Fight for Blood (Blood Origins Book 2)
Page 7
the trials.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked me, finishing up the
application of her mascara.
I nodded. I wasn’t ready—I didn’t think I would ever be
ready—but what could I say? If I didn’t go down to breakfast, they
would probably come up and get me. There was no avoiding this.
And I didn’t want to embarrass Cryder. I wanted him to think he’d
made the right choice in bringing me home. I can handle this, I told myself over and over. It’s just a few tests, and I’ve always been 59
Fight for Blood
good at tests. I can take whatever they can dish out.
God, I hoped that was true.
The whole family was waiting down in the dining room.
Giorgia and Samuele smiled as I entered, presumably to help put me
at my ease, and Cryder got to his feet and embraced me. “We’ve got
everything you could possibly want for breakfast,” he said, guiding
me to the table. “I want you to have some blood and some human
food, okay? Make sure you’re as strong as possible on both fronts.”
I nodded, unable to speak, and allowed him to fill my plate
with eggs and bacon and to pass me a cup that I knew by smell
contained blood. I ate mechanically, cutting my food into
manageable bites and transferring it slowly into my mouth.
Everything tasted like sand. I was sure on some level that it was very good, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“We’ll go in for the trials first thing after breakfast,” Giorgia
said. She was speaking softly, kindly, and I knew she could tell I
was nervous. “The room is already prepared for you.”
“Will we be able to stay with her?” Cecile asked. I was
grateful. That was what I’d wanted to know too, but forming words
felt impossible right now.
“Regrettably not,” Giorgia said. “But you’ll all be able to
stay in an adjoining room, and you’ll know what’s going on and
how well Rena is doing. If anything should go wrong—not that it
will—you’ll be able to be at her side in a matter of seconds.”
Nothing will go wrong, I told myself. But I couldn’t turn my thoughts away from the story Cryder had told me last night about his aunt who had insisted on undergoing the trials and had failed
miserably. She was insane now. What if that happened to me?
Cryder continued to urge me to eat, but I felt as if I couldn’t
keep anything down. The last thing I wanted was to throw up when I
was supposed to be completing the trials. Finally, seeing that food
had stopped disappearing from my plate, Samuele got to his feet.
“It’s time,” he said quietly.
Around me, everyone else rose. Cecile rested a hand briefly
on my shoulder as she got up. Cryder wrapped his arm around my
waist, and I was glad of it. I felt as though I might actually pass out 60
Fight for Blood
from fear if he wasn’t holding me up.
We made our way down a long and narrow hallway that
seemed to twist and turn into the very heart of the palace. This
hadn’t been on our tour. It was intimidating. I wasn’t sure that I
would have been able to find my way out if I’d been called upon to
do so. Of course, who knows what state I’ll be in when the time
comes to leave here?
At least, one way or another, it would all be over.
The room we entered didn’t look as if it ought to belong to
the palace at all. The elegant decor that was present throughout the rest of the building was absent here. This room would have been
more at home in a doctor’s office. The walls were sleek and plain
white, and the room was completely unfurnished except for a bed in
the center. Around the bed was an array of medical equipment that I
didn’t recognize or understand. It terrified me.
“It’s time to say goodbye,” Giorgia said. “I’ll be here with
you, Rena, administering the trials. But everybody else will have to retire to the next room.”
Cecile stepped forward and hugged me. “I know you can do
this,” she said. “You’re one of the toughest people I’ve ever met in my life, Rena. You can get through anything. Just be strong.”
I nodded, returning her embrace. It was so reassuring to have
someone here who believed in me, even though I thought she was
vastly overestimating me. I hoped she was right, though. I hoped I
would be able to get through this, and that I wouldn’t disgrace
myself. She stepped back, and Cryder came forward. He wrapped me
tightly in his arms. I inhaled the scent of him, wishing I could just stay here in his embrace forever. This was the safest place left in my world. “You know I wouldn’t let you do it if I thought anything bad was going to happen to you,” Cryder said.
I nodded, even though the truth was more complicated. He
had brought me here to get me away from the dangers that faced me
at home. This was less dangerous than that. At least here nobody
was trying to kill me.
61
Fight for Blood
But that didn’t mean everything was going to be okay.
“All right,” Samuele said. “Cryder, Drake, Cecile—come
with me.”
They looked over their shoulders, waving as they went. A
moment later, I was alone. Only Giorgia remained beside me.
“Lie down,” she said gently. “Get comfortable on the bed.”
“Will the trials take place in bed?”
