Mark of Blood

by Jody Morse

  At least, I assumed I’d never seen him before. He was dressed entirely in black and his face was covered with a black mask, but he looked a lot taller than anyone who I’d met in Deadwood so far. He towered over the girl, who I guessed was about my height. He must have been, at least, six foot five.

  “Troy, I have a new arrival. Fresh off the streets of New Orleans,” the man told the guard as he walked past my prison cell, leaving his hands on her shoulders to guide her in the right direction.

  “Yeah?” Troy eyed the girl up and down.

  The girl was pretty. She had short dark hair, fair skin, rosy cheeks, and plump lips. She kind of reminded me of Snow White.

  The man who’d brought her into the dungeon nodded. “Cute one, isn’t she?”

  I felt my cheeks grow red as anger swept over me. Who were they to talk about her like that? It made me wonder if that was how most vampires talked about humans.

  “I’ll say. I’d like to have a drink from her right now.” Troy sneered.

  “You know the rules,” the other man replied, turning his back to me and pulling his black mask off. “Royals get first pick.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sure neither of us could afford her, anyway,” Troy added as he continued to eye the girl. “I’m sure she’ll go for a pretty penny, considering how cute she is.”

  From where I was sitting, I could see the girl trembling. I realized that this must have been what it was like to be kidnapped and blindly brought here to this other world you knew nothing about. Completely terrifying.

  “Ain’t that the truth?” the guy who’d brought her there said with a chuckle. “Anyway, you’re going to need to keep her here in a holding cell. Auctions are on hold at the moment.”

  “Why is that?” Troy asked, sounding surprised.

  “I assume it has to do with Prince Emerson being away on business,” the guy replied with a shrug. “I don’t know, exactly, but Prince Sebastian told me to bring all new arrivals here.”

  “Okay. Well, it’s not a problem. We have plenty of cells,” Troy said with a nod.

  “Perfect.” He leaned in closer to the girl. “See you around, precious.”

  She kept her chin in the air to avoid looking at him. Moving past her, he pulled off his black mask and glanced over in my direction.

  An uneasy feeling took over as I stared back into his red eyes, which stood out against his pasty white skin. His thin lips curled into a smile as he gauged my reaction to him.

  A shiver crept down my spine as the realization of what he was hit me. A Seeker.

  Without saying a word, he moved past me and headed back up the stairs. Once he was gone, relief washed over me.

  I focused my attention back on the girl. Troy was handing her a nightgown that looked identical to mine, except it was a shade of lilac. “You’ll need to change into this.”

  “Is there a dressing room?” the girl asked quietly.

  He chuckled. “You’re so innocently adorable. You’ll have to get used to the way things are around here. That means no modesty.” He leaned in closer to her. “I want you to remove everything.”

  “Everything?” Her voice wavered as her eyes grew really wide.

  “Yes, you’ll have to take off your panties and bra, too,” he informed her. “And, to answer your question... no, there is no dressing room. You can change right here.”

  The girl glanced over at me and Sean and then she quickly looked away from us, almost as though she wanted to pretend that we weren’t there.

  She removed the gray Hollister sweatshirt she was wearing and then tugged off her dark wash jeans, revealing the light pink bra and undies she was wearing.

  Then she glanced over at Troy and shook her head. “I... I can’t do it,” she told him quietly.

  “No problem. I’ll do it for you then,” he said, reaching for her underwear and tearing them right off.

  I shifted my gaze away from her, partly because it was hard to watch her violated like that but also to give her privacy. I stared down at the stone floor for a few moments before glancing over at Sean. The moment I laid eyes on him, I wished that I hadn’t looked his way.

  Sean was staring ahead, his brown eyes full of intrigue. I knew exactly what he was doing.

  He was checking that girl out as her clothes were ripped off, as she was stripped down to nothing.

