by Anya Bast
“I’m the same Alejandro you’ve always known. The same man who wanted you then and who wants you now.”
She made a frustrated noise and headed for the door. “Enjoy your hard-on. I’m going back to work.”
Right before she closed the door behind her, she heard him call, “Baby, everything about you is work.”
She slammed the door extra hard.
Daria crashed out of the building and into the disconcerting Earthlike sunshine. Above her the sky shone a deep blue and white, puffy clouds scudded past. No one was around. Probably everyone was still in Sante Hall, at the party. She stopped for a moment on the path and closed her eyes, immersing herself in the moment in order to ground herself.
Her body still hummed and tingled from Alejandro’s touch. As much as she hated to admit it, the man made her feel good. Being in his arms felt right.
Her ears filled with the twitter of the birds in the trees and a light breeze lifted the hair at the nape of her neck, drying the sweat on her skin. The fresh scent of grass teased her nose and Daria had to remind herself that she wasn’t back on Earth. She was here on Darpong in the Logos Territory, at the Shining Way . . . and Christopher Sante was somewhere in the vicinity.
As she centered herself in the moment, the disturbing pleasure of feeding from the blood donor reentered her mind like a fever she couldn’t shake. He had smelled so good and the thought of his life force, coursing strong and certain through the veins just under his skin, had called to her like the sweetest song. She’d known all she’d had to do was penetrate that thin, vulnerable layer of flesh to drink the goodness within.
Daria shuddered. So this is what it was to be a Chosen. Tears pricked her eyes.
Far away, the muffled sound of voices and music met her ears. Her eyes popped open and she headed toward it. Work. She could do work. It was Alejandro she had problems with.
When she reached Sante Hall and opened the door, the driving sound of digitized music mixed with an ancient tribal beat nearly overpowered her. They’d dimmed the lights, and the scent of human blood, sex, and the tang of tobacco fought for prominence in the room. Daria fought her way through the crush of people, seeking the back of the room where the music was less loud.
As she made her way through, skillfully avoiding being served anything to drink, she caught a glimpse of Brandon sandwiched between two slim, female bodies, his head buried in the throat of one and his hand down the pants of the other. As she glanced around, seeing more such erotic entanglements, her stomach tightened.
To her right a pair of three entwined in a dark corner. A woman between a man and another woman, all questing lips and exploring hands. The succubare in the middle was currently orgasming around some object the male was fucking her with while the woman tongue-kissed her.
All righty, then. That’s how it was. That’s how it always was here in Vamplandia.
She would have to be extra alert. She didn’t want to do any heavy petting with anyone but Alejandro, and obviously she had issues about that, too.
Brandon apparently didn’t have a problem with acting like a local. Of course, if push came to shove and her cover risked being blown, she’d have to join in, too. She just hoped push never came to shove. She’d do all she could to avoid that.
Carlos approached her and she pasted a welcoming look on her face for the oily vampire. She even managed to hold it when he moved to the side and she saw that he led the man she’d fed from earlier. The human stumbled along after him on a chain, looking dazed and confused.
“Valerie,” he greeted her. “I saw you leave with your lover. I am glad you have returned.” He made a show of glancing around. “But where is Emanuel? Did he not accompany you?”
“I’m sure he’ll be along soon. He needed a moment to recompose himself after the excitement of the day.” Damn it. Had her expression tightened just a bit? Had there been a note of sarcasm in her voice?
Carlos smiled knowingly. “Ah, Valerie, are you jealous he chose a woman to feed from? You must not be. The Chosen don’t like to feed on the same sex if they can help it. Well, unless they enjoy the same sex. It was clear to all that the only one he wants is you.”
She wanted to tell the bastard she didn’t need her ego stroked, and she certainly wasn’t jealous of Alejandro’s choice of food. She also wanted to tell him that, by the way, his proximity creeped her out and could he please move away? Instead she unlocked her jaw and said, “I appreciate your reassurance.”
He yanked the chain of the blood donor, who staggered forward a couple of steps. Blood marked the skin of the thirty-something man. His face was pale, his eyes heavily hooded, and his mouth slack. He looked drunk, drugged out of his mind with veil pleasure.
Daria made a tight fist at her side, fighting the obscene allure she had to biting the man again—fighting her newly born Chosen-ness. “Have you been allowing everyone to snack on him?” she asked in a mild voice, tinged with curiosity.
Carlos shrugged one shoulder loosely. “He enjoys it. We enjoy it. It’s a win-win situation. He’s a walking party favor.”
She smiled tightly. “Is he a slave?”
Carlos’s lips compressed. “No. He is a slave to nothing more than his addiction. Once he sobers, if he wants to leave the dome and return to New Chicago, we will allow that. He is paid to be here to play the role of a slave.” He paused. “If you wish to see his employment contract, you may. We don’t deal in blood slaves here, Valerie. We never have and never will. I find the practice abhorrent and would not allow it.”
Right.
Daria’s gaze scanned the donor. He would die if he lost much more blood. Daria had to hold herself back from taking his chain from Carlos’s grasp and dragging him out of there. She couldn’t do that. To act in such a way would blow her cover, it would endanger their lives, and, worse, Sante would get away. Again.
