by Cate Corvin
“Follow them and don’t be seen,” I asked, and the car slipped into the flow of traffic.
Imagine my surprise when the cacodemons parked several buildings down from Club Bathory. Apolline and Lydia knocked on the red door. It swung open to admit them.
I got out of the taxi, my crossbow balanced on my shoulder, and took in the lay of the land in sunlight for the first time.
By night, Club Bathory was a monolithic brownstone bathed in arterial light. By day, it was just possible to see the opaque black paint covering the countless windows. From the inside, they were boarded and drywalled over as well. A celestially-activated glamour came into effect as well; the few humans walking down the sidewalk here passed right by like they didn’t even see it. The vampires of the Court wouldn’t want unwelcome visitors breaking in by day.
Visitors like me.
I walked the outside of the brownstone, safe under the assurance of both sunlight and glamour that neither human nor vampire would be around to see me. In the back of the building was a rusted set of industrial doors, padlocked with multiple locks and chains, but the side of the building was where I found my way in: an unobtrusive metal door that was barely visible, painted a shade of reddish-brown that just matched the stones.
As I went to work picking the single, flimsy lock, I idly considered all the ways this could go horribly wrong.
It was a direct violation of King Thraustila’s Law, entering his domain without open invitation. And King Thraustila was a perpetually sixteen-year-old asshole with at least one hellhound I knew of, one probably imported without a valid infernal trade license… which meant he likely had more.
King Thraustila also entertained Fae, who might find an unaccompanied slayer an interesting play-toy.
And there was no guarantee Càel wanted to see me at all. Not after he’d taken a whipping for me, the kind of skin-ripping torment that would’ve killed a human before long. My fingers fumbled at the lock as the image of his torn flesh entered my mind, the hooks embedded in the bullwhip shredding him with every blow.
The lock clicked and fell open in my hands. I slid the picks back into my jacket’s lining and hoisted the crossbow on my shoulder. It was small and light, not suitable for a long-range target… but perfectly fine for a vampire standing right in front of me.
The only thing I appreciated about Thraustila at that moment was that he kept his hinges oiled. The door opened and shut silently, allowing sunlight into the building for the bare second it took me to get inside.
Club Bathory without an omnipresent background of thumping bass was eerie, more like a tomb than a club.
There were sounds, signs of life; vampires rarely actually slept. When they did, it was more of a trance state than true sleep. Instead, they whiled away the daylight hours with drinking blood, fucking, playing chess, whatever they found the most stimulating.
Luckily, I was good at moving silently, and there were plenty of vampires fucking their human thralls today. Moans and grunts, both masculine and feminine, filled the air, covering whatever faint noises I might’ve made.
One of them was very familiar, and very close. My heart thumped in anticipation, and a flush of disbelief filled me. Here, really? It was almost too perfect.
The first room was empty of everything but dust. The next held a vampire flopped across a bed, bloated with blood, and my heart jumped into my throat. I silently eased the door shut, but the vamp was too blood-gorged to notice or care.
I nudged the next door to the left, which had been left cracked open. They were either too careless to bother, or they wanted everyone else to hear them.
Lydia Hurst was straddling a vampire’s lap. His pants were around his knees, and he had one arm wrapped around her waist, holding her against him.
The other held a little plastic baggie stuffed with glittering gold powder. She tilted her head back, and the vampire tipped the baggie over her mouth, letting a tiny stream pour onto her tongue.
She pouted when he lowered the baggie. “The deal was for the whole thing,” she said, riding him harder as the dust’s effects hit her.
I shifted to the side, and my heartbeat stuttered. The sallow face, the angular features topped with chestnut hair… he was the one. He’d torn Càel wide open, grinning like it was his goddamn birthday the entire time, and now he was fucking a slayer and feeding her dust like he’d done nothing wrong at all.
I aimed the crossbow, carefully choosing my target as the vampire gave her a smug grin. My finger tightened. “The whole thing after a-”
He choked, going silent as dark blood sprayed across Lydia’s face. She didn’t even stop moving, still screwing the guy while she began shrieking in earnest.
