BloodGifted (18 page)

His fingers lingered on
my neck and I wondered if it really was the medico in him that prompted the suggestion. Guiltily, I hoped it wasn’t. My mind was still coming to terms with the fact that this man was a vampire, an honest-to-goodness bloodsucker who less than a few hours ago had drunk my blood. His mouth had been on my throat to feed, not to caress as a lover would. Yet, in spite of it, I couldn’t deny my growing attraction to him.

I thought about
his question. ‘What about change of clothes?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’ll find whatever you need.
Guest rooms are all well stocked.’

‘In that case, okay
.’ I didn’t really mind as I’d get a chance to explore the house in the morning.

When I was in school I’d become a member of the National Trust just so I
could wander through old Georgian and Victorian mansions. I joined the queues on their Open Days and imagined myself dressed in a tight corset and muslin dress, walking through those period-decorated rooms in the hope of meeting Mr Darcy.

A young woman approached
our table. She looked no older than nineteen or twenty with straight, shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes. Blue eyes! What a pleasant surprise, someone who wasn’t a vampire.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said
enthusiastically, ‘but I was so curious to meet you. My name is Lora as well, though mine is spelled L-O-R-A.’

‘Nice to meet you Lora spelt L-O-R-A. Mine’s just the old-fashioned kind,’ I returned.

‘While you two ladies are discussing variations in spelling,’ Alec said, ‘I’ll go speak to Luc, spelt L-U-C. Please excuse me.’ And he was gone.

Smart-arse
, I thought. ‘Come, sit down,’ I said to Lora and patted Alec’s empty chair.

She had
a dainty upturned, freckled nose. Just then, her wide-eyes followed Alec as he walked over to another table.

‘He is
so
hot! You are
so
lucky!’

I eventually go
t her to sit down and pull her eyes away from him.

‘So, Lora, who are you with?’
I asked to get her attention.

‘Over there.’ She pointed to a young man lounging aga
inst the bar with the same brown-coloured, shoulder length hair. He looked no older than her and I could only guess what colour his eyes would have been before his transformation.

‘Wayne. Isn’t he cute? We met at a rave party.’

‘Vampires go to those things?’ I asked, fascinated.

‘Oh yeah, all the time.’ She sounded surprised that I
didn’t know. ‘I think you’re
so
brave going up there,’ she pointed to the pavilion, ‘and letting him, you know—bite you publicly like that. I mean, when Wayne and I go for it, it’s like, you know, just the two of us.’ She sing-songed her way through all that in one breath.

‘I didn’t
have much choice and Alec helped me through it.’

She sighed deeply and looked in Alec’s direction again. I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. Lora had the biggest crush I’d ever seen. I wondered how her boyfriend felt about it.

‘How often do you, um, let him feed from you?’ I wanted to know how other vampire-human couples behaved compared to Alec and myself. Not that he and I were actually a couple…

‘Oh, almost every day. He has to eat just like we do,’ she said
in a matter-of-fact voice which pulled me from my mental wrestling.

I looked closely,
but couldn’t see any fang marks on her. ‘Where does he bite you?’

She smiled coyly and
placed her hand high up on her inner thigh.

M
y eyes must have widened to the size of dinner plates.

‘I don’t like people to see any, you
know, like fang marks on me, so he takes a little drink, when… you know.’ She smiled at me with a knowing look.

I guessed that some of the couples here tonight had more than ju
st a blood-sharing relationship as occasionally some disappeared into the house and didn’t come out again.

‘What about you and Alec?’ she asked
, all wide-eyed curiosity.

‘We only
met on Friday night and I have a boyfriend,’ I was quick to point out.

‘Bummer!’ She
looked sorry for me. ‘Never mind, you might get lucky.’

I didn’t want to consider
that.

Lora turned her head side
ways to glance at her boyfriend who just waved for her to come over. ‘Oops, gotta go. It was
so
nice meeting you, Laura. See ya.’ She breezed away.

Alec saunte
red back to his seat. There was laughter in his eyes.

‘Were you listening?’ I asked.

‘Of course. Fascinating conversation.’ His lips twitched.

If Alexander Munro thinks he’s going anywhere near tha
t part of my anatomy, he’s got Buckleys
! But I couldn’t prevent the image of his dark head bent over my thigh from surfacing and heat suffused my cheeks.

I could hear Terens
chuckling in the background.

Men
!

‘My Lord Princeps, may I dance with
Lady Laura?’ A voice asked.

I looked up
to see a young man, no more than seventeen or eighteen at the most, who bowed slightly and extended his hand toward me. I smiled at him then glanced at Alec. The look I saw on his and Terens’s face filled me with alarm. I’d already danced with several blood drinkers tonight, so what was it about this one that made them so tense?

Alec looked at me questioningly. ‘Laura?’

‘I don’t mind,’ I answered.

