Blood of Life: Cora's Choice 1-3 Bundle Page 20

  Dorian looked down at me. “It’s up to you, of course. Do you want to see this?”

  I started to say, Of course, but I stopped myself. I took nothing as a matter of course with him.

  “What is it?” I asked carefully.

  “If one of my people was subverted, the proving will reveal it.”

  “Dammit, Dorian, she’s a baby,” the female agnate said impatiently. “She doesn’t understand what’s going on. Send her back to her nursery. You can play with her later.”

  I bristled. She was right—I didn’t understand. But if I got sent upstairs, I never would.

  “I want to come with you,” I said quietly.

  The female agnate just shook her head, looking disgusted.

  “Half an hour,” she repeated. She took the foyer stairs down to the lower level, where I’d never been before.

  I looked up at Dorian. We were alone, for the moment. For the first time since he had come to my rescue. As alone, at least, as we ever were in his house.

  My arm was still resting lightly over his, a curiously old-fashioned gesture. Through the fabric of his sports jacket, I could feel the tension in his body shift in keen awareness of me. A ripple of anticipation went through me.

  My lips formed his name. “Dorian.”

  He gave a broken chuckle. “The world falling down around our ears, and what I want most is...you.” He lowered his face to mine. “To take you.”

  He was so close to me. My hand shifted, no longer hooked over his but gripping his forearm. Little tremors of arousal shivered down into me.

  “Take me,” I breathed, an echo, an invitation—and a dare.

  And then his lips met mine, and nothing else mattered. The world and all its horrors and complications fell away, and there was only him, his body, long and lean against mine, his mouth over mine, laying claim to it like he had laid claim to my body and my life.

  I knew now what he was even more clearly than before. A killer. Ruthless in pursuit of his goals. Willing to gamble my life to satisfy his thirst—and willing to end a thousand to keep me.

  The thought of it should have made me sick, and I knew that later it would. But when it really counted, when I was in his arms, I didn’t care about what he was or what he’d done. I couldn’t. I needed him too much.

  Heat unfurled inside me, wakened by the electric tingle that went from his lips down to the juncture of my thighs. I pressed myself against him, opening my mouth to him, wanting him more than anything as I stood in front of the very doors through which I’d tried to escape him only the day before.

  He pulled back.

  “Dammit, Cora,” he said roughly. “The blood—all that blood. In the vehicle, I had almost....” A shudder went through his body. It passed from his to mine, the sudden violence of his desire sweeping across me as some invisible control that he had clamped over it suddenly loosed, broken.

  Chapter Four

  I gave a small, ragged gasp, my skin suddenly alive and burning under his hands, wanting his touch, his mouth, his teeth, his bite—

  “You have to get out of those clothes, Cora.” The darkness was roiling out of him now in streams that seemed to dim the light. He grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me in three long steps over to one of the two bronze doors that stood directly off the foyer.

  Dazed, I could neither resist nor assist him. He flung the door open, slapping on the light to reveal a row of coats within. He pushed me in ahead of him, then, keeping me at arm’s length.

  Dorian grabbed my hoodie and the shirt under it and ripped them from collar to seam in one motion. He flung them away, deeper in the closet, and took hold of my bra where the cups met the band. With another quick jerk, the fabric gave, and he threw it after.

  I stood, swaying under the force of his regard, a welter of thoughts coming over me that I didn’t dare to examine too closely. I didn’t want to put a name to my sudden longing—because not only did I want him, but I wanted him to hurt me. He’d been so gentle before, just as he’d promised. I wanted to feel what it would be like when he wasn’t—I wanted to feel my finger in the candle flame again.

  And the thought scared me almost as much as he did.

  His eyes seemed to be holes into another universe, sucking at my soul. He traced a hooked finger along my jaw and down my neck.

  “It’s still on your skin,” he said softly. “In your hair, Cora.”

  “I know.” I breathed the words. My heart was loud in my ears, a terrified thrum, fast and jerky.

  Please, please, please....

  Then his mouth silenced mine, his body driving me back into the coats, hard against the wall. He rolled my pants down over my hips even as my own shaking hands scrabbled to loosen his belt. My head was heavy and light at once, my limbs tingling with demand.

  The hot ache was growing, a slickness between my legs that begged for him. I could smell my need in the confines of the closet, and I could smell him and the metallic tang of my blood.

  His hands were rough on my back, tangled in my matted hair, moving down across my breasts, across my belly to find my clitoris. His mouth descended in a line down my jaw and neck, hard against my body, his teeth against my skin, so close to making it part, the hot blood spilling out—

  My body was on fire. I shook as I neared my peak, but he didn’t give it to me. With a low sound, he turned me in his arms, pushing my face against the cold wall. His hand hooked around my hips drove me onward as his mouth found the bloodied skin of my back.

  He pulled my hips back, toward him, even as he pushed up and in, filling me with a sudden motion and surprising a noise from me as he came up against my deepest place. The shudders of his body as he tasted my blood shot through me with every hard stroke.

