My Blood To Give

by Paula Paradis

  The hall erupted in cheers again. Andrei escorted Dara to an empty chair on the other side of the king and queen, and he took another at her side. Dara’s head swam, and she could scarcely focus her eyes on the faces looking up at her. What did they expect her to do? Should she give a speech?

  The sea of bodies parted once again, and a procession of people filed forward from the back of the hall.

  A middle-aged woman dressed in rich garments led the group. Two younger women stood on either side of her. When they reached the foot of the platform, the king addressed them first.

  “Madam Trendeaux, the Assembly has heard your petition,” he said. “You have come to us for protection from your former … business associates, who wish to end your life. We give our approval for you and your…”

  “Daughters,” the madam said, though Dara saw clearly that they were not related.

  “…daughters, to make your home in Sanctuary, according to the edicts of our law.”

  The two girls burst into tears of joy. One of them clapped her hands, and then covered her mouth with her fingers to stifle her sobs. The other seized the older woman by the arm and jumped up and down. A shudder passed through Trendaux’s frame, and she wavered back and forth, but she never lost her composure. In the end, she merely bowed from the waist.

  “In order to ratify this agreement,” the king went on, “you must allow yourselves to be bitten now.”

  Madam Trendeaux stiffened, and the smiles evaporated from the girls’ faces.

  The king held up one hand. “This is simply a formality to seal your initiation into our society. We cannot accept you until you have been bitten.”

  Madam Trendeaux exchanged glances with her girls. Then she stepped forward. Her voice boomed through the hall. “That wasn’t the deal. You said we were to become servants in exchange for protection.”

  “And that is how humans serve us best,” the king said. “No human can remain in Sanctuary without offering us their blood. That is our law.”

  Dara recognized the look of horror on the woman’s face. If she believed all the stories of vampires, she would expect that their bite would be fatal.

  As if to a child, the king explained, “If we allowed you to remain here without giving your blood, your ‘daughters’ would ask for the same consideration. Then their children, and their children’s friends, and their children’s friends’ parents, and their children’s friends’ parents’ associates would want the same. We could not allow that. All of you must offer your blood to us. And the offer to us must begin with you, my dear Madam Trendeaux. We cannot accept any other terms.”

  Her voice quavered when she said, “I did not fully understand these terms before I applied to enter your service.”

  The king frowned. “I cannot help that. You chose to forfeit your life in the human world for a place in Sanctuary. No one made you take that step. You came of your own free will. But now that you are here, you cannot go back.”

  “The Assembly has accepted you, but you must offer your blood to our Kind. There is no other option available to you.”

  Madam Trendeaux looked at her daughters, but she couldn’t exactly argue with him. “Your Majesty,” she said, shoulders slumping, “you give me no choice. I submit to you.”

  The king regarded her in silence for a moment. No one in the hall moved a muscle. Dara swallowed hard. What would happen?

  She couldn’t sympathize with Madam Trendeaux very much, though. She must have known putting herself and her people into the service of vampires would mean being bitten by them. Madam Trendeaux knew a lot more about what she was getting into with these vampires than Dara herself knew before Andrei bit her for the first time.

  The king waved his hand, and Andrei stood up.

  Dara gasped and tried to pull him back down into his chair. But he pulled his fingers out of her grasp and walked to the edge of the platform.

  Madam Trendeaux stared up at him. She tried to put on a mask of determined strength, but her lips quivered and her hands trembled at her sides.

  Her daughters sobbed and wrung their hands, but Madam Trendeaux kept her eyes fixed on Andrei’s face. She stood ramrod erect as he descended from the platform and took his place in front of her.

  Her daughters fell into each other’s arms in a flood of weeping.

  Dara clenched her hands together in her lap, but she couldn’t stop the shudders of anxious horror racing through her. Was this really going to happen? Was Andrei really going to bite that lady?

  Madam Trendeaux looked stoic and firm, but underneath, she must have been quaking in her boots. Some forgotten instinct made Dara look at her neck. The paper-white skin throbbed with the pulse underneath. Was Andrei looking at it, too?

  They stood face to face for several seconds, and then Andrei darted forward. He moved so fast, Dara saw only a blur.

  The next moment, Madam Trendeaux hung limp and helpless in his arms. He buried his face in her neck.

  A sigh of relief went through the crowd, and several vampires applauded.

  Dara swooned, and she cradled her head in her hands. Suddenly, she couldn’t watch.

  Soon, Andrei would be coming to Dara for another feeding. How could she let him do that? Like Madam Trendaux, did she have any choice in the matter?

  Chapter Three

  Dara turned over on her bed.

  The sun had moved to the other side of the palace and no longer shone through her window. The chill of evening crept into the stone walls of her room.

  She ought to close the window, but she still couldn’t get used to the absence of bird calls outside. She listened and listened and couldn’t stop listening.

  Voices rang up from the stone courtyard, and the sounds of work and play reached her ears, but nothing could comfort her in place of the birds. Nothing meant home to her so much as the sound of birds outside a window.

