“May I ask why?”
She almost told him right away that it was none of his business. Raina considered it for a moment, shrugged, and reached for a few sealed alcohol swabs.
“I just think this is better,” she told him as finished assembling her equipment and reached across the desk to secure the tourniquet upon his bicep. “It’s cleaner. And I don’t feel like such a monster when I stick someone with a needle. Biting people makes me feel like I’m … I dunno … like I’m some kind of rabid dog or something. Just because I look like an ugly beast doesn’t mean I have to act like one, too.”
She clicked together the plastic buckle of the tourniquet and cinched it down snugly, although not so tightly that it cut off his arm’s circulation. Without being asked, he clenched his fist a few times, and almost immediately several large, ripe veins swelled into obvious view. Ah, how she much preferred drawing blood from vampires rather than humans. She hoped to never again have to spend fifteen minutes at a time chasing around some elderly person’s thin, fragile veins with a tiny butterfly needle, only to have the damned thing rupture and cause a big, ugly, purple bruise as the vein bled under the surface of their loose, paper-thin, almost transparent skin.
“You are not an ugly beast, your grace. You are very beautiful,” Thomas assured her as she quickly swabbed at his median cubital vein with the alcohol-soaked square of gauze.
“Well … I don’t agree,” she said, “but thank you, anyway. That’s very sweet of you.”
“Are you ashamed of what you are, or just disgusted?”
She froze for a moment as she began to screw the needle into its hub, looking up to him with an almost offended look. Immediately, his smile vanished as he realized he had mistakenly gone from hitting on her to being nosey. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway? What right did he have to take that kind of an almost accusatory tone with her? Her whole Grand Duchess status aside, it just wasn’t the sort of thing a guy should be asking a gal during a typical getting-to-know-you kind of conversation. It was the sort of question she might have expected to hear from an opinionated TV show host. He was wrong to say it, he knew it immediately, and she didn’t bother to disguise the look upon her face that let him know it hadn’t escaped her attention, either.
“I … I am sorry, your grace, I…”
“Let’s just dispense with the chit-chat and get this over with,” she said, abruptly yanking the cap off the needle, grabbing his wrist, and none-too-gently piercing his swollen vein. She was never rough with her draws, never, but in that moment, she took some small sadistic bit of satisfaction in poking him with something sharp and making him wince. It seemed fair in that instant, a little bit of his physical pain for the little bit of emotional pain he had (unintentionally) given her.
She knew that she was extremely on-edge because of her thirst, and so her spontaneously angry reaction was, of course, a bit out of hand. She normally would have just shrugged it off, let it slide, and not even let him know that it bothered her. While the Change had brought with it an end to her monthly cycle, being on the edge of bloodlust made even her worst PMS episodes as a human seem harmlessly mild by comparison. Quite frankly, being a vampire had turned her into a severely moody bitch, especially when she continually neglected her need for blood.
Thomas’s blood spurted into the vacuum tube as soon as she pushed its rubber cap into the hub of the needle, making a wet gurgling sound as the bright red fluid began to squirt into it. Raina was immediately apologetic, at least on the inside, for having acted so harshly towards him, but she said nothing. She had learned that sometimes, even when she knew she was wrong, it was best not to admit any error or wrongdoing as Grand Duchess, for to do so would undermine others’ confidence in her ability to lead. She did not personally agree with the concept, but with Olivia’s guidance, she had at least been shown that it was at least sometimes a legitimate policy. Olivia had taught her that, as a leader and particularly as the head of a monarchy, one should never be seen as subordinate in any way, however subtle, to one’s followers; as Raina saw it, it was the nature of her position that required her to act like a haughty snot a lot of the time, or at least occasionally.