  And I shattered, the hot darkness roaring out from my center, connecting his mouth on me, his hands, his erection deep inside me, my hands clenching around fistfuls of fabric as I cried out. I felt him come seconds later, and then, almost as abruptly, he stepped away, leaving me gasping and leaning against the wall for support.

  I rolled against the wall to face him, shaking with the aftermath and with all the thoughts that still tumbled through my head. I could still feel the darkness seething around him. I knew what he had really wanted—to open my veins, to drink from me. To break me, so that I spilled out all at once.

  I knew what he wanted because the complimentary urge had burned in my body—the urge to give until nothing was left. He had held back. But I wouldn’t have. Even if I were strong enough to fight him, I wouldn’t have wanted to. I would have given him everything he’d asked for, and I’d have begged him to take more. No matter what the cost.

  I clung to the coats as if they could offer some support.

  “Not a good time,” he said abruptly. “Too close to bonding. Too much temptation. Too much to lose.”

  I didn’t understand what the time since bonding had to do with anything, but I nodded anyway, my body still trembling with reaction. If it had something to do with what I was feeling, I could only agree.

  “Wear this,” he ordered, holding out a long woolen coat without looking at me.

  Wordlessly, I toed off my tennis shoes so I could strip off my yoga pants and underwear, which were dark red and stiff where the blood of my wounds had run down from my back. I used the leg of the pants to clean myself up quickly, then wrapped the long coat around my body, buttoning it from neck to knee and leaving my blood-matted ponytail tucked inside.

  Dorian took a deep breath. I knew he could still smell the blood—I could still smell it, thick and corrupted in the air. But now that I was covered and my bloody clothes were far away, he relaxed fractionally and straightened his clothes.

  My heart was still beating hard as I put my shoes back on, my limbs weak with the aftereffects of adrenaline. Fear, I realized. That primal part of my body knew exactly what had happened, how close I’d come to an edge I couldn’t return from, and I shook with the reaction. I fumbled with my laces, getting them tied
again somehow.

  When I straightened, Dorian stood in the doorway, his face a mask. He made no attempt to touch me again.

  “I am sorry, Cora,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “You stopped.” Don’t be, because I wanted more.... My mind reeled away from the thought.

  “I will always stop,” he said.

  He didn’t mean that he would not drink my blood. That would happen again. I knew it, and at that moment, I not only accepted it, but I was glad. What he had wanted at that moment went far beyond that. He had wanted me to be opened, to be flayed, to give him everything I had until there was nothing left.

  And I would have. I’d heard stories of kinks and fetishes, of dangerous games and safe words.

  With a vampire, there was never a safe word. Even to the very end.

  “Will you ever stop scaring me?” I asked. But that’s not what I really meant. What I really meant was, would I ever stop scaring myself?

  A brief, humorless smile flicked over his lips. “I hope not. If I do, then we are both damned.”

  He stepped out of the coat closet, back into the foyer. “Come on. You’re safe now.”

  Safe. He’d said that word when he had rescued me on the road. Now he meant that I was safe from him.

  I took a deep breath and joined him. There was nothing else to do.

  “This way,” he said, and he led the way across the foyer to another bronze door, the twin of the one he’d just opened.

  “Another coat closet?” I asked.

  “Not this one,” he said, and he swung it open. “I want to show you something. Before we go down.”

  The lights were off, but the room glowed from the light of the bank of monitors against the wall. I stared, mesmerized, at the rotating display. The salon, from four different angles. The grounds. What must be a garage. Rooms I recognized—and many more that I did not. My attention was drawn by a huge room in which a crowd of people milled about. It must be the ballroom, I realized.

  “They’re here for the proving,” Dorian said quietly, keeping his distance from me.

  “Proving for what?”

  “A thrall. To see if any of them has been compromised by another agnate.”

  Thrall, like enthralled? The police who’d chased me had certainly had something done to their heads.

  “You mean like the police? And those bikers?” I asked.

  I was pretty sure the motorcyclists had been human, even with their helmets. They’d shown none of the impossible speed or strength of an agnate or a djinn.

  “Exactly like that,” he said. “A human can be persuaded of a great deal in an agnate’s presence. To maintain a deeper level of control, a control that does not dissipate with distance or in another agnate’s presence, requires a longer term hold, called a thrall. I hold provings monthly, as much for my staff’s protection as for mine. They like the assurance that they can’t be made another agnate’s agent for months at a time, and the provings mean that other agnates hardly ever even try.”

  “Hardly ever. That’s not the same as never,” I said. I looked away from the changing view of the people gathered in the ballroom to frown at Dorian.

  He shrugged. “One every few decades. I can’t keep them from being subverted, but a proving will break the thrall and enable them to tell me what happened to them and what secrets they betrayed. That makes the technique of limited use to one of my enemies.”

  “But you suspect that at least one of them is...subverted...now.”

  His expression was grim. “Not many others, human or agnate, knew of your conversion until you called me for help. If a human is put under another’s thrall, he will do the other agnate’s bidding until the control is broken—including telling him all about you.”

  I looked again at the people standing around the room. They looked so ordinary. Some appeared to be my age or even younger. Others looked older than my Gramma. Tall and short, fat and thin. Some were talking in animated groups. Many looked bored. A few looked angry or scared. They didn’t look special or different. They could have been any crowd, selected at random.

