Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (The Order Saga Book 1) (33 page)

I lost all sense of the bed beneath me and the room around us. Nothing existed except me, my thoughts, the indefinite comfort and warmth of a woman in my arms and a distant sensation of expertly-timed nails scratching at the front of my pants to bring me to orgasm again.

It seemed to go on forever except for a gradual lessening, a sensation that I was fading into nothingness, disappearing. I remember thinking that I should be worried about this but I wasn’t. I didn’t seem to be capable of worrying about it anymore. I felt something move off the top of my body and started thinking about how comfortable I was, how nice it was lying here with my eyes closed and drifting away to sleep. I tried to worry about falling asleep but couldn’t dig out the proper feeling. Finally, after an eternity, I realized that maybe I shouldn’t try to worry or panic but should just decide to get up. After another eternity, I did.

My eyes snapped open as I heard Jade Tiger cry out.

I sat up to prevent myself from falling asleep. It would be inconvenient to fall asleep here. Beside me, Jade Tiger lay face-down on the bed. I reached out and touched her on the shoulder—she knocked my hand away and shouted, “What are you doing? Go away! Get out, damn you!”

Her expression was furious but also miserable. Tears poured from her eyes and she flung herself onto her back, pounding and clawing at her chest. “Vengeful gods, how can you live with this? I feel … so empty.”

I’d intended this taste of my happiness to be a gift to her but it seemed to be having the opposite effect. I should have known. When had seeing other people in love made me feel better when I was single?

Jade Tiger cried out for Flea. I got to my feet and glanced around at the
Guaiwu
but Flea rushed over clutching an ornate, ivory opium pipe. Another young handmaiden followed and set to massaging Jade Tiger’s back and shoulders.

“I fulfilled my part of our agreement,” I said.

Flea glanced up at me and I thought I saw a hint of pleasure in her eyes. “Mistress tell you go,” she said. She’s cute, if a little flat-featured and plain next to Jade Tiger. She looks all of sixteen and that awful bowl-cut emphasizes the boyishness of her body.

I ignored her.

After taking another long, slow draw of opium, Jade Tiger looked at me. “Do not question my word. I will rid myself of this obligation. Go now, I have much to prepare for.” Wiping the last tears from her eyes, she turned her attention back to her pipe.

I nodded for the sake of form and left via the servants stairs, the spicy-sweet fragrance of the opium tickling my nostrils most of the way. When I reached the third floor, Flea called out in Chinese. Three more handmaidens and a guy clad only in pajama-bottoms and resembling a Chinese version of Fabio, emerged through the curtains that are their doors. I stepped back to let them pass as they scurried downstairs.

Most of this wing’s third floor is separated from the unused area above Geoffrey and Iago’s suites by a solid wood door. This door was unlocked, since I’d been let in through it. As I got closer, I heard approaching footsteps on the other side. I ducked through a set of curtains as the knob turned.

Luck was with me for once and the tiny sleeping quarters were unoccupied. I knelt down and peeked between the curtains to watch as Valmont’s male Dhampir passed by … but as I looked closer, I realized that it wasn’t Valmont’s Dhampir at all. It was Valmont.

It surprised me how different he looked in the black leather and sunglasses but I appreciated his strategy in always dressing in those ridiculous peacock outfits. You remembered the clothes, not his face.

But what the hell was he doing awake, much less strolling around during the day?

He made his way down the stairs to Jade Tiger’s suite as though he had every right in the world to be there. Slipping out from behind the curtains, I followed. My house guard shoes were quiet but I did my best to distribute my weight as I walked. Every creak of the wood sounded like a siren to me, the taps of my heels like gunshots but each time I stopped and listened, I heard Valmont and Jade Tiger speaking normally.

By the time I got to the bottom, my sense of apprehension returned and I started sweating. I felt zombified due to my complete lack of strong feelings. I’d tried thinking about Caroline and discovered that I could no longer summon a single iota of sentiment for her.

