Chapter 20 #3
“The Trial of the Nemesis begins as early as your departure from this room,” Mathias intoned.
“You will have a little over one week to capture a vampire alive from the House of Whispers to present to the council and the Flask of Dominion with the rising of the full moon. Try to impress the Flask with a powerful nemesis, not just any servant you can capture. Good luck to you all, and enjoy your evening.”
He stepped down from the stage, and walked past my full table to instead take a seat next to the dignified figure of Tierney Sutcliffe.
I admired his confident stride on his way by, and he knew it, as a smirk twisted his generous mouth as his attention flicked to me one last time. It set my teeth on edge.
Several vampire actors took to the stage in his absence, and I sat back, keeping my eyes wide open so I didn’t doze off. I couldn’t care less about this play, selected only because Mathias liked it, but I watched it for a lack of anything else to do.
That was, until dinner arrived during the intermission. Without fanfare, twelve young human blood donors filed in. My back went rigid at the familiar snap of Bruvor’s voice telling them to hurry up. The head priest of Eona stood scowling at the back of the room as his charges circulated.
One sat herself in Emmeline’s lap, tilting her head to offer her pulse to the vampiress. “A main course of virgin’s blood for your dinner, my lady,” she said in a demure murmur.
Emmeline sank her fangs in the human’s neck without another word, drawing a gasp from the young woman. Emmeline drank for a few long moments and made a sound of relish against her skin.
“I’ll take from your wrist, dear,” Felicity said to her donor, and the human nodded, offering up his palms.
The sweet scent of blood drifted across the table, threading a dulcet note through my nostrils.
My mouth watered again, fangs aching. Fuck.
Another blood donor approached me, slipping into my lap.
She flicked her braided hair to the side, revealing the pale stretch of her neck peppered with many scars from healed bite wounds.
None of the other vampires were refusing virgin’s blood, as it was a delicacy. Nemea had once called it “sipping from the nectar of youth.” Even the memory of her voice wasn’t enough to turn my stomach, nor the voice of doubt whispering in the back of my mind with Carlyle’s words.
I couldn’t deny that I wanted a taste, even if it would damn me utterly. I searched for the strength to resist the frantic pulse fluttering under the donor’s skin, but found an empty pit of hunger within me. My stomach rumbled and churned as if I hadn’t eaten in days.
“Sweet blood for dinner, my lady,” the blood donor coaxed.
There was no war of temptation, no hesitation within me. Just a single thought, not centered around damnation, but pure scientific curiosity. What must a virgin’s blood taste like, to make vampires wax so poetically about it?
I leaned toward the servant, studying her pulse, her breath, the faint tremor in her hands. “Do you prefer the neck or the wrist?” I asked.
She blinked, a faint crease formed between her brows, her lips parting in a small, surprised breath before she gathered herself. After a beat, she swallowed and whispered, “The…the neck, my lady.”
The human made a soft yelp as my fangs sank into her neck, and then her essence was flooding my mouth and I had no more thoughts.
It tasted like the sweetest trickle of water on a parched throat.
My head was packed with cottony clouds at the sheer exhilaration of tasting her.
There was no more pain in my body, not with this fresh infusion of life.
I tingled all over as I sucked more blood from this young woman’s neck.
Only a well-timed commotion from another table drew me back.
In an instant, I remembered who I was and released my bite.
Halfway into pushing this human off my lap in horror, she seemed to go limp, so I instead held her upright against me.
Her head lolled against my shoulder, but she breathed slow and steady through the dizziness that followed a blood donation.
Razira’s ruby eyes blazed with fury. I followed the line of her attention toward what had the other vampires tittering.
Willowy Genevieve Mercier was standing over the prone form of a different blood donor.
Bloodlust had taken her, from the snarl baring her crimson-stained teeth to the pits of darkness where her eyes should’ve been.
Bruvor approached the body with a slow, bored gait, barely glancing down at the jagged ruin of her throat. He didn't bother to kneel or check for a lingering pulse. Instead, he gave her foot a sharp, impatient nudge with his own, as if checking the weight of a fallen log.
“She's dead,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of any scrap of empathy. He looked to another servant. “Take the body away.”
Genevieve may have overindulged, but most of the blood made a mess in the carpeting as it pooled under the body. The sight turned my stomach, making my share of blood taste like ashes where it lingered on my tongue.
By Aetherius’s light…
But there was no hint of his grace here. Only evil. “Monster.”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken the thought aloud until Razira nodded and stood.
“You greedy monster,” she spat across the room. “You killed her!”
Genevieve laughed. Her tongue darted out to lap at the drips of blood leaking down her chin. “Spoken like a true Turned. You’ll never be a queen if you think human lives are worth anything.”
The rest of the room hushed, the other candidates watching Genevieve and Razira far more avidly than they had the evening’s play. Razira’s intensity faltered, her gaze darting. “Watch your back,” she added in a venom-laced purr.
“You watch yours, soft-hearted fool,” Genevieve snarled.
They both sat down. No one else spoke in defense of the dead human, not even me. I couldn’t risk any more attention right now, even if guilt gnawed at my conscience.
As servants materialized to remove the body and sop up the blood, Emmeline cleared her throat primly.
She pitched her whisper across the table.
“Was it really necessary to get so worked up over chattel? Blood servants die all the time.” My esteem for her dropped through the ground as Razira eyed her coolly and didn’t spare a response.
Still sitting in my lap, my blood donor giggled almost drunkenly. By a quirk of fate or the toss of a coin, she’d come to our table, not Genevieve’s. She’d live another night, even enjoy a good meal after this as a coveted virgin blood source.
But Genevieve’s nights were numbered. A vampiress with no control of her bloodlust had no place in this competition. I mentally placed her name on the list.