Chapter 10
Ten
What a fucking brat. I’m half tempted to just tell Callahan to drop her and leave her here for the night. But even as I think about trying to do that, my body won’t let me. Something about the situation keeps nagging me.
Maybe it’s just because she saved my life. She could have easily taken the antidote instead of giving it to me. Even if she doesn’t die from it, this isn’t much better. With how she looks she’s closer to going into a bloodlust and most would rather just die.
Callahan is glaring at me as I watch her. She’s panting now, her fangs gleaming in the low lighting and sweat drips down her brow. D’etre slithers into view as he slides down Callahan’s leg and begins to shift. In this state I doubt the vampire will notice. Her eyes are squeezed shut anyway.
It takes him a couple minutes before a naked demigod stands between us. He runs a hand through his golden-brown hair and blows out a breath.
Uncaring that he’s naked, he turns to me. “No way is she a spy. She’s got secrets, that’s for sure, but she wasn’t sent from the Mage Board.”
Castiel D’etre. The original spymaster himself. Over two hundred years old, a full shifter demigod – making him the only shifter who can shift into any animal, creature, or beast – and now professor at Syngenia University.
“Thorne,” Callahan growls. “She’s going to go into bloodlust soon.”
Fuck.
Looking at D’etre I nod to the vampire. “She’s not sticking her rotten fangs anywhere in me.”
He rolls his eyes before turning around to face Callahan. An artwork of intricate symbols and runes cover his entire back. All painted in gold, depicting him as a demigod. Proving his holy blood.
Callahan shifts untrusting eyes to D’etre. Of all of us he’s the only one who hasn’t met D’etre. For the last decade he’s been off wherever doing whatever. I had barely gotten to know him before he left, but Asier has told me stories about them.
“The only bloodsucker who’s ever bitten me was Varian,” he muses. Then walking towards them he says, “Don’t worry devil boy, I’m just lending my blood to the little vampire so she doesn’t go into bloodlust and kill us all.”
“So over-fucking-dramatic,” she mumbles. D’etre chuckles at it but Callahan continues glaring at him.
“At least put some fucking pants on. Vampires can’t turn anyone but they still have venom in their fangs.”
Glancing back at me, D’etre raises a brow but I only stare at them. Shaking his head the demigod disappears leaving only a few light wisps of smoke before reappearing with a pair of slacks on.
“Happy, devil boy?” Callahan almost snarls but the vampire whimpers again and he has no choice but to yield.
D’etre takes her quickly and then heads to the couch. Her hands are already latching onto his neck as her nose traces up his chest.
“Gods,” she mumbles.
D’etre chuckles as he sits in one of the reading chairs and positions her with her knees on either side of his hips. “Not quite, poison flower.” She hums as her tongue replaces her nose and D’etre’s hands tighten on her hips. “Fucking gods.”
She hums as she digs her nails into his shoulders and opens her mouth wider to reveal her fangs. But before she pricks D’etre’s skin she tenses. Her body vibrating with tension as she pulls back and lays her forehead in the crook of his neck.
She whimpers again and I swear to all that is holy if she does it again I’m snapping her neck.
“You – you don’t h-have to,” she stutters out. Her voice cracking as her body continues to shake.
D’etre widens his eyes as he looks over at me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Callahan with the same expression pointed at her. That should be impossible. She’s too newly turned and too close to a bloodlust to still stop when the points of her fangs were a hairs breath from a demigods blood.
Taking one of his hands, D’etre runs his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck and pulls her head back. Tilting her head, he positions her back as she was with her fangs nearly touching his neck.
“I consent, poison flower,” he murmurs. “I give my blood freely.”
She hesitates for a second longer before slowly sinking her pearly fangs into the crook where his neck meets his shoulder. For some reason I hold my breath as I watch her take her first pull of his blood. And then her body relaxes into him and she groans.
Callahan doesn’t hesitate as he storms out of the room and down a hall.
D’etre removes his hand from her head and places it back on her hip as he gets more comfortable in the chair.
I can see the exact moment her venom begins to affect him but he keeps her sat above his dick and keeps his hands firmly on her hips.
“You gonna babysit me all night?” he calls. His pupils have swallowed up the entirety of his eye making the color a true black. Despite being a holy demigod, his eyes are a shade lighter than true darkness.
“I’m going to make sure she doesn’t suck you dry,” I state, to which he chuckles.
“If you’re so jealous about it why didn’t you offer up your blood?”
The corner of my lip pulls up as I round the couch and sit adjacent to them. “I am not jealous, and no one ever drinks my blood.”
He clicks his tongue as she shifts in the chair. “I forgot. Blood demons with their morals and souls and blood sharing. You know it’s not the same. You wouldn’t be drinking her blood. . . “ His eyes spark as he trails off. If only he’d be discreet about it. “Ah, but you want to.”
“I do not.”
He chuckles again. “I don’t blame you. I’ve also tasted blue belladon before, and she’s dripping in it. I’m almost envious you have fangs and I don’t. I wonder if her blood would taste as sweet.”
Ripping her mouth away from him, two trails of blood drip down her chin. There’s a sneer on her face as she glares at him.
“Try to lick even a drop of my blood and I’ll rip your heart out before shoving it down your throat,” she threatens, and it sounds like she means it.
Pushing at his chest, she shoves off him and stumbles before righting herself on her own two feet. Using the back of her hand she wipes her mouth, smearing her lipstick, and backs away from both of us. She doesn’t look as bad as she did before, but she still looks unsteady.
Shaking her head, her body tightens and she straights her back to glare at us.
“I said a fucking blood bag,” she grits.
“And I gave you one.”