Giorgia nodded. “Remember how I described them to you as
a simulation? You’ll be injected with a serum that will cause you to experience certain scenarios. Your test will be in how you respond
to those scenarios.”
I frown. “I’m going to hallucinate?” I wasn’t such a fan of
that idea, especially given the fact that my life had taken a sharp turn for the surreal over the last several months. I had become a pretty
big fan of clinging to the knowledge that, as weird as things around me might seem, I knew what was real and what wasn’t.
“It won’t be a genuine hallucination,” Giorgia said. “Think
of it as more like a projection. We’ll be playing images for you in
your mind. You’ll know what’s real and what isn’t, and nothing will
actually be able to hurt you. It’s really the safest and least invasive way we can do this, I promise. You don’t have anything to be afraid
of.
I still didn’t feel great about what lay ahead, but what could I
do? The trials were necessary if I wanted to move forward to a life
with Cryder. And I did.
I crossed the room and climbed up onto the bed, feeling
deeply weird. It was as vulnerable as lying down for an exam at the
doctor’s office, except that at the doctor’s office you weren’t
literally in bed, and that somehow made the whole thing feel even
more vulnerable.
At least Giorgia had a good bedside manner. She moved
efficiently, readying equipment I didn’t recognize, breaking from
her work occasionally to give me a little smile. I believed she really wanted me to do well, and that was immeasurably helpful.
“Okay,” she said, placing a mask over my nose and mouth.
“You’ll be out in a minute. You’re just going to feel a quick jab—
62
Fight for Blood
that’s the serum—and then the first simu
lation will begin. I’ll be
right here the whole time, and your friends are waiting in the other room. Not to worry.”
My last thought was of Cryder’s aunt, the one who had failed
her trials and was now insane. It seemed to me that there was plenty to worry about. But before I could articulate the thought, before I
could even fully think it, I felt a sharp pain in my arm. The world
tilted sideways, and I slid off.
***
I stood in a gown of pale gold at the center of a vast
chamber, a crown atop my head. It took me a moment to recognize
the room. The throne room. Of course.
It’s a simulation, I reminded myself. In this simulation, I’m already queen. I moved slowly across the room and toward the throne, taking a seat, looking out over the empty space.
“Supplicant number six hundred and forty-five,” a
disembodied voice said.
The doors swung open. A man entered. As he approached the
throne, I understood that he must be a vampire. He stopped before
me and bowed. “Your highness.”
“Um. Hello.” I wasn’t sure of the proper greeting. Would
that cause me to fail the trial? It couldn’t, surely?
“Your highness, I seek your permission to bring a new
citizen into our town,” the man said.
Why was that a problem? There must be something I didn’t
know. “Who is this citizen?”
“She is a human woman,” he said. “I have fallen in love with
her, and she with me.”
“I see.” That ought to be okay, surely? That was what had
happened with Cecile and Drake. But then I remembered something.
Cecile hadn’t been turned into a vampire until she’d been at death’s door from her injuries. She’d had no other choice. And I had been
told that only vampires could live in this city. “This woman you
speak of—is it your intention to turn her?”
63
Fight for Blood
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“And is that her wish as well?”
The man hesitated.
“Is there a problem?”
“It’s just that...she doesn’t know. What I am.”
Oh boy. “And yet you say she’s in love with you? How can
she love you if she doesn’t know the most basic information about
who you are?”
“Please, Your Majesty. If I turn her, she’ll see all of this
from the right perspective.”
“Because you will have removed her choices.” I shook my
head. “No. I forbid this. You must tell this woman the truth if you
wish to turn her. Offer her a choice. If she chooses this life freely, then she is welcome here.”
The man looked crestfallen, but he appeared to accept my
judgment. He left the throne room, shoulders slumped.
The doors swung open again. This time Cryder entered. I
wanted to run to him, but something held me back. It’s an illusion, I reminded myself. He wasn’t Cryder. Not quite. Not exactly.
“My queen,” he said formally. “May I escort you to the
ball?” I got to my feet. I would have followed Cryder anywhere.
Even this shade of Cryder, who wasn’t the real thing, was
comforting and familiar. I took his arm and allowed him to draw me
out of the throne room and into the ballroom.
The ballroom was full of people dancing, gliding in neat
circles. Cryder took me in his arms and guided us into a slow waltz.
I stepped carefully. I wasn’t a good dancer, but by keeping my
attention on what I was doing, I managed not to embarrass myself.
“Here’s Lady Fiona and her husband, Lord Harrison,”
Cryder murmured as we came up alongside a man and woman in red
wine-colored formalwear.
