Page 116 of Red Masquerade

There was a hearth in the room—which I realized now must have been an imitation of the old sacristy—and Vince summoned a servant to build a fire and bring some blankets. Chills wracked my body, and he cursed under his breath as he wrapped me in the furs and cashmere that had been brought. Against my naked skin, it felt like heaven.

We sat in front of the fireplace. He watched me, waiting for the moment I would pass out, but it never came.

I nibbled on some pastries he ordered—too many for me alone. I slowly regained some semblance of normalcy after the warmth from the fire and the sugar from the sweets.

We were alone in the cavernous room, but we sat in a comfortable silence. At least I was comfortable, though I suspected he had yet to relax after my brush with unconsciousness. I hadn’t realized how close I was, or I hadn’t cared, so exhilarated—but he had taken so much from me, that when I stood, I saw stars. He instantly swooped me up in his arms and growled for a servant.

His amber eyes traced the column of my neck. “You will scar.”

I lifted a shoulder, though the movement was hidden by the blankets.

“I will never regret marking you,” he said, his eyes flicking up to mine. He sat naked upon the blanket on the ground, one leg bent, his arm resting on his knee. “Even if it will eventually fade. You are already healing.”

I reached up, and felt that the punctures were already closed, not like a fresh wound, my skin smooth. “How?”

A corner of his mouth ticked upward. “My teeth. They heal as I tear the skin, so that when I’m done, there’s only a vague red mark. A byproduct of being a killer that lives and hides amongst its prey.”

“But the others out there—” I began, my brows furrowing.

“It’s a choice,” he said. “We can choose whether to heal or not. And while I wanted to see that pretty crimson blood spill all over you, I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

I didn’t need to tell him I had already been overwhelmed in other ways, thanks to how our bodies craved each other.

I took another bite of the pastry, the sugary, buttery breading crumbling on my tongue.

“We typically wait until the end of the evening to heal up wounds,” he explained, cocking his head to the side so boyishly I saw Adam for a moment.

“How often…”

He sniffed, knowing what I was about to ask. “We hold these at least once a month, more often in the summer months,” heexplained. “We gather during the parties, so no one will be any wiser.”

“But why?” I asked, setting the pastry down and pulling the blanket close around me, a chill traveling up my arms. “I didn’t know what was going on when I first came. I just thought it was a party.”

“Itisa party—for humans. For us, it’s a blood bank.”

I starkly remembered the man in the garden, pinning me, wanting to feed from me, before I truly understood what was happening. He had disappeared after that, after Vince had scared him away. I hadn’t seen him since.

“And,” he continued, “it draws others to us. People who want to be Made.”

The pieces began to fall into place, the full picture before me, begging to be put together. Dixon’s insistent warnings, the blank stares of the servants. Vince watched me, a dark smile growing as he saw I was beginning to understand.

“You Make them, and then they serve you.” He had said it himself, had said it before, that he was their Sire. “You deal in immortality.”

“I give them true life,” he said, his teeth glinting in the firelight, and I saw then his vicious cunning, how he had returned home but made an entirely new place for himself. “If someone wants it, who am I to refuse? Making the choice to become immortal—is that not better than it being forced upon you? As it was for me?”

There was truth in what he said, but I knew there was more.

He bent the truth.Madethe truth.

“What do you do?” I asked, fists tight under the blankets.

He watched me, every muscle at ease, the portrait of nonchalance. He knew I wasn’t asking how one was Made; and I saw it then. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell me.

I shed the blankets, letting them fall around me, and rose to my knees before him, so we were face to face. His mussed auburn hair fell away from his eyes as he looked up at me with the eyes of a king. There was no concern there, not for the topic at hand.

The him from Before was small, was meek in a way that was only learned from being stuck at the bottom rung. Adam was quiet, spoke only when spoken to, had been ready to take the blame for running into me on the street.

But now, Vince moved through the world unapologetically. He made his choice, he found me, and his transformation years ago hadn’t only been physical. In these six years, he’d built his own empire, right under our noses.