The tube filled quickly, and she deftly held the needle and tube in place with one hand while using the other to grab a fresh tube. With just the movement of the fingers of her left hand, she pulled the first tube off and pushed the second one into the hub, again rewarded with that soft squirting sound. Lately, that sound had always seemed to bring back the audio memory of refilling her plastic bottle with cold filtered water from the cooler at the back of the hospital laboratory where she once worked. The fluid that filled this was far smaller in quantity, far redder, much warmer, and admittedly much more refreshing. She actually had to fight the temptation to pop the top off the first tube and knock it back like a shot of booze while the second one filled. Instead, she simply stared at the second tube, fascinated as always by the sight of its filling.
Without thinking, as soon as the second tube was almost completely full, she withdrew from his vein and immediately clicked the safety cap into position over the needle. Having forgotten to first remove the tourniquet, there was enough blood pressure in his vein to cause a small stream of blood to quickly drool from the puncture site. It quickly trailed around to the underside of his elbow before she even had a chance to grab a couple of squares of cotton gauze and press it over the wound. Not only was she feeling out of practice, she was getting terribly sloppy with her procedures. The sooner she could satisfy her craving, her need, the sooner she could start to mellow out a bit and get herself under control. It appeared that Olivia had been right, after all. Raina was so anemic, she was becoming a jittery wreck.
“Sorry,” she murmured without even thinking, and then immediately regretted that verbal error, as well.
Thomas lifted his arm and began to arise from the chair, keeping his elbow up and tilting his forearm down in an effort to avoid dripping upon the desk or the carpet. He began to try to sop up the trail of blood when Sophie suddenly lunged at him from nearby, taking his arm in both her hands.
“Wait,” she said. Their eyes met for a moment and she smiled mischievously. “Allow me.”
Sophie brought his arm closer to her face, parted her glossy pink lips, and flicked her tongue out at the small blood trail, working her way up from the back of his elbow around to the front and lifting the gauze to get at the wound site. Just as Sophie sealed her lips around the puncture site, Ethan stepped forth and physically pulled them apart.
“Hey, hey,” he said, “what’s wrong with you? What do you think you’re doing?”
Sophie stepped back and just looked at him with wide, innocent, clueless eyes as she smacked her lips, savoring the taste of Thomas. Thomas was momentarily just as surprised as Sophie, but quickly recovered and frowned at her.
“Nobody gave you permission,” he informed her, pressing the gauze square over the wound again as it began to ooze just one fat, precious drop more.
“Oh, I … I’m sorry,” Sophie finally said after a moment. She turned to Raina, now with eyes slightly widened with growing fear. “I didn’t think that I—…”
“Sophie!” Ethan hissed in sort of a loud whisper.
Raina simply stood and looked at them in silence for a few moments. She was still so distracted by the thought that two perfectly good, warm … no, two very hot vials of blood were awaiting her on the desk before her. The longer she delayed, the cooler they would become, and the less pleasant they would be to suck down – the physiological effect would still be there, regardless of temperature, but the experience would suffer. In fact, it was really only with Ethan’s warning to Sophie that Raina snapped out of her momentary trance. She had heard everything, and yet she hadn’t been paying the least bit of attention, honestly – just background noise.
Trying her best to recover from her awkwardness, Raina gave Sophie a rather devilish smile. “They’re both right, Sophie. You weren’t invited t
o taste him.”
“And no one should feed before the highest vampire present,” Ethan added, “unless she gives you permission first.”
“Thank you, Ethan,” she said with a brief glance and nod in his direction, keeping her attention upon Sophie. Raina slowly wagged a finger at her, clucking her tongue. “Considering that Lady Olivia is both your Maker and your aunt, I would think that you’d know better.”
Sophie met her gaze a moment longer and then quickly looked away to the floor, only shyly and reluctantly bringing herself to try to make eye contact again. She took a moment to gauge Raina’s sincerity and then, apparently recognizing the smile she saw as genuine, she relaxed with a novice vampire’s fang-baring grin. She had not been a vampire for very long, perhaps not even much longer than Raina.
“I am sorry, your grace,” she said as she clasped her hands behind her back and rocked from side to side. “I didn’t mean to be a bad girl.”
