“I’m sure we do. Do you need it exchanged? Was something wrong with it?”
She floundered a moment, remembering how we’d damaged it. A beautiful soft pink flooded her cheeks and the woman’s eyes flared and then she smiled.
“No worries, I’m sure we have another. I’ll check when I get back to the store.”
“Thank you. When you get a new shipment in, let me know. I’m sure the guys would love to drag me out shopping again.”
Gina offered her business card and the woman dug in her purse to find the credit card receipt for Shara to sign. She gulped and looked up at Gina in a bit of a panic at the number.
:One dress in Paris could cost that much. It’s truly nothing: I whispered through her bond.
:It’s a year’s worth of cleaning jobs for me.: Though she signed with a flourish and passed the receipt back. :And if all this needs to be dry cleaned…:
My rock troll took that moment to surge inside me. My spine popped and my muscled bulged with the effort of holding him in. :You worry. About nothing. Dry cleaning is beneath my queen’s notice.:
:Somehow I don’t see Daire or the Templar knight dragging my clothes to the dry cleaners.:
I didn’t have to make an order. Guillaume already scanned the racks and quickly picked a fluffy cream-colored sweater and butter-soft glitzed out jeans that managed to look worn and comfortable while still being brand new and classy. Stripping off the plastic, he knelt on one knee before Shara and offered the clothes to her over his arm as grandly as if he’d drawn his family sword to display for her. “If these aren’t acceptable, perhaps Daire has better taste.”
His tone said he found that highly unlikely.
“Hey,” Daire grumped. “I picked it all out in the first place. Rik’s taste is all in his…”
“Daire.” I didn’t put much power behind his name, but the word still rumbled through the room.
“Are you really a queen?” The woman blurted out.
She stepped closer to Shara and I went on high alert. I flexed my left hand, ready to throttle her, but didn’t remove my right arm from around my queen’s shoulders, in case I needed to get her to safety in a hurry. Guillaume didn’t stand, but shifted slightly so he was angled toward the threat, a glint of silver in his hand. Daire crouched, ready to pounce.
“Oh, no,” Shara laughed uneasily, glancing at Gina. “Not really.”
Another step. Her hand in her coat pocket. :Weapon?: I asked Guillaume, since he was slightly closer.
:Doesn’t smell like metal, gun or knife.: He paused, breathing again. :It smells like… Shara.:
“Ms. Isador doesn’t like to brag,” Gina said. “Her family has a long, proud history.”
“I was wondering if you left something in the dressing room.” Catherine edged closer, slowly. Eyes locked on our queen, which told me more than anything that she was a threat. A woman would have been wary of approaching the two large men, but she didn’t even glance at us. “I mean, don’t you think it was odd that only your dressing room was attacked?”
Shara’s embarrassment returned in the bond and that pissed me off. :She left underwear stained with her blood behind as a lure. That’s how she escaped the thralls alone for five years. Is that what you smell?:
“I don’t think so. But I suppose I could have, since I changed my clothes. Why? Did you find something?”
:Hard to tell with our queen so close. I definitely smell her heat and her blood but I can’t tell if any hint comes from the human.:
“Just a scrap.” The woman’s eyes glowed oddly, like Daire’s cat eyes in the night. She took another step and my instincts screamed with urgency. “That’s all they left.”
“They who?”
“Thralls.”
:Take her out.:
Guillaume moved so smoothly and quickly that even I didn’t see exactly what he did. Only that blood spurted from the woman’s throat. He neatly caught her body and dumped it aside, far from our queen.
While her head rolled across the floor.
7
Shara
I let out a soft cry and covered my mouth in shock. Blood sprayed me in the face and the saleswoman dropped to the floor. I blinked, frozen, staring at her head. I swear she looked right back at me, as surprised as I was.
