“I’m alright,” she said. “I was caught off guard by what Katherine did. When she gets back, I will be giving her a piece of my mind.”
“She says she’s sorry,” said Jack. “For what that’s worth.”
He ran a hand through Ryoko’s hair and let out a sigh.
“What is it?” asked Ryoko. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to lie to you, Ryoko,” he said. “I fooled around with Mira. And with Katie, while I was feeding off her. Part of it was unavoidable. I mean, I don’t want to upset Mira and jeopardize Pierce’s plan. But another part of it is just… confusing.”
Ryoko didn’t say anything for several seconds, long enough to make Jack wonder if she’d heard him.
“And you were worried that I’d be upset?” she asked.
“Well, yeah,” said Jack. “You’re allowed to be. To be honest, it upsets me a little. I don’t want them, Ryoko. I want you.”
“Are you planning on coming back?” whispered Ryoko.
“Of course!” he said.
“Then… I’m not worried.” She laced his fingers through his. “I trust you, Jack. And I know what you are.”
He stared down at her pretty face, wondering what she meant by that, but a little afraid to ask.
“Does her blood taste better than mine?” asked Ryoko.
The hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stood up straight.
“What?”
“Does her blood taste better than mine?” Ryoko repeated.
For some reason, Pierce’s words from earlier about the anti-enthrallment potion came back to him. And Katie had asked him almost the exact same question just ten minutes earlier. Was it a coincidence? Or did it point to a symptom of something greater?
“No,” said Jack. “But, uh, I don’t really see why it matters…”
Ryoko and Katie’s blood tasted different, but Jack enjoyed the flavor of both. It was more like comparing cookie dough ice cream to rocky road than ranking one over the other. He watched as Ryoko let out a breath that he hadn’t noticed she’d been holding in.
“Good,” she said. “I’m sorry. That was a weird question, wasn’t it?”
“Kind of,” said Jack. “But it’s okay.”
“I’ll keep the mansion safe until you get back,” she said. “I… I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” said Jack.
He leaned in close and kissed her. Ryoko was still half asleep, and her lips only made small movements against his.
“Goodnight, sir,” she whispered.
“Goodnight.”
He let his Blood Sight fade, and his vision snapped back to the motel room. The exchange had left him more uncomfortable than he’d expected it to, and for all the wrong reasons. Ryoko’s unquestioning obedience. The way she always called him “sir.” The enjoyment she seemed to get out of him feeding off her.
Had the potion been doing what it was supposed to? Had he enthralled her, by accident?
An even more painful question pushed its way into his thoughts.
Did she really care for him as a person? Or was it all because of his bite?
CHAPTER 12
The door opened, and Katie came back into the motel room. She walked over to the bed and shook his shoulder, assuming that he’d fallen asleep.
“Jack,” she said. “Mira is on her way back. I saw her parking the car she rented while I was waiting… Hey? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” mumbled Jack. “Just tired, I guess.”
He ran a hand through a hair and forced a smile onto his face. He was still thinking about Ryoko. Still wondering if their burgeoning relationship was based on their real emotions, or if it was just a function of his addiction to her blood, and her addiction to his bite.
“You don’t look fine,” said Katie. “Pull it together. Mira might get suspicious if you start acting moody.”
“I said I was fine.” Jack widened his fake smile. “See?”
“Don’t do that,” said Katie.
“Jeez, make up your mind,” said Jack.
The door to their motel room opened, and Mira stepped into the room. She moved slowly and didn’t look directly at Jack and Katie. Rather, her eyes had a distant, vaguely pensive quality to them.
“It’s been taken care of,” she said. “Take some time to rest for what’s left of the night and the morning. We shall set out late tomorrow afternoon.”
“Alright,” said Jack. “Is everything okay?”
Mira’s gaze finally focused on him properly. She let out a sigh and brought a hand to her head, as though trying to cope with a migraine.
“…Yes,” she said. “It’s been a long journey. We should all get some sleep.”
She smiled at Jack and Katie, and then left the room without another word. Jack stared at the closed door for a couple of seconds.
“She’s acting weird,” he said.
“You’re both acting weird,” said Katie.
They took Mira’s advice, climbing into the motel room’s singular bed for the night. Katie only had a few minor objections to sharing it with him, and soon enough, they were both drifting off to sleep.
He was apparently more tired than he’d realized, for when he woke up, it was well past noon. Katie was sitting in the corner, peering into her phone screen as it charged through the cable plugged into the wall.
The motel provided a meager brunch for them, which they found arrayed across a table in the main lobby. Jack stuck to nibbling on fruit and a few other things that looked edible. Neither he nor Katie said much, and it felt more like the aftermath of an awkward hookup rather than a meal shared between a vampire and his temporary thrall.
“I’m going to head into town after,” said Katie. “Take a look around. See if there’s any heads-up information available about the Emerald Keep.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Jack. “Let’s just check in with Mira, first.”
Mira did not come to the door when Jack knocked, and neither did Aiden. He frowned, trying a second time and wondering if the silence on the other side had anything to do with her mood the previous night.
