Dawn's Envoy

by T. A. White

  I hadn’t felt this weak since waking up from my change. I was as unsteady and exhausted as a newborn.

  The magic on my shoulder flexed, reminding me of another reason I needed to find strength. Right now, it seemed dormant, content to remain where it was. That probably wouldn’t last. When it acted, I needed to be at my best, not my worst.

  I settled back and nodded.

  Thomas seemed slightly surprised by my capitulation, even as he turned away to summon refreshments.

  I sighed. Sometimes I hated being as weak as I was.

  Before any of us said anything, a soft knock came at the door.

  “Enter,” Thomas called.

  Deborah slipped in, her gaze lowered submissively. A companion of one of Thomas’s vampires, Deborah was human and regularly donated blood to her chosen vampire.

  I held myself stiff as I watched the three people in the room. Thomas knew my rules. I didn’t feed from humans.

  “How may I be of help, master?” Deborah kept her voice diffident and her eyes lowered. It was a complete difference from the strong, assertive woman I’d met before.

  I had to wonder if this was the appearance she gave to all vampires or just something reserved for Thomas.

  “My yearling is in need of your services,” Thomas said. He watched me much as a cat watched a mouse, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

  His request startled her, enough that she dropped the facade, her head jerking up as her gaze met mine. There was anger there, loathing too. She didn’t want to be my walking meal for the night. That much was clear.

  She lowered her head and said, “Of course, master.”

  I snorted. He would have respected her more if she was honest.

  All companions wanted to join the ranks of the undead. It was why they let the vampires feed from them. It was why they accepted a status of being second class, little more than indentured servants, from what I could see. It was true some vampires treated their companions with love and affection, but a human would never be the dominant in any relationship. Not even an equal, if what I’d seen was anything to go by.

  If Deborah thought this little display would be more conducive to obtaining her lofty goal of the kiss, she should think again. Vampires respected strength and stubbornness. They had to. Too many of them succumbed to death during the transition. Only the strongest survived.

  “No, thank you,” I said politely.

  Deborah didn’t like that. She might not want to be my donor, but she also couldn’t fail to notice the insult being rejected would bring. Not that I meant it as a rejection.

  I turned my attention to Thomas. He stared back at me expectantly.

  “You know I don’t drink from humans. Bring bottled blood if you have it, and if not, I’ll wait until I get home,” I told him firmly.

  It was the only way to be with this vampire. If I gave him even a little bit of space, he’d push for more. He did it time and again.

  “You’re being stubborn,” he said. The slight smile on his face said he didn’t truly object.

  Before I could respond, he leaned closer, his eyes hypnotic in their intensity. They were liquid silver as they became all I could see, so focused on them the rest of the world faded around us.

  Power arced between us, warmth spilling through me.

  “You’re so thirsty,” Thomas said, his voice a thrumming purr. “You want to drink and her blood would taste so good.”

  He looked at the woman, my gaze turning with his until my vision spun down to Deborah’s slim neck. Her pulse pounded at the base, calling me, tempting me.

  My gums ached as my fangs descended, my gaze never wavering from that pulse. It was a siren call, a demand, one that overrode the small voice at the back of my mind telling me I didn’t want to do this—that following this urge to its conclusion would cost me more than I could understand.

  Just a small taste wouldn’t be so bad. I’d been so good for so long. Feeding from her wasn’t so different from feeding from Liam. It wouldn’t make me less human; It just made me what I was. Vampire. Top of the food chain. The only predator that mattered.

  The world popped and I was standing before Deborah, the fear pouring off her potent as it called to me, whispering to my most base instincts.

  I grabbed her shoulders, yanking her to me.

  “Easy,” Thomas crooned in my ear. “You don’t want to hurt her.”

  No, I didn’t. I needed the blood in her veins. Hurting her might cost me that.

  I bent lower, my fangs piercing the delicate flesh. The first taste of blood brought me back to myself, the warm copper coating my tongue restoring my sanity.

  A strong hand on the back of my head kept me from jerking back.

  “Not yet. You need more,” Thomas said.

  His grip was implacable, impossible to budge. My defenses teetered as blood filled my mouth.

  “Swallow, my dear,” Thomas urged.

  I couldn’t. Blood dribbled out the side of my mouth.

  “Aileen, swallow.” His voice turned dark with power, impossible to resist.

  The first mouthful overrode my willpower. After that, I drank without thought, pressing the woman against me as I fed from her throat, that which made me Aileen, washed away on a sea of decadent life. It was like biting into a lightning bolt, powerful and bold, but instead of being singed, it restored the pieces of me that I didn’t even know were missing.

  “That’s enough. Let go now,” Thomas said. A pressure on my neck forced me to unlatch.

  I made a wordless sound of protest. The urge to drink the source dry was almost undeniable. I struggled for a long second, trying to fight my way back to the nectar of life. He held me easily, with no more effort than he might use to subdue a week-old puppy.

  “Shh, enough of that,” Thomas murmured, his hands strong as he turned me away.

