouldn’t want to bring someone that far down. I don’t want to send anyone else into bloodlust.”
“It
won’t be such a great loss of blood,” Olivia explained, “if you don’t take it all from the same individual. I’m sure that you’ll find more than enough between everyone here.”
At that, Raina could not help but to automatically look directly to Sophie. She was still having a hard time accepting some of the twisted ethical standards in vampiric life. Yes, Olivia was actually offering up her own niece for Raina to feed upon. Of course, this was nothing akin to throwing one’s child into a sacrificial pit of fire, nor was it as though she were prostituting her own child out to others. Among vampires, blood was both sacred and casual. The offering and taking of blood was not always sexual, and in fact, the two pleasures were usually separate, at least in a social setting. Thus, for Olivia to volunteer Sophie to offer a measure of blood was no more inappropriate by vampiric standards than, say, a man asking his son to mow his neighbor’s lawn or to ask a friend to help another friend move some furniture.
Still, it had only been a few months since she had gone through the Change herself. Raina was still clinging to “past life” standards of human ethics. To her, blood was still a very intimate thing. Sure, as a human she had been a phlebotomist, performing blood draws at a hospital for her day job and, after hours, upon humans and vampires that gave her a bit of extra spending money in return. But she had always clung to the notion that vampirism was romantic, that it was a visceral, carnal sort of act that was just a different shade of sex.
Of course, upon becoming a vampire herself, her preconceptions had been shattered … and, just as well, simultaneously reinforced. It had all changed the very instant that she had sunk her fangs into Countess Wilhelmina’s throat – a moment immortalized from many angles in both photographic and video form by so many witnesses, much to her chagrin. Consciously, she had hated it, loathed it, and felt utterly disgusted and horrified by her own actions; subconsciously and physically, however, she had yet to experience anything even remotely as ecstatic. Ripping into someone’s flesh with her fangs and then drinking them to death was the single most intensely intimate thing that Raina had ever experienced in her entire life.
So, even though neither Olivia nor Sophie seemed to have any issue with what was being proposed, Raina could not help but to feel a bit awkward about the idea. In fact, she was very much inclined to refuse the offer. But she knew better. To decline this would have been an insult to Olivia. Raina needed Olivia’s guidance and wisdom, as well as her influence. She did not want to risk losing that by committing a vampiric social faux pas.
“Well then,” Raina finally said, “as long as it’s okay with everyone here…?”
All three nodded pleasantly in agreement, Sophie seeming the most excited of all. She barely knew Sophie at all, having only met her on a handful of occasions. Apparently, she was simply thrilled by the idea of getting to spend some time with the much-hyped Grand Duchess, even if it would cost her a bit of blood. The other two, as Sabertooths usually went, were probably just eager to get physically close to her, perhaps with the underlying hope that Raina might be interested in more than just blood. And, truthfully, she was interested in more, although she had no intentions of violating the monogamy of her relationship with Loki – a silly sentiment, according to Olivia and others, but the closest thing to something “normal” that Raina had been able to establish in this life.
Stepping behind them toward the door and beginning to pull it shut, Olivia gave a quick formal bow and said, “I will give you some privacy and wait in the foyer downstairs, your grace.”
“Thank you, Lady Olivia,” Raina said with a rather nervous smile as the door was gently shut.
For a few awkward moments, Raina simply stared at the three of them – Thomas, Ethan, and Sophie – while they just stared right back at her in silence. The men stood in a sort of militaristic at-ease manner with their hands clasped behind their back, while Sophie anxiously rocked back and forth in her heels with a smile. She was definitely a cute girl, very petite, slightly shorter than Raina, with wavy, light brown hair that trailed halfway down her back, and intriguing blue-green eyes. She seemed perky, youthful, and genuinely sweet. Although Olivia had previously mentioned that her niece was in her twenties, she looked not a day over sixteen; likewise, Duvessa had been over two hundred years old, and yet she had only appeared to be in her early to mid-twenties. Immortality and artificial youth made it nearly impossible to visually gauge a vampire’s true age.