It bothered me in a shallow, distant sort of way.

This was the last time I’d allow myself to be fed on by a Shen.

Valmont left the narrow door open when he entered, so I slipped into the sitting room in silence. My luck held as I snuck behind a three-panel screen that blocked the view of the servant entrance from the bed. Valmont, Flea, the Chinese Fabio and all the
Guaiwu
were on the bedroom side of the suite. Valmont stood by the bed in tight leather pants and a poet shirt waiting for Jade Tiger to appear.

The handmaidens came first, marching quickly out of the bathroom with their heads bowed. I scooted around to the bedroom side of the corner as the procession snaked its way around the screen and up the stairs. I moved right back because a
Guaiwu
stood less than two feet from me. Good thing its attention was focused on Valmont, as were the others. Then Jade Tiger stepped out from the bathroom, hair and make-up retouched and I was doubly glad I’d moved back. She would have had a straight view of me.

Valmont and Chinese Fabio both dropped to their knees and bowed while Jade Tiger dismissed Flea, who thank the Goddess, had her quarters across the suite’s entrance foyer, so I didn’t have to move again. After taking a moment to bask in their worship, Jade Tiger stepped up into the bedroom.

Valmont rose without being invited. “Why do you always insist on dressing up when you know you’ll not remain that way for long?”

“Why must you always insist on ruining my beautiful dresses?” she countered.

The Vampyr slid into her personal space, took her extended hand and kissed it in a way that was somehow suave, suggestive and threatening all at once. “Because they are beautiful … and I can only abide so much of that in the world.”

I thought I saw a ripple in the air around their joined hands but didn’t know what I was seeing at the time. Jade Tiger’s body perked up, however and color rushed to her cheeks. “No more play,” she whispered, raw with hunger. “I need to be ravished! I need you to burn me until I cry for oblivion!”

She dug her nails into his shoulders and attacked him with her mouth, kissing and biting at his face and neck. Smiling, Valmont shoved her back a step and slapped her across the face hard enough to make her cry out. “As m’lady commands.”

Rather than the indignation I’d expected, she seemed chastened as Valmont grabbed the front of her beautiful dress and ripped it from her body in a single tug.

I knew something was wrong with me when the sight of that fabulous body produced no excitement in me at all.

Chinese Fabio made no move to help his mistress. Instead, he removed his pants and revealed a stiffening organ too big to be natural.

Tossing the shredded dress at her feet, Valmont swooped down, latched onto one of her breasts with his mouth and scooped her up off her feet. She moaned, kicking off her shoes as he threw her down onto the massive bed.

Without my emotions rising up to make me feel ashamed or aroused, I watched with an appreciation for a brilliantly-choreographed dance featuring performers who partnered exceptionally well.

Ignoring her protests, Valmont teased her by sending in Chinese Fabio while he got a syringe out of a small case on his belt.

“A little ketamine,
ma chere
? Special K they call it in America,” Valmont explained, preparing the injection, while Jade Tiger moaned on her silk sheets and ran her nails and tongue up and down Fabio’s considerable length. “Surgical anesthetic, date rape drug and hallucinogen all in one. I’m told it can make you feel as though you’re being fucked by twenty partners, so you’ll have to let me know if it brings back any memories.”

He stripped and climbed onto the bed just as Jade Tiger maneuvered her concubine onto his back and dropped herself onto him. Her Vampyr lover came in behind her and somehow managed to coordinate sodomizing her, injecting her right carotid artery with the syringe and sinking his fangs into her left carotid. Jade Tiger screamed like a Banshee but true to form, increased the intensity of her thrusts and begged for more.

She got it.

Valmont wrapped his hands around to touch her breasts as they built toward climax and within seconds Jade Tiger’s head thrashed like someone being electrocuted. Her shrieks just built and built until I thought she would explode but then she finished and started coming down. However, as soon as her intensity waned, Valmont fondled her in some new way, continued thrusting and forced her back up toward her peak. This time, he didn’t let her reach it—again and again, he and Fabio eased off at the last second. They kept this up for twenty minutes, letting her get so desperate that I wanted to come out from behind the screen and shout, “Oh, Christ, just let her come already!”