  Chapter 12

  Kade

  BY THE TIME I GOT BACK from Zoe’s cottage, the sun was already beginning to rise. Even though it wasn’t shining yet, the heat that radiated against it burned against my cold skin. It was a dreadful feeling, one that I knew I wouldn’t be able to tolerate for long.

  We needed to figure out a way to get the barrier spell into effect again. I was fairly certain that Zoe was the only one who could do that for us, but I wasn’t sure how I would be able to get her to cooperate.

  As I entered the castle, I rounded the corner past the staircase, toward the dining hall. That’s when I heard voices: one belonged to Henry and another belonged to Sebastian, but I wasn’t sure who the other voice belonged to. It was a female, but it was too soft-spoken to be Alessandra.

  Pulling the door open, I stepped into the room. As Celia came into view, my eyes grew wide and an angry feeling washed over me.

  I took a few steps closer to them, wondering why Sebastian and Henry were even entertaining her company. How could they so much as speak to her when she and her family had deserted us over 200 years ago? Really, they were no different than our poor excuse for a father. It must have been genetic.

  “Cousin. What are you doing here?”

  Celia glanced up at me, looking just as surprised to see me as I was her. Her lips formed a smile. “Hello, Kadence.”

  “Careful. He gets very offended when people call him Kadence. He goes by Kade now,” Henry warned her.

  “My apologies. Hello, Kade,” she corrected.

  “I asked you a question and you didn’t answer me. What are you doing here?” I repeated. I knew there was a growl to my voice, but I couldn’t help it.

  Celia Dezerea was dead to me. She’d died the moment she’d left the island and, essentially, the coven with her mother, never looking back.

  She exchanged a nervous look with Sebastian.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “I’ll explain.” My brother turned to me. “Aunt Caroline—” He started to say, but I interrupted.

  “Don’t you dare call that woman our ‘aunt’. She is anything but.”

  Sebastian sighed. “Fine. Caroline wants to reclaim the throne.”

  “Reclaim?” I snorted. “It was never hers to begin with.”

  “No, but she brought me a photocopy of the Stark Coven Doctrine. Since father has abandoned the throne, it rightfully belongs to Caroline now.”

  “That’s absurd.” I shook my head. “How can this be?”

  He shrugged. “It’s laid out very clearly. Fortunately, Alessandra was there when Caroline came by. She was able to buy us some time to figure out a plan.”

  “What does any of this have to do with the reason she’s here?” I questioned, pointing my chin in Celia’s direction but not looking at her. As far as I was concerned, her traitorous self didn’t deserve that much attention from me.

  “She came to warn us about Caroline, Kade,” Sebastian explained. “Her mother has no idea that she’s even here, so don’t let the ball drop when you see her.”

  “Why would she come to warn us?” I asked, pretending that she wasn’t even in the same room.

  “Because I’m on your side, Kade,” Celia spoke up. “This could lead to a war, and if it does, I plan to fight alongside you.”

  “But why?” I turned to her. “Why would you want to side with us when you haven’t even seen us in over two-hundred years?”

  “Because of my mother. She’s out of control.” She shook her head and then glanced up at me, a confident look in her gray eyes. “I’m sorry that I ever left in the first place, but Daniel... He convinced me that it
was the right thing to do. I should have listened to my gut instinct. I’ve regretted it every day since.”

  “If you regretted it every day for 203 years...” I paused to do the math in my head before glancing back over at her. “You had about 74,000 days to come back. What made you decide on this day, of all days?”

  “Because I needed to warn you, Kade. I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. Mother has a coven of three-hundred. If you’re unable to prove that the throne is rightfully yours, she’s ready to go to war to fight for what she believes is hers.”

  “A coven of three-hundred?” My eyes grew wide as I glanced over at each of my brothers. “Are you guys hearing this? We don’t have anywhere near that number of vampires in our coven.”

  “Actually, we’re not as far behind Caroline’s coven as you may think. We have two-hundred and seventy-five.” Henry ran a hand over his dirty blonde hair and sat up straight in his chair. He glanced over at me with a nervous look in his honey brown eyes as he added, “Two-hundred and seventy-seven if you count both Celia and Alessandra.”

