Adano screamed with nothing to dull the pain. I sunk my fangs in farther, bit down harder, as if I intended to rip off this chunk of his flesh. I was aware of it, this strange rage, but it also seemed far away, or like it was from somewhere else, carried on the wind. But that wasn’t wind. It was the air circulating through the chamber.
Adano’s nails stabbed my waist as he pushed, but I wouldn’t budge. He scratched, but it didn’t sting. I was a specter floating behind my body, peeking over my shoulder.
Though hurting, Adano continued to smile.
“Lisette.”
Though he gasped for air, he grinned.
Why was he healing so slowly? His wound was gaping, flesh immobile when red threads should have been knitting themselves back together. What kind of blood did they feed him? He seemed healthy, but this was abnormal for a well-fed vampire.
The puppeteer in control of my body jerked those thoughts out of my head as I grabbed the vampyre I desperately needed. I held his soft member in my hands, and his hands went to my hair. He pulled, yanking out dark strands, but I kept going.
“Stop,” Adano said hoarsely.
I wanted to. But Ednis had been right about my need. She had nothing to worry about. I’d perform, betraying myself in the process. I wouldn’t return to White Team. All of that discipline bashed into me over the years, starting when I was a small scamp, no longer applied.
I’d been transformed into a mindless monster.
“Please, Lisette,” Adano said.
Begged.
My skull rattled, and my ears rang with his plea. I’d lost my discipline, but this plea… It rested in my stomach, twisting my guts. Adano was defenseless and I was toying with him the way I loathed. I had seen it so many times. Most often, I had turned away and let it happen. I could always turn away. I could turn away now, too.
Or I could put an end to it.
So, I did.
I let him go. Then I said something I’d never said to anyone but Fyefa: “I’m sorry.”
Adano was as surprised to hear the words as I was, because his white eyebrows shot up until they were hidden underneath his mussed bangs.
I had no intention of breaking Adano out of Silver Hollow. I couldn’t. It wasn’t as simple as sneaking him out. It would involve killing, and Adano wasn’t my responsibility. It wasn’t my job to fight his bullies. No, his enemies.
My lungs filled with sludge and my heart palpitated.
I was surrounded by enemies, too. I shouldn’t have been here. White Team hadn’t come for me. Fyefa hadn’t truly come for me. They had left me alone when I would have killed for them. Died for them.
I thought to carry their bodies home.
“Goodbye, Lisette.”
“Get me out of here,” Adano said, interrupting my spiraling thoughts. “If you’re sorry, get me out of here.”
He sounded like a scamp. He sounded like Fyefa when she had come crying to me because that bully had mangled her wrist and we wouldn’t get blood rations for twenty-four hours because our teachers were putting us through rigorous training.
Adano gingerly touched where I had bitten him. He flinched. The loose chunk of flesh was barely hanging on. With how slowly he was healing, it was a good thing I hadn’t severed his carotid artery. But I had shed enough blood to permeate the room with his rummadies-reminiscent scent.
I had hurt him when there was no reason to, and it made me feel dirty all over. I needed an ice-cold shower. “Let’s do this right, quick, and as painlessly as possible,” I said. “On the bed.”
Adano glared at me, but he was obedient when I stepped aside. He dropped his robes on his way to the square bed. I undid my sash and followed him.
Adano favored his neck as he rolled onto the bed. He stopped when his back was against the mattress. Then he was still, even as I crawled on top of him.
Finally, a drop of venom seared my tongue. The urge to give in to the chaotic need inside of me was present, but it didn’t consume me. I had found my discipline. I had conquered it once, and it would never take me again.
Because I am a slayer.
Was a slayer.
I rested my fangs against Adano’s bleeding neck. The flesh around the wound was raw, too. I licked the blood away, an attempt to assuage the discomfort. He groaned and cut off a whimper.
“Why aren’t you healing?” I asked when my long hair draped down and hid our faces.