“She’s probably tired,” said Katie. “She was telling us to get lots of rest for her own sake.”
“Maybe.” Jack frowned. He tried to accept it as just her sleeping in late, rather than a foreshadowing of what might be to come.
He and Katie walked down the street from the hotel, slowly taking in the full breadth of Preluca. Though, there was not very much to take in. It was a small village, with most everything within walking distance. The buildings were old, and so were most of the people they saw.
Preluca felt isolated, though not in a geographical sense like Lestaron had been. If Lestaron Island was isolated from the world by hundreds of miles of ocean, Preluca was isolated by the march of time itself. The village had been left behind at some point, and instead of eventually snapping forward to catch up, it remained where it was.
“This is so sad,” said Jack. He and Katie had found a small park just across from an old church near the village’s center.
“It is sad,” said Katie. “Especially because this didn’t happen by accident.”
She walked over to a bench and sat down on it. Jack remained standing, frowning a little.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Look at this place,” said Katie. “Small, rural, and undefended. Think about what having a nest of fucking vampires within striking distance would do to a place like this. Or rather, has done to it.”
Jack chewed on his lower lip, taking another look at the decaying church across the way.
“Maybe,” said Jack. “It could just be regular poverty. We don’t know enough about this village’s history.”
“There’s a reason why your grandfather’s code had no tolerance for vampires,” said Katie.
“You went against that code,” said Jack. “So did he, at times, if what Mira has told me is true.”
“And look at how
I ended up.” Katie smiled weakly at Jack, and he had to look away from her.
Neither of them said much for the next few minutes. Katie rubbed her hands together and exhaled into them. It was a little colder in Preluca than it had been back on the island, and neither of them had anticipated that when they’d packed their clothing.
They slowly made their way back to the motel, arriving as the afternoon began to flow into the evening. Jack was hungry, and he doubted that there would be an evening meal provided by their lodgings.
He knocked on Mira’s motel room door again. Nothing happened for a couple of seconds.
“Come in,” called Mira.
Jack opened the door, and he and Katie stared at the sight within. Mira was sitting in bed, dressed only in a nightgown, with Aiden lying across her lap. Two small trails of dripping crimson ran from the corners of her mouth, and Aiden’s skin tone was clammy and pallid.
“He’s fine,” said Mira, before either Jack or Katie could ask. “I know what his limits are. I’ll be needing all the blood essence I can get before we head to the Emerald Keep. We will be heading out very shortly.”
“Are you worried about how this might play out?” asked Jack.
“I would be a fool if I didn’t have doubts,” said Mira. “But we should be okay. In this case, the blood essence is similar to a contraceptive. It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
“Right,” said Jack. “Okay. When are we going to leave?”
“Within the hour,” said Mira. “You should attend to any preparations you might see fit to take.”
She shot a deliberate look at Katie, who winced slightly in response.
“Of course,” said Jack. “Any chance we can eat before we go?”
“Oh, they’ll provide us with food,” said Mira. “Of that, I am sure. They will be welcoming hosts for us.”
There was an edge to her tone that Jack really didn’t like, but he nodded and led Katie out of the motel room.
“Are you going to need to feed again?” asked Katie.
“I should be fine,” he said. “I’m not planning on doing with you what Mira was doing with Aiden, if that’s what you’re worried about. She treats him like a blood bank.”
“I’m not planning on letting you do that,” said Katie. “Come on. Let’s get our stuff together.”
CHAPTER 13
The car Mira had rented for them was a fairly nice BMW, which surprised Jack, given the impoverished state of the village. He loaded his and Katie’s suitcases into the trunk and climbed into the front seat next to Mira, with Katie and Aiden climbing into the back.
She drove them through the village and then along a winding road that led up a rocky hillside. The interior of the car was dead silent, which added a certain amount of tension to what was to come.
“It’s just up ahead,” whispered Mira, as she angled the car around a sharp turn along one of the narrow, rocky cliffs.
“We’ve barely been on the road for ten minutes,” said Jack. “We could have just walked, you know.”
“No, we couldn’t have,” said Mira. “Appearances matter, dearest Jack. Especially here.”
Jack nodded, though he wasn’t entirely sure he knew what she meant. The Emerald Keep appeared in the distance as they reached the top of the hill. It was a massive, rectangular structure, with two windows larger than the rest midway up its wall that looked like empty, gaping eye sockets.
The Emerald Keep, true to its name, looked distinctly green from a distance. The stones it had been built from were a muted white and grey, but thick moss and hanging vines had grown to cover almost the entirety of the structure’s walls over the years.
It was surrounded by a deep trench that appeared to have once been a moat. The wooden bridge that stretched across it to the keep’s front entrance, likewise, seemed like a drawbridge that had fallen into disrepair and become permanently stuck down. Most of the entrance it had once closed into had been blocked with rough stone mortar to fill out the empty gaps around the smaller wooden door the drawbridge had been replaced with.
