The countess turned her palm upward, catching the red spill, her smile widening as she glanced at the vampiress, then at the blood again.
The mistress wished to tell the countess that, perhaps, blood would not provide answers. Certainly, lovers could be stunned into adoring your youthful visage again after a blood bath, yet the glow would always fade. It would not keep those lovers from cavorting with girls whose freshness was real—as the mistress’s lover was doing even now in the dungeons. It would not stop the wrongfulness of loving him.
The glow would last only until the next blood bath and, even then, the change was only skin deep.
The countess licked the blood in her hand, and the mistress only hoped that it would be enough to fulfill her; the other woman’s own pores would not open to drink and bring youth to her flesh, and the vampiress refused to initiate an exchange to accommodate it.
It would be such a responsibility to create a child, the mistress thought. For it would be necessary to leave the countess behind when she departed this castle soon, as planned, while following a great love, winning it time and again, bath after bath....
Yet the countess did seem satisfied, leaning back her head in ecstasy, red dripping from her mouth to her neck. “Oh, how it begins to work.” She opened her eyes, gazing at the mistress. “In return, I have many spells to share with you. Enchantments to bind and create love where it has waned.”
“Spells... ?”
The countess’s smile faded. “I have seen how his gaze wanders. I have seen how it tears at you.”
The mistress said nothing.
Yet... Spells. Would they aid in a lost cause?
With one more glimpse at the countess’s eager expression, the mistress caught a stream of blood from above in her own palm then lifted it to the dark-haired woman’s cheek.
She rubbed the crimson against the countess’s skin, slowly, circling with ever-increasing pressure.
“Yes,” the woman said. “Yes. My flesh drinks it in.”
She leaned forward to scoop blood into her own palms, then splashed it over the rest of her face, her throat. Then, laughing, announcing her intention of finding her own source of blood for a full bath, she finally left the room.
As the last drips from the girl above the tub flicked over the vampiress, the creature leaned back again, pores reopening and slurping until they finally closed in their own contentment.
Then the mistress stepped out of the tub, body shifting back to original form before coming to a mirror. There, the creature touched a soft, refreshed face that was hardly even recognizable, even to the vampire’s own eyes now....
TWELVE
LONDON BABYLON, MAIN UNDERGROUND BELOW HIGHGATE
AFTER Della and her classmates had zoomed away from the hotel and through darkened London, toward Highgate, then to the very edges of the heath where an Underground entrance lay in wait, a fresh batch of images had started creeping in on her.
A tub of blood ... The drip of red from above ...
Now, on her newly assigned bed in the girls’ Underground quarters, the pieces of the scene suddenly crashed into one another in Della’s mind, exploding into a full vision.
Bathing in that blood ...
The mouthlike pores on an unidentified vampire’s body ...
Della pressed her hands over her eyes. She and her classmates could do that, too—drink blood in such a manner. If they wished, they could open their skin and slurp it into their flesh and bodies and-
She shook the thought out. Was her subconscious twining real life and nightmares, holding her accountable for all the terrible things she had done recently?
Across the room, which seemed to Della like a fuzzed, frilly blur of lace and pink paint, the group of girls who had been welcoming Polly, Noreen, and her to their new home stopped gibbering in order to survey Della instead. Little by little, she could see them go from barely defined shapes to sharp, clear entities: girls with long hair, short hair, flounced skirts, smart dresses, wrinkled trousers.
The first time Della had encountered the more seasoned girls who resided in this main Underground, they had been in costume, partaking in a masque. Now they weren’t so much different than she.
Except none of them seemed on the edge of a scream.
After a moment of curiosity, they went back to fussing over Polly and Noreen, who had taken to the rest of the crowd quite easily. Della had been too occupied with the scattered, guilt-induced images attacking her mind.
Yet it was time to mingle, she thought, lest she be marked immediately as an outsider and have to pay for it eons afterward.
She stood as if all was well, then arranged the fluffy furred pillows that had been waiting on her bed. She, Polly, and Noreen had been given a room of their own, as had the other students who had managed to graduate from Queenshill in previous years. Queenshill girls were the more precious type of vampire, fewer in number among the runaways and disenfranchised youth whom the high-class students had recruited from the lower echelons of society.
Yet they all combined here in the Underground, female soldiers-in-training for the dragon’s future armies.
“Della?”
Someone across the room had called to her, so Della gave one last pat to a pillow then turned toward the others.
It was Noreen, who seemed to be a great favorite with the Underground group. One fellow vampire even kept touching Noreen’s red hair as if she had never seen the like.
But Noreen’s tone struck Della as being rather removed, as if she were only seeking Della’s attention because it was wise to do so. She had closed herself off, so Della could not get much of a read on Noreen in general.
“Our new friend Raine,” her classmate said, gesturing to the girl who had been winding her fingers through Noreen’s hair, “has some naughty paparazzi photos of Zac Efron. She copied them from an Internet café aboveground last night while staking out a backpacking tourist.”
“Then I brought the photos with me for inspiration,” Raine said, her pug nose wrinkling as she giggled. “And tonight, we can use them as an appetizer to a meal we’ll get in the common area afterward. They show quite a lot of skin. And what lovely skin, too.”