I knew instinctively what I needed to do. “Good evening My
Lord, My Lady,” I said politely. “Welcome to the palace. It’s so
good of you to join us.”
“Congratulations on your coronation, Your Highness,” Lady
64
Fight for Blood
Fiona said. Lord Harrison bowed his head.
Cryder whirled me away—
And then I was rising, ascending through smoke and mist
and into darkness.
***
My eyelids felt as if they weighed a ton. I couldn’t move.
“No one’s ever completed the first task so quickly,” a voice
said. “She has a preternatural gift for diplomacy. She’ll make a good queen. There’s no doubt about that.”
“If she survives,” said a second voice.
“Don’t talk like that. She will.”
And then another voice, a different voice, much closer.
“Rena? Can you hear me?”
“Mmm.”
“The first trial is complete. You did well. The second one is
about to begin.”
I felt another jab in my arm and slipped away again.
65
Fight for Blood
Chapter Nine
I waited for the next trial to come into being around me, but
it didn’t happen. Nothing appeared before me. I didn’t find myself in the throne room or anywhere else. Instead, I remained surrounded by
blackness.
And pain shot through me like a poison.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t move. I felt tethered to my
bed. Something had gone wrong. I was burning up. My skin was on
fire, my very blood was ablaze. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t manage it.
This is how I die, I realized. This is it. Something’s gone wrong with the test, and I can’t tell them. I’m going to burn alive right here on this table, and nobody’s going to know until it’s too late. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the burning pain washed away. It was as if a cool wave of lake water had swept through my
body, extinguishing the pain and the poison, bringing me back to the self I knew. I lay still for a long moment, collecting myself, trying to gather my wits, trying to understand what had just happened to me.
The second trial was supposed to be a physical challenge. I
knew that, but I had expected some sort of fitness test. But maybe
I’d been thinking about it wrong. Maybe the test was to see how
well I would hold up under torture.
If so, had I failed? I hadn’t been asked any questions, but I
66
Fight for Blood
felt as though I would have rolled over on my best friend to make
that pain go away.
I opened my eyes, fully expecting to see Giorgia, hoping for
an explanation of what had just happened to me.
But I didn’t see Giorgia. I didn’t even see the room I had
been ushered into for the trials. Instead, I was standing on the street of an unfamiliar city, watching as cars rushed by at top speed and
people—human people—walked past me in a great hurry.
How did I know they were human? Was it just that we were
so clearly in a human city?
No. There was something else.
I could see them in a way I’d never been able to see people before. There was a quality to them that I couldn’t put into words—a flat, dull quality, like unpolished metal.
Also, I could smell them.
I recognized the smell as that of blood, but it appealed to me
now more than the smell of blood ever had before. It smelled ripe,
like the best fruit I’d ever eaten.
I’m a full vampire.
Of course. That was the trial, wasn’t it? Giorgia had said as
how I would comport myself when I’d fully transitioned into my
new life.
Well. Easy enough. I just wouldn’t eat any of these humans.
And that was easy, I was relieved to realize. I had worried
over the past months that when I had completed my transition I
might turn into a blood-crazed psychopath who would just as soon
murder a friend as look at her. But although the people around me
smelled appetizing, it was as easy to restrain myself from harming
them as it would have been to stop myself from eating somebody
else’s lunch, even if the lunch had looked delicious.
Was this all there was to the trial? Being around humans and
not hurting them?
It couldn’t be. This was too easy.
67
Fight for Blood
Just as that thought had occurred to me, a hard blow landed
between my shoulder blades and sent me sprawling. I landed on my
hands and knees on the pavement. Scrambling around, I looked
behind me—
And came face to face with a burly man of about thirty years
old. He was bearded, tattooed, and muscled. He was terrifying. I
didn’t know if he meant to rob me or worse, but I knew a threat
when I saw one. I scrambled back against the building behind me,
screaming.
He advanced on me.
I screamed again, but nobody around us seemed to notice.
Nobody batted an eye. Did no one care that this giant man was about
to attack me?
“Please!” I held up my hands. “I don’t know who you are, I
don’t—please don’t hurt me!”
He ignored my words and kept moving forward.
It’s a simulation. It isn’t real. But falling on the pavement had felt real. It had hurt. It still hurt—my knees and my palms stung where they had been scraped. If I could be hurt by falling, I could be hurt in other ways, too. I couldn’t let this man get his hands on me.
I scrambled to my feet and started to run.
I wasn’t a strong runner. I had always finished last when we
did the mile in gym class—well, last along with Cecile, who was
usually kind enough to run with me so I wouldn’t be by myself. My