Blood Legacy (11 page)

“Let’s have number two,” he whispered in my ear. “
Vorona
.”

My climax poured out of me like an overturned glass. I contracted wildly around his shaft, dimly aware that I was screaming. Screaming his name. There was something wet on my fingertips—I’d drawn blood from my palms with my nails.

“Very good,” Victor said, nodding, then nipped at my throat. “You are a true
agonie
, my dear. Don’t you feel it even now, the power flowing through you? Through us both?”

“I feel a lot of things right now.” I laughed, then gave him another sultry squeeze with my walls. “And I like all of them.”

“If only you could feel what this power is like, for a Vampyr.” He withdrew almost completely from me, hands firm on my hipbones, then slammed back into me with startling strength. “We aren’t meant to be political animals. We’re certainly not meant to be house pets, napping in the shade and waddling around half-drunk on blood half the time and alcohol the rest. We’re predators. My brethren have forgotten that. But I will show them again.”

That tendril of fear raced through me again. He’d spoken of freedom for us humans, but if Vampyrs were predators, there was only really one kind of prey worthy of their hunt. What exactly did he have in mind?

He rocked against me, faster now, the iron cross creaking with the force of his penetrations. “But you shall have power, too. I wonder.” He sucked at my earlobe. “How do you mean to use it?”

“I mean . . .” I stammered, as the rising tide of orgasm built within me once more. I didn’t even think it would possible for me. I’m lucky to manage a single one, and that usually alone, in the darkness of my compartment in Undertown. Sexual release is pretty low on the hierarchy of needs, with the kind of life we lead. “I mean to use it . . .”

“Three.” He dug the claws into my ass as he pummeled me to the core. “
Vorona.
”

Something shifted inside me, like two halves of a broken glass. I was screaming, I was squeezing him, I was feeling him unleash his load deep inside of me—but I was also somewhere else. I had left myself, and fallen back into
the vivid hallucination—a strange space not quite a dream and not quite a memory.

The hooded figures circled around me, each cupping a ceramic bowl in their upturned palms. Though I was spread before them, naked, I did not feel fear. The scent of the lapping pool and the scented candles nearby overwhelmed me with calm.
There was a weight lifting off me with each verse of their chants—relief that this had come to pass.

“The blood shall not run cold.”

“We shall rise, and rise again.”

Something winked at me in the dank air—the honed edge of a dagger. Five slashes. One ankle, then the next. Each wrist. And then, lovingly, like a necklace being laid across my throat, it slit my throat from end to end.

I smiled, overwhelmed with gratitude, as dozens of arms raised the bowls upward to catch my blood, gurgling out of me at a luxurious pace.

Slowly, each candle in the room winked out, and I surrendered to darkness.

Chapter Seven

Victor loomed over me
with a dark expression on his face. He was fully dressed again, and smelled of rich soap and cologne. I tried to sit up but found my limbs suddenly weighed a ton each. I slumped back into the soft mattress he’d sprawled me upon.

“How are you feeling, little bird?” he asked, stroking the side of my face with one finger.

I closed my eyes and turned my head so I could kiss his hand in response. We appeared to be in a bedroom—a more normal-looking one, with rain-streaked windows looking out on New Sanguinus’s building tops. I’d been spread out on a massive, downy white bed, and my skin felt warm and damp as if from a bath. “What . . . what happened?”

“
You
,” he said playfully, poking my nose, “my naughty little
agonie
, were perhaps enjoying yourself a little too much.”

I chuckled. “No such thing.”

His smile waned. “The power can be . . . overwhelming, at first. I should have better prepared you. We could have eased into the rites better than we did. I simply—” He stopped himself, cheeks flushing. “It’s simply been so long that I’ve dreamed of this. I couldn’t control myself around you.”

“I really made that big of an impression on you four years ago?” I asked.

A comm pinged at the far corner of the room and a mechanical voice intoned, “Violetta Stregazzi has entered the quarters.”

