Blood Leverage (Bloodstone Chronicles Book 1) (28 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY
-
ONE

TEN minutes later, my brain was still
sputtering. Granted, it had been given a lot to process.  For one thing, the house was largely a disaster zone. Though the reinforced walls had kept Ian and Keanu’s rooms intact, the guest rooms and front entrance had been obliterated. I felt a surge of relief that the living room had already been emptied and a pang of sadness for the computer in the guest bedroom.

Since Ian and Keanu wouldn’t let me out of their mutual sight, I received a firsthand look at the remaining rubble. Fortunately, or as fortunate as things could get under these circumstances, debris covered most of the gore. I was briefly concerned about losing my ice cream, but either Eggplant had desensitized me or I was in shock.

I viewed the mess dispassionately before following the guys back to Ian’s office. Keanu’s cartoons still ran in the living room (something with a pig and a duck), but he flicked the program off without looking as we passed. I didn’t know what to say, but finally opted for, “Who were they? And what did they want?” 

My vampire friends engaged in an enigmatic eyeball dance and I jumped to my feet. “Don’t you dare pull that unspoken conversation eye contact shit,” I threatened menacingly—and meaninglessly. Seriously, what could I possibly do, spank them?

“I deserve an explanation.”

Ian looked pained, but Keanu took my side. “She has a point Ian. We weren’t the only ones at risk tonight.”

About bloody time, I thought.

“Fine then,” Ian said quietly. “I’ll answer anything you’d like, starting with your first question. I don’t know who those vampires were, but it’s reasonable to assume they were acquaintances of Eggplant. I recognized a few scents.”

I thought that over. “So when Eggplant was first here, it wasn’t about Nicky or any other human. It was about you. What did they want?” I repeated. 

Ian turned to Keanu, but I didn’t sense any secrets. It was more like Ian had issued an order, a notion Keanu confirmed when he left the office.

“As you already know, vampires from before the mass conversions are rare. Well, it’s not that we’re rare,” he corrected himself. “There have been vampires for thousands of years—ever since the time of the reluctant king. Still, the
vast
majority of vampires today were converted during the mass conversions.”

My ears perked up at what sounded like a vampire origination story, but Ian glossed right over it and forged ahead. “Post-conversion vampires, though much stronger than humans, are weak compared to pre-conversion vampires.”

“Most of them anyway,” Keanu countered as he re-entered the room. He was carrying a small wooden box that he handed to Ian.

Ian looked at the box thoughtfully before opening it. Then he took my hand and poured a small, shimmering stream of gemstones into it.  

I pulled my hand back to bring the stones into the light. They ranged from pale pink to crimson so dark it was almost black. Mindlessly, I began sorting the gems by color. They were oddly heavy for their size.

Meanwhile, Ian nodded at Keanu. “Most are weak, but not by choice.”

“No one chooses to be weak,” I pointed out, placing a lighter crimson stone with its similarly colored fellows beside the scales on the desk.

“Exactly,” Ian said, stilling my hands as I debated where to place a particular garnet. He culled through a pink pile I’d made and extracted a stone. “This specimen,” he held it up as he lectured in a tone not unlike my own teaching voice, “was bled from a man—age twenty-eight at the time of
conversion—approximately two months after conversion had occurred.”

It took me a moment, but then it sank in. “You mean?”

Keanu grinned and said, “Present!” as if answering roll call in class.

I reached over and took the stone from Ian, looking from the stone to Keanu and back again. “This is… yours? Your… blood?”

Keanu took the stone in his hand before tossing it and catching it. “Me in my earliest and weakest days—before I succumbed to the power of the dark side.”

Ian rolled his eyes and caught the stone effortlessly as Keanu flicked it back. “Feel free to ignore him—I often do. But yes, that stone was formed by Keanu’s blood back in his earliest days as a vampire.” He set the gem down and hovered over the piles, touching several additional stones before selecting one. “This is Keanu’s blood from last year.”

The second stone was much darker—a ruby red with a pink undertone. Picking up on the concept, I selected one of the darkest stones and held it up, raising an inquiring eyebrow in Ian’s direction. “Yours?”

Ian smiled. “Indeed it is. Bloodstones reflect our age and strength.” 

I frowned. “I thought bloodstones were traditionally green mottled with red.” 

“They are,” Ian agreed with a snort. “I have no idea how humans came up with that concept, but when a vampire refers to a bloodstone he’s talking about a crystallized drop of vampire blood. Such stones are very valuable to our kind.”

Quick as a wink, Keanu snatched the stone from between my thumb and forefinger, and shot it up with another mercurial flick. “Very valuable indeed,” he echoed with a grin as the stone arced through the air, glinting in the light.

At the last possible moment, Keanu took a neat step to the left and caught the stone in his mouth, chewing with a crunch that would have shattered my teeth. Then he gave what I can
only describe as a happy shiver as he swallowed. “Valuable and
delicious
.”

Ian sighed and I put my hand to my jaw as if expecting to find my own teeth broken. “You mean you
eat
them?” I didn’t know whether to be horrified or fascinated. I mean, I knew vampires drank blood but this was like chewing rocks. It
was
chewing rocks.

Ian laughed at my appalled expression. “It’s not a common practice. It’s painful for a vampire to lose even a small amount of blood and few will do so willingly.”

I glanced at the pile of pink stones and then back at Keanu who simply shrugged. “Lessons learned.”

Alrighty then. Ouch. 

“Also,” Ian said, apparently determined to ignore his vassal, “a pale stone has little impact. There isn’t much point. However, the benefits of consuming a dark bloodstone can be tremendous. Dark bloodstones can confer powers otherwise obtainable only over the course of centuries.”