With a tight smile he laid my hand in
that of the young man.

‘My name is Douglas,
Lady
,
’ the young man said politely.

‘Please call me Laura.’

He curled his arm around my waist and led me into
a slow dance. Douglas had beach-blonde hair and could have passed for a surfer kid. He wasn’t all that tall either, maybe two or three inches more than me.

‘Do you mind if I ask
how long you’ve been a vampire?’ I attempted some small talk.

‘Since nineteen sixty-five. I went for a walk along the beach one night with this really cute girl, and, well…’ Temporarily releasing my hand, he
curled two fingers and dug them into his neck.

‘Okay.’ Wh
at could I say to that? ‘Surely it needs more than one bite to change you, doesn’t it?’

‘For sure! She took a lot of bites and then I drank her blood…’ His eyes danced.

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to be with her forever!’

‘How old were you?’

‘Seventeen.’

Seventeen! I’d guessed right, but what would a kid of that age know about lifetime commitments? I wondered if he’d regretted his decision, but I wasn’t about to ask. He seemed nice, like a regular kid, but he held me too close. That’s when I noticed the hint of something “other” in his eyes. They’d turned a lighter shade of lavender—almost opalescent. Warning bells went off in my head.

‘What if you wanted to choose someone else?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘You didn’t really get a chance
to choose did you?’ His hand tightened over mine.

‘T
he ring glowed Douglas, and it chose Alec—as I did.’

‘
You’re the Bloodgifted. You could have any one.’

I could s
ee where he was headed. ‘Like you, perhaps?’

‘Why not?’ he answered and a sly grin spread across his face.

Huh, so beach boy wants to be head boy
! ‘Forget it, Douglas! This dance is over.’

He dropped the friendly expression and his pupils slit over.
‘Not till I say so!’

My stomach plummeted and as I tried t
o manoeuvre out of his embrace his grip tightened, painfully squeezing my fingers. His smile broadened to reveal fangs.

‘I
say it’s over. NOW!’ Alec’s voice was quiet and menacing. He had appeared from nowhere.

D
ouglas’s face paled as he released his grip but there was no disguising the expression of pure hate etched on his face. With a final, leering glance in my direction he slunk off into the shadows. Alec’s gaze followed him before coming back to me.

I flexed my fingers to r
estore circulation, hoping nobody noticed our little exchange. Couples continued to move around the dance floor as if nothing had happened.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ I assured him. ‘He seemed so nice at first. Just a kid!’

Alec took hold of my sore fingers and gently massaged them. ‘Mmmm, just a kid!’ he snorted. ‘Don’t forget Laura, our kind look young, but many are decades
, even centuries old.’

Douglas
mentioned he was changed in nineteen sixty-five when he was only seventeen, which meant he had to be around his early sixties. Definitely, not a kid.

‘
I think he wants your job.’

‘H
e’s not getting it!’

Alec looked dangerous; his eyes were cold and near-reptilian and instinctivel
y I knew he could have killed Douglas, had he so chosen. I tried to swing the mood around since I’d been enjoying this part of the evening and didn’t want to be reminded that the finely attired creatures with whom I’d been dancing and conversing, weren’t human.

‘Shall we dance –
My Lord
Princeps
?’ I mocked.

His expression softened and
he drew me close and twirled me into the crowd. I glanced over his shoulder to where Maris stood with her little group. Her eyes never left Alec, but he never even glanced in her direction. Only once did she look at me and when I attempted a smile, her cold eyes narrowed.

I’d
made an enemy without knowing how.

Chapter 13

Trials of a Princeps

ALEC

Since Laura was happy to rest her feet for a moment, I left her temporarily in Terens’s care and I made my way to Jake’s table. Cal was with him, as well as Jean and Sam. As I passed on the way, small groups greeted me with congratulatory handshakes. Luc joined us while Judith escorted her brother, John, back up to the house.

‘Nice ceremony. I like the little addition,
’ Cal said.

He was referring to my
kissing Laura during the Ritual.

‘It was just the First Blood
lust, nothing more,’ I replied.

‘Y
ou certainly didn’t seem to suffer from that condition with the previous
Ingenii!’
He chuckled while downing his favourite non-blood drink, Armagnac. He acquired the taste in the sixteenth century and is now something of a connoisseur. He owns a distillery in France which sends him several crates of the stuff. Recently, he’s been mixing it with Luc’s best Scotch whisky and chilled blood and calling it a Bloody Cally.

‘
Judith’s blood wasn’t as potent,’ I said.

He
looked at me with interest.

‘
It’s nothing!’ I reiterated.

‘I would have loved to see Luc kiss Owen like that!’ Jake s
aid and the others guffawed.

Owen Dantonville, Laura’s grandfather and Judith’s father was
a selfish, self-centred man and directly responsible for my becoming a vampire.