Victor’s face went ashen; I felt my own stomach lurch. Though what I feared, I couldn’t say.
I was, after all, the one Victor had just tied up and screwed senseless. Literally. I grinned to myself. That was about as close to a religious experience as I’d ever had.

The door to the bedroom flew open and Violetta stormed in. She was swathed in an enormous garnet gown the same shade as her hair and lips, and hundreds upon hundreds of black jets sparkled in the lamplight with her every step.

Victor stepped forward, arms raised defensively. “Violetta—this is hardly the time—”

“Silence. Sit,” she barked, her words stinging like a lash. She snapped her gloved hands. The sound reverberated throughout the opulent bedroom.

Victor instantly dropped to his knees right there, in the middle of the floor, and bowed his head. I couldn’t blame him a bit. Had I not already been lying down, the authority in her voice would’ve made me obey, as well. But I suddenly had trouble reconciling the dominant, controlling Vampyr I’d seen not an hour ago with this docile house pet.

“What were you doing?” Violetta seized him by the chin, forcing him to meet her eyes, and tilted his head from side to side.

“I—I made an arrangement with Raven. She understands what she is, and she will—”

Violetta cracked him across the jaw with the back of her hand. The massive black ring on her hand left a stinging welt on his skin. “And this couldn’t possibly wait until you’d made your announcement to the hundreds of the most important Vampyrs in the entire Republic?”

I heard his teeth cracking together. “You know what this means to me.”

“Well, we have much bigger concerns.” She glanced over at me on the bed, as if sizing me up. “Get dressed. Nastasya? Get
Raven
out of here.”

Nastasya slunk into the room, tossing a quick look toward Violetta. “Yes, mistress.” She approached me and offered her arm to help me stand up. I groaned in spite of myself. Every muscle in my body ached, including several I didn’t know I had; the space between my thighs was particularly raw. I looked, sheepishly, at the bruises rising on my knee where Victor had bitten me so harshly, and at the red lines of scars along my thighs from his claws.
Nastasya threw her arm around my shoulder and escorted me into a sitting room separated from the bedroom.

“They acquired some sort of archive,” Violetta hissed, back inside the bedroom. “What the hell is it? How did they find it?”

Before Victor could answer her, the door slammed shut. I stood, naked and shivering, as panic rose like a tide in me. Was she talking about the archive I’d passed to Finch? I’d covered my tracks flawlessly on the data warehouse logs. Besides, it was her archive—she knew damned well what was inside. Accounts of her plot to seize control of the Republic, if I had to guess.

Nastasya arched one eyebrow at me as she fluffed out my gown. “Is everything all right?”

I shook my head to clear myself from the reverie. “I—yes. Of course. Just exhausted, that’s all.” I took the gown from her with trembling fingers, and somehow, with her assistance, managed to put myself into something like a presentable shape.

Back in the grand ballroom, the crowd had grown increasingly drunk and rowdy, the smell of alcohol, perfume, and drying blood hanging thick over the chamber like a fog. Instead of relegating the lewd displays to the exhibition hall, we passed several clusters of Vampyrs and their human pets
engaged in various acts of sex, Donation, and some interesting combinations thereof.

My skin felt set on edge by the energy, the vibrancy, the hunger
swirling all around us. I could hear every conversation surrounding us like it was its own silky ribbon coiling around me. The throbbing bass line of the music seemed to echo the beating of thousands of hearts, however artificial their pumping might be. So many colors, swirling overhead, and splashed across the fine gowns and suits and makeup and coifs. Everything looked too sharp, too real, like I could cut myself on it.

“I know,” Nastasya murmured, taking my staggering, swaying gait for a sign of lingering pain, perhaps. “It must take some getting used to. I’ve heard Victor can be . . . a true savage. More than one would expect, even from a Vampyr.”

I did ache, to be sure. But the twinge of every bruise and cut was like a boon. I stood straighter, knowing what I’d endured and come out of stronger.