“And they’re delicious!” Keanu pointed out again, determined to annoy Ian or die trying. 

“You should know,” Ian said mildly. “You’ve had six in the past month alone.”

“Hey, those were medicinal,” Keanu objected. “The previous five were for sun sickness and I
did
take out eleven vamps tonight.”

I looked at Ian in dismay. “You made him take eleven out of twelve? What is this, vampire boot camp?”

Ian shot Keanu a dirty look. “Hardly. My valiant companion is neglecting to mention there were twenty-seven vampires in all. Still, he pulled his weight,” he concluded somewhat grudgingly, the ghost of a proud smile hovering about his lips.

Keanu shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard once we triggered the explosion.”

“Wait, you two blew up your
own
house?” I was getting a headache. In an effort to relax, I rolled the bloodstones around in my hand. 

“Not the first explosion, you were with us then,” Keanu said patiently. “Our guests did that to force a larger entry point. It was smart on their part—strength in numbers and all that,” he added with a touch of admiration. “The
big
explosion, of which I am extremely proud, was part of my security genius.”

I was too tired to move my facial muscles, but the irritation on Ian’s face was priceless. Sadly, Keanu was too blinded by his own brilliance to notice.

“The empty rooms? Everything was arranged that way for a reason,” he said eagerly. “You know the upper house?”

“The one you blew up?” I asked with a touch of sarcasm.

He nodded, oblivious. “The only rooms beneath the upper house were the guest rooms and a couple of the surrounding empty rooms. The entry rooms—the guest rooms in the front and the empty rooms in back—” he clarified proudly, “are the most vulnerable, so I rigged them with explosives.”

I think he expected me to burst into applause. Instead, I asked, “Why?”

Ian took over as Keanu sulked. “Stop pouting, it’s a legitimate question.” Ian continued his explanation while Keanu continued to shoot me disgruntled looks. “The idea behind the explosives was to trap intruders, which we did once all the vampires were inside. One or two burned, but most were buried by debris. That let us take them out one at a time.”

He shrugged like this was no big deal and I realized, for them, maybe it hadn’t been. Other than the odd spot of blood, Ian and Keanu looked nothing like the Eggplant scenario, which was a relief. They did, however, reek of smoke and plaster.

“Well, I appreciate you not setting off the rear explosives,” I said dryly. “However, that doesn’t answer why they broke in. Isn’t that extreme for a handful of stones they may or may not have known about?” I was still missing something. 

A moment later I caught another glance between the two vampires, both of whom looked away when they caught me watching. I’d seen more convincing behavior from students lying about homework. “All these centuries and you two can’t lie for shit. Spill.”

“Actually,” Keanu said, “lying is tough. We don’t get much practice because we’re used to making humans believe by saying, ‘Hey you, believe
this
, not that.’”

“Keanu.” Ian was gritting his teeth. He looked ready to throw his vassal out a window—if they hadn’t blown up the windows. “Would you kindly shut up?”

“Sorry,” Keanu said, not looking at all sorry.

Ian heaved a truly put-upon sigh that could’ve knocked down the third little pigs’ house. “It comes down to politics.”

We were finally getting somewhere. “What sort of politics?”

“You already have an idea of how things work in the cities—the mandatory blood donations, the mixed blood and pooled resources and the carefully formulated allotments that determine how much each vampire receives and how often.” He looked at me for confirmation and I gestured for him to continue. 

“You also know there are vampires who prefer other arrangements and choose to circumvent that system.”

“Like you,” I returned, stating the obvious.

“What you don’t know is that certain factions favor another approach altogether—the approach used before the blood banks came into play.”

“The system that gifted you with your sidekick.” I grinned, enjoying the dirty look Keanu gave me.

Ian snickered but quickly became serious again. “Honestly, meeting Keanu was the best part of that system as far as I’m concerned.”

Keanu stuck his tongue out in triumph. 

“Currently,” Ian said, “humans in the cities have few rights. However, prior to the blood banks, humans were outright slaves. They could be sold or punished for any infraction,” he added grimly. “Humans had mandatory spousal and procreation requirements. There were food shortages, but mandatory births continued. There was no age limit on those required to donate and countless people died from starvation and blood loss.”

I frowned at the picture he painted. “It sounds awful,” I said carefully, “but I’m not sure where you fit in.”

“Some vampires were worse offenders than others,” he answered, and I had the sense he was selecting his words as carefully as I. “Those who overfed grew strong and the distribution of power began to shift.”

He sounded somewhat depressed and I wanted to, I don’t know, hold his hand or something but Keanu sat beside him before I could move.

“City by city, some of us began recruiting vampires with more… tolerant beliefs and we did what we could. We used entrancement constantly,” he added wearily, sounding as though even the memory was exhausting. “Unfortunately, the most susceptible vampires were among the weaker members of our kind.”

“Who is ‘we’ in this instance?”

“Others with my beliefs,” he said firmly.

I’d found another topic that wasn’t up for discussion.

“So, what? You began gifting your cohorts with sparkly pick-me-ups?”

“Not through Ms. Parkes, as we hadn’t created her yet, but to an extent, yes.” He frowned. “Understand, this is not commonly done, Aurora. Using one’s blood to strengthen another is a provocative thing.”

Judging from his grave expression, I assumed he meant the controversial provocative as opposed to the sexy sort.

“There are only three instances in which such a gift has been historically acceptable. First, you can use a bloodstone on someone you wish to join you in immortality.”

I dropped the stones I’d been handling and both vampires laughed at my horrified expression. Keanu was still laughing as he said, “Bloodstones are inert as rubies until exposed to human blood, Rory. You have nothing to fear from holding them.”

“Exposed to human blood? Humans don’t eat them?”