Guillaume calmly wiped a knife on his jeans. A fucking six or seven inch-long knife. Where the fuck had he pulled that from? And to behead someone with it, so easily, so quickly…
Beheaded. A sound escaped my throat. More a whimper than anything. I dropped my gaze to my lap, avoiding the body. The blood. My new Blood who’d killed her.
Fresh blood stained the pretty sweater.
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. But it wasn’t a healthy, good laugh. At all. “I guess I won’t wear this after all.”
Rik lifted me onto his lap. “I’m sorry that we shocked you, my queen. She meant you harm.”
“What kind of harm? How did you know?”
I wiped my face, smearing blood. Human blood. My stomach knotted, the merciless hunger roaring back to life.
“No!” Guillaume seized my hand. I looked at him, surprised that I’d been lifting my bloody fingers to my mouth. “Not her blood, my queen. She’s tainted.” He looked at Rik. “Get this foul blood off her and don’t let her taste it. It reeks of Marne.”
My blood ran cold. Rik swept me up and raced for the stairs, Daire ahead of us. He started a bath while Rik helped me strip off the bloody clothes. Shivering, I tried to understand what was going on. “She was human. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then how could she reek of Marne Ceresa? The queen of Rome?”
“I don’t know. We’ll ask Guillaume for details once we get you clean.”
I held onto his shoulders as he helped me out of my jeans. “He killed her. A human. In my living room. What are we going to tell the police?”
“Don’t worry.” Rik lifted me and gently set me into the water. Daire had made it nice and hot. “All will be taken care of.”
“Do you honestly think we haven’t had to hide a body before?” Daire splashed me as he got in with me. “I’m sure Gina has things well in hand.”
I still shivered, even with the hot water. “Why was I going to taste her blood? A human? I’ve never even looked at a human before. Not like that.”
“It’s your hunger.” Rik said grimly as he climbed in too.
This hunger. It was quickly becoming maddening. I couldn’t think about anything but Daire’s throat. Rik’s wrist. His blood. G’s. I wanted them all and I’d just had Daire.
I couldn’t keep drinking from him like this or he’d be sick and weak.
Daire snorted and gently washed my face. “Nothing you did could make me weak. I’ve had three sandwiches the size of the one I made for you already. You can take my blood whenever you want.”
Rik eased me back so he could wash my hair, his arm underneath my shoulders.
“I used to swim laps in this tub when I was a kid. I never pictured it being too small because I had two men in with me.”
G stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “Make that three.”
He’d already stripped. I wanted to say to protect me from the tainted blood that must have gotten on his clothes, too, but I couldn’t say for sure. Not when he had such a large erection. Very large. I didn’t have a lot of experience comparing men’s genitals yet but he seemed excessively big, even while I suspected Daire and Rik both had impressive cocks too.
“Gina and Frank are already resolving the issue with the body. It seems as though Catherine Chambers had a terrible car accident on the way back to the city.”
He came to the edge of the tub but didn’t climb inside. Instead, he knelt at the edge, watching me with those dark solemn eyes. “Why did you kill her?”
“Her manner was odd. She approached you too closely. As a human, she ought to have been wary of us, and if she wasn’t human, she would have been downright terrified of three powerful
Blood. But she wasn’t. At all. She had only one thought and that was to get close to you.”
“We suspected her but didn’t react right away,” Rik said, smoothing his hands through my hair. “Until she said thrall. No human would have thought to use that word. Even you called them monsters.”
True. I just had the nagging guilt that we’d hurt, no killed, an innocent person. A human. Who had nothing to do with the monsters that hunted me.
“The item in her pocket.” G laid a small tattered scrap of material on the edge of the tub.
Cotton. White, well, mostly. It looked like it’d been washed hundreds of times and taken on a slightly grayed tone. It took me a moment to recognize what it was.
A scrap of my very plain, very cheap underwear.
“Some humans have a natural interest in our kind. They’re drawn to us. They’re curious. Some say it’s because they have a drop or two of Aima blood in their distant family tree that stirs when they’re near us. It makes them easy prey as thralls, or for queens who use them for more nefarious purposes.”