Against the backdrop of other screams, both pleasant and fearful, nobody bothered to come investigate. The whip-wielding vampire couldn’t make a sound. The bolt had gone right through the soft meat where the underside of his chin met his neck, spearing through both his larynx and vocal cords.
He made a wheezing noise instead, pushing Lydia off him as he stumbled to his feet. I pushed the door open, dropping the unloaded crossbow and pulling out my silver knife.
Lydia threw herself at me. I planted my hand on her chest and shoved her backwards into the wall as the vampire made a gargling mmpf sound, scrambling away from me with his pants down.
What an undignified way to die.
He lashed out at me, but his movements grew jerkier by the moment. I smiled, wrapped my fingers in his collar and dragged him into the hall, to the metal access door.
“Bolt’s tipped in silver, ass wipe.” I kept my voice low, even though the nearest grunts were halfway down the hall. “Poison to your kind.”
He glared up at me with huge eyes, but there was no hiding the fear in them. He knew this was the end. His struggles to get up were weaker, like a tortoise trying to right itself.
I crouched next to him, running the silver blade along his cheek, gently at first, and then harder. When it sliced through his face, the skin began to bubble and char. “I’m going to take your fangs,” I told him, pushing harder. “Not because you specifically deserve to be remembered. You really don’t. It’ll be more of a memory for me: what happens to people who fuck with the ones I love.”
The vampire couldn’t even crawl away. I drew the knife out of his blistered cheek, and he heaved a sigh, blood bubbling on his lips.
That relief was short-lived. I grabbed his collar again and shoved the access door open, throwing him into the brick wall opposite so hard the bricks cracked.
My blade found his chest, stabbing him over and over as the sun beat down on us. He let out a sound that wasn’t quite a scream, not a bellow, but a strange mix of the two that was nothing but pure agony.
I didn’t stop stabbing him until his charring flesh grew too hot to be near. He collapsed in a heap against the wall as I wiped my blade clean on my pants, watching him burn to ash and char.
When his smoldering remains began to crumble, I knelt down and poked among the ruins with my clean blade. His teeth remained intact, chips of white against the filth alley floor, the incisors even more obvious.
I picked them out of the ruins and cupped them in the palm of my hand. They were long and straight, the root a soot-stained ivory. A good memory to add to my war-chain.
I carefully tucked the fangs in my jacket, dusted my hands off, and went back inside.
No one had come to see. Either everyone was occupied with their own pastimes, or Thraustila felt so confident in his own security he didn’t feel the need to guard the outer doors.
I nudged the door open. Lydia was on her hands and knees, running her tongue over the disgusting carpet to catch every last speck of pixie dust. The baggie had burst open and spilled when the vampire had panicked.
I slid my new phone out of its cold iron case and held it up, pushing a button. Lydia just stared at me with blank eyes as I recorded the scene, her crawling in a vampire’s filth to lap Faerie drugs off the floor.
I finished my recording, tapped a few more buttons, and slid the phone back in its protective shell. Lydia didn’t look up as I snagged the empty baggie, still shimmering inside with bits of dust, and shoved it in my pocket.
She finally responded when I grabbed her by the back of the neck and hauled her off the floor and out of the room, spitting and clawing like a cat.
I dragged her outside and dumped her in the sun, next to the smoking pile of her erstwhile dealer. “Go home, Lydia.” She blinked up at me, shielding her eyes with a hesitant hand. “You might want to sober up enough to defend yourself.”
She licked her lips, still looking confused. “What do you mean?” The words were so slurred it was almost impossible to tell what she’d said.
“I mean I just sent a video of you licking pixie dust off a floor to a lot of people. Like… the Headmaster, all of Libra’s clans, your family, Will’s family.” She turned a sickly shade of green as I smiled. “I’m sure Will’s really into that sort of thing. He’s probably falling all over himself to get with a girl who’s about to be expelled.”
