Chapter 31 #2
“What would you like me to call you?” Sylvia asked quietly, maintaining eye contact.
Aster’s eyes traveled down to Sylvia’s neck. At the scarred skin at her nape. Then back at her eyes, glowing faintly red, like two orchard apples. Aster’s entire body buzzed with want.
“I can think of a lot of things,” Aster said softly, massaging the back of Sylvia’s neck in small circles. “I don’t think any of them would be appropriate for our current audience.”
Sylvia’s nails had begun to dig holes in her dress. “Speak quietly, then.”
Aster rolled her eyes. She’d never met someone less competent at fighting their inner demons.
But if Sylvia was going to ask, she was going to answer. She leaned close to Sylvia’s ear and whispered, “I wouldn’t mind being your plaything.”
Sylvia inhaled sharply, egging Aster on, so she lowered her nose to Sylvia’s neck, and smiled against the skin there — always warm, even when the bus’s air conditioning was blowing like a jet engine from above. She grazed her fangs against it ever slightly.
The sensation broke Sylvia’s mask right down the middle.
“Jesus Christ, Aster,” she gasped quietly. “There are children on this bus.”
“The children you were about to hotbox with lung cancer?” Aster laughed, and before Sylvia could say something else, something undoubtedly evil and lovely, she bit down.
She didn’t know what came over her. She blamed Homer. She blamed him for making her think of death and dying and all the things she’d like to do before she was shepherded off to Elysium—how she’d like to propose to Sylvia and fuck Sylvia and drink Sylvia dry.
Yes, it felt very much like Homer’s fault when Sylvia’s blood trickled against her lips, and she nearly moaned into the bus full of other people.
It was Homer’s fault when she drew away, giving Sylvia a mere second to say no — and when she didn’t, when she just looked at Aster with as much desire as the Earth could hold — it was completely Homer’s fault that Aster pressed their lips together.
The kiss was desperate and needy and short, and Sylvia whimpered into it, not moving in her seat. It was a good thing when the bus abruptly halted to a stop, rocking them apart, because Aster had been five seconds away from pressing Sylvia against the window.
“We’ve now arrived,” a grainy, accented voice announced over the intercom. “Please exit.”
Families began to crowd the middle of the bus, chatting loudly and excitedly about the beach and the fields and the mountains and what to eat for dinner.
Panting quietly, Sylvia covered her eyes instinctually, and gathered her breath.
After a moment, she slowly slid her hands down, so Aster could see her now-quiet irises, and gave Aster a chastising look.
“Thralls don’t do that, by the way,” she muttered.
Aster shrugged, feeling emboldened in a way she never had before.
“This one does.”
****
They arrived in Vik at five, and hailed a taxi to take them the rest of the way to their destination. The old Italian car crawled up the mountainside, until they were far above the humble little white-painted homes that were dotted across the verdant city.
As it turned out, the company’s office was not an office but in fact a proper villa — a mansion that reigned high on a ledge that towered over the black sands of the Reynisfjara beach.
As they pulled into the driveway, the taxi driver moved the rear-view mirror so he could take a look at them.
He was an old Icelandic man with a peppery white beard, the kind of man who’d never gotten further than a few miles out of his hometown.
But when he talked, he had remarkably good English. Like he regularly conversed in it.
“How long are you planning to visit Iceland for?” he asked.
“Just the night,” Sylvia said, then waved toward the building. “For the party.”
“Are you guests of the company?”
Sylvia reached for the handle, but before she twisted it, she said, matter-of fact,
“No.” She paused for a moment, then added, “We’re just vampires.”
The man blinked several times into the mirror. Aster furrowed her brows in surprise, looking between them. She was about to open her mouth when he suddenly laughed heartily.
“Ah,” he said. “Then you must know my Lady.”
Aster’s eyes widened. He’s a thrall?
“I know several ladies. What’s her name?”
“She goes by many names,” he said, then waved them off. “I’m sure you’ll meet her inside. Now, chop chop. Out of my car. I need to pick up the other guests. You can find your way in through the back. Mind the koi pond. The fish tend to bite.”
***
“Jesus,” Aster muttered. “I thought he was joking.”
Aster grimaced as she clamped her hand around the fanged fish that was currently attached to her ankle.