  But they weren’t. They were all employees of an ageless vampire. And he’d already told me that they all knew what he was. I was sure that, without compulsion from another agnate, they’d never betray that knowledge. Dorian would never allow that.

  The thought made a sour taste in my mouth even as I asked the question.

  “So they’re all in your thrall, then? Normally, I mean?”

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s a part of the proving, and every agnate must demand absolute loyalty from those who serve him.”

  His cold logic made the thought no more pleasant.

  “Then they aren’t ever doing anything of their free will. They’re just...puppets,” I said, remembering the word that the person on the other end of the radio had said.

  “With some agnates, that is the case,” he said evenly. “They wish their servants to be nothing more than bodies to do their will. I have found that allowing people to have full lives, both in the physical world and in their own minds, is mutually beneficial. I require only loyalty, nothing more. And those who serve me know this before they make the choice to do so.”

  “Why would anyone agree to that?” I protested. But I knew. A vampire could make cutting off one’s own arm seem attractive in his presence. How many people would even hesitate if he asked only for loyalty?

  “There are certain advantages.” His tone was dry. “Aside from my charm, which humans find not inconsiderable, I pay well, the job always has complete satisfaction, and there is a lesser version of the benefits that you enjoy—a slightly increased resistance to human ailments and a somewhat decreased rate of aging. There are many humans who would give much to live longer than ordinary people. These benefits are directly related to the closeness of working with us and the frequency of the renewal of the thrall.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, still feeling uncomfortable about the entire idea. “So how do you...put them under your thrall?”

  “A small amount of their blood is mixed with mine externally, then taken by mouth,” he said. “This establishes a new thrall, replacing any that already exists.”

  “It doesn’t kill them? I mean, when you bite someone—”

  “No, saliva doesn’t mix in their bloodstream, so it does no harm.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “And to break a thrall without making a new one?”

  “That would be another area of research,” he said dryly. “One without a compelling enough benefit to invest in. Even if a human is nominally under an agnate’s thrall, it doesn’t mean that the agnate must affect him. If the agnate chooses to give him no orders or thoughts, he would not live any differently than a person in no thrall at all. And a thrall fades over time of its own accord. If a vampire desires a true puppet, the thrall should be renewed every week. Even the slightest influence is entirely dissipated within a few years.”

  “What about a bond?” I asked the question that was more relevant to me. “Can it be broken or reformed with the blood of another vampire? Does it...dissipate?”

  His face went perfectly still. “No, Cora. Bonds don’t work like that. They never dissipate, and if another agnate tried to feed from you, you would both die.”

  I wondered if he would lie to me.

  But I knew the answer. Of course he would. If the stakes were high enough, he was capable of anything.

  Dorian stared fixedly at the monitor that showed the various views of the ballroom. The crowd was now shuffling into neat lines.

  “It’s time to go,” he said. “Let us hope that we are lucky.” He stepped away from the monitors, heading out the door and back into the foyer.

  “Lucky?” I echoed.

  He cast a look at me back over his shoulder.

  “And no one dies.”

  Chapter Five

  I trailed Dorian down the stairs toward the ballroom, my mind buzzing with questions. He wa
s keeping a careful distance from me now—reducing the temptation that my blood presented to him, I realized.

  And I was following him. Really smart, Cora.

  The staircase ended in a grand vestibule, a row of columns dividing it from the vast room beyond. The ballroom itself was a rococo confection in white and gold, the mirrored walls glittering with the light reflected from a dozen chandeliers. There must have been two hundred people gathered on the parquet floor, though the room was so large that it could have held five times as many.

  The crowd was no longer milling about but was standing in four precise lines fronting a narrow table at the near end of the room where the ballroom met the vestibule. I recognized the butler at the front of one of the lines. That’s why he hadn’t opened the door—he had to undergo the proving, too, like everyone else.

  Three vampires stood behind the table, the female agnate and two others I hadn’t seen before, their indolent expressions at odds with the tension their postures betrayed. On the waist-high table was an assortment of medical-looking equipment.

  I felt a little queasy.

  “Ready?” one of the agnates asked as we stepped into the room. This one was a male—and like the female agnate when she greeted us upstairs, I could sense the force of his will, but it just washed over me, leaving no effect behind.

  So the bond did keep them from affecting me. That was good to know. It was bad enough being addled by one vampire—being controlled by any that came along would have been far too much to handle.

  Dorian gave a curt nod and stepped up to join them, taking the empty place between two of them so that he stood in front of the last line. I hovered near the stairs, not certain I wanted to be there at all but unable to look away.

  “First four, step forward,” Dorian ordered the ranks of humans.

  The people at the front of the lines stepped up, each to a different vampire. The agnates moved with inhuman speed but not so quickly that I couldn’t catch their motions.

  First, they pricked the human’s finger with a lancet, like those used with glucose monitors. Taking the drop of blood on the end of a fat white pill, they squeezed another drop from a syringe on top of it, mixing the two. Then the human bent down, opened his mouth, and the agnate put the white pill, now stained red with blood, inside.