Worthless: New adult paranormal romance (Age of Blood Book 2)

Worthless

Age of Blood

Book 2

One

They hadn’t taken over the White House.

After defeating the human authorities so quickly their uprising couldn’t be called anything but embarrassing, allowing them to keep their little symbol had seemed like the right thing to do – no point kicking a lot of pathetic and inconsequential mortals while they were down.

Besides, Michael had found the edifice too ostentatious. If he’d been into dramatic columns, sculptures and all that crap, he wouldn’t have gambled the house Andrea Palladio had built for him in his youth. He also cared about his staff too much to allow them to waste three quarters of their lives dusting high ceilings; Michael’s home was modern and minimalist.

Alright, he might very well have
one
dark green office with a massive mahogany desk and golden trim just about everywhere, but it couldn’t be helped: after all, he was the King. What did that title even mean if he didn’t get to intimidate foreign dignitaries with a décor fit for your average James Bond villain?

Now, standing in a large room with blood red walls, and looking at the pathetic excuse for a human being who’d summoned him there, he understood the mistake the Coven had made fifteen years ago. They should have taken this place from the human’s clutches, even if they’d only used it to store his considerable stamp collection. Letting the mortals use it as their base, as they had in the old days, had given them a dangerous illusion. They thought they were still in charge of
something
, when in fact, they were nothing but relics of a world that had all but disappeared.

Unlike his brother, Michael had voted for declaring their existence to the world. He’d genuinely believed that people were over the whole xenophobia trend; after their last pointless war, they’d more or less stopped killing each other based on inconsequential details such as the name of the god they prayed to, or their color, their sex. It had seemed like the perfect time to come out of the shadows, so to speak.

He’d been wrong. They’d reverted right back to their inherent reaction whenever confronted with anything different from them, and tried to kill them all.

Tried, and failed, needless to say. Vampires weren’t easy prey. 

Michael had overestimated humans in the past; it wouldn’t happen again. Now he saw them as the useless flock of flapping penguins they were: cute, endearing sometimes, but useless, and quite predictable.

He wasn’t even surprised by what had come out of his host’s mouth.

“Say that again,” he asked quite calmly, smiling at the corpulent, self-important mortal who wished to so carelessly relinquish his right to breathe.

Michael hoped that he’d wise up and retract – or at least, reformulate – his threat.

But the human smirked and pushed it further yet:

“I expressed myself quite clearly. We have proof,” he said, pointing to the handful of pictures he’d waved to his face. “And things are going to change around here, or we will release them. We want a say in your council.”

Michael looked down again, perfectly recalling the event portrayed in the photograph.

The head of the European Coven and the daughter of one of his Knights were kissing each other… around his cock.

Yeah, it had been a fun night.

“Just a question,” he asked, out of sheer curiosity, “What could possibly make you think that I respond well to threats?”

He was rather intimidating, by anyone’s standards, yet the human tried to threaten him with a few pictures. It was beyond his understanding.

“This is Mina Verren,” the fat guy said, his tone victorious. “Her mate is known to be quite ruthless.”

Ah, that was his angle: hiding behind a vampire’s wrath.

Thinking of it, now, Michael could comprehend it: the politician was human. In their golden days, this would have been a scandal; presidents had fallen from grace for far less.

“Peter,” he sighed patiently, not without a certain dose of pity. “Her mate is one of my oldest friends. Incidentally, he was the one taking that picture. And before you move on to the fact that I was balls deep inside Jennifer Hogan’s ass in that one,” he added, throwing a second picture to his face, “note that her dad begged me to fuck the grumps out of her.” 

The incredulous expression on the face of every single human in the room was hilarious, all things considered. Michael somehow managed to maintain an even expression.

“Now we have a few options. I could have you arrested and throw you in jail for attempting to blackmail me… but frankly? You entertained me, so let’s find an alternative.”

He scanned everyone in the room, and settled on a thirty-something blonde with a ring on her finger, long legs and a Hilary Clinton hairstyle.

Michael focused on her for a heartbeat and got a little insight in her self-centered mind.

She was thinking about running; telling herself she never should have married the stupid oaf, regardless of the size of the various diamonds he’d bought her with. What a smart woman she was.

“You have a few vibrators upstairs.” God knew the woman needed them all. “Go fetch. Don’t forget the lube. Your husband will thank you for it.”

Then, he turned back to the handful of shell shocked humans.

“You have to understand that there’s one thing I cannot stand: non-consensual intercourses. So here’s the thing. You can all go out of the room right now. We’ll go the official way, and you’ll spend the next ten years in a cell. Or you lot,” he said, gesturing to the men, “can stand up, get in line in front of the desk, pull your trousers down and bend over.”

They passed through the usual stages of what the fuck, from denial to anger, but finally, every single one of them were awaiting their fates, ugly frumpled asses in the air.

“Let’s have a quick introduction to vampire politics, shall me? Ladies. I’m sure you know what to do.”