Adano’s face was tilted to the left so he didn’t have to look at me. “They don’t give me much blood.”
“The bare minimum.”
“You got it.”
No wonder he’s so fragile, like a human. “Take some of mine.”
“That’s a major no-no.”
“We’re already breaking the rules.”
“I don’t want your blood.”
“Fine. Then let’s finish this. Would it be better if I bit you in the same place or somewhere else?” I asked.
“So considerate,” he commented. Paused. “You were serious about giving me your blood just now, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“A slayer offering me her blood.” He turned his head, face lining up with mine. “You don’t enjoy this, do you?”
I licked my dripping fangs. “I don’t.”
His pale eyes flickered, settling on one of my eyes and then the other. “You’re a strange one, monster.”
“But a monster nonetheless.”
He hummed. “It doesn’t matter where you bite me.”
I went for an unmarred space on his neck. This time when I bit down, my venom obeyed. My body roared with it, entreated me to rend and disfigure, but I maintained control. I lowered my hips to Adano’s, and he moaned. Second by second he got harder and harder. I stopped the venom flow when he was fully erect.
After checking that my robes were concealing us as well as they could, I took him in hand and gave him a quick rub. My need coiled lower in my stomach. I released Adano and ground against him, but I was careful to keep him outside of me. It didn’t stop the stimulation, though, the way he touched me just right. I gasped as I came. My body pulsed again and again, fiercer each time. Then Adano came with a grunt. I was already so hot and wet I barely noticed. Then it was over. It was so simple, but getting to this point was always a fight.
Suddenly, I was exhausted.
I collapsed onto Adano’s chest, my chin resting above his shoulder. He was slick with sweat, and so was I. His chest bobbed up and down. The rhythm of his heart met mine. Our hearts beat at the same pace as if they were the same heart. I shouldn’t have stayed here. I was vulnerable, but I couldn’t move.
His skin is so—
“You resisted, in the end. Like you said you would,” Adano murmured. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
I almost hadn’t, either.
CHAPTER 27
ADANO
My neck throbbed.
Lisette’s second bite hadn’t been so bad, but that first one… I cringed when I probed it. I had no idea how deep it went. It felt bad, though, and I was surprised no one had offered me any blood when they had shoved me back into my quarters with nothing but the performance robes. The hastily tied silver sash fell to the floor as I cleaned up in the bathroom by using the sink, but I kept bleeding.
And bleeding.
My blood smelled wrong. It was my blood, so that was to be expected, but it was starting to make me nauseous.
I knew slamming the door in the Sadist Queen’s face wasn’t the smartest move. I hadn’t thought it through when I had done it. It was an impulse, a reaction to fear.
Clearly, this was the start of my punishment for it.
After grabbing a hand towel, I stumbled out of the bathroom. I pressed the plush fabric to my wound. The throbbing worsened and an electric shock jolted down my spine. I tossed the towel aside.
Gods, my vision is blurry. And the room was spinning.
I tripped on one of my bed’s metal legs and my torso landed on the mattr
ess. It should have been a soft embrace, but it was like skidding across concrete. I shuddered, inhaled a short breath, and the world darkened at the edges of my vision. This was different from passing out. I’d had too much experience with fainting to not feel the difference.
I’m going to die.
It would be easier if I did, so I strangely found the thought comforting. If I had been suicidal, I could have ended this already. But I hated to let them win. My death counted as them winning, so I hung on.
I didn’t have Ivy with me anymore, not physically, but her memories remained. Her stories did, too. I wanted to see the world. Feel it. Smell it. Touch it. Taste it.
“I’m getting you out of here, Addy.” That was what Ivy had told me on my twelfth birthday, when I had cried so hard I thought I’d never stop. It was two days before the 5th Month of Summer, Day 145. 2381. Ivy named that date, assigned it as the MC’s password, a month before the Sadist Queen—
I shut down that thought.
