Blood of Life: Cora's Choice 1-3 Bundle

by V M Black

  Red pill or blue pill.... The crazy thought, a movie reference from nowhere, popped into my mind. These people, though, had no choice.

  The first four people in line swallowed their pills and stepped aside, making room for the next group at the table as the used lancets were discarded. The butler took up a station to the side of the table with a glower on his face, as if taking the proceedings as a personal insult.

  Two of the women who had finished the proving moved to an empty part of the room and began to chat in soft voices, keeping an eye on the action at the proving table. But the last walked quickly past me to the stairs.

  “Pardon, madam, my in-laws are watching the kids,” she said in explanation when she caught me staring at her for a sign that she had been changed in some way.

  I blinked, but she was gone before I could do more than make a strangled sound in reply.

  Right. She’d left her in-laws at home on Christmas Day so that her bondage to a deathless vampire could be confirmed.

  Why not?

  The lines moved quickly. Was the proving even doing anything? I didn’t know what to look for, but none of the people seemed to react in any meaningful way. A few of them followed the first woman up the stairs as soon as they took their pills, but most of them congregated to the side, talking amongst themselves and watching the lines.

  “Oh, my God, I was so scared,” I heard one woman say, a touch too loudly.

  “No kidding,” said a man at her elbow. “An emergency proving. I kept thinking, ‘What if it’s me? What if I was put in a thrall and ordered to forget it so that I didn’t even know that I was?’”

  “I checked my pockets,” another man said. “I always do. Just in case I’ve got a poison pill in there or something that I’m supposed to use if I got caught.”

  “And what would you do if you found it?” the woman asked.

  “Throw it as far away as I could!” the man said.

  “It never works like that,” the first man said dismissively.

  They sounded so casual about it all. It made the possibilities they raised seem even more macabre.

  Why had I said I wanted to see this? The scene was unpleasant—grotesque. I should have gone to my room, gotten cleaned up, gone to sleep and let this little drama play out however it would. It had nothing to do with me, I told myself. I didn’t have to know about it.

  Except that it had everything to do with me. One of these people’s subversion might have almost killed me—and this bizarre scene was a fundamental part of how this strange world of Dorian’s worked.

  The world that had become mine.

  A small commotion at the proving table attracted my attention. I recognized the woman at its center—she’d been the one in the gray dress who had been at my bedside when I woke. She’d kept her arm at her side when she stepped up to the table, looking like she was ready to flee.

  “Hand,” the agnate in front of her ordered, frowning at her.

  The woman swayed, but she did not budge.

  “Hand,” the agnate repeated again.

  Dorian finished with the person in front of him and motioned to forestall the next man from coming forward. He circled the table so that he stood behind the woman.

  All around, the ballroom went silent, the conversations among those who had already been proven trailing off into silence as all eyes turned to the reluctant woman. The tension was so thick I could taste it.

  “Put out your hand,” Dorian said softly.

  The command crackled across the room, the strength of it so great that I balled my hand into a fist even though I was not the one being addressed. The other humans in the room shifted as well, their hands twitching.

  And still she did not obey.

  “Now,” the female agnate said.

  What happened next was almost too fast to see. A lancet flashed, and Dorian held the woman, pinned and screaming, as another agnate deftly prepared the pill. She tried to clench her teeth shut, but the female agnate pulled her jaw open as the pill was popped inside.

  She continued to fight for two seconds, and then she went limp and began to sob.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Thorne!” she wailed. “I’m so sorry!”

  Chapter Six

  Dorian glanced at the other three vampires. “You will screen the rest?”

  The one who had prepared the last pill nodded. “Of course.”

  Dorian wrapped an arm around the woman, who was now clinging to his shirt as she sobbed, and guided her carefully to the edge of the room where I stood.

  I felt a twinge—an instinctive jealousy of her proximity to him.

  God, was I a piece of work.

  “Oh, madam,” she blubbered as she saw me, the words almost incomprehensible with her distress. “I swear I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t want to do it!”

  Dorian’s expression was bleak. He spoke to me over her head. “Come to the study, Cora. You must decide what to do with her.”

  Me? Seriously?

  I looked at the woman, who was clearly scared out of her mind. What to do with her. In her mind, I was certain that death was a very real possibility.

  “Why?” I didn’t want to have anything to do with this anymore. I wanted to go home, pull the covers over my head, and pretend everything was a dream.

  But she was a real, live woman there, in front of me. Whatever else happened, I couldn’t let her die for what some agnate had done to her.

  I couldn’t let Dorian kill her.

  “Because you’re the one she almost murdered.” His answer was flat as he shepherded the hysterical woman up the stairs.

  Unwillingly, I followed. From the salon, Dorian led the way to a room under the colonnade that I’d never seen before, opening the door and flipping on the lights to reveal a room with a club chair on either side of a long, low sofa. Books and curiosities crowded the shelves along the walls.

  Dorian guided the woman to a chair and ordered her to sit.

  She did. What else could she do?

  He nodded to the chair opposite her, and I sat in it gingerly, wondering what, exactly, my role was supposed to be.