She did throw up this time, right in the remains of her boytoy, the thin slime shimmering. “Wow. You ate so much dust your puke glitters. That’s gotta be a new low, even for you.”
I left her in the alleyway to contemplate her destruction. I could bask in her downfall later. Other things were more important.
Nobody accosted me. Nobody was there. Every fiber of my body was jumpy, and by the time I found Càel’s room, I was convinced there was a ploy at work. Thraustila had to know I’d just broken in and murdered one of his own men. There was no way his Court was just a bunch of slack junkies with bad security.
But here I was. No vamps had stopped me. I tested the knob and it slid open under my hand.
Càel’s quarters were always dim, the light sparkling off the endless loops of his war-chain’s teeth, but he was clearly laid out across the bed.
His alabaster skin was marked with red welts, one on top of the other, a patchwork so dense it didn’t seem possible he had skin left at all. Tears pricked the back of my eyes at the sight of it, but they vanished with the rise of a burning anger.
A human woman sat on the edge of his bed, only inches away from his prone body, her hand stretched out to hold him.
13
Tori
I bit back my snarl of pure rage before it could escape, realizing I’d gotten it wrong.
Her arm was extended, his lips wrapped around her wrist, but he held her hand weakly. She looked him over as he drank, the expression on her face a mix of lust and disgust as she took in the gorgeous body covered in wounds.
My fault. All my fault. My stomach swooped, both with guilt and a sick jolt of jealousy at how intimate a picture it posed, even if there was no real intimacy to it at all. His lips were on her, and the primitive animal part of my brain responded to that with a call to defend what I thought of as mine.
“Get out.”
The woman started at the sound of my voice, wincing as she almost pulled away from Càel’s fangs before he’d released her. His grip on her hand slackened and she stood up, wavering between me and him, clutching her bleeding wrist. “But he’s only just started-” she began, and I held the door open.
“Get. Out.”
She ducked past me and I swallowed back my irritation. It wasn’t her fault. She was feeding him, keeping him alive and healing him- I should’ve been thanking her, really.
I closed the door when she’d hurried out and locked it. All five bolts, plus the chain, which was probably useless, to be honest. Then balanced my crossbow against the wall and slid off my jacket.
Càel sat up. He didn’t openly wince, but his face was tight. I couldn’t fathom how much it hurt to move. “Mo shíorghrá. You shouldn’t be here. I needed the blood.”
My breath rushed out, the sting of rejection pricking at me, but he didn’t sound angry. I stopped a foot away from his bed, feeling horribly awkward and guilty as I took in the damage. A whip weal bisected half his face, all the way across his cheek and mouth. “Well, I am here. You’ll just have to deal with that.”
I half-expected him to push me away, to blame me for putting him in this situation, but he just looked back at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my throat swelling shut around the words. “This is my fault.”
If I tried to touch him- and I knew I’d only hurt him if I touched him- would he push me away?
His head tilted the tiniest bit. “Not your fault, Victoria.”
I could’ve cried from relief. Even if he didn’t blame me, I could still blame myself. “You saved her. She’s so young and she didn’t know the rules. I owe you, Càel, even if I wasn’t already in your debt. I owe you for her, too.”
Càel raised an eyebrow as I climbed on the bed next to him, and almost physically recoiled when I held my arm out in front of him.
I tried not to let the hurt show on my face, but I knew it was there. “Here. Take my blood. I’m offering. You saved her, I got you into this, I can heal you.” Maybe I was repulsive to him now that I’d gotten him whipped to shreds?
He shook his head, even though his gaze was glued to my exposed limb. “Not like this.”
The last thing I expected to feel in response to a vampire’s blood-drinking preferences was relief, but there it was. He didn’t find me repulsive.
“I don’t want this-” He nodded to my arm, “As a transaction. Not as a debt. Understand?”
His pale blue eyes held me pinned in place. I understood.