For all their passion though, there wasn’t a single hint of affection in their coupling. They were junkies helping each other satisfy their needs.

When they let Jade Tiger complete her orgasm, Valmont whispered something to her. Grabbing her Chinese Fabio’s head, she pulled him up to a near-sitting position and drew breaths in reverse hisses as she had when feeding upon me. The man became disoriented but I saw no physical evidence of the emotional drain that took place. She continued riding him and Valmont continued his sodomy while biting open new wounds in Jade Tiger’s neck. I noticed the similarity in both their reactions as they fed.

Was it possible that Valmont wasn’t a Vampyr? Perhaps some type of crossbreed that shared characteristics of the Shen? According to our theory of what the Shen were, that wasn’t possible. But his ability to remain awake and fully functional during the day made the idea seem more likely.

As Jade Tiger continued feeding from Fabio, her eyes slid closed and she slumped forward onto his limp body. Then, with a heavy sigh, she fell asleep.

Caroline and I had theorized that Shen didn’t sleep.

Pulling out of her, Valmont rolled her aside and bent to drink from Chinese Fabio. If his mistress didn’t kill him with her draining, then Valmont finished him off before shoving his body off the bed.

Blood-stained and sweaty but still erect, Valmont lay on his side and watched with mild concern as the
Guaiwu
approached. To my surprise, Flea came out from her room with no surprise at the scene before her. She gave the
Guaiwu
an order and they pounced in unison on the body of Chinese Fabio, the closest monster dragging the body into his corner where the others joined it in ripping the former concubine into bite-size pieces.

“So quick?” Flea asked Valmont.

He shrugged, fondling himself. “She’s become a bore, really. Not unlike your country’s reputation for cuisine. I feed from her and get hungry again within the hour. Tell her I said it was a bad reaction from the ketamine and opium.”

Jade Tiger whimpered and tossed in her sleep, flinging an arm into contact with him. He lifted it by the wrist and threw it back onto her like a used tissue. Flea giggled and rushed over to him, covering him with kisses and cooing endearments.

I groaned, wondering how much of this I could take. My joints were stiff and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.

“Tell me those things,” she demanded as she worked her way down his neck. “Say original name and tell why you love me.”

Kneeling beside the bed, she began an enthusiastic blow job on him. As nauseating as that was, the condescending smile on his face was worse. “My little Chipmunk is infinitely greater than the witless whore of a mistress who stripped her of her name and shamed her by calling her Flea.” He wasn’t even looking at her but I heard her moan with pleasure at his words. “Her child’s face hides a heart that is black with bitterness and beats only to pump bile and venom through her veins. My sweet Chipmunk has a soul empty as a desert plain, tattered as old lace and hard as steel, it is dyed through with an envy as green as the purest jade. My poison flower is clever and deceitful, greedy and hateful. She is all things that are perfection to my eye and thus, I shall make her my queen.”

Eat your heart out, Romeo.

When they finished, Flea begged him to piss on Jade Tiger while she slept to show his contempt. Valmont did so while Flea jumped up and down, clapped and added a few spit gobs and Chinese curses of her own.

“I want two time everything you do with her,” Flea murmured when they were done, cuddling up to him. “Not sleep, no, everything else.”

Valmont wanted to hear about what Jade Tiger had been up to first but Flea said she couldn’t think good after waiting so long.

“Very well,” he said, “but send the
Guaiwu
upstairs, would you? I detest the way they look at me when we make love.”

She smiled with pure wickedness and shrugged. “They mine now. Get excite when I get excite.”

Ah-ha
, I thought. Jade Tiger was due to have a little revolution on her hands one of these days. It also explained why Valmont went to so much trouble just to screw this spiteful little bitch.