Ivy wanted to give me something beautiful for my twelfth birthday and busted her ass to secure that date. It wasn’t the same day as my birthday, but it couldn’t be because what she wanted to give me was special, a one-day-of-the-year event. She promised we’d see several species of butterflies’ breeding grounds in Shade Forest before they moved on to the Bone Cliffs for their final resting place.
“Those colors, Addy,” she had said. “It’ll be like a rainbow. You’ll love it.”
It would have been the first time either of us had seen anything like it, but it never happened.
Instead, on my birthday, Ivy held me and told me she would get me out of here. She said she’d work it out, that she overheard a new slave whispering something. He knew a poem, said it was guiding him to a sanctuary before he and his group were caught by vampires. That slave was killed for causing trouble, but Ivy memorized the poem. I memorized it too, because it was imbued with Ivy’s sweet tones.
To the east, salvation
Ignite the fires of hope
For atop the claw o’re savage seas
An answering flame doth burn
That was where I’d go when I got out of here.
Yessma could give me that before I died, couldn’t she? Damn God likely wouldn’t welcome me to heaven, anyway.
Gods. Such stupid, useless lies. You’re not real. Are you, Yessma?
She wasn’t. Neither was heaven nor hell. When I had seen a red jacket die by the boot of a guard, it returned to Prime. The dead poking grass did, too. All dead things returned to Prime because they were of Prime. I didn’t know why I bothered pleading with an imaginary figure who was probably made up by some vampire like the Sadist Queen.
Because I was desperate?
Because I wanted someone to care?
I yanked on the white duvet, a poor attempt to hoist myself onto the bed. The duvet came to meet me instead. It slid until I was the only thing keeping it from falling off, and I couldn’t get up. The bunched-up fabric framed my head, buried me as I murmured, “Ivy. Save me, Ivy. Come back and finish what you started, damn it. Please. You said you’d get me out, but you died. How could you?”
I hated her for it, but I hated myself just as much. I could have helped her, had a better idea of what was going on at least, but I had been… floating. And then she’d died and I’d crashed back down to Prime and got buried underneath the soil and drowned.
I was still drowning.
And I didn’t hear the door unlock. I wasn’t aware of her presence until she wrapped her bony arms around my waist, the silky fabrics of her billowing sleeves whispering against my skin, and forced me to stand. Her decaying-leaves perfume tainted my nose.
The Sadist Queen.
I was too weak to recoil, too weak for my skin to crawl.
“Get up, Adano.” Everything was underwater. I almost missed what she said. “I brought you a meal.”
I smelled blood, equal parts savory and sweet. I salivated at the thought. My stomach growled and my neck ached. Blood would satiate both needs. Where was it coming from?
The Sadist Queen turned me toward the door, where a thrall waited with a bloodied forearm. I’d never seen a thrall up close, but I knew the smell. I didn’t see the thrall now, either. The blood was the only clear spot in my vision.
I found my legs, and the Sadist Queen let me go. I stumbled forward. Instead of pouncing on my prey like a good vampire, I fell into her. Him. He was hard as a rock, much broader and taller than me, and there was so much skin.
Blood. Blood. Blood. I need blood.
I gripped the back of his shaved head, little pricks of short hair meeting my fingertips. He was an obedient slave. He didn’t make me work for it. He bent down, allowing me full access to his thick neck. I wasted no time burying my fangs. I instinctively let loose a pitiful shot of venom while I was at it. The thrall’s meaty hands hooked on my hips, but he kept his touch somehow light as he braced against me.
Each swallow of hot blood alleviated some of the pain as my neck mended. The healing process itched, but it was otherwise unnoticeable—aside from my stomach’s incessant growling. I drank more, until I was fuller than I had been since Ivy’s death. I would have kept going, but the Sadist Queen pulled me away from the thrall.
I threw my weight to the left. It was enough to break her iron grip on my waist at the cost of a few scratches. I huffed and wiped my mouth. Then I proceeded to lick the blood off my hand. It wasn’t half as satisfying.