Carlos yanked on the man’s chain again, not knowing he was also yanking hers. “Would you like another taste for your evening sustenance?”
The human’s addiction-glazed gaze snapped to her face and a look of longing transformed his slack expression. The man was so out of it he didn’t even know he was a breath away from death. Two more good pulls on this man’s veins might very well mean his end.
She shook her head, searching for a response that would be plausible. “He looks dead on his feet. This man is playing fang roulette.” God, she hoped those words got through to the human. “I don’t want to be the Chosen who kills him and takes away a valuable Shining Way employee.”
Two birds, one stone. She’d done what she could to warn the man while not acting overly interested in his welfare.
He nodded at her throat. “I see your lover has bitten you and you have lost blood. As a newly Chosen I am surprised you can resist the offer.”
“As you have already pointed out, I have a very strong will. That’s why I made it through the succubare.” She gave him a cold little smile. “In fact, if you must know, I don’t like dining from other Chosens’ leavings.”
The human reacted as if slapped. Awareness snapped to attention in his bloodshot eyes, and he speared her with a look to kill. Daria was surprised he still retained an ego to be bruised. Of course the man didn’t know she was trying to save his pathetic life.
Carlos’s gaze took her in from head to toe. “You have an attitude already and you are but newly born.” A slow, small smile that turned her stomach spread over his face. “Perhaps you will do well here after all.”
She returned his smile. “I’m pleased you think so.”
Daria sensed Alejandro’s approach behind her.
Carlos looked over her shoulder, glimpsing him. “Ah, and here is your Emanuel. I will take my leave.” He turned away to melt back into the crowd, trailing the blood donor behind him. That poor man wouldn’t last the night, voluntary service or not. Idiot.
She turned and caught Alejandro’s gaze. His eyes were hooded and he looked pissed off. Of course, unless he’d taken himself i
n hand after she’d left, she wasn’t surprised he was agitated. His cock had been like a steel rod, and she’d left him unsatisfied.
Anything? He’d opened a private mental pathway. Even in her brain, he sounded tense.
No. She paused. Look, it makes me nervous to speak this way. I’m afraid I’m going to slip and broadcast all over the place.
You won’t. It doesn’t work that way, but we’ll work on it tonight in the room, okay? Let you have some practice before we do this anymore. He cut off the pathway so fast her brain practically spun. Yep, he was still mad.
She knew from the manual that the telepathic abilities between Chosen took a long time to master. It required several steps in order to address more than one person at a time, steps she wasn’t ready to try yet. Steps she didn’t even know. Still, she was shaky on her newly Chosen feet and didn’t want to take any chances. Doing these things in reality was far different than reading about them in orientation.
Alejandro came to stand near her. His body heat radiated off him and she absorbed it with gratitude. Despite the press of bodies in the room, she remained chilled. In the distance, they both watched Brandon enjoying himself.
“I see Brandon has settled in well,” Alejandro murmured.
“Yep.”
“Sante’s been here. I heard from someone in the crowd.”
Her body stiffened.
“He’s gone now.” He took a swig of his beer. “Back into his hole here under the dome, wherever that is. People around here talk like he’s a god.”
Frustration at missing his appearance tightened her stomach. “To these people, he probably is.”
Carlos climbed onto the podium, and everyone in the room clapped and cheered. Daria scanned the area near him, but saw no sign of the male blood donor. She hoped Carlos had sent him away. Or, even better, he’d left on his own. Carlos held his hands out in a gesture meant to quiet the crowd and the roar died to a murmur.
“Let us all give thanks to our benefactor, Christopher Sante, for hosting this gathering tonight. Without him, we would not have the pleasure of each other’s company, sustenance in our veins, or a roof over our heads. We all benefit from his generosity.”
The crowd went crazy, hooting and clapping. Daria tried not to gag as she applauded politely and smiled.
When everyone calmed, Carlos continued. “Tonight we celebrate to welcome new members into our community. We hope they are happy here . . . and are productive.” The crowd cheered, and he made the hand gesture again. The boisterous Chosen again quieted. “So tonight, eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow we go back to work!”
Work?
Alejandro and Daria exchanged a quick look. The outside world knew next to nothing about the Shining Way. It was a theory that the commune produced some kind of product, origins masked by an unknown distribution company, in order to finance themselves. Or it could be some kind of work related to the trafficking of blood slaves, or drugs, or both. Really, it could be anything.
Daria eased the beer bottle from Alejandro’s fingers and took a drink herself.
12
ALEJANDRO sprawled on the bed, dressed in just his jeans, and studied Daria across the distance. “Okay, open up a pathway.”
Daria sat clear across the room from him, as far as she could get. That was probably a good idea. She’d left him with a rock-hard cock earlier that day and just about the only thing he had on his mind now was stripping her bare, spreading her across the bed, and fucking her until neither of them could think straight. Having her in this room with him, her scent filling his senses, was nearly more than he could bear.
It’s open.
Good. Now I want you to bring an image of Brandon into your mind and open a pathway in the direction of that picture in your mind’s eye. I want you to talk to both of us at the same time.