  Dorian turned in front of the fireplace to face both of us.

  “That’s enough tears, Worth,” he ordered.

  I shivered at the authority in his voice. He wasn’t allowing her the indulgence of crying. He had the power to deny it.

  The woman nodded, and with a hiccough, she brushed the last tears away with her fingertips.

  “When did it happen?” Dorian’s voice was as impassive as his hooded eyes.

  The woman took a deep, shuddering breath. “It was Christmas Eve, sir. I needed one more present—I’d forgotten to pick up the newest Grand Theft Auto for my brother—so I stopped by the Target near my house. She was waiting for me in the parking lot when I came out. I tried to fight her, but she was too strong.”

  “Did you see who it was?” he demanded.

  “A djinn. She pulled me into the back of a van, and then she cut my arm up high, where no one would notice. She had the other blood ready, and she forced me to drink it. I’m so sorry!” Worth looked on the verge of bursting into tears again. “I never saw the agnate’s face. I just heard his voice.”

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t see him,” Dorian said. “If you had, he would have made sure that you wouldn’t survive the proving, one way or another.”

  Worth nodded, relief spreading over her face.

  Was I so obviously desperate for Dorian’s approval? Was the queasiness in my stomach caused by the reflection of myself I saw in her face?

  No, that wasn’t me. I wouldn’t let it be. No matter what he made me give him, I wouldn’t let that be me.

  “What did he ask?” Dorian prompted.

  “He wanted to know about Cora Shaw—about the new mistress. He knew I was meant to be your cognate’s lady’s maid. That’s why he grabbed me, because he knew I’d know whether she’d survived the conversion and become your new cognate.”

  �
�He already knew her name?” he asked sharply.

  Worth trembled. “Yes. But he didn’t know much about her because he asked me what she looked like and where she was right now. I told him she’d gone home.”

  “The conversion was five days before, at that point. I wonder what alerted him to her existence just then,” Dorian mused, his eyes flickering over me. “If he had subverted you earlier, he might have gotten you to poison her IV line, avoiding the mess with the djinn he hired to come after her.”

  Christmas Eve. What was so special about Christmas Eve? A horrible realization was forming in my mind.

  The woman looked even more stricken, if possible. “You shouldn’t trust me anymore, sir. I can’t hardly live with myself.”

  Dorian’s mouth curved ever so slightly in an ironic echo of a smile. “I know, Worth. Believe me, I know. Yet you reacted no differently than anyone else would have.”

  He tilted his head as he looked at me, his face perfectly expressionless. “What do you want to do about her?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked carefully. I felt that there might be a minefield in that question, if only I could see it.

  “She is your lady’s maid, but what she told that agnate nearly caused your death. Can you still trust her? Or do you believe that she should be dismissed? Or punished?” He asked the questions lightly, but his gaze on me was intense, searching.

  The woman gave a tiny, dismayed cry. “I don’t deserve to live, sir! Not after what I did.”

  I recoiled from them both. I couldn’t even talk to her, not when she was like that. “She couldn’t help it, could she?”

  “Once she was subverted, she was in thrall to the agnate and could not refuse his orders, even when he wasn’t present.”

  I didn’t know what he was playing at. When he had spoken to Worth, every word had shivered with control. Now, his words were hollow, giving no hint of what he wanted me to say. I didn’t want him to order me—the very idea made me sick—but I couldn’t understand what the difference was in his mind, why he would choose to shape her reactions so cavalierly and to leave me guessing as to his intentions.

  Whatever they were, her death was absolutely off the table.

  “She’s not...in thrall to him now, is she?” I asked carefully. “Or at any greater risk of being put back under his thrall?”

  “No, when my blood is mixed with hers, the proving process returns her loyalty to me.”

  It was a test. But I didn’t know what kind. If I failed to give the answer he desired, what would he do to me?

  I looked at the woman across from me, her hands knotted anxiously in her lap. She didn’t look all that much older than I was. It didn’t seem right to talk over her head like she wasn’t sitting right there, but she didn’t seem able to protest.

  It didn’t matter what Dorian wanted me to say. Worth wasn’t at fault for anything that had happened. In fact, I was beginning to suspect that I’d caused her to be snatched from the parking lot, however inadvertently. I wasn’t going to let her take the blame at any level.

  “I don’t see that there is anything to be done,” I said firmly. “What happened isn’t her fault, and now she’s as trustworthy as she ever was.”

  “Does that mean I will still be your lady’s maid, madam?” The woman looked like she didn’t even dare to fully believe it.

  I shot Dorian a look. “If that’s what you want—what you really want, not just what Dorian wants out of you—of course you can.”

  “Of course it’s what I want, madam.” There was a hint of outrage in her voice. “I applied for the scholarship when I was sixteen. I was one of six selected to complete years of study in fashion, cosmetology, interior decoration, administration and secretarial work, and event planning, and I beat out all the other candidates to win the position.”

  I rocked back slightly in the chair at that revelation. At the time that she had applied, there had been no cognate for her to serve—in fact, there was every possibility that Dorian would not have found a cognate during her lifetime. All that preparation for something that might never take place.

