Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6
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Authors: V. M. Black
Tags: #vampire romance, #demon romance, #coming of age, #billionaire romance, #mystery, #mutants, #new adult
Cora’s Choice
The Complete Bundle, Books 4-6
by V. M. Black
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Aethereal Bonds
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Swift River Media Group
Washington, D.C.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 V. M. Black
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.
Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6
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Blood Rites
Cora’s Choice – Book 4
by V. M. Black
––––––––
Aethereal Bonds
––––––––
Swift River Media Group
Washington, D.C.
A
ll characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 V. M. Black
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.
Chapter One
“I
t is my honor to present Dorian Thorne and Cora Shaw.”
The words were soft but resonant, filling the room from hidden speakers to announce my arrival on Dorian’s arm. The hum of the crowd dropped into silence.
My eyes were fixed straight ahead as we took the last few steps down to the balcony landing, where the single flight of stairs split into halves that doubled back to continue down on either side.
I didn’t want to run. Not anymore. Dorian had taken that desire from me, and in the process, he’d shown me that he could take everything. He’d proven that I belonged to him, utterly and completely, and any faint resistance I could mount against him was only at his whim.
At least, I thought bitterly, he allowed me to still feel my fear.
I’d avoided looking over the railing into the grand salon as we descended the first flight of stairs—I had that much choice left to me—but as we turned on the landing, I had to face the room and the guests who were gathered below, waiting to meet me.
My hand tightened convulsively around Dorian’s arm.
Hundreds of faces were turned to look up at us, eyes glittering, lips red gashes that were parted in smiles of varying shades of sincerity. The impression of falseness was overpowering. They looked human, but their appearances were so calculated to hit every note of physical beauty that they seemed like a gallery of mannequins that had been given life.
They were vampires—or agnates, as they called themselves—and a few of their not-quite-human consorts. And at least one of them wanted me dead.
“There are so many,” I whispered, freezing on the top step. I couldn’t force my legs to move.
“It’s a special occasion,” Dorian murmured. “Every agnate who could come is here, from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.”
I looked up at him. His tone was almost conspiratorial, like that of one outsider to another. But he was one of them. He looked like one of them, moved like one of them, with his aristocratic features under his dark, waving hair. He even smiled like one of them right then, a reflex that didn’t reach his eyes, a public face meant for the benefit of the assembly below.
And yet I craved him every bit as much as I feared the others. It was an ache in my bones, a hole in my chest, a sense of a phantom missing limb that was only eased when his touch sent electric awareness coursing through my body to bring me to life.
His children, I reminded myself. That feeling was a trap to make me want to bear his children and make more creatures like those below. And the very thought made me want to scream.
But I didn’t, because only a short time ago, it had also made me want to run away. Then he’d plucked that desire right out of my mind while I stood there, helpless to stop him. So even though my head spun and my breath dragged inside my lungs, I didn’t dare to even protest out of the fear of what else he’d take from me.
The guests applauded at our appearance, a polite and restrained sound that was pitched to be continued for minutes without flagging. Dorian put his free hand over mine where it creased the sleeve of his tail coat.
“Come on, now,” he said, his blue eyes capturing me. “We shouldn’t leave them waiting.”
There was something in his expression that I’d never seen before. Victory. Exhilaration. Was it me that caused these new emotions? No—no, it was only what I meant to his cause in the role of his consort, his cognate.
He took the next step, and I came with him even though my heart felt so tight I thought it would choke me. I would follow him to hell because I had to. My feet wobbled in their heels.
A blast of trumpets accompanied our advance, the opening to an exultant processional played by the chamber orchestra perching upon the far end of the mezzanine above the salon. And the clapping continued as we reached the edge of the red carpet that ran from the foot of the stairs to the center of the room.
The dazzling assembly swirled before my eyes, as if Tim Burton had been set loose on the Academy Awards. Couture fought with costumes that must have been centuries old, hoop skirts and Louboutins, knee breeches and Armani. Rubies battled lamé, diamonds clashed with sequins, and feather boas rivaled stuffed foxes, all thrown together with a mad abandon that crashed in my senses.
The guests melted away on either side as we followed the strip of carpet. I risked a look over my shoulder. The crowd closed up behind us as soon as we passed.
Surrounded. Trapped. My heart skittered madly out of control. If I had been able to run then, I would have.
The carpet ended at the foot of a towering, black-draped object in the exact center of the vast room. Dorian came to a stop in front of it, and he turned us around to face the crowd just as the orchestra let out one last chord and fell into silence, the applause dying with it.
He had timed our arrival with theatrical precision, making the most of the moment. And I was the prop, swaying on his arm.
“Today marks two beginnings.” Dorian’s voice rolled out over the assembly. His face was perfectly composed, but I could see the cold flash of triumph in his eyes as he looked across his friends and enemies. “One is personal, the beginning of my bond to my new cognate, Cora Shaw. The other is a new beginning for us all, because I found Cora not in the old way but through the new reproducible, scientific screening techniques developed by the research that I and my compatriots have been funding these last thirty years.”
Applause erupted again, this time far louder, though it came from fewer hands. Some agnates didn’t clap at all, and some of the fake smiles turned into something that more closely resembled snarls. I could feel all the eyes on me like a weight—a sense of hope from some, hate from others.
I shuddered away from all of them. I was just...myself. Not a symbol. Not a tool. I hadn’t chosen this dubious honor, and I didn’t deserve the burden of their emotions.
Agnates like Dorian had to feed on blood from a living human to survive, but only one human in thousands would normally survive the feeding—and in the process be transformed into an ageless cognate, bonded to the vampire who bit them and able to provide blood as needed forever after. Dorian’s tests screened out those who couldn’t be turned, improving those odds to one in one hundred.
An ordinary college student, I’d been dying from leukemia. The transformation cured human illnesses, so when Dorian’s tests revealed that I was an excellent candidate, I’d taken the chance—without knowing that he was offering more than a cancer treatment. Without knowing the nature of the change until it was far too late.
I wished I could hate Dorian for it, but any time I reached for such an emotion, it slithered away, out of my grasp.
A noise and a sudden breeze behind us made me look back. The drape was falling away from the tall object, revealing a black marble sculpture more than twice life size—a nude winged man surging up from the base, wings extended and arm uplifted as he rose, his face turned up to the ceiling far overhead.
Dorian continued, speaking over the applause. “In commemoration of this historic event, I commissioned a work,
Angel Rising.
Let it be a representation of the new age that we are about to enter.”
The angry muttering rose in volume, but other agnates clapped louder, some even cheering in support.
“Bravo! Bravo!” called a soprano voice, and I saw Clarissa, one of Dorian’s friends, deep in the crowd with her hands cupped around her mouth.
Dorian held up a hand, and gradually, the noise died away. “And now let us observe the venerable institution of the introduction of a new cognate in the spirit of harmony with which it is traditionally kept.”