The group giggled, as well, and Della wondered just how old Raine was—one of the eldest or youngest, just out of her teens?
Della knew only one thing: every single one of them craved the feeling of being as loved and cherished as little girls normally were, before they lost what Wolfie often referred to as their “dewiness.”
He took care of them, coddled them, and several lifetimes would never chip away at the everlasting happiness he would give them.
When Della didn’t respond straightway to Noreen’s invitation, Polly took it upon herself to head toward the door. “Della should probably stay put. She’s awaiting a serious talking-to.”
Violet’s death, Della thought. Polly wasn’t about to let Della forget.
Blast—didn’t Polly recall how Violet had bullied her, the so-called best friend, too?
Unwilling to allow her classmate any leeway, Della joined the group as they followed Polly toward the door. Then, as one, they walked down the rock hallway of the quarters section, which stood apart from the common play areas where the girls laughed, chased dispensable young male prey lured from aboveground, and pounced on their victims when the chasing became utterly boring.
Della caught up to Polly and extended a mind-linked thought. Polly was caught off guard, her consciousness open.
It might be prudent for you to stop chatting to these girls about my talking-to.
Polly lost a step, then answered quickly. I’ll be quiet about it.
Then she fell behind Della in order, her mouth quite shut now.
A tickle of success feathered along Della’s skin at how easy it had been to put Polly back in line, but the aftermath of it felt heavy, too, as if it had left a mark that didn’t belong on her.
Raine guided them into the common room she shared with at le
ast eleven other vampires. The crowded feel of an activity holiday camp told Della that Raine was one of the recruits, not a former Queenshill student. No, Queenshill girls wouldn’t have these bunk beds, complete with down mattresses of a lower quality.
On those beds, females loitered, all of them of the European stock that Wolfie preferred, their gangly legs hanging, feet encased in Mary Janes and Skechers. Some of the vampirelets sucked on lollipops laced with blood, a treat they had whipped up in the experimental kitchens where some young male prey were kept in confinement. On a higher bunk, Della even saw three girls toying with pretty butterfly knives, playing Truth or Dare with cuts that they cooed over and healed with ecstatic, glowing touches to the flesh.
Della’s own skin tingled with the thought of joining in, playing such games....
But then she saw a curly-haired blonde in a corner, dripping blood from a dainty perfume jar onto her skin and dizzily watching as her pores opened like tiny mouths to sip the sustenance.
A flash of a bathtub, a spill of blood made Della squeeze shut her eyes to flush the image away.
Yet it stayed, hovering just over every giggle, every exclamation in the room.
Raine reached under her lower bunk pillow to retrieve those promised naughty pictures, but they ended up being so innocuous that Della wandered toward the blonde in the corner, with her drip, drip, drip of blood on skin.
She felt something brush against her boots and glanced down to see a gray cat sliding past her.
The room went quiet as the other girls saw the cat, too. When it fixed its ominous gaze on Della, then padded out to the hall, she followed, knowing she had been summoned.
A buzz of conversation swelled in the room behind her as Della tried to keep her feet moving in slow, deliberate progress.
No running away, she thought. She was ready for this talking-to from Wolfie and Mrs. Jones.
Perhaps she even wanted it—the warped attention. The reckoning.
But why would a person want a punishment?
The thought rooted, but didn’t develop. It didn’t have time to since Della was already trailing the cat back into her own quarters.
Once inside, the creature stretched, undulated, and grew into the figure of a grown woman.
Mrs. Jones.
Without modesty, the housematron remained naked, leaning back against a wall while she looked Della up and down.
Della herself didn’t know where to lay her gaze. Mrs. Jones had always worn clothing in front of the girls, but Della could see the reason she might not wish to. The elder vampire’s body was flushed with gorgeous, smooth skin, her breasts round and beautiful with pink-tipped nipples.
Just as Della was beginning to wonder what turn her newest punishment had taken, Wolfie stepped out from a shadowed corner.
Della held her hand over her chest. She had been too preoccupied to pick up his hair-in-sunshine, leather-clothed scent before, but the sight of his thick, wild brown locks, golden eyes, and wolfish grin slammed into her now.
And not in the usual blood-fluttering way.
A cottage in the woods ...
Her veins twisted as they never had before. Caution.
But why? She loved Wolfie.
Why so frightened?
Mrs. Jones’s voice raked over the room. “Any words for Della, Mihas?”
She had dissected his name with her tone, yanking his attention from Della to her. And when Wolfie’s gaze absorbed Mrs. Jones’s bare skin, he looked just as lost as he had been last night, when Della had stumbled upon their rendezvous.
While she stood there, not knowing what to do with herself, Della remembered the night she and her classmates had been turned into vampires. Seven of them, some of whom had left school under odd circumstances. Both Wolfie and Mrs. Jones had bitten them that night, exchanged blood with them, and as a result the girls resembled both superiors when they changed into their vampire forms.
And, even on that night, Della had got the feeling that, perhaps, Mrs. Jones took joy from the girls’ wolf/cat ugliness.
Now, under the glare of her superior’s beauty, Della felt even uglier.