He wouldn’t take my blood as payment, but only if I wanted him. It was so much sooner than I’d anticipated- I’d never thought I’d want a vamp to feed on me- but a sleepless night of thinking and agonizing over what had been done to him had made some things clear to me.
And once we crossed this threshold, there was no going back, no do-over buttons. It was the next step into terrifying and unknown territory.
I slid a little further onto the bed and pushed my hair back, exposing my neck, chest, and shoulders. The spaghetti-stringed tank top I wore didn’t leave much to the imagination for a vampire.
Despite his injuries, a deep fire kindled in his eyes. I ran my fingers over the exposed skin of my neck, feeling flesh unmarked by a vampire’s fangs for the last time.
“I want you to drink from me because I want you, Càel. Not as a debt, but because I’m your bloodsinger.” I almost stumbled on the word with my nervousness. I guess it wasn’t too far off the mark to say I felt like a trembling virgin, when I was a virgin to having fangs in my flesh.
He held back a little groan of pain when he climbed up the bed towards me, but there was no telling him no when he had something he wanted. I slowly leaned back, tilting my head to the side. The feeling of Càel settling over me, one muscled thigh wedged between my legs, felt perfectly natural, like I was supposed to be here.
I touched his broad shoulders carefully, finding those few areas where there were no gouges or welts. “Will it hurt?” I asked, unable to keep a hitch out of my tone, then felt bad for asking at all. He’d endured a far worse hurt for helping me.
“No. Not for you.” Càel’s head tipped towards me and I tilted my chin up, exposing my throat to him. I’d never felt so vulnerable in my life as I did in that moment, giving myself over to a vampire with perfect trust… but that was why I was here. Because he was the one person in the world for whom I had perfect trust.
I shivered when his lips brushed the smooth skin of my neck, his tongue flicking out to brush the warm beat of my pulse.
He paused for a fraction of a second until the shiver subsided, then continued his gentle exploration of my throat,
working his way up to nibble my earlobe, then brush kisses down my jawline to my lips.
Hot tears stung the backs of my eyes. He was the one hurting and torn open, and he was worried about my wellbeing and comfort when he desperately needed blood.
“Do it,” I said, the words sliding painfully past a lump in my throat. “Please, take what you need.”
If I’d needed any sign that he’d been seriously fucked up by them, it was that for once he didn’t protest for my sake. He kissed his way back down, his urgency growing the closer he got to my throat and laved a wet trail with his tongue.
His jaws flexed, exerting a tight pressure as his lips locked around my neck, and I tensed, bracing myself for pain.
It was nothing like what I’d been expecting. A tingle, a gush of warmth that flowed through me and filled my limbs… then the blossoming of huge dark flowers before my eyes as he took a deep draw.
His groan of fulfilled need rumbled through my chest and I wrapped my arms around him involuntarily and gasped. My nails dug into his back. There was no pain, but a deep-seated sense of pleasure and desire, the dizziness wrapping me in a warm, dark blanket until there was no world at all outside myself and Càel.
I dimly realized the pressure against my neck had stopped, and he was running his tongue over the wounds again, kissing the tender spot as it slowly healed.
“Did you get enough?” I whispered, but the dizziness was so complete I wasn’t sure if I’d spoken aloud until he answered me. Having your blood drunk by a vampire was a way sexier high than pixie dust, hands-down.
“I’ve taken all I need,” he said, still settled over me. “No more than a human would give for the little plastic bags. The wounds are healing.”
I blinked up at him, blinded by the dim light of his bedroom. All I wanted to do was stay in that enveloping darkness where it was just me and him. “You didn’t take very much.”
The red welt across his face was already healing over with silvery scar-skin. He raised an eyebrow, the faintest smile on his lips. “Are you asking me to drain you, mo shíorghrá? You know I wouldn’t do that. Besides…” He touched the place where he’d bitten, and an involuntary shiver ran down my spine. “It’s hard enough to stop as it is. Your blood is like ambrosia for me, the gods’ own nectar; all other blood is like water, tasteless next to the finest wine. It wouldn’t be wise to tempt me now.”