  “If that’s really how you feel, then I would be honored if you’d stay,” I said weakly.

  “Thank you, madam,” Worth said fervently.

  I winced and decided it wouldn’t be too selfish for me to leverage the moment to get my way on one small thing.

  “On one condition,” I added.

  The woman looked nervous again. “Yes, madam?”

  “That you stop calling me ‘madam’ and call me ‘Cora’ instead,” I said.

  Worth looked scandalized. She opened her mouth, then closed it. After several long seconds while the conflict played out on her face, she nodded. “If that is your wish...Cora.”

  “It absolutely is.”

  Dorian shifted in front of the fireplace, and I turned to him instantly—and felt a small disquiet as I realized that Worth had done the same thing, with as much attention reflected in her body as I felt in mine.

  “Cora’s judgment will stand,” he said. “You must not feel guilty. You weren’t responsible for your actions. I was. I should have protected you, too.”

  Worth sagged, as if a sentence had just been lifted from her. Dorian wasn’t just reassuring her. He was ordering her—telling her what to think, what to feel. I could feel his influence in every word.

  “Thank you, sir,” she murmured.

  “You may go now, until tomorrow. And have a good night.”

  “Good night, sir.” Still sniffing slightly, the woman rose from the chair, gave a deep nod of her head, and left.

  Dorian stood silently for a long moment, looking at me.

  I stared back, trying to read his emotions in the impassive lines of his face. What exactly was that all about?

  “You approve,” I said finally. “You were judging me. Seeing what I would do. What would you have done if I had said that I wanted her to be punished?”

  Dorian’s wave was dismissive. “I was certain that you wouldn’t.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “No, you weren’t. You might have been pretty sure, but you wouldn’t have asked if you were really certain.”

  He moved over to the chair that Worth had left and sprawled in it in a single graceful, loose-limbed motion. His posture was casual, but I could feel the undercurrents growing between us again, now that we were alone, and I knew he was deliberately putting distance between us.

  And I was acutely aware that I was wearing absolutely nothing under the coat he had given me. I shifted uncomfortably. The corner of his mouth twitched at the movement, but he said nothing about it.

  “You are as much a stranger to me as I am to you, Cora. It takes time for us to get to know each other.”

  “The appropriate time to get to know someone is before you drink their blood and bond them to you forever,” I said.

  Also before you screw them senseless in a coat closet, a part of my brain pointed out helpfully.

  Yeah. That, too.

  “Perhaps,” he mused. “Perhaps one day, we will have that luxury.”

  I knew he wasn’t talking specifically about me but about all of his kind. I closed my eyes, shivering slightly with the horror of everything that had happened that day. I wished that I could believe that I was safer now than I had been when I was running from the djinn.

  But I couldn’t be sure. Dorian could control me as easily as Worth had been controlled by the other agnate—more, even.

  How did I know that I wouldn’t become a puppet for Dorian? What person could not give in to the temptation to make his lover in the image of his fantasy, if he had the power?

  I wasn’t sure that I could have that level of self-restraint.

  “You changed her,” I said aloud, opening my eyes again. “Worth. You...rummaged around in her head and changed things around. You told her not to blame herself, and so she didn’t. She couldn’t.”

  Dorian’s eyes were hard, like chipped sapphires. “She had a compulsion
to protect my privacy, to betray no information about her employment here that might compromise me. That is what I require of every human in my service. Yet she betrayed me, however unwillingly, and she knew it. If I had left her with both the impulse and the guilt, it very well could have driven her to her death. Is that better to you?”

  I shuddered. “Of course not.”

  I wanted to protest against using any kind of compulsion at all. But it was becoming clear to me that such a position just wasn’t possible for a vampire. He had too many enemies in other vampires, and if unaffected humans were ever allowed to find out who lived among them, they would try to stamp them all out.

  Could I blame them? If he hadn’t gotten into my head, wouldn’t I want his kind destroyed, too?

  “You could do that to me, too,” I said. “Demand complete loyalty. Complete submission. A bond—that would be even stronger than a thrall.”

  “Yes. But I needn’t do anything so drastic. A bond can stand on its own. I have no reason to...tamper to that extent.”

  To that extent. That meant that he would change more than the bond already had if he did see the reason. What would that require? If I’d given the wrong answer, told him I wanted Worth to die—would that have offended him to the extent that he would choose to rewrite that part of me?

  I looked at the beautiful creature across from me, a physical approximation of a man—no, an improvement upon one. No real man was that perfect, no man could make my blood sing in my veins, make my heart beat in terror and desire.

  I couldn’t imagine him without all that, tangled together, the darkness and the terrible light.

  I shook myself—shook my head to try to clear it of the fog that was beginning to trickle in again. I seized on what I’d meant to ask him as soon as Worth had left the room.

  “Has Dr. Robeson sent you many...candidates in the past?”

  Dorian raised an eyebrow at my sudden change of subject. “Yes, of course. Cancer patients are ideal for our cause because they receive a terminal diagnosis weeks, if not months, before they die.”