Preening under Wolfie’s lustful scrutiny, Mrs. Jones ultimately seemed content. “You’ll take care of this situation? I must research longer-term arrangements to explain to the school where Violet, Della, Polly, and Noreen have gone.”
“Hurry back then,” Wolfie said, completely under her spell.
Slowly, as Della watched out of the corner of her gaze, Mrs. Jones turned back into her cat form—the one she often used to skulk around and keep tabs on the girls.
Then the housematron departed, her tail high as she slipped through the crack of the door.
The instant she left, Wolfie smiled even wider. But as a haze seemed to lift from him, his eyes focused on Della.
He opened his arms to her, and she found herself running to him and burying her face in his loose white shirt.
“How I’ve missed you!” he said.
She held on, knowing this moment would bend to a worse one at any time.
“Me, too, Wolfie,” she said, smelling the leather of his rock-star-like jacket, trousers, and boots.
When his grip on her loosened, she knew it was over, and sadness closed her throat.
He held her at arm’s length, his gaze just as sorrowful. “What have you done, my darling?”
The question was rhetorical and, out of sheer desperation, she fell against him again, embracing him so tightly that she started to believe that maybe she would not ever have to let go.
He rocked her, petted her hair, the frizzed bunch of it crackling under his touch. “My little love,” he said, all but cooing. “My wayward Della.”
During his rocking, he had moved her in full view of the door, and when she saw the cat’s eyes glowing from the crack, she raised her head from his chest, the constant visions twisting into thoughts as her mind spun:
Blood is youth ...
Last night, when Mrs. Jones had suddenly seemed so much younger ...
The girl dripping from above the bathtub ...
But before Della could completely reconcile everything, the cat’s eyes were gone.
The urge to run consumed Della because, all of a sudden, Wolfie’s arms didn’t feel so secure.
Without letting him know this, she backed away, her head down.
But why? She was home. She would always be safe with Wolfie here.
He clearly misconstrued her response as fear of punishment, not anything darker or deeper.
“It was on the news,” Wolfie said, referencing Violet’s termination. “The terrible conspiracy of ravens witnessed as they flew early this morning into Southwark. You’re fortunate nothing else has come to light. Very fortunate.”
“I know.”
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
“Because Violet wanted to avenge herself on us.” The truth. Her best hope of ending this quickly. “You know I bested her last night, Wolfie. I humiliated her and brought her down, and she wasn’t about to tolerate being at the bottom. So she told us we would be sorry, then she sneaked out of the hotel.”
He was shaking his head, his shoulders slumped. “Violet.”
A flicker of hope warmed Della. He believed her.
Sighing, he sat on Polly’s bed, among a cheetah stuffed animal and an embroidered pillow featuring a football.
“She was the most difficult of any of you,” Wolfie said. “I held out hope for Violet, yet Mrs. Jones always ...” He trailed off, then recovered. “She always lobbied for her to ... leave.”
Della froze. Leave?
“You mean,” she whispered, “just as Briana and Sharon and Blanche left?”
All members of their small Queenshill vampire class.
All mysteriously run away from the group or taken by estranged parents who hadn’t seemed to care for their child before reclaiming her and never allowing their girl to return to the school.
Here today, gone tomorrow.
&
nbsp; Della’s brain flickered.
Young girl dangling over a tub, the vampire with the blurred features beneath, her pores drinking and drinking ...
Slowly, she chanced a look at Wolfie, who had not said anything since Della had mentioned the three other girls.
Wary, she thought. He seemed to be looking at her in a different light now.
If Della had any stones, she would enter his thoughts, as she had done once, yet she knew it would be an unforgivable act this time. Even Wolfie, with his love and tolerance, had his limits.
“Violet,” he said, “has nothing to do with your classmates who have left us, my dear.”
It seemed as if he were about to pat the bed next to him, inviting her to nuzzle up against his chest, but he stopped himself.
He exhaled, planted his hands on his thighs as he engaged her with a serious stare. “You’ve put me in quite a position, you know, with your raven games.”
“Mrs. Jones also said that. Even if Violet required action, I went too far. I did more than track her.”
“I can understand how you might have gone overboard. Mrs. Jones and I were out of range, out of touch, and you had to make decisions on your own. We’ve trained you to realize that a good soldier does that, Della, even while following orders. And I have always attempted to instill the will to fight in you—the urge to win at all costs.”
Perhaps he was not going to terminate her, Della realized. Yet she knew he was hurting from the loss of Violet.
“I’m ready for what’s due,” she said, straightening her posture, exhausted in this waiting and dreading.
A strange smile darkened his eyes. “Just like a good soldier.”
This time, she knew he was not going to be lenient, not as he had been before whenever she had misstepped.
He rose from the mattress, his muscles rolling under his clothing with every footfall as he walked toward the door. “Follow me.”
She obeyed, steadying herself, staying on the lookout for the cat as they took the hallway where the scent of blood traced the air on the way to the common area.
As they passed the recruits’ rooms, Della noticed the silence, the lack of presence from any other girls, and she supposed it was feeding time for one and all.
The Path of Razors Page 13