Raina rolled her eyes at that and waved it off. Unlike her aunt, Sophie was of a younger and more open-minded generation. While Raina still knew next to nothing of the young Commoner, she was willing to bet that Sophie was at least somewhat attracted to other females, based upon what she sensed from the girl. However, it was just that fact about Sophie – that she was only a girl, really, and still very much looked like one – that kept Raina in check. She would not allow herself to even begin to rise to the seductive bait as she had felt herself doing with Thomas.
Ah, yes, that thought brought her eyes back to Thomas. He was backing away now with that handsome smile of his, again lowering his chin to look up at her slightly as he did so to maximize the effect of his looks. Had she been wrong to commit herself to Loki? Of course, it wasn’t the first time she had asked herself as much, but more and more she was beginning to question the validity of her own determination to remain monogamous with her one and only bloodspawn, her first and only consort.
Could she really stay faithful to Loki, given her condition? Bloodlust came and went, but love was forever … right? Or had she mistakenly confused the two? Surely, Duvessa would have argued the complete opposite; surely, by her rationale, the inevitability of losing loved ones to death meant that love was finite, whereas bloodlust was a condition with which one would have to contend forever as a vampire. Raina hated to even find herself pondering that, loathing the idea that she was second-guessing the sanctity of love’s very nature.
It seemed as though she had taken some measure of Duvessa’s soul into herself when she had inherited her role. Or, at the very least, in being Duvessa’s bloodspawn by descent (only one generation removed), perhaps it was Duvessa’s blood in her veins that was serving to corrupt her thoughts and warp her perspective. Perhaps her desire to prove that she was nothing like her predecessor was futile and naïve, a losing battle that would ultimately and inevitably result in her becoming the very sort of personality … no, the very sort of monster that she despised.
Breaking the awkward silence and relative stillness, Ethan stepped forward and sat in the chair where Thomas had been only moments ago. His thick arm was laid upon the desk with a meaty thump.
“I am happy to offer my vein to you, your grace,” he said proudly, his voice again not quite as deep nor as harsh as his imposing physical size would seem to imply.
“That’s good to know,” she said as she dropped the first used needle and hub into a compact sharps container inside her equipment box. She held up the next sheathed sixteen-gauge needle she intended to use. “Then I won’t feel quite so guilty for poking you with this.”
His fearless, somewhat macho act was easy enough to see through, even without her ability to sense his unmistakable fear. She could see his eyes following her every movement as she uncapped the rear section of the needle and threaded it into the hub, his eyes remaining transfixed upon that small instrument in her hand while she grabbed a couple more gauze squares and a wrapped alcohol swab.
Why was it that the biggest, beefiest guys she’d ever drawn blood from were usually the biggest wimps when it came to needles? It seemed almost backwards to her that guys such as Ethan probably wouldn’t have thought twice about letting someone such as herself or, say, Sophie press their fangs – those dirty, germy things – into his neck or wrist. If he was willing to do something that barbaric and grossly unpleasant, it seemed silly that he was practically terrified of having a teeny-tiny little bit of clinically sterile metal poked into a properly cleansed and sterilized site on his body.
She wrapped the tourniquet around his huge bicep and was surprised to find that she barely had enough length in the device to even latch the thing closed. It barely even required a tug to cinch it down and make his pipeline-like veins practically pop right out within a couple of seconds. His wasn’t the biggest arm from which she’d ever drawn. No, that title belonged to a morbidly obese patient from whom she’d drawn in her hospital days, one whose arms had been so big that she’d actually had to tie together two disposable rubber tourniquets to get enough length to go around the circumference of that woman’s arm. But Ethan’s veins were quite possibly the thickest and most prominent she’d ever had an opportunity to stick. Just as she had actually enjoyed drawing from pregnant women in the hospital, whose veins were almost always ripe and easy to hit due to their condition, Raina had long ago come to take a perverse pleasure in drawing blood from vampires. It wasn’t just the fact that they always, always had huge and easy-to-hit veins, but also the reversal of roles that thrilled her – to suck blood from a blood-sucker. Of course, in the wake of her Change, that latter bit of excitement had completely lost its luster.