The Sadist Queen mirrored me, licking my blood from her fingers, one by one. “There you are, acting like the vampyre who had the gall to slam a fucking door in my face. What happened to the vampyre who froze in my presence?”
Oh, he was still here. The ice was creeping through my veins, slowly freezing my joints.
Another figure caught my eye. Silver-accented gray uniform. A guard. She stood in front of the closed, and likely locked, door. Another guard must have waited on the other side.
I glanced at the thrall. With my vision cleared, I properly saw him. He was a mountain of muscles, and the bite I’d left on his neck wasn’t bleeding.
Gods, he was huge and dark, darker than Ivy. And what the hell was he wearing? Woven synthetic-leather ropes didn’t make proper clothes. They covered nothing.
I cocked my head as if the new angle would change my perception.
I had never seen another male. Not vampire, not thrall, not human, certainly not werewolf.
I wasn’t sure what to think. This was unprecedented. Feeding on a living creature was equally as unprecedented.
“Adano,” the Sadist Queen purred.
I cowered. I would’ve fallen onto the floor if I hadn’t been so close to my bed. The mattress caught my hands and my arms held, though they shook. I wouldn’t speak. Couldn’t. But I grinned. I gave her the biggest grin I had.
“You behaved like a proper vampyre for your vessel today.” The Sadist Queen’s eyes glittered with… something. When her eyes narrowed, the bluish lights overhead dyed fire-orange irises green. “I’m very disappointed. But I know how you can make it up to me.”
CHAPTER 28
ADANO
The Sadist Queen jerked her chin toward the thrall, and he stepped forward. There was something off about him. It wasn’t his half-human scent. It was his eyes; they were dull, almost dry. He was like a machine, movements clunky and robotic.
I stepped back. I had the persistent urge to crawl under my bed.
It was stupid, but my brain short-circuited whenever the Sadist Queen was involved. It wasn’t as if anything I did could make a difference in this situation anyway. Scamp solutions were as good or bad as anything else. When it came to power, physical power, I knew I had lost. All I could think about was sparing myself from the worst of the inevitable coming pain.
“Do you know why we’ve never introduced you to another male?” the Sadist Queen asked.
I crawled across my bed for the other side, though it wasn’t much help in putting distance between us.
“It’s because there was a chance that you would be attracted to the same sex. There was no point in introducing a problem when you were already so problematic. As you performed today, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.” The Sadist Queen rolled her shoulders. “And as you so thoroughly betrayed me, broke the special bond between the two of us, I thought I would try something new today.”
The thrall reached me, cornered me. I tried to dart away. I dove for the small space under my bed, but he caught me, and he was strong, stronger than me as I knew he’d be. But his grip wasn’t tight enough. I slipped out of his grasp and crawled under the bed. I barely fit these days, so he wouldn’t.
“What are you doing, Adano?” The Sadist Queen crooned. “You know there’s nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.”
The thrall’s hand shot under the bed like a striking snake. I scooted to the right. There was enough room for me to get away. I thought I might be able to prolong this runaround by rolling back and forth. Maybe I’d be enough trouble that they’d leave—but that was wishful thinking.
The bed screeched. It rumbled above me as if there were an earthquake. Then it rose. It almost touched the ceiling when it flipped to its side, the duvet and pillows rolling off it in waves. It was the thrall’s doing. His muscles and veins bulged. He threw the heavy furniture against a concrete wall, and the crash reverberated through the ground. My teeth chattered, too.
That thrall was fed very nutritious blood. And he was hungry for more. His stomach made a low grumble, close to what I imagined a werewolf’s growl would sound like.
I scrambled to the left, but there was no cover. The thrall caught me. He used the full extent of his strength this time, because I couldn’t wriggle free. His fingers bruised my waist, my arms, as he bound me against his chest. I was about to throw back my head, to bash my skull into his nose with the hope it’d launch into his brain, then the Sadist Queen was there.
Vampire Captives (From Blood to Ashes Book 1) Page 14