“Marne,” I whispered, shivering again. I hoped that saying her name wouldn’t bring her attention to me like some kind of demon.
“She has been known to…” He paused a moment, as if trying to think of the best word. Or perhaps, spin the story in a way that wouldn’t scare the ever loving daylights out of me. “Booby trap humans such as this. She feeds on them, gives them a drop or two of her blood, and then looses them into the world with a simple command. Seek. Bait to reel her prey in.”
I sat up, moving closer to the edge while Daire popped the drain to let the gross water out. I thought about getting out, but none of them seemed to be in a hurry, and then Rik turned the water back on to refill the tub with clean water. “I don’t understand.”
“A well-fed queen would usually not look upon a human and hunger,” G said, his voice gentle and without censure. Yet I still felt heat rush across my face. “She does it on purpose, trying to catch the unsuspecting queens who might not know any better. Queens who were raised far from her court, in America, say, where there are so few known queens. Queens without enough Blood to satisfy their thirst. If you had tasted the human’s blood, you would have indirectly taken Marne’s blood too.”
My eyes widened. If I’d taken the queen’s blood… “That would make me her… sib? Is that the word?”
“Her pawn,” Rik growled, his fury leaking through our bond like sparks from an blacksmith’s forge. “She almost got away with it too. I had no idea she tainted humans like that.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” G replied, shaking his head. “Only someone familiar with her court would know. Unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with her tricks. She’s tried to snare me thusly for decades. Even a single drop of her blood would have given her a hold on you. Most likely, she would have been able to command you to come to her and offer throat to her formally. Though you are very strong, my queen.”
“And stubborn,” Rik muttered.
My cheeks flushed hotter. He was right. I knew that. Swearing some silly oath that I wouldn’t ask them to help me out of pride was only going to get someone hurt or killed. Maybe it wouldn’t be any big deal if I died, but could I live with myself if one of them was killed because I was too weak? Too stupid? If I died, what would become of them? And if I’d fed on that tainted human out of desperation…
Stupid. So stupid. When I had three magnificent men begging me to take their blood.
G stood, looking down at me. I ran my gaze over him, noting the many scars and puckered punctures that ran over his body. All faint now, rather than vivid on his skin like when he’d first come to me. I couldn’t imagine how many times he’d been wounded, and so severely that they’d left scars when even Daire’s and Rik’s messiest, deepest bites hadn’t left a single mark the next day. He was thicker and stockier than Rik, about the same height as Daire, but he carried himself so differently. He moved like a man who’d looked Death in the face a million times, only to spit in his eye and limp away to fight again another day. Over and over. For centuries.
I slid back against Rik, making room for G to step into the tub with us. “Bring a knife.”
Flashing a small silver blade against his palm, he grinned and stepped into the tub. “Already ahead of you, my queen.”
8
Guillaume
It had been my great misfortune to encounter many queens in my long, miserable lifetime, though I had only formally served one after leaving my lady mother’s nest.
As Desideria’s executioner, I’d bathed in queens’ blood and wallowed in their Bloods’. I’d lived in their courts and been invited deep into their nests to the queen’s own bed. I’d drank from their throats and yes, fucked plenty, both queen and Blood.
In service, always in service, waiting in dread for the order to begin the killing. The order always came, and yet the queens always allowed me in. Willing to play the game. Hoping to win. Or at least end up allied with the most powerful living queen in the world, if she was able to retain her head.
Once finally free of Desideria’s yoke, I had sworn never to be captured again. To never again be forced to give my blood or wield knife and sword in service to another queen. For I had had my fill of queens and their twisted games. While not related by bloodline, Marne Ceresa was just as twisted as Desideria, and I would wither to a husk of what I used to be and damn my soul for all eternity before I would ever feed from that bitch’s throat.
