CHAPTER 15
Cassia
Cassia hadn’t gone very far. She had turned the corner, stopped, looked back, and hoped that Iro would come to her senses. When she hadn’t, Cassia turned back and watched Iro as she headed in the opposite direction.
“Oh, my love. I’ve wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. You will always be mine.”
Cassia wasn’t about to set foot on consecrated ground, and she’d come dangerously close to it as she walked past the church.
These times were so tricky, she thought to herself.
It was well past Henry VII and Mary I, or Bloody Mary, as she had been called when she’d tried to rid England of Protestants after her father’s conversion.
Elizabeth had returned them to Protestantism, but there had still been practicing Catholics.
James I had kept them Protestant, and on and on it had gone.
Cassia was exhausted with all of it. With every woman being named Elizabeth, Mary, or Jane, though, Iro had caught her attention when she’d heard the name shouted by a pregnant woman outside of the church.
She’d watched them, and she’d known. Of course, the child wasn’t Iro’s, but there was love there beyond that of friendship.
Cassia, bored with everything as usual, had followed the two of them as they had walked together for a brief time.
Then, she had followed Iro to her home, and days later, Cassia knew all she had needed to know.
Iro’s father hated her. He treated this beautiful woman like a servant at best and a slave on his worst days, and he was unmarried and seemed to blame that on Iro as well.
Cassia had listened to him yell at his daughter and watched Iro as she had hurried into town, trying to cover up where she’d been going.
The house she had entered was Mary’s, and Cassia had watched them make love to each other.
She’d remained unseen and knew now that she wanted Iro for herself.
She wanted to taste her blood and her skin.
She wanted Iro’s hands on her body, and she wanted to make Iro come.
It had been too long since she’d been able to find a woman who was willing to risk eternal damnation to be with her, and Cassia was more than ready to show Iro her world.
One night, she watched Iro walk into a pub, a new alteration to the human invention, in a way, although Cassia supposed the concept had been around for a long time.
“Hello,” she greeted as she sat down across from Iro.
“Hello,” Iro replied.
“I’m Cassia. And you are?”
She licked her lips, wishing she could taste her.
“Iro.”
“Iro? That’s an interesting name.”
“Yes,” Iro said simply, not trying to elaborate.
“What are you doing here tonight?” Cassia asked her and looked around the room, smelling sweat and blood of men with cuts and abrasions on their hands that worked hard.
“I needed to get out of my house for a while. A friend of mine is having a baby right now, and, well, I’m nervous for her.”
“You’re not there with her?” she asked, already knowing why.
“No. Her… husband is, I assume.”
Cassia looked at her with a smirk and said, “I see. And do you wish she didn’t have a husband?”
“Pardon?” Iro said.
Cassia slowly leaned forward, not wanting to spook her, and said, “It’s all right. I can tell, but no one else can. Can you not tell the same about me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Iro replied and turned away from her.
“You’re very beautiful,” Cassia told her, testing the waters. “You would be even prettier with shorter hair, though.”
“Thank you. I should go,” Iro said and stood.
“I don’t have a husband.”
“Pardon?” Iro repeated.
“Your friend has a husband. I don’t.”
“I’m sorry for you, then.”
“You shouldn’t be. I have managed for a long time without one, and I don’t plan on getting one in this lifetime, either. I assume it’s the same for you.”
“I should be going.”
“Iro, she is married to a man and is having his child,” she reasoned. “Not yours, dear.”
“I’m well aware.”
“You should be with someone you won’t have to share,” Cassia suggested. “Unless you want to.”
Iro seemed nervous and probably worried that Cassia was trying to trap her, so she bowed her head and left the pub.
Cassia followed her at a safe distance and watched as Iro arrived home.
Then, she went to check on Mary, who was in labor and would probably be giving birth soon.
When Cassia arrived at the house, she encountered a man at the door.
“Who are you?” he asked, looking frantic.
“My name is Jane. I understand your wife is in labor?”
“Yes, she is. What are you doing here?”
“A friend of yours called for me. I used to be a midwife for the royal family. I’m here to help with the baby.”
“A friend?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t have time for this.”
Cassia pushed the man inside the house and, not wanting to kill him, chose to hit him over the head with a giant cross instead. Once he was out of her way, she moved toward where she heard the screaming and found Mary on the bed, with a midwife between her legs.
“Well, I am hungry,” she said.
The midwife turned around to her, and Cassia’s fangs were the last thing she had seen. Cassia snapped her neck after taking a long drink, but she had to stop because Mary had been screaming the whole time, and she’d been the reason Cassia was there in the first place.
“Sorry, love; Iro’s meant for me,” she said after she’d made it look like Mary had died in childbirth.
Then, she carried the midwife out of the house, around the corner, and dropped her in an alleyway.
The next morning, she hid and waited for Iro to arrive. As she watched the devastation on Iro’s face, she knew it would be an uphill battle, but she thought it would be worth it, and they would have lifetimes together. Cassia smiled and walked over to her.
“I can take away the pain, if you want,” she offered.
“You again?” Iro asked.
Soon, Cassia convinced Iro to leave with her or risk being seen and caught. She took Iro to the house she’d acquired prior to that, and they drank together. Iro poured out her heart and soul to Cassia, she cried, and Cassia held her before she revealed her true self to Iro.
“Do you want it?” she asked.
“Yes,” Iro replied.