He might have punished the women, too, but none of them had condoned that farce – frankly their only sin was living in a world where their voice didn’t have any weight, so instead, he showed them the light. It might not be today, or even tomorrow, but eventually, they’d understand what he’d just done. Turned the tables, putting them in control. They’d wonder if vampires were all that bad, and they’d look into it.

They’d realize Michael was the only male in charge in the entire world: everywhere else, they had Queens and their Kings were powerless consorts –their arm candies, really. They’d know that having a brain and an ambition was a thousand times more important than the hairstyle covering it… and they’d raise their children to understand that.

Vampires didn’t need immediate gratification – a decade was nothing, to his kind; they were in for the long haul, and that meant that the most effective way to conquer mortals, in Michael’s point of view, was empowering women. Everyone with half a brain should know that they were the ones holding the world in the palms of their hands. 

Michael didn’t linger; after ensuring that the four women in the room had fun nailing their male counterparts, he walked out of the room. He was all for a party, but the ones he enjoyed generally didn’t involve quite so many beer bellies.

A smiling Knox greeted him at the door; from his expression, his exceptional hearing hadn’t missed a thing.

“What are you doing here?” Michael sighed.

He had no reason to dislike Knox, but the guy never seemed to turn up, unless he had some abysmally bad news to deliver.

“I’ve traced the hit on William.”

See? He couldn’t have just come to speak about the weather. He had to bring up the latest terrorist attack.

The previous week, his brother’s car had been blasted by a freaking missile, and the professionals he hired had informed him that there was no way to figure out where it had come from – something about a curved trajectory or another technical explanation Michael didn’t care to decipher.

There was no surprise that Knox had managed to solve the issue – he was the best at anything that involved standing behind a computer screen.

“And?”

“And, I can’t prove it, but the only person who currently owns the sort of technology that
could
inject liquid silver in a missile is Daniela.”

Talking about powerful women…

Michael sighed; he wasn’t even surprised.

Daniela Phillips had been his only serious opponent back when the North American Coven had voted for a leader, and she hadn’t taken the loss very well.

She’d made things difficult for him for years, to no avail. It wasn’t exactly surprising that her attention had turned to one of his siblings.

“Are we retaliating?”

Michael considered it, before shaking his head.

“Keep an eye on him for now. Our allies are coming in less than a week – it’s not exactly the right time for an internal quarrel.”

Which meant that it was the perfect time for Daniela to stir some trouble; Michael knew better than to take the bait.

“She might try to push it further,” Knox warned.

Michael shrugged at first – it wasn’t like his brother couldn’t take care of himself…

Then, he remembered.

Fay.

He’d only been around William for a few days since his brother had met the girl he liked to call his “little pixie,” but there was no denying that William was attached to the human.

That made her precious to the entire Drake clan… which meant that she was their one weak spot, right now.

“Hold whatever can wait, pass the rest off to my advisors,” he asked Knox. “I need to take care of my family.”

Six days. She’d been out of Vincent’s home for almost a week, now, but Cece still felt trapped, completely out of control. Vincent had done whatever he pleased to her for over five years; getting her out of the nightmare wasn’t enough. She needed more.

Cece peeked inside the room before marching in, confident now she’d checked that the little – yet plenty annoying – shadow of her cousin, Fay Turner, wasn’t in the vicinity.

She went right to the vampire working in there, planted her feet firmly in front of his desk and announced:

“I want you to punish Vincent.”

The ancient vampire had just fucked hair, and dreamy blue eyes he used for evil, looking up from just under his eyelashes, so as soon as he lifted them to her, Cece’s lady parts were desperate for action… But as he was William Drake, her cousin’s doting fiancé, there was just about zero chance of a happy ending.

Not that she would have pursued him, if he’d been interested. Cece was a desperate sex addict, sure, but at least, she had some sort of understanding of right and wrong. Seducing the gardeners, the chauffeurs, the occasional busboy? No problem. She hadn’t done it, but she would if she got to a point where she just couldn’t resist anymore. She wasn’t even remotely interested in taken guys, though.

Some women were classy, nice, handsome, others hadn’t been blessed in those departments, but from her experience, there was only two kinds of women in the world. Those who wouldn’t ever touch a man who belonged to someone else, and those who could. If she knew anything about herself, it was that she stood under curtain one. 

“Cecilia,” William sighed. “We’ll find a way around the spell, I promise you. In the meantime, there’s nothing we can actually do to…”

“It’s Cece, and
yes,
there is,” she announced, a smirk on her lips.

It had hit her just a few minutes ago.

Vincent had forced her to drink a weird-ass potion that linked them – anything he felt, she was also submitted to, hence why he was living quite comfortably in the vampires’ version of Alcatraz, instead of being submitted to the torture he deserved.

But Cece was stronger than your average human girl out there; she’d been a slave for so long, there were things she didn’t even blink at.

“I’m listening?”

“Fisting,” she shrugged. “Flogging, clamps, caning…”

The list of stuff Vincent would cry like a baby at was pretty long.

William had completely stopped paying attention to his paperwork now; he was looking at her, with a mixture of pity and intrigue.