  I came back to myself with a start, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and the taste of blood in my mouth. The wound I’d made at her neck had already closed, the anticoagulant in my saliva and something about my bite working to make sure she didn’t bleed out. Within the next few minutes, the wound would be fully-healed and it would be as if this had never happened.

  Abruptly my walking meal bag became a person again. Someone with thoughts and dreams of their own. Someone I had just turned into my dinner and if I hadn’t been stopped, would have gladly murdered so I could gorge myself on her blood.

  Deborah wavered and staggered to a chair, lowering herself with shaky hands. Her skin was pale, and she appeared frail, as if a stiff wind might blow her away.

  I stared at her, stricken, my entire being frozen, the warmth of her blood still in my mouth. Despite having just fed, I wanted more. I wanted to do it again and again. I couldn’t wait until the next time.

  My line had been crossed. The last line I’d held onto with a fanatic’s zeal—gone. Erased so easily. As if it had never been.

  “You may leave,” Thomas told Deborah kindly. Despite the soft words, it wasn’t a request, the steely undercurrent in them making it clear there was only one correct action.

  Deborah understood and nodded, her gaze skating to my horrified, sick expression before she lifted herself out of her chair. She snuck one last glance at me as I stared at her feeling more lost and alone than I had felt since day one of this new life. Her path to the door was wobbly and unsure. I’d done that. I’d taken enough that walking was difficult.

  She needed a cookie. Orange juice. Something with sugar, I noted distantly. An urge to laugh struck me followed immediately by an urge to cry. I was treating this like she’d just given blood to the Red Cross, not like I’d buried my fangs in her throat and sucked her down like she was an ice cream sundae.

  No one spoke until we were alone in the room.

  “I feel sick,” I said, bending over as my stomach rebelled and I made a small retching sound. Thomas grabbed my chin and held my mouth closed, his fingers bands of steel around my jaw.

  “Oh
no, you’re not going to dishonor your donor by throwing up her life’s blood,” he said.

  I breathed through my nose, fast pants that did nothing to quell the nausea. A prickling sensation teased the bridge of my nose as tears threatened. I held them back through sheer force of will, unwilling to let this man know just how much this little experience had devastated me.

  “Calm a stór. Calm. Things are not so bad. You are still you. There is no need for this carrying-on,” Thomas crooned, his hard hold turning soothing. His thumb caressed the skin just below my jaw.

  I jerked out of his grip as soon as I was able, unable to help the half-sob that tried to well up. I would have crawled across broken glass if it would have meant escaping him.

  My actions seemed to amuse him rather than deliver insult, and he watched me go with a small twist of his lips, his expression calm and unaffected.

  He remained crouched for a long moment before standing, adjusting the lapels of his coat and tugging his cuffs down.

  “You can thank me later, deartháir, for doing what you could not.” Thomas’s gaze was unsympathetic as he looked to where I huddled in on myself, trying to contain all the broken pieces of me, the ones that had been ripped open again with one simple act— parts I’d stitched together with impossible wishes and broken dreams and held together with sheer willpower and a staunch need to deny the truth.

  It felt like I’d been stripped bare, sanded down until all the wounds that had only partially healed were visible again, the air stinging their half-formed scar tissue.

  “Why did you do this?” I asked, my voice barely sounding like mine. It was raw and bewildered.

  “You like to lie to yourself,” Thomas said. “Tell yourself pretty stories about how human you are, but you’re not; pretending otherwise will only hurt you in the long run. I made you face the truth. One day you will thank me for this.”

  “No, I won’t.” Pure conviction sounded in my voice. There was no way I’d be thanking him for this. Never. Not in a million years.

  I was beginning to regret stepping in the way of that spell. I should have let it have him.

  “There were better ways,” Liam said, his voice quiet in the silence.

  Thomas’s snort was elegant, as was everything else about the man. It made me want to rend and tear, leave him maimed and feeling like his world had just been yanked from him. “You know there wasn’t. Not when her blood had already gone toxic.”

  The words were delivered like a blow.

  Liam went stiller than I’d ever seen, his chest not moving with breath. He was like a painting, life size but just as remote. Slowly, his gaze swung to me a question in his eyes.

  I looked away, hugging myself tighter. I might not have realized how bad things had gotten but I couldn’t deny something was drastically wrong, even to myself.

  Realization and something like a soft regret filled his expression.

  It made me want to withdraw even further into myself, as if I’d disappointed him in some way.

  “She had already begun rejecting blood. Had I let it continue she might have entered devolution.” Thomas’s gaze was brooding as he looked down at me. “She needed human blood. Your blood would not have been enough.”

  I remained still, afraid that if I moved, if I shifted even a little bit, the things that made me Aileen Travers would shatter and what would emerge would no longer be me. That thought was scarier than any monster I’d ever faced.

  “You’re going to hate me for this,” Thomas told me. “Rail at me, despise me, tell yourself all the pretty lies, but in your heart, you know I did you a favor. Know this my a stór, I will always do what I feel is best for you. Your conscience is clear. I made you take this step. Just like I’ll make you take the next.”

  He sauntered out of the room without waiting for another response.

  I stayed where I was. This all felt like a dream, a horrible nightmare.