  Would she ever hear birds again? Andrei told her she would never choose to go back to the human world once she came to Sanctuary. Did that mean she wouldn’t be allowed to go if she decided she wanted to? Was she a prisoner here?

  She closed her eyes and buried her head in her pillow. She couldn’t get the image of Madam Trendeaux out of her mind.

  It wasn’t the sight of Andrei biting and bleeding her, though, that disturbed her so much. It was the expression on the older lady’s face when she stared into Andrei’s eyes and knew beyond doubt what was about to happen.

  The memory of Andrei’s bite came back to her and she shivered again. She couldn’t deny the truth of his words, though. He had surprised and frightened her that first time, but the bite itself didn’t hurt. Before it had happened, her desire for him had been intoxicating. It was only how she felt afterward that made her shiver.

  Reeva said she now felt pure ecstasy for days after being bitten. Would Dara feel that bliss the next time? That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

  She kicked herself. How could she justify it that way? She couldn’t let herself get used to being nothing more than livestock for the vampires.

  Sighing, she started to sit up when the door opened again.

  “Doesn’t anyone around here knock?” she was about to ask, but closed her mouth when Andrei appeared in the door.

  “Were you asleep?” he asked.

  She sank back down on her pillow. “I couldn’t sleep, not after what I saw.”

  “What bothered you?” he asked. “Seeing Madam Trendeaux receiving her initiation?”

  “Is that what you call it?” Dara asked. “Is that the initiation you give all your … your servants?”

  Andrei nodded. “All of them—even you.”

  Dara sat up straight and glared at him. “What do you want?”

  He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped.

  He stroked her cheek. “Are you still mad at me, Dara? I thought you were happy with your place here. You di
d very well in the Royal Hall today. You’re going to make a splendid queen one day.”

  She turned away. “What exactly does a queen have to do? The queen just sat there through the whole affair.”

  He laughed. “That’s about it. Her position is mostly ceremonial.”

  “When do you become king?” she asked. “I guess you can’t just wait around for the old king to die.”

  “No,” he replied with a smile. “But the king has been on the throne for a long time now. He’ll step down soon, and then you and I will take over.”

  “How long is a long time?” she asked.

  He looked up at the ceiling. “The king has been on the throne for about three hundred years. Some serve more; some less.”

  Dara gasped. “Three hundred? What will they do after they step down?”

  “They’ll go back to their ordinary lives,” he told her. “I don’t know what they’ll do, but I’m sure they’ll think of something to keep them occupied.”

  “Won’t they stay in palace anymore?” Dara asked.

  “Why should they?” he asked. “They have their own homes to go back to. They’ve had enough of royal life, and I can understand that.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “I’ll be long dead by the time you finish being king. You’ll have another consort, another queen.”

  He took her hands in his. “My dear, I already told you: you are my true consort, and you will share in my immortality. The current queen is human, like you.”

  Dara turned away. She didn’t know if she believed she was going to become immortal. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  He laid his hand against her cheek and turned her head to face him. His eyes burned into her heart. “If you don’t understand anything else, understand that I brought you here because I love you. I couldn’t stand to leave you behind in the other world. You belong here.”

  “Am I going to have to go through what Madam Trendeaux went through?” she asked. “Will I have to be bitten in front of everyone to prove my submission? I don’t think I can do that.”

  “You won’t have to,” he replied. “You’ve already been bitten. You have a bite mark on your neck to prove it. Everyone can see you’re my consort already. You have nothing to prove.”

  Dara looked away.

  “This is all too much for you,” he told her. “You’ve only been here a few days, and this was your first experience of court. You need to get out of here and enjoy yourself.”

  “What do you suggest?” she asked.

  “Let me take you to the games,” he replied. “That should take your mind off things.”

  “Games?” she asked.

  “Now that Madam Trendeaux and her daughters have been initiated, they’ll be competing for their places in our society.”

  Dara’s eyes widened. “Competing? You didn’t mention that.”

  “I told you people competed for the right to serve us,” he reminded her.

  “You said they held competitions and fought to the death,” she said. “Is that what you want me to watch?”

  He chuckled. “Of course not. That would be barbaric. They race, and they throw the javelin, and they have wrestling matches. There are many other events, but the contestants don’t kill each other. Sanctuary is a civilized place. We wouldn’t allow our human companions to do anything to endanger themselves.”

  “You might not do it now,” she pointed out. “But you did it in the past.”

  Andrei shook his head. “Dara, dear Dara. When are you going to believe me? We didn’t make them fight to the death or war against each other. They did that in their own cities and nations. They never did it here in Sanctuary. We wouldn’t stand for it. We want happy, healthy, living companions. If humans want piles of rotting corpses, they can have that. We won’t have it here.”

  She sighed. “All right. So Madam Trendeaux and her daughter are competing in the games. Haven’t they just been bitten? They’ll be too weak to do much.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “I don’t expect they will win a very high position this time around. But by the next set of games, I’m sure they’ll do much better.”