  “Celia cannot stay here,” I began to protest, but Sebastian cut me off.

  “It’s already been decided that she will stay here, and we will all do whatever we can to protect her. Now, let’s drop it, okay?” My brother asked, staring at me evenly. “We have other pressing matters that need to be discussed.”

  “I’ll say. Have you seen the sky?” I asked.

  Sebastian nodded. “Yes. I’ve issued a televised warning to let everyone know they need to stay indoors and keep their blinds or curtains shut. I’m also having security make phone calls to every vampire in the coven, just so that everyone understands exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  “What are we going to do about the sky?”

  My brother shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it.”

  That’s what he thought. I, on the other hand, knew otherwise.

  One way or another, I was going to get Zoe to fix this, whether she wanted to or not.

  Chapter 13

  Alessandra

  AS THE SUN STREAMED in through Sebastian’s bedroom window, I could feel its rays burn against my skin. It didn’t feel like I was going to go up in flames anytime soon, but I knew I couldn’t allow myself to get too much sun exposure.

  As I drew the curtains shut, I glanced over at the desk where Sebastian had left the Stark Coven Doctrine for me.

  I sighed. The book was a lot thicker than I’d realized, which meant I had a lot of reading to do. But there was something much more important I needed to do first.

  I slipped out the door of Sebastian’s bedroom chambers and walked across the hallway. I didn’t even bother to knock as I entered Sebastian’s Slave Chambers. I was on a mission: find Julia.

  I hadn’t quite figured out what I was going to do with her once I did find her. I didn’t want to kill her... not just yet, anyway. I had to figure out a way to make her life a living hell first, a deeper way to get to Sebastian.

  I supposed that what I really wanted to see was how foolish Sebastian really was. If he was trying to hide the girl from me, then he had to have known better than to let her go back to the Slave Chambers.

  Actually, on second thought, if I found Julia in the Slave Chambers, I would kill her. I would do it right then and there, just to prove a point.

  If Sebastian was really foolish enough to believe he could just lie to me like that without even attempting to hide her from me, well... I would personally ensure that her corpse was delivered to him when he least expected it.

  While I was certain Sebastian would figure out I was the one who had killed his precious slave, it didn’t even matter. He could hold it against me all he wanted, but the truth was that he needed me. He believed he needed me to defeat Emilio Craven, but he actually did need me to prevent his aunt from taking her rightful place on the throne.

  When it came down to it, I was Sebastian’s only hope... and knowing that he needed me, whether he liked it or not, made me smile.

  As I walked down the hallway to the room I knew belonged to Julia, I tried to decide how I would kill her if she was inside. I could just rip her head off, but that wouldn’t have been any fun.

  No, I would drink every drop of her blood until there was nothing left.

  Opening the door, I stepped into the room. When I laid eyes on her bed, I was sort of surprised to find that it was empty.

  I stood there for a few moments, wondering where Sebastian could’ve been hiding her from me if she wasn’t in her room. And that’s when it hit me.

  He must have been keeping her in the Chambers.

  Chapter 14

  Lila

  MY EYES WERE CLOSED. I’d been pretending to be asleep so that Sean wouldn’t ask me any more questions that I wouldn’t be able to explain the answers to. I wasn’t sure how long had passed since the last time we’d spoken, but it must have been a few hours.

  “Lila, wake up,” I heard Sebastian’s voice whisper.

  My eyes flew open, and I saw him standing in front of my cell. Zoe was standing alongside him, a slight look of discomfort in her eyes.

  I shot Sebastian a questioning look.

  He must’ve recognized it, because he quickly explained, “It’s important for us to keep your identity a secret, but I had to ask Zoe for help. We really need her magic right now.”

  “Help with what?” I asked.

  “I’ve finally figured out what to do with you,” he told me as he unlocked my cell. “I need you to come with me.”