Ethan was built impressively, easily standing over six feet tall, with very broad shoulders and muscles that seemed to stress the material of his shirt, and close-cropped sandy blonde hair that showed off the pointed shape of his Sabertooth ears – not as high-pointed as a High Court’s, but slightly elfish. It had been bodybuilder vamps such as Ethan that had helped to develop a diet for most races of vampire that could almost completely substitute the need for blood and keep its cravings at bay. The discovery had been accidental, however, as the original goal had simply been to find a way to take the average vampire’s already superior strength and develop it further to an almost absurd level. Raina didn’t personally dislike Ethan at all – actually, she barely knew anything about him at all – but she had honestly never cared at all for muscular jocks. It had always seemed that they were trying to overcompensate for something that caused them a great deal of unspoken insecurity.
Thomas was another matter entirely. He was rather average in height and build, but his face was strikingly handsome, his wavy hair dyed jet black and spilling just over his shoulders and framing his pale face ideally. Raina had a very hard time looking away from his dark brown, almost black eyes. He was the kind of guy that could wear eyeliner and still manage to look very masculine. He also seemed to be very aware of the fact that his eyes were one of his most alluring features. He kept his chin down enough that he was almost looking up to her, deliberately posing himself. The smirk upon his lips was subtle, but knowing. Thomas didn’t need any fancy High Court empathic abilities to know that Raina liked what she saw.
Finally, Raina stopped nervously nibbling upon her lower lip and broke the silence by clapping her hands together loudly, causing everyone (including herself) to jump a bit.
“Well then, boys and girls,” she said with a smile, “let’s do this thing, shall we?”
* * * *
Chapter Four
Raina stepped around her desk and sat in her chair once more to open the large side drawer. She withdrew her familiar old “tackle box” of phlebotomy supplies that she had brought over from Arizona. From the very beginning, Raina had anticipated that it would likely take some time for her to get used to the idea of drinking blood. It wasn’t so much the blood, itself, that still bothered her as much as the idea of using one’s fangs to extract it from someone else, even if they were a willing donor.
For one thing, the idea of biting someone to draw blood seemed gross to Raina, at least in a clinical sense. She had always been a bit of a mysophobe, as her mother (a registered nurse) had put the fear into her with horror stories about all kinds of diseases when Raina was young. During her phlebotomy certification classes, the things that she had learned about blood borne pathogens and the terrible things that could get into a person’s body through an open wound had only made those fears worse.
Instead of willfully pushing her bacteria-hosting fangs into someone’s flesh and potentially giving them some kind of terrible infection, she preferred to stick with what she knew to be safe. It was a moot point between vampires because they were not susceptible to common bacterial or viral infections, but she still avoided biting. She took comfort in the clinical sterility of proper phlebotomy – no muss, no fuss. There was little or no pain, the wound healed very quickly, and her donor(s) didn’t have to walk around for a day or two with an ugly wound visible to everyone. Of course, to bear someone else’s “mark” was a sign of ownership amongst vampires, the equivalent of a wedding ring or a personal tattoo. Raina didn’t want anyone to feel owned. She didn’t regard the members of the House o
f Fallamhain as property. She felt that marking anyone would be akin to branding them like livestock. These were her allies, her friends. Sure, they were vampires, but to her, they were still people.
Just as Duvessa had felt that she could not trust anyone whom she could not love, Raina felt that she could not trust anyone with whom she did not share a mutual sense of respect. Nearly everyone respected Raina by default because of her status as Grand Duchess. However, she could not expect them to trust her if she abused them as Duvessa had. Thus, she almost never drew blood by any means other than clinical phlebotomy.
“Pull up a chair, take a seat, and roll up a sleeve,” she said to them as she began to lay out her materials carefully.
Thomas readily took the initiative to be first. He unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve before pulling one of the leather chairs up close to the desk and sitting with his pale arm draped across the top. Glancing up as she laid out a few sodium-heparin tubes, sixteen-gauge needles, and safety-lock hubs, Raina saw that Ethan and Sophie were watching her actions very intently with obviously uneasy stares. Thomas, however, was completely oblivious to the instruments that Raina was laying out, instead choosing to focus upon her, meeting her eyes directly. He was still sporting that sly, sexy smile of his.
“I take it you’re used to this sort of thing?” she asked, trying to make conversation to hopefully distract herself from the swelling lust she was sensing from him, as well as herself.
“I was one of Duvessa’s regulars,” he replied with a subtle accent not unlike Loki’s, “but she always used her fangs or a knife.”
“Yeah, well … when someone offers me something as precious as their own blood, I don’t thank them by mutilating them.”
“Do you not like to bite?”
Raina paused, setting down a few squares of cotton gauze as she met his eyes. In a very serious tone, she replied, “No. No, I don’t, actually.”
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 6