Partly out of habit, and partly because she simply wanted to, Raina ran her finger over the visible ridges of Ethan’s very prominent veins. They felt like thick strands of spaghetti under silk. If she had ever truly felt tempted to give in to a natural urge to forego the needle and try to bite a vein directly, it had been in that moment. She could totally imagine herself lifting that thick arm up to her mouth, opening wide, sinking her teeth down upon it carefully, and feeling her fangs push into him with the sensation of a very soft pop as his felt gave way. She would seal her lips around the wound, withdraw her teeth slightly, and just take in all that hot, deliciousness, probably not even needing to suck upon it at all and simply letting his blood pressure shoot that sanguine wine into her mouth, across her tongue, down her throat…
“Your grace?”
Raina blinked and realized that she had been stroking his arm with both hands and leaning across the desk to lower to face to it. She sprang back and stood bolt upright as she let go of him, blinking her eyes firmly and shaking her head a couple of times to clear the fog from her mind. She was quickly losing her grip upon reality. This was not a good sign. She had not allowed herself to get to this stage in months, perhaps not at all since her duel with the Countess. Through a combination of stress, sleep deprivation, and a lack of proper nutrition – specifically, the absence of blood in her diet for far, far too long – she was teetering on a razor’s edge between sane control and outright bloodlust. She needed to get this over with, and soon.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insisted, hurriedly tearing open the foil seal of the alcohol swab and rubbing at the inside crook of Ethan’s elbow.
She was mostly clinging to her phlebotomist training in using alcohol, although it was additionally in part to her lingering mysophobia. Raina did not want to be seen as incompetent by causing anyone to become ill or injured as a result of her feeding upon them. As Grand Duchess, she had already mediated a quarrel between two Houses that were very nearly at war over the exsanguination death of one bloodline’s member caused by the careless feeding of another. The last thing she needed was a grievance to be issued against her, especially at that time, if one of Lady Olivia’s subjects developed some manner of infection and/or injury as a result of her having fed upon them.
Raina’s actions were much more controlled this time, although she was a bit surprised to find tha
t when she pressed the tube into the receiver end of the hub, no blood was produced. Realizing her error, she withdrew the needle slightly and then the blood began to flow readily, as the bevel of the needle had been lying against the inner wall of the opposite side of Ethan’s vein – sort of like a vacuum hose sucking itself onto a throw rug. She not only could feel and hear the contained splash of the fluid into the tube in her hand, she could feel its warmth. Vampires’ bodies tended to run a few degrees hotter on average than humans, and so their blood seemed absolutely hot by comparison to the humans from which she had drawn in the past.
Ethan had turned his face away to avoid looking at the actual moment of puncture, and even then he still kept his gaze averted. Raina saw him looking up to Sophie as he scowled. A glance to her right revealed Sophie struggling not to laugh out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Ethan demanded with a near-snarl.
Giggling slightly, Sophie shook her head as she replied, “You are such a big baby! It’s only a needle.”
Raina tried not to smile. “It’s not nice to mock others’ fears.”
“I’m not afraid,” Ethan stated.
“Then why aren’t you looking at the needle?” Sophie persisted.
He hesitated, then turned to face Raina as he said, “I would much rather look at you.”
With one tube full, Raina switched it out and pressed on a second, this time remembering to release the tourniquet before the end of the draw. Was Ethan hitting on her, too? If so, it wasn’t working. All of this attention and attraction was really quite flattering, but the only one whom she felt herself really responding to was Thomas, and she wasn’t ready to accept another fellow into her bed. For that matter, she wasn’t sure that Loki would have been willing to share, anyhow. It was seen by others as something of a problem because it meant that the House of Fallamhain was severely limited in its members. The Fallamhain race was an extremely endangered species, so to speak. Raina was aware that, at some point, she would simply need to look past her personal preferences and think more practically.
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 7