Dark Heir

I said, “Thanks,” sat, and added cream and sugar to my tea. The spoon was sterling silver and tinkled as I stirred. I noted that the outclan priestesses were also using sterling, handling the silver as if they no longer had to worry about silver poisoning. I could count on my fingers the number of vamps who could do that without getting blistered, and have digits left over. I sipped and discovered that the tea was delicious. Not that I was surprised. Vamps spent money on the things they treasured.

“You are welcome in our house. We offer hospitality to you,” Sabina said.

I was flying by the seat of my pants already and the vamp day hadn’t even started, but I figured that the formulaic welcome meant they would let me keep my blood supply inside my skin. I dredged up the manners taught to me in the children’s home where I was raised and said, “I am . . . honored for the hospitality and, uh, recognize the gift of it, and, um, thanks for the tea. Too. The tea also,” I clarified. Crap. This was stupid. But I didn’t say that aloud. I was learning. “It’s . . . enchanting.” Could tea be enchanting? I wondered. Poisoned, yes, but enchanting? I shook away the mental wanderings.

Sabina and Bethany were both nearly two thousand years old, belonged to no clan, and were the keepers of the holy relics. They were also the arbiters of most anything that Leo couldn’t or didn’t want to handle. And both were scary powerful. I was smart enough to know that being allowed to drink tea with them was intended to be a humongous honor, but all I could think was that they were about to put me in a bind, one way or another. I’d come in there to ask them how to track Joses Bar-Judas, per Leo’s order, but I had a feeling they had agendas of their own.

“Have you seen the camera film of Leo after the Son of Darkness escaped?” Sabina asked, her nunlike, starched white gown rustling.

“No, ma’am. Should I?”

“Yes. Turn on your device and ask it be sent to you.” She poured more tea for her and Bethany and sat back, looking relaxed. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and lunch was long past, and my stomach growled, deep and low. I pressed a hand there to keep it quiet. I had food to eat and stuff that needed doing, but if the priestesses wanted me there to watch video, that is where I’d be. Into my cell I texted to Alex, Footage of Leo after Joses escaped? Send to me. He sent back a K, and moments later, my cell tinkled with the incoming video.

I waited as the vid opened on my cell and clamped down on a gasp before it got free. The footage was of Leo, holding Gee DiMercy down in the hallway, surrounded by humans who looked like they were waiting on something. The humans looked jittery, uneasy. I didn’t blame them. Leo wasn’t being kind to Gee; there was no tenderness or laving with tongue to stop pain. Leo was savaging Gee’s throat.

My own throat spasmed, shutting off air as remembered pain became real again. I clamped my good hand around my throat protectively as I watched. Over the vid, I heard Leo growl like a wild animal, a grizzly, deep and sonorous. This was violence far worse than what Leo had done to me. There wasn’t going to be anything left of Gee DiMercy’s throat. If he were human, he’d already be dead. I waited for a human to pull Leo off, to shout for help. That didn’t happen. Had Leo killed Gee? Was I gonna have to watch that? The pain in my stomach ratcheted up a good six levels into an inferno.

What was Leo upset about? He had been fine when he left me, carrying Adrianna.

On the video, Gee’s hands unexpectedly came up and encircled Leo’s shoulders, patting him tenderly, the way a mother might a fractious baby. Leo’s body went limp for a space of seconds, and then he pulled away, wiping Gee’s blood from his mouth with a shaking hand. Gee’s throat closed up, healing as I watched.

Leo looked better now. Calmer. So what was I seeing? Maybe what Gee had just done had calmed the savage beast? Something similar? Leo looked up at the humans and gestured for them to follow him, which they did, down the hallway. One was carrying Adrianna, who was still dripping blood and brains. That was gonna be hard to get out of the carpet. Brains were sticky and adhered to fibers.

There was a blink in the digital vid, and I was now seeing the camera down the hall from Leo’s office. Three humans were stumbling along, all heavily blood-drunk and weak looking—anemic. I checked the time frame. Half an hour after Leo had bled Gee.

“Is Gee okay?” I asked.

“Our Misericord is well,” Bethany said. “But he will not remain well if the master of this city continues to drain him in anger.”

“You must find the Son of Darkness and bring him back to us,” Sabina said, echoing Leo’s command.

“Once he is caught like a bird in a raptor’s talons, we will remove his sacred blood to tame him and place him back upon the wall,” Bethany said.

“And his blood will fill the holy relic for preservation,” Sabina said, her voice carefully bland.

I stared back and forth between the two priestesses. Those statements were so confusing I had no idea where to go with any of the information contained in them. Their faces were expressionless and cool, as if the idea of starving a vampire into greater, but compliant, insanity and using him for their own ends was an acceptable practice. And I had no idea what the holy relic was, but chances were it wasn’t anything to do with religion as I understood the word.

Humans had been researching ways to preserve vamp blood so they could test it for use in human medicines and drugs. So far, no go. Vamp blood decomposed quickly, no matter the preservative they tried, and even fresh, it didn’t cure every human illness; some of them seemed impervious to vamp blood, unless the patient was turned. And even turned, they had to go through years of the devoveo—the madness of the turn—with no certainty of surviving physically or mentally intact. Vamp blood was no panacea, sometimes healing, sometimes not, which was why vamps still existed as free beings at all.

Vamp blood also made the drinker susceptible to the mind-warping abilities of the vamp he or she was drinking from. A few sips and the drinker would be willing to do anything the vamp said, including removing shackles and shooting guards. The addictive properties of vamp blood kept most powerful humans from becoming blood-servants or paying for the privilege of drinking it. Vamps made dangerous captives.

So vamps weren’t being kept prisoner, or not openly, anyway, and drained of blood for sick humans to become healthy. But if human researchers ever discovered that there was a way to preserve vamp blood, there would be all-out war, as humans caught and shackled the vamps and drained them little by little for healing and cures and whatever else they could devise, all in the name of humanity and compassion. The relic, whatever it was, needed to remain secret.