Cassia bit into her flesh and wanted to drain all of her blood entirely.
The taste of her… It was exquisite. She resisted, though, until she could combine her own blood with Iro’s and make the near-unconscious woman drink it.
Then, she returned to Iro’s neck, and she sipped happily until Iro’s heart ceased to pump.
Cassia hadn’t ever told her wife that she’d killed Mary.
And yes, Iro was her wife. They hadn’t been married in the eyes of God, of course, and technically, not even under the law, but there had been a reason for that.
The more paperwork they created about themselves, the harder they had to work to hide it when they eventually needed to move on.
Iro was doing too much with her company already, and soon, she would have to give that up and create a new one under a new name.
“Zara, love, what are you doing right now?” she asked when Zara answered her call.
“I’m still at your house, like you asked.”
“Want to go out for a late dinner?” she asked.
“I don’t want to kill anyone, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t want you to kill anyone, sweet Zara.
I want to watch you feast. Then, I want to fuck you while that human recovers.
I’m going to teach you how to take just the right amount so that when they wake up, they’re groggy, thinking they just had too much to drink at the local bar and only faintly remembering someone biting them. ”
“That’s bad, isn’t it?” Zara asked.
“They’ll tell no one out of embarrassment. Now, come out and join me. I thought I wanted to be alone, but I have changed my mind. Can you tear yourself away from Miranda and the rest for a few hours?”
“I’m not with them. They’re all busy. I’m in your room.”
“Ah,” Cassia said. “Then, perhaps, I can bring dinner to you.” She smirked as she saw a woman, who looked to be in her thirties, walking toward her on the opposite sidewalk. “Give me thirty minutes. Go nowhere.”
And thirty minutes later, Cassia walked into her house with the woman she’d talked into coming over after she had tripped her and caused her to hurt her knee.
“The first aid kit is upstairs. Can you make it? If not, I’ll bring it down.”
“I’m really okay. I appreciate you wanting to take care of me, but I can take the train home and bandage my knee.”
“Nonsense. I caused this. Let me at least bandage it up for you.”
Cassia nodded for the woman to follow her, and she did. When Cassia opened the door to her room, she found Zara lying on her bed, wearing the robe that Cassia had loaned her.
“Here you go, my dear,” she said to Zara. “Stop when I tell you, and she’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry?” the woman spoke, looking confused and ready to leave.
But before she could move, Zara was on her, and Cassia watched as Zara sank her teeth into the woman’s neck.
“You’ll be fine,” Cassia said when the woman screamed. “She won’t kill you. She’s just hungry. We all are.”
She bared her fangs and bit down on the other side of the woman’s neck, craving a little snack herself. A minute later, she pulled away and looked over at Zara, who was still enjoying herself.
“There. You can stop. She’ll live, but will be groggy,” she said.
To her surprise, the new vampire did stop on her own and wiped her mouth. Cassia moved to her then, letting the unconscious woman fall to the floor.
“Let me sip you,” she said and brought Zara’s wrist to her lips, earning a groan when she bit into it.
When she let it go, Zara lowered the robe and turned to get onto the bed for whatever Cassia had planned for them next. Cassia wiped her mouth, mixed the woman’s blood with Zara’s, and bent over to drip the mix into the woman’s mouth before she snapped her neck and returned her attention to Zara.
She wanted a backup plan in case Zara decided to put any of her own needs over Cassia’s much more important ones.
The woman would be of Zara’s blood now, and Cassia would tell her tomorrow morning that she must have taken too much and drained the human, even though she had told her to stop.
Zara wouldn’t be able to remember the exact timing of it all, but she would undoubtedly feel an obligation to care for the vampire she had made.
Cassia would help her with that and offer the woman a place to live for the time being. Maybe Zara would move in as well.
“Stay here tonight,” she said. “I’ll have someone take her away, and we can stay up all night.
” She ran a hand down Zara’s body and between her legs, where she stilled, cupping her.
“By now, you’re discovering that while we can sleep, and we do, it’s not as required as it is with humans.
You can go to work tomorrow after staying up all night making someone come without issue. ”
“It doesn’t ever go away?” Zara asked.
“What?”
“This insatiable need to feed and…”
“Fuck?” she guessed.
“Yes,” Zara said.
“It lessens a little over time, but you shouldn’t want it to. Why would you ever want anything more than this?”
“Cassia, you know I want more,” Zara shared.
“I do. And you shall have it, darling. I’ll make sure you and your Arwen live happily…” Cassia pushed inside her and stilled. “Ever after.”
“God. Please fuck me and don’t stop.”
“You’ll need me to stop once you get Arwen, though, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you only really want her to touch you like this?”
“Yes,” Zara repeated.
Cassia transformed into the woman Zara clearly craved, and when Zara opened her eyes, they widened immediately.
“No, I didn’t want this.”
“Be honest with yourself,” she said in Arwen’s voice. “You absolutely want this.”
Zara’s hand moved to the back of Cassia’s head, and she pulled her down for a heated kiss.
Cassia gave Zara exactly what she had always wanted, and Zara had been just as interested in making her come.
She had let Zara take her slowly, which wasn’t what she preferred on a night like this, but Zara wanted to make love to Arwen, so she’d give her this night.
Tomorrow, Zara would find out that she had made her very first vampire, and she would need to return to her spying on Iro and Arwen.
So, yes, Cassia would give her this one night.