  “Next set?”

  “We hold the games once a month. Any human can compete if they want a better place in our society.”

  “Will I have to compete?”

  Andrei laughed. “You’ve already attained the highest position a human can have. Others will compete for the honor to serve you.”

  “But Reeva is serving me,” she said

  “If someone challenges her, she will have to accept and defeat them, or they will exchange roles. But don’t worry, I’ve seen Reeva in the games; she’s very good.”

  That didn’t assure Dara quite as much as she would have liked.

  “And afterward, there are the children’s games,” Andrei said.

  “Children?” she gasped.

  Andrei smiled. “They aren’t really competing for places. It’s just for fun for them, so they feel like they’re a part of the entertainment.”

  “But they still become companions, don’t they?” Dara asked. “Reeva told me she became a companion when she was a young girl.”

  Andrei locked his eyes on her. “Every human being in Sanctuary becomes a companion. There are no exceptions.”

  “What about little babies?” she asked. “What happens when a baby is born here? Do you feed on them, too?”

  Andrei stood up. “Of course not. They usually start when they’re about six years old, when feeding wouldn’t cause them any discomfort or danger. Now come on. I don’t like to see you lying there moping.”

  She looked at her court gown. “Shouldn’t I change?”

  “If you like,” he told her. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Outside? Why?”

  “You don’t want me watching you change your clothes, do you?” he asked.

  “Don’t you want to watch?” she asked.

  “Why would I want to do that?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on your privacy.”

  She examined him. Then she turned away. “Suit yourself.”

  His voice took on a tone of concern. “What’s the matter?”

  “I just don’t understand all this,” she murmured. “It’s exactly opposite to what I expected.”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  Dara faced him. “You made all that fuss about bringing me here to be your consort. In the human world, that would mean being lovers and spouses, having children, sharing each other’s bodies and our lives. Now you won’t even stay in the same room while I change my clothes. It’s nothing like a human relationship at all.”

  “You’re right,” he replied. “It’s not a human relationship. We’ll be sharing each other’s bodies, but it won’t be in the usual human sexual way. Being consorts isn’t the same as being lovers or even companions. It’s much more.”

  “That’s what you keep saying,” she told him. “But I am human. I can’t deny the basic human need for physical intimacy. I’m sure the other consorts feel the same way.”

  “Do you mean sex?” he asked. “If you mean sex, you can have sex with any human you want. I can see to that if you like.”

  She gasped. “You want to arrange for me to have sex with another man? Is that what you think I want?”

  “Do you not want sex?” he asked.

  “No!” she cried. “I mean yes. But I don’t want some strange man you’ve arranged for me to have sex with. I came here to be with you. You say you brought me here because you love me. Well, I came here because I love you. I want to give my body to you and only you, and I don’t mean for you to feed off me and parade me around in fancy clothes. I want us to be closer than anyone else. I want us to be two sides of the same coin.”

  “We are,” he replied. “You’re my consort. I couldn’t be closer to anyone if I wanted to be.”

  “But you don’t desire my body,” she pointed out.

 
“Oh, I desire your body,” he countered. “I desire your body more than any human man ever could.”

  “You know what I mean,” she shot back. “You don’t desire me in a sexual way.”

  He made a troubled face. “Sex is meaningless to vampires. What I want from you is so much more than that. I desire your body in its purest sense. I desire that part of your body that represents your highest self. I desire your blood, your essence.”

  She turned away. “You don’t understand.”

  “It’s you who doesn’t understand,” he told her. “You will understand one day, though, after we’ve been consorts for a while. You’ll see that the bond between us is deeper and stronger than anything we could ever have through ordinary sex.”

  She didn’t turn around. “If you’re going to wait outside while I change, you might as well go. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  He nodded and went out.

  Dara stared out the window. If only the tiny twitter of a house sparrow rang through that window to comfort her soul. What she wouldn’t give for that.

  Chapter Four

  Reeva came back in and quickly had a change of clothes set out for Dara that would suit her visit to the games.

  She traded her ornate court gown for a light blouse and a long skirt. A pair of ankle-high leather boots and a matching leather jacket completed the ensemble.

  When she opened the door to face Andrei, it was with a refreshed air. The disquiet and doubt she had experienced earlier faded away, and she looked forward to the excitement and exhilaration of the games.

  Andrei took her by the hand, and they walked side by side down through the main foyer into the street.

  People of all colors and ages mingled in the square in front of the palace. They smiled and bowed to Andrei, and to Dara. Would she ever get used to that? Would she ever get used to having other people waiting on her, dressing her, and bowing to her?

  Vendors tended stalls on the side streets. Children ran and shouted through the square. Women carried baskets of laundry here and there. Industry, contentment, and tranquility reigned throughout the city. Sanctuary really was the shining city from Dara’s dream. The noise of human activity even obliterated the curious absence of bird songs.