He intended
to shoot Luc, but hit me instead and to save him from a hangman’s noose, Luc transformed me. If he hadn’t been
Ingenii
, I believe Luc would have killed him—and enjoyed doing it!

To my relief, as I didn’t want to dwell on why I kissed Laura,
Luc brought our conversation back to the present danger.

‘As
long as Laura’s here she’s safe,’ he stated. ‘When this is over I want a double guard around her flat.’

‘You suspect
trouble?’ Cal asked.

With a tilt of his head, Luc indic
ated Maris and the closely huddled group around her.

‘Why her?’ Sam asked.

‘Alec, tell them,’ Luc replied.

‘
Drained bodies, lying in the streets. Young kids. It only started with her arrival,’ I stated.

Cal shook his head in disgust. ‘How the hell did she become an Elder!’

‘Lack of older female Brethren after w
e executed three in the First Rebellion, and one in the Second,’ Luc said.

‘Damn! Forgot.’

The repercussions were serious. She had to be stopped, but the last thing we wanted was an enemy on the Eldership. She couldn’t sway the other Elders, but by her very position she could gather a sizeable following of like-minded Brethren and cause trouble. Civil War couldn’t be ruled out.

‘You believe they’d actually try something
against the Principate?’ Jake’s expression darkened as he gazed at me.

‘We all know
what she’s capable of,’ I said.

Sam nodded. ‘S
he’d go after Laura.’ He knew her best for they had once been lovers, before he became her sire. They met on the eve of the French Revolution and he’d kept her hidden during the worst excesses of that murderous regime, but the rest of her family had not been so lucky.

They were together the entire period of her servitude
and when she began to display the cruellest aspects of her nature, Sam’s affections grew cold. He forbade her to kill anyone bar the criminals who roamed the streets at night in search of victims of their own. As her creator, he had the power to order her extermination. But once out of servitude she indulged her perverse tastes.

‘I told Lau
ra she’d be safe after the Ritual!’

No one spoke for a while and
I had the feeling they were remembering the past when two previous
Ingenii
had been attacked. One had been killed and the next in line had been a juvenile. His blood hadn’t yet matured. Luc and his men had hidden the boy till he came-of-age. In the meantime, they’d hunted down the rebel ringleaders and brought them before the Elders who executed fifteen of them and forced the rest to take the Pledge.

Those events occurred
long before my time, but Luc had told me some of the history and I’d read the rest in Marcus Antonius’s Chronicle which sits on a lectern in the library at Luc’s house, below his sword and armour.

The Pledge had been
invoked on no more than two occasions, each time after a rebellion. The first took place over a thousand years ago after the abduction and murder of the fifteenth
Ingenii,
Clement D’Antonville. The Second Rebellion was more recent—only four hundred years ago. The twenty-sixth
Ingenii,
Robert D’Antonville, fought off several of the Brethren who tried to take him. Fortunately, as an accomplished swordsman, he’d held them off till Luc and the others arrived.

According to Marcus’
s Chronicle, the Pledge was created to safeguard the Principate from any future attack. The Prefects—leaders of the Brethren in their respective nations—had to swear an oath of allegiance on the Serpent Rings to protect the
Ingenii
and Guardian at the cost of their own life. Those who defied the oath were destroyed. The rings flashed fire and incinerated them.

‘Can we invoke the Pledge?’ I asked.

‘We could,’ Luc said. ‘Problem is, it costs energy. The fire from the serpents’ eyes comes from a combination of the ring and you. The more you use it, the weaker you’ll become.’

‘Is that common knowledge?’ I asked.

‘No, and I’d like to keep it that way. After the First Rebellion I only needed to use it twice, and after that the rest of the rebels backed away. They never got a chance to see how exhausted I was.’

‘And the Second Rebellion
?’

‘
Those who had taken the oath stayed well away although one or two incited the juveniles to rebel. So we made the young ones take the oath and executed the leaders,’ Luc said.

‘N
ow we have a new batch of juveniles,’ Sam stated.

At that, we
turned to look at Maris’s group. Their hushed whispers stopped abruptly. Maris gave me a slow, seductive smile and ushered her group to the other side of the garden.

‘Couldn’t catch everythin
g. They’re deliberately blocking me. What about you?’ Cal asked.

‘No,
same with me.’ I turned a questioning eye on Luc, but he shook his head.

‘They’re planning somethi
ng, I can sense it,’ Jake said.

Cal
nodded in agreement and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

‘N
ot enough to force the Pledge.’ Luc’s voice was grim.

‘T
here’s nothing we can do?’ Sam asked.

‘Just keep watch
. For now.’ Luc’s gaze shifted to his daughter and the tense lines around his mouth relaxed.

‘You know something, Alec?’ Cal said. ‘I
think you may have placed Laura in danger without meaning to.’

