Page 7 of Night Prey
“Sophie. Wake up,” a male speaks near me.
His voice sounds familiar, but I’m having difficulty placing him. I want to wake up, but my eyelids feel as though they’ve been glued together.
“You said the spell would work, Hector,” the male snaps.
“It should have worked. Give it time,” another male voice replies. I assume it’s Hector unless there are more people in the room.
“I don’t have time! Boone is gone, and Tatiana isn’t herself.”
Boone. That name feels like a bucket of ice-cold water has been poured over me. My skin prickles, and it seems I can’t get air into my lungs. With a gasp, I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling with lights that are far too bright.
“Sophie!” My father’s face appears before me. He looks frantic.
I open my mouth to say something, but my throat is dry, and it seems I forgot how to use my tongue to form words. How long have I been hibernating?
My father turns to the other person in the room. “Give me one of those damn blood bags.”
I follow his arm movement and see that the other person is human, and he feels powerful. He must be a mage.
My gums ache as my fangs descend. Father puts a blood bag against my lips, but I’m not interested in the stale liquid inside it. I’m craving fresh blood from the source. But I’m far too weak to move, so I drink what’s offered first. It’s no surprise that I empty the bag within seconds. Father offers me a new bag, but I push his hand away and pounce on the mage, who was too distracted to stop me.
He yells as we both fall on the ground, but he grows silent when I sink my fangs into his neck. His body becomes limp as his blood fills my mouth. A rush goes to my head and I become delirious thanks to the heady feeling of drinking blood after so long without it. It’s not only the satisfaction of quenching my hunger, but also the flow of information my brain receives from the mage’s blood. Blood remembers.
“Sophie, that’s enough!” Father tries to pull me away from the mage, but it only makes me clamp my teeth harder into his skin. I keep drinking until his blood becomes tasteless. That only happens when the heart stops beating.
I pull back and confirm what I already knew. I killed the mage. His eyes are wide open but seeing nothing. In my bloodlust, I tore through his throat. He would have died even if I had stopped in time. I wait for the guilt to come, but all I feel is a great void as I stare at the corpse.
“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you cleaned up.” My father takes my arm, and this time, I let him help me to my feet.
“Who was he?” I ask.
“No one of importance.”
I frown. “He helped bring me back from hibernation, didn’t he?”
My father waves his hand. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just a rogue mage. He won’t be missed.”
I look at the dead mage once more, trying to imagine what kind of life he lived before he accepted a job from my father. Maybe he had a family, children even. Surely someone will miss him. But I say nothing. My musings won’t change what happened, and it will only irritate my father.
He returns to me holding a wet cloth. His eyebrows are pinched together while he cleans my face. Second-generation vampires stop aging at some point when they hit maturity. My father still looks like a man in his mid-thirties, but he seems older somehow, and his once light brown hair has silver streaks in it.
“How long have I been gone?” I ask.
“Too long, darling. Too long.”
He doesn’t want to be specific, which is a bad sign. I take a deep breath and attempt to sort through all the information I received from the mage’s blood. He didn’t live long enough, so the knowledge is confusing to me. I’m missing a lot of history.
“What happened to Tatiana and… Boone?” It costs me to say his name, and I wonder why. Even though he was Queen Tatiana’s son, I never liked the male. He always gave me a bad feeling.
My father grimaces, then steps back. “Queen Tatiana is ill, and Boone… well, Boone is dead.”
Boone is dead.A strange sense of relief washes over me.
“How did he die?”
He sneers, and pure hatred shines in his eyes. “Lucca.”
Lucca Della Morte, the usurper king’s nephew. It’s been centuries since we’ve been at war with his family.