Mira parked the car off to the side a short distance from the drawbridge. There were no other cars surrounding the Emerald Keep, which along with the lack of illumination showing from within made it seem abandoned. Mira was the first to get out, and she had a worried frown on her face as she examined their destination.
“We’ll need to wait for a few minutes,” she said. “The Jade Circle won’t arrive to greet us until just after sunset.”
Jack glanced at the horizon. The sun had just dropped low enough for its light to take on red and purple hues against the cloudy sky.
“Right,” said Jack. “It’s not like we’re in a hurry to get inside, is it?”
He’d meant it as a rhetorical question, but still felt a little unnerved by the lack of responses from his companions. He leaned against the car, standing alongside Mira. Katie came out and joined them, folding her arms across her chest and shivering slightly from the cold.
The sun dropped over the horizon at a slow, arduous crawl, but when the last of its direct light faded from view, Jack almost wished it had taken longer. Wisps of mist and fog settled over the area, with the bulk of it pooling within the dry moat as though in mockery of its intended purpose.
Mira suddenly tensed and stood up straight. The Emerald Keep’s front door creaked open, revealing a deep blackness within. Jack watched as members of the Jade Circle slowly began to pour out. It was just dark enough to obscure any details beyond their general silhouettes.
There were a little less than two dozen of them present. Mira gestured for Jack, Katie, and Aiden to follow her as she started toward the bridge. She shook her head when Jack gestured toward their luggage.
“Not yet,” she said. “If we need our things, the Jade Circle’s thralls can fetch them for us.”
Her voice had taken on a cold, commanding quality that would have unnerved Jack if not for the fact that she was on his side. He followed alongside her as she walked over to the bridge, drawing to a stop at the edge of it.
One of the vampires stepped forward to greet her just as a cloud finished passing over the moon, providing a minimal amount of illumination. He was half a head taller than Jack, and more muscular by far. His hair was jet black and cut close to his scalp, and it seemed oily despite how short it was.
His skin was almost pale enough to be true white, and as he smiled, Jack saw a pair of outsized fangs at least twice the size of his own. He wore a rough cotton shirt, dark grey trousers with a red sash, and a voluminous black and green cloak.
“Mira,” called the vampire. “It is… good to see you again.”
“Volandar,” said Mira. “It’s been a while. Decades, at least.”
“Yes…” Volandar let out a deep, grumbling noise. “I was a little surprised, to say the least. You’ve refused my offer of cooperation so many times that I doubted if you’d ever consider it.”
Jack was surprised by Volandar’s accent, which sounded more like an American from an old movie than what he would have expected from a Romanian vampire. Though, he remembered Mira telling him that Volandar had been a soldier in the United States Army before he’d been turned.
“The circumstances have changed,” said Mira. “Some of my enemies have grown more bothersome since we last spoke.”
“The mages…” Volandar said, drawing out each syllable. “I am aware of them. Though there have been times in which they’ve been even more powerful than they are now.”
Mira didn’t say anything, and the silence set Jack on edge. He tried to keep the tension from showing in his posture as he examined the rest of the vampires on either side of Volandar. Most of them were men with the same tall, burly physique as their leader. And most them wore clothing that looked centuries out of date: robes, cloaks, and even tunics.
“We both know why you are here,” said Volandar. The leader of the Jade Circle turned his full attention to Jack. His eyes glinted
in the moonlight and were the color of fresh blood. “Is he weak? Or stunted, in some fashion?”
Jack felt his heart rattling against his ribcage. He opened his mouth to answer and felt Mira give his elbow a hard squeeze.
“He is anything but weak,” said Mira. “Which makes him an even greater target for the Order of Chaldea. We did not come here seeking protection, Volandar. Merely to have an open discussion in regard to what we can do for each other.”
Volandar smiled. His teeth looked like an exaggerated version of a wolf’s, massively threatening and bulging out from under his lips. He waved a hand to the side, and a female vampire that Jack hadn’t noticed before stepped in close to him.
She was short, with dark brown hair and a petite build. In appearance, she didn’t quite seem as mature as a fully grown adult, though Jack knew that it was impossible to know her true age. She leaned in to confer with Volandar, who frowned as she offered a response to his muffled question.
“My daughter seems to agree with you,” said Volandar. “Perhaps we can find a way to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement. But I will speak with the newblood, first.”
Jack perked up and took a cautious step forward. He tried to keep his body language confident, reminding himself of what he could do if the situation devolved into violence. He had his blood magic. He wasn’t defenseless.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“As you should be,” said Volandar. “For the words I speak are ones that you, Jack Masterson, are likely in need of hearing.”
Jack resisted the urge to glance back at Mira. Had she told Volandar his full name?
“What is it that you want to say?” asked Jack. He couldn’t help but let a little of his annoyance slip into his tone.
“I know who you are, boy,” said Volandar. “And I know your father, as well. If you come planning treachery, know that you will pay your life in price for it. You may be a blood mage, but you enter my realm and will be in my power.”
Jack nodded slowly, working to keep his reaction from showing on his face. His father. Volandar had just said that he knew Jack’s father.
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