‘What?’

‘Kissing her during the Ritual would piss off any woman.’

‘Especially her,’ Sam pointed out
.

‘We broke up decades ago. I made it very plain. She can’t possibly think…’

‘Not as far as she’s concerned,’ Jake said. ‘Damn it, Alec! Her eyes haven’t left you all night. I’ve been watching. And we all saw that sex-laden smile she shot you. Smelt her arousal from here.’

I ran my hand through my hair
and let out a frustrated breath, then cursed the foolishness in allowing myself to become infatuated with the woman during my early vampire years. ‘It’s over,’ I remonstrated. ‘Has been since nineteen-twenty three and she knows it!’

‘Women can be clingy,’ Cal said.

It never occurred to me. Too late now.

Jean h
ad been silent the whole evening, yet his glances continually strayed towards Laura.

‘If Maris
comes near Laura I’ll kill her!’ he burst out.

His heat
ed reaction was unusual. He’d never expressed an interest in any woman, which gave Cal endless opportunities for teasing. Jean always took it with good humour but, from the scent which clung to him, I knew he satisfied his physical needs in female company although where and with whom he never revealed.

I looked a
t him closely, really closely, and what I saw made me uneasy, for Jean did not look at Laura like a benevolent uncle. I sensed something deeper and darker, too.

‘That’s why we are here, Jean. To protect her,’ Luc said. ‘I know you care for Laura,
as do we all, but Alec is her guardian.’ It sounded like a warning.

I
remember my surprise at Jean’s decision to move here in the late seventies. We all knew how much he loved Paris. He must have had a very good reason.

Jean’s gaze
turned to me and he gave me a smile, but there was no mistaking the flash of anger that preceded it. And that could stem from only one thing—Jean was in love with Laura! My fists clenched at the realisation. Why hadn’t he challenged me during the Ritual? Was it out of respect for our friendship or was there some other reason? I had to find out, but unlike Maris I didn’t believe Jean posed any danger.

I glanced at Laura then
scanned the room to see how many other eyes were on her. A lot—mostly male. Was it her looks or her blood that drew them? Possibly both.

Luc
watched Maris’s group in silence. His pupils began to slit; the pale irises narrow.

I placed my hand on his arm and cautioned. ‘Not here
. We don’t have definite proof. Once we do, it’s my responsibility as Princeps to order her execution.’

Sommers had sent through
the DNA results I’d requested. There were two distinct types, so there must be more than one new killer. Unfortunately neither appeared on their database. Until I could match them with a living sample, I could only guess. Yet I was convinced that they were here tonight, and one of them was Maris. The trick was to obtain that sample.

‘Do we have it
yet?’ I asked Luc.

He had instructed one of the dri
nks waiters to discreetly put Maris’s used glass into a plastic bag, taking care to avoid contaminating the rim. We couldn’t afford to have her DNA compromised. It would go straight to the lab for analysis and if the result confirmed my suspicions, we could act.

I sent Cal to fetch the glass and
watched him weave his way through the crowd.

‘All yours,’ he said
when he came back and handed me the coveted parcel with the remains of her drink still visible through the plastic.
Bloody Russian
, her favourite—Tia Maria, vodka and blood.

‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘It’l
l keep it till I can get it to the lab.’

‘I don’t think she suspects a thing,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t care less if she did!’ Luc replied gruffly.

I
headed back to our table and Laura smiled at my approach. I dropped the plastic bag into my jacket pocket, which hung across the back of my chair, and swung her into my arms for another dance.

The more contact we had
, the more strongly my scent would cling to her and even those Brethren unable to attend the Ritual would know she belonged to me.

Later
I asked her if I could examine her neck. It had healed very quickly—more so than normal. I began to wonder if it was because she was part-vampire. After all, none of us had any idea what to expect. All we could do was watch and wait.

When Lora
, spelt L-O-R-A came to speak to her, she seemed to be thrilled to be speaking to a human. I made an excuse and left them together, but stayed within reach. From there I overheard their conversation and watched Laura’s changing expression during their exchange. I knew she was curious about vampire-human relationships and, by the look on her face, this one seemed to take her by surprise.

Many
vampires and their
donsangs
have a sexual relationship, so it isn’t uncommon for their feeding to be intimate. But I didn’t believe Laura was ready for that type of discussion and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up with her. Not yet anyway.

Then it happened. One of Maris’
s group asked Laura to dance. I didn’t sense any immediate danger, so with Laura’s permission, I placed her hand in his for a dance.

Terens stood up and came to
my side. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said.

I looked over to the bar
where the others stood, alert and watching. Luc turned his head in my direction, his brow creased in a frown. I shook my head in warning.

‘Jean, Jake,’
I heard him say, and he indicated the dance floor with his head. Obeying his order, they both moved out and followed Laura and Douglas at a discreet distance.