She growls. Actually fucking growls. “For someone who’s all high and mighty about blood sharing you sure don’t give a shit about anyone else’s morals on it.”
“To be fair,” D’etre interjects, “I – “
“Was not speaking to you,” she snaps. Silencing the demigod but I can feel his blood rushing south. “Now tell me, high and mighty demon, what else do you want from me?”
Her pink colored eyes stare hard at me. Her smeared lipstick makes me want to storm over to her, shove her down to her knees, and smear it all up and down on something else.
But that thought has to just be a remanent from when Callahan had said he’d let her drink from him and Darian’s lust was still floating in Callahan’s mind.
She rolls her eyes when I don’t answer five seconds after she asked her question.
“If you’re still so fucking conflicted about who and what I am then by all means drag me outside when the sun comes up.
I am too fucking tired for this shit. Just when things were going so fucking good fate wants to be a bitch. God, can I not just get a damn break?”
She rubs at her face and now her makeup is blotchy and smeared everywhere. Mascara running down her cheeks and smokey shadow rubbed all over her lids and under eyes. She looks a bit unhinged as she rants.
“I know,” she huffs, “I’m sure everyone gives the same fucking excuse but it’s not like I chose this!
If I could be in New York away from all of you I fucking would.
I never wanted to go to this damn school, I never wanted to meet any of you, I did not want any of this!
Okay!? So just pretend I don’t exist and I promise I’ll stay as far as I possibly can from you. ”
D’etre is glancing between us but with a stone expression and she is burning with a begging. It looks wrong on her. Begging. After everything that has happened. . . her maneuvering me, her confidence, her fire.
It’s like when she had been all head-on stares, rolling eyes, smirks in the infirmary and then hunched shoulders and submissive in a weak way in the cafeteria early this week. Like when I watched her brace in front of Darian when she had handled him fine enough a second before.
Once again, having no patience, she drops her shoulders and sighs. “Please.” And hearing that word makes me want to rip out her tongue so she’s unable to ever say it again. “Just pretend I don’t exist.”
Wrong.
That’s all my mind is telling me about this situation.
Why is she so willing to beg? I’m sure she could figure out a way to demand it of me.
My instincts are not shit and that scent of bone witch blood did still me.
I have no doubt she can pull through with whatever threats she makes, so if she were to do so again I would relent.
So why isn’t she?
Why is she begging?
It’s grating on my nerves.
“You didn’t drink enough blood to be satisfied.”
She gives me a blank stare. “No,” she huffs, exhausted. Maybe she’s too tired to fight. “I drank just enough so I won’t pass out while walking back to my dorm. I have blood bags there that will help a bit more and then I’ll probably sleep all weekend.”
“Why wouldn’t you drink from Callahan or Darian?”
“I won’t drink from devils.”
D’etre frowns as she peers at her. I cross a leg over my knee. “Darian isn’t a devil.”
“Well he looks like one,” she tries to snap but there’s no power behind her words.
“Why don’t you drink from devils?”
I don’t know why I’m prolonging the conversation. D’etre said she’s not a spy, she can’t be anything other than a vampire, and now I know why her scent is so sweet. I should be done with her. Let her scram back to her dorm and do as she says, pretend she doesn’t exist.
She sighs and pulls the edge of her sleeve up an inch.
The point of a scar from some sort of blade peaks through and right next to it is a scarred bite mark.
It makes my blood rush and I can feel D’etre’s blood boiling.
Obviously neither of us like the fact that she’s marked, though we don’t show it and I don’t know why I care. I have no claim over her.
She lifts her arm up as if I can’t already clearly see it.
“The devil who adopted me had a thing for my wrists. So much so that it left a clear scar, and because he was able to embed blue belladon into his fangs like they do to weapons, the poison is trapped in the scar tissue. He would try to make me drink his blood.”
She pulls her sleeve back down and gives me a deadened expression.
She doesn’t seem to notice I’m about to punch a hole in the wall.
Maybe it’s a good thing Callahan left because I’m sure he wouldn’t be able to hold it together as well as I am.
Not even D’etre is fully holding it together because his demigod aura is fuming.
“Am I freaking done now?”
Taking a slow, deep breath, I ask my last question for now. “Did that devil give you the other scars?”
She glances down at her forearms and grows even more somber. “They were my distraction when he would feed. He always kept a small knife embedded with blue belladon on his waist. I was too small and could never stab him so I did the next best thing.”
Her heart stays steady, her scent doesn’t spike, there’s no indication she’s lied to me. She hasn’t lied at all. Meaning a devil has marked her and the untouchable poison for all flows through her veins. A diluted enough concentrate that someone could drink from her, taste that poison, and not die.
I’m glad Callahan cleared everyone out when he did. No one needs to know about her blood or they’ll be after her for the taste. And fuck, she’s invoked my morals so unless she takes them back I’ll never taste her.
“You can leave now,” I announce and she doesn’t miss a beat shooting straight for the door.
She does pause before the hallway entrance to glance back. Pale pink eyes looking at D’etre with something similar to guilt or regret.
“Thank you,” she murmurs. “For letting me feed from you. Even though I would have been fine, I. . . owe you.”
D’etre nods stiffly at her and then she’s gone. Apparently she has a moral code of her own. No wonder she didn’t want to feed from anyone.
Without a word D’etre gets up and leaves too. I’m sure he’ll be heading over to Asier to inform him on everything if Callahan hasn’t already. At least we’re finished with all that. Asier can relax knowing the Mage Board isn’t yet retaliating on him and by extension us.
The night has just begun and it already feels too long. I think I’ll just skip the parading, I have too much shit to do tomorrow anyway.