She concentrated. It took a few minutes, but she finally pinged them both. Brandon, are you there?
Silence. Then, Busy. His voice came terse and out of breath. The pathway collapsed.
Alejandro let out a bark of laughter, and Daria looked at him and threw up her hands. “You did it right. That’s all I wanted. You felt the shift of your awareness, right?”
She nodded and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Daria did that when she was tired. “It felt far different talking to you alone than it did addressing two people at once. They talked about that during my training, but now I truly understand it.”
“So you see that you’d need to specifically direct your intent in order to broadcast to a room at large, and, if you did, you’d know it. It’s nearly impossible to do accidentally.”
“How do you address people whose faces you’ve never seen? I still don’t understand that. How did the guards speak to us as we approached the Shining Way?”
“All you need is an image to open up a pathway. The guards saw us, we were in their range, and therefore they could communicate with us even though they’d never seen our faces. If you had a picture or holo of someone you never met who was miles away, you could open a pathway. But you could not initiate communication with someone across a distance without knowing what they look like.” He paused. “Well, you could try, but you’d probably get a wrong number,” he amended.
“All that was covered in the training, but it’s much different in reality.”
He nodded, letting his gaze travel from her slim bare feet, up her long legs, to the press of her breasts against her shirt, to her face. Her body appeared tense, in direct contrast to the relaxed slouch he maintained on the bed. His fingers itched to massage away the stress she so clearly held in her shoulders. “Why are so far away from me, Daria? Are you afraid I’ll bite you again?”
She made a frustrated sound and stood. “Not everything is about you, Alejandro.”
Daria walked to the closed door of the courtyard. It was a beautiful night, but they kept the doors shut most of the time so they could speak freely. “I’m wondering where Ari Templeton is tonight. I’m wondering what happened to that man I fed from this morning. Are they both lying facedown somewhere, dead?” Her voice broke. “I couldn’t do anything for that blood donor today. He was being passed around like an hors d’oeuvre and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.”
He rolled off the bed and came up behind her. Knowing he probably risked a limb, he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She startled, but then relaxed under his palm. “Ever since I first met you, I’ve seen this desire in you to protect everyone in the world, Daria, most especially the downtrodden and weak. It’s one of the qualities about you that I most admire, and it’s something that attracts me to you.” He paused. “But you can’t take on responsibility for everyone you meet and still stay sane.”
“Please don’t tell me that man chose his addiction. Don’t talk to me about consensual crimes.” Her voice and body had gone bowstring tight.
He took a moment to answer. “I’ve known Chosen who have deliberately addicted humans. They held them captive and forcibly fed from them until their victim was under their thrall. It’s the same thing as rape. So I won’t say a word about choosing addiction. We don’t know anything about the histories of the donors employed by the Shining Way. Knowing what I know, I won’t make judgments about any of the humans I saw today.”
She turned and looked up at him, studying his face. “You’ve seen that kind of mistreatment? Why didn’t you stop it? Were you in thrall and unable to step in?”
He dropped his hand from her shoulder. “Yes, I was in thrall to Lucinda at the time. It was after she’d Chosen me, and I was still very weak. When I could help, I did, but Chosen hierarchy is a complicated thing. I was not free to act for the first three years after my making because she’d placed me under her dominion. I could do nothing without her consent. The minute I was strong enough to break away from her, I did.”
“Why did you free me, Alejandro? Why am I not under your dominion? It seems like you’d enjoy that.”
He shook his head. “Do
you really think that of me? I would never hold another in thrall, never. Although I was urged to do so. Without sharing my energy from the dominion, many in the GBC figured you’d be weak as a newborn kitten and of no use to the mission. As usual, however, you’ve stood strong. I thought you would. That’s why I didn’t think twice about releasing you after the Choosing.”
She stared up into his eyes, her solid resolve clear in her gaze. “I have no other choice but to stand strong.” She pursed her lips, her expression hardening. “Tell me about Lucinda Valentini. How did she come to Choose you?”
He turned away and pushed a hand through his hair. “She saw me in a club one night and sensed I had the genes to make it through the succubare. She took a liking to me, and decided she wanted me for her own. So one night she cornered me outside a bar in New Chicago with three Chosen males. I was pissed drunk at the time, so I didn’t put up much of a fight. By the next morning I was Chosen, had a lover I never wanted, and some shiny new mental tethers to her.”
“Damn,” she said softly. “I never knew. It’s like you were raped and enslaved.”
He turned back to her. “It wasn’t all bad. I never asked to be Chosen, but I’m stronger now, faster.” He turned and gave her a feral grin. “Not to mention immortal, if I can prevent the insanity.”
“Yeah, I’m still getting used to that idea.”
“I gave Lucinda as much hell as I could. I snapped at her from the end of my leash for all the years I was under her dominion. Once I could get out, I got.”
“Good.”
He studied her. “When will you tell your family?” He knew how close she was to her mother, but he also knew her well enough to understand she hadn’t told anyone about her Choosing beforehand. That would’ve jeopardized the mission.
“After.” She shook her head. “I don’t think she’s going to understand.”