They had traipsed through the overgrown yard on the side of the estate, whose plants and weeds had grown miraculously tall in comparison to the rest of the well-kempt villa — almost as if whoever owned the place didn’t want there to be clear sight lines into the back of the building — and wandered around until they saw a few well-dressed people milling about near a koi pond.
A koi pond full of cannibalistic fish, Aster concluded, when she finally pried the thing off her leg and saw bite marks on her ankle. She threw it back into the pond and kept a wide berth as Sylvia laughed, stringing their arms together and heading for the doors.
“The security here is curiously lax for a gathering of the world’s most prominent bloodsuckers,” Aster mumbled as they approached.
There had to be over a hundred people in the yard alone, some dressed in tuxedos, others in more traditional attire from various countries — Austrian dirndl, Japanese kimonos.
Time and place didn’t seem to exist here, it was as if people had stepped through portals from every corner of the Earth and from every period in time, all collected to have one large drunken dinner party.
“It’s not lax,” Sylvia whispered back, not looking at Aster as she said it. She kept her eyes straight forward. “We’re being watched. But don’t go craning your head around—”
Naturally, Aster was already craning her head around.
She looked to the rooftops, trying to spy any snipers or eagle-eyed scouts, but there was just floor after floor of open-air balconies, men and women clinking glasses full of sloshing red liquid.
“Aster,” Sylvia teased, but her voice didn’t sound commanding. It sounded terribly adoring, and it drew Aster’s attention to her all the same. “Some discretion, please?”
“Sorry,” Aster said, in a way that wasn’t sorry at all. “I don’t see a single eye on us.”
“Spies aren’t very effective if you can spot them.”
Sylvia grabbed a glass of wine, or more likely, blood, from a table they passed, profusely thanked the thrall serving it, and then held the glass casually up to the light.
“Don’t freak out,” Sylvia whispered. “And don’t look back.”
Aster frowned. “Don’t freak out about—”
Then she saw it.
In the reflection of the glass, several meters away, back by the koi pond.
There was a man there. A very tall man with yellow eyes, hollowed out cheeks, and a gaping hole where there was supposed to be a mouth.
“Holy shit,” Aster whispered harshly. “What the hell is that thing?”
“Don’t be rude. That thing is a person. Well, formerly.”
“Right. And we’re just really old anemics.”
Sylvia chuckled. She lowered the wine glass, putting that thing out of sight, and they pushed into a wide living room.
It smelled like tobacco and red wine, clouds of thick smoke fuming out past wall-to-ceiling windows.
It was even more crowded inside than it was out, forcing Aster and Sylvia even closer together.
Aster could still smell the blood on her neck.
“Leonard Bianchi, one of the Council members, can control ghosts,” Sylvia answered her quietly, almost inaudible in the chatter of the room, “It’s a nasty specialty. But they do make for great watchdogs. I’m sure about ten phantoms have already reported on our presence.”
“Truly?” Aster asked, genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know ghosts were actually… real. I thought they were a thing humans made up to scare themselves into being good to each other.”
“You underestimate the power of fear. It finds a way of making itself real,” Sylvia said, in a tone that felt briefly too serious, when her attention suddenly shifted elsewhere, to something in front of them, by the bar.
She put on a fake smile and began to wave.
“They’re coming this way now. Game faces.
Don’t talk unless spoken to. Follow my lead. ”
“What are you talking abo—”
“Sylvia Maroven. As I live and breathe. How many years has it been? Six hundred?”
Aster looked up to find five men and women standing before them. They all looked vaguely middle aged in that way that most truly ancient vampires do. The aging process seemed to round out at forty-five, and after that, it was all up to the quality of the blood.
This pack of people had clearly been drinking well for centuries.
That wasn’t just a wild guess, either—she recognized their faces immediately. These were the people on the Board website.
This was the Council, minus one or two faces.
You could feel it in their presence. The power wafting off of them was nearly oppressive. It made Aster’s throat tighten, and her knees feel weak in their sockets. None of this seemed to affect Sylvia, though. Growing up around old money probably enured her to this sort of thing.
“Nice to see you again, Leonard,” Sylvia answered, with an overly sweet smile that made Aster almost cackle at its extreme insincerity.
Shaking his hand delicately, she turned her eyes to the other four, who she seemed to similarly recognize.
“And Isabella, and Eleanor, and Hans, and… Anne Hathaway? No, Sandra Bullock?”
The last one smiled, and extended a hand, “Lauren Graham. At least, that’s what I’m going by this century.”