Save for that nasty-looking bite on my knee. I’d never seen his fangs emerge. Surely he couldn’t have bitten me with them—it had to have been from his normal teeth alone. I flinched. I didn’t even want to contemplate the possibility that
the Vampyr venom was working its way through my veins and my brain.

“Just remember.” Nastasya smiled at me, eyes twinkling. “It may be painful now, but only those who die can truly live.”

The slogan of the Resistance. My jaw dropped. “You’re—you’re one of—”

“Shh.” She pressed one finger to my lips. “We immortals may not die naturally, but it doesn’t mean we can’t respect the natural order of things. All this . . . unnaturalness. Seems like a rather lot of work, doesn’t it?” Nastasya sighed. “There has to be a better way. One less degrading to your side, and
that doesn’t falsely reward ours.”

I rocked back on my heels, trying to parse my words. Finch hadn’t prepared me for this possibility—that there could be Vampyrs who were actually sympathetic to our cause. Of course, it could always be a trap, but something in Nastasya’s eyes told me otherwise. She’d been to
o kind to me when she didn’t have to be. When she had nothing to gain for it. And Vampyrs were all about only doing things that would directly benefit them.

But before I could answer, a squadron of waiters began to weave through the crowd, offering up flutes of champagne as well as shot glasses of blood,
the glass color-coded by type. Nastasya and I both chose the champagne, but the waiter leaned toward me with a bow and produced a black box tied with ribbon from his suit pocket.

“
From Lord Bressov, miss.”

As the rest of the ballroom sipped their champagne and chattered excitedly, wondering what grand announcement was about to transpire,
I tugged the ribbon free and cracked the box open. Nastasya arched one eyebrow and waited expectantly for me to show her the contents.

But I wanted to keep it all for myself.

Nestled in the velvet of the box was a metal collar, coated in fine filigree scrollwork. It snapped shut in the back, and in the front hung a metal ring. I clutched the box to my chest as possibilities cascaded through me. Victor pulling a chain through the fastening to restrain me, or maneuver me around . . . Victor gripping me hard by the collar as he thrust into me from behind . . .

The handwritten notecard with the collar read simply,
Bring this with you tomorrow, but don’t yet put it on. I’ll know if you’ve cheated.

An eager thrill ran through me at the possibility of just how he might punish me for disobedience.

Gasps rippled through the crowd; the music faded away and the lightshow ceased as a spotlight focused on the balcony that overlooked the great hall. Victor Bressov strode onto the balcony, confident and loose in a way I’d never seen him before. Some of the harshness had sanded off his edges. I wanted to kiss that softness and explore it with my tongue.

Oh, god, Raven Meadows. I clenched my teeth. So much for doing this for the Resistance.

But, no, I was doing that, too. A means to an end. Even if it was a delicious, deliriously wonderful means to an end.

Victor kneeled before Dame
Evrana Bressov, the Family’s grande dame, and kissed her signet ring. He clapped his “brothers” and “sisters” on the shoulder—Ivan, Faedra, Irina, Marmon—then approached the balcony railing to an uproar of applause.

At the back of the balcony, nearly shrouded in shadows, lurked Violetta Stregazzi, smirking like she’d just gotten away with murder. Maybe she had. For a moment, I thought I felt her looking directly at me.

“My fellow Vampyrs,” Victor said in address, to further applause. “Their distinguished guests.” Our eyes met, and my cheeks burned. “Members of the Sanguine Republic, citizens of New Sanguinus.

“The Onyx Queen united our families into the Republic centuries ago, and while the Coven of Families has never quite recovered from Her passing, I like to think that my brother in blood, Lucio Bressov, shared many of her goals, if not always her methods.
”

Murmurs rose around me. Speaking so fondly of the Onyx Queen was dangerous these days—she’d always pushed for more leniency toward humans, after all, and while she acceded to many of the crueler Vampyrs’ demands, it was softness that got her killed. Or so Finch has always said. I hardly saw the similarities between the supposedly kind Onyx Queen and a bloodthirsty Bressov, even Lucio, but then, I wasn’t privy to what transpired behind the Coven’s doors.