  Liam’s sigh was heavy as he reached for my shoulder. I flinched away from his touch.

  “Don’t touch me. Never touch me again,” I said, my tone steely, determined. It sounded like someone else talking, someone more put together than me, not this hot mess who was barely holding herself together.

  “Aileen.”

  Just that. Just my name.

  I moved to the door, my back bowed, my steps as tentative as a century-old grandma. “We have a pair of bodies to look over.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer, leaving the room where I’d lost the last remnants of my human self without a backward glance.

  Liam would follow or he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, I’d head home and forget. Or maybe I’d head for Dahlia’s for a little help in forgetting. It didn’t really matter to me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I stood in the corner, arms folded across my chest and shoulders a little more bowed than usual as Joseph referred to his notes.

  A tall man with skin the color of coffee and eyes a very light hazel, Joseph had a face that invited sin and a presence that always reminded me of a caged tiger. Beautiful but deadly, if you got close enough to touch.

  He didn’t remark on the tension my presence had caused or the clear awkwardness between Liam and me. We stood on opposite sides of the room. If I could have found a spot farther away, I would have. Right now, I didn’t want to be in the same space as him—or any of the vampires really. Right or wrong, they’d all been painted with the same brush. As dangerous for my continued health and wellbeing as the master of the city.

  The last thing I wanted to do was be standing in a room with them, but there was a job to do. Until it was done, I’d suck it up and work with them, but as soon as it was done, I planned to never cross a vampire’s path again. I didn’t care what it took or even if I had to move to the sunniest spot on earth to accomplish my goal. One way or another our association was at an end.

  The rest of Liam’s enforcers had gathered, at least the ones I knew. There might be more, but I had yet to meet them.

  The only one missing was Nathan. Away on some mission only he and Liam knew about, no doubt.

  A few of the enforcers glanced in my direction, picking up on the tension between Liam and me. They were subtle about it, until they weren’t, staring outright when neither one of us made any move to address the problem.

  Men. They were as bad about gossip as any group of ladies I knew.

  I stared at the bodies on the table, ignoring their side-looks.

  Even Joseph seemed to be aware something was going on, his gaze curious and considering.

  “Something I should know?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t concern you,” Liam replied, not looking up from the bodies. “Makoto, what do we know about these two?”

  Makoto busied himself on the tablet in his hands, quickly sifting through information as he bopped his head to a beat only he could hear, numerous earrings glinting along the upper rim of his ear.

  He had shaved his head on both sides, leaving the hair on top slightly longer. Today it was green, a bright spot of edginess in the otherwise formal room.

  Joseph’s study looked about as far as you could get from a morgue. The furnishings were all antiques with a mixture of textures and clean lines. Masculine and formal at the same time.

  “Alright, the woman was Joanna Saska, from clan Raelle. Her sire was Angelique. She was practically a baby. Only a few years out of her hundred years of service,” he recited, eyes focused on his tablet.

  “Shame, that,” Anton drawled.

  Daniel grunted and folded his arms across his chest, his pretty hazel eyes fixed on me. He wore a beard, something rare in most of the vampires I’d met. It made him seem even gruffer than he already was. I didn’t normally care for beards but on him it worked, adding to the impression that he was just off a battlefield, ready and willing to pillage the surrounding land. He was tall and fair-haired. A Viking through and through.

  For once there was no hostility radiating from him, just a calm consideration as if
he saw something the others had missed.

  That was hard for me to believe. Of Liam’s enforcers, Daniel knew me the least. He should have been the least likely to stare at me as if he guessed at exactly what I was going through.

  “The man’s current name was Frederick Mayer. Formerly of clan Davinish, now of clan Glaise.”

  “Aiden’s clan?” Liam lifted his head.

  Makoto frowned as he stared at the tablet. “Seems so.”

  “Two clans, neither likely to assassinate the master of the city,” Anton said.

  “Perhaps Thomas wasn’t their target,” I said.

  All eyes turned to me. I didn’t move, even as I found myself under the regard of several predators capable of turning me into mincemeat.

  “Why do you say that?” Liam asked.

  “We assumed Thomas was the target because he was the destination of the attack,” I said, working through a theory that had been tickling at the back of my mind. “But he wasn’t the only one there.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We know the Fae are responsible,” Anton said. “It only makes sense that they were after Thomas.”

  “What would have happened if one of the Fae had been hit in the crossfire?” I asked.

  I thought the fact that they used vampire puppets a very telling one.

  “They would have expected a weregild to honor their dead—we would have been required to pay some form of recompense. The master would have had no choice but to give into their demands,” Daniel rumbled.

  “What would be the purpose of that?” Anton asked. “They don’t view gold or wealth in the same way we do, and we have nothing of magical value to them.”

  Liam seemed contemplative. “Either way, we can’t discount any theory.”

  Anton grimaced.

  “What can you tell us about how they died?” Liam asked.

  Joseph stirred and bent closer to the bodies. I pushed my personal issues to the back burner and stepped forward. There was a job to be done, and as tempting as it was to find a deep dark hole and burrow down for the foreseeable future, that wasn’t who I was. Who I was trying to be.

  I was stronger than that. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.