  I glanced over at Sean, who appeared to actually be sleeping soundly in his cell. “What about him?”

  “He can stay here for now,” Sebastian replied quietly.

  I swallowed hard and met the prince’s eyes. “What are you planning to do with him?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Now come.”

  I stepped out of the cell and followed after him. Once we reached the stairwell, Sebastian turned to me. “I brought Zoe with me because she’s going to cast an invisibility spell to prevent the risk of you running into anyone in the palace halls.”

  “Okay.” I wanted to point out that I couldn’t remain invisible forever, but I decided to keep my mouth closed.

  “You two need to be quiet. I really need to concentrate,” Zoe informed us.

  I nodded as Sebastian pursed his lips together.

  The witch fixed her gaze on me. She stared at me for a few long moments, seemingly deep in her own thoughts.

  A few moments later, I watched as my arms began to fade away. When they settled, I could still see them, but they were somewhat translucent in appearance.

  “You’re invisible. I’m the only one who will be able to see you now,” Zoe explained.

  “Make sure you stay close to us. And don’t talk,” Sebastian added.

  “Actually, I also added a silencing mask as well,” Zoe informed him, though her eyes still seemed to be locked on mine. “No one will be able to hear her move, speak or breathe. No one will even hear her heart beat until I lift the spell.”

  “We’d better hurry then. I’d hate to waste any more of your time,” Sebastian said, his eyes sliding over to her.

  She still didn’t look at him. “It’s fine.”

  I couldn’t help but notice that there was a slightly bitter edge to her voice. Of course, it made questions begin to swirl around in my mind.

  Did Zoe think that my life just wasn’t worth saving? Did she feel like her magic was being wasted on me?

  That didn’t seem like her, though. She had given me and each of Sebastian’s slaves a sun pendant for our protection, making each of us promise not to remove it. I didn’t know what the pendants did exactly, but I doubted that she would have gone through the effort of making them if human lives meant nothing to her.

  Without saying another word, Sebastian began to head up the steps. Zoe followed after him, and I stayed close behind her.


  Once we reached the top of the stairs, I saw the figure that loomed before us in the hallway.

  Princess Alessandra.

  Her dark hair was swept back into a ponytail, and she was wearing a short black dress. Her light olive skin had a vibrant glow to it, but there was a look of surprise in her dark brown eyes.

  “Sebastian. What are you doing here?”

  “I just wanted to make sure that things were being handled properly,” he lied. “I’ve put auctions on hiatus for the time being.”

  “Oh? You don’t want to add more slaves to your harem?” Alessandra asked with raised eyebrows.

  For some reason, it had never occurred to me that Sebastian would add more slaves to his harem. It was probably a naïve assumption of me to make, but for some reason, I’d just thought I was the only slave he’d needed...

  “No. Not right now, at least,” Sebastian replied. “I’m not even sure what to do with the slaves I already have if we go to war or evacuate the island.”

  “Hmm.” Alessandra stared at him for a long moment before glancing over at where I was standing. Even though I knew it wasn’t necessary, I couldn’t help but hold my breath, out of fear that she would still somehow hear me. As it was, it felt like her eyes were on me, almost as though she somehow knew I was there. Then her gaze flicked over to Zoe.

  “Miss Blackwood,” Alessandra murmured.

  “Please call me Zoe.”

  “Zoe, then. How lovely it is to see you again. I’m surprised to see the two of you... together.” The princess glanced from Zoe to Sebastian, an almost accusing look in her eyes. It was clear to me that she was waiting for them to give her some sort of explanation.

  To my surprise, Sebastian didn’t give her one. Instead, he turned the accusations around on her. “What are you doing down here, near my coven’s Chambers?”

  “You mean our coven,” Alessandra corrected.

  “Need I remind you that we aren’t married yet?” Sebastian didn’t need to say what he really meant by his words, because his tone revealed his threat: there was still a chance that they might not have gotten married.