I had often wondered if all queens grew up deep in the game, dealing in blood and lives as easily as human children played checkers. Perhaps Aima queens were simply born cruel, their needs endless, their thirst unimaginable, both for power and blood.
Until I felt the call floating through the night. A queen in desperate need. A queen unlike any I’d ever felt or tasted before.
Shara Isador played a game, the same as any other queen. She played a dangerous game to keep her own life and her Blood’s, but more, she played to keep her independence. Whether she knew it or not, she’d drawn a line in the sand and dared the Triune to do something about her very existence.
That was a game I was willing to play. Especially once I had a taste of her blood, her power, the likes of which I’d never tasted before.
She might be a young American queen without the training of a formal court, but to me, that was a blessing straight from the goddess.
Her two prior Blood shifted closer to her, especially the big alpha, as much as the cramped tub would allow. He would not relinquish his place at her side, not that I’d fault him for that in the slightest. I felt her hunger burning in the bond, a wildfire threatening to consume us all, but she leaned back against the alpha and only looked at me.
I laid the thin blade on the side of the tub and waited for her first play.
Finally, she spoke. “There are things we need to iron out between us before we go any further.” She paused, moving her arms gently in the water, thinking of exactly what she wanted to say. I appreciated the fact that she wasn’t self conscious of her body—but neither did she flaunt her curves. We might as well have been sitting downstairs at the table sipping coffee than naked in a tub. “You said you would be willing to swear an oath.”
“I am.”
“I don’t mean to insult you, but you take your word very seriously. More seriously than men of this age and country do.”
“My honor is all I have left, my queen. Were I to give an oath and then break it, my honor would be destroyed.” Just the thought made my stomach tighten with dread and I clenched my fingers around a nonexistent sword. I’d sworn hundreds of years ago never to dishonor my blades and I wouldn’t begin now.
“Why were your fingers bent and twisted when you first came to me?”
I blinked, trying to follow her train of thought. “In the year of our lord thirteen hundred and seven, I was imprisoned by King Philip IV of France for being a heretic Templar knight. They tortured me. One of the things they did involved b
reaking every finger on my hands, numerous times.”
I could only hope she wouldn’t want all the gory details. I didn’t want to remember those dark years. Because they couldn’t kill me. They tried. Oh, how they’d tried. If I’d still been sane, perhaps I wouldn’t have weakened enough to accept the service Desideria offered me.
Shara could have made me swear just about any oath under the sun when I came to her and lay down face first before her. I had been that ravenous. That close to death, which had not come easily to this unkillable knight.
“They’re straight now and your scars are healed. Did I do that, or would any queen’s blood have healed you?”
“Any queen’s blood would have healed me to a point. Your power is great enough, and you allowed me to drink long enough, that I’m healed back to my former glory. Truth be told…” I took a deep breath and laid the truth out between us. “I have never been this strong, Your Majesty. You wrought that in me and you alone.”
“I hear horse hooves when I look at your bond,” she said softly, closing her eyes, her head tilting. “Why?”
“When I shift, I’m a hell horse. That’s why in the old days, when I served in Ireland, I was called the Dullahan, the headless rider.”
“Gives hung like a horse all new meaning,” Daire said. Rik punched him in the shoulder. “What? He is.”
“What about that… um… test?” Her cheeks flushed and I suddenly identified the most beautiful color in the world.
I had no idea why Daire laughed and Rik looked disgruntled, as if he suddenly found himself the butt of a joke. “He accepted me as alpha.”
“I did, and do,” I said firmly, in case there had been any doubt. “I’m not a leader. I’m a killer.”
“But why would they call you a headless rider?” she asked.
I winced, touching my throat. “I’ve been beheaded and lived to tell the tale.”
Her mouth fell open and her gaze dropped to the jagged scar around my throat. “How is that possible?”
Queen Takes King (Their Vampire Queen Book 2) Page 5
