Page 8 of Blood Magic

Chapter Three

“Weapons?” one of them asked.

She glared at him. “Take. Her. Upstairs.”

He shrugged and opened the door, and the other one motioned for me. I didn’t hesitate, happy enough to get away from Jennifer. There was something awful about her. But in the doorway, I stopped and looked back. “He’s twisted you all up inside, hasn’t he? You don’t even belong to yourself anymore. You’re just his…object.”

And suddenly it hit me. I was terrified of the same thing happening to me with my alpha. That was why I wanted my distance while my wolf wanted only Jared. I was terrified he would own me, fuck me up, and then…then I’d be just like Jennifer with her pitiful clipboard.

She only stared at me, hollow and lost, then lifted her fingers to the side of her neck. Her long hair moved, only for a second, but I saw what was there—what was likely over her entire body. Scars from hundreds of bites. She was his food, and her clipboard was likely all that remained of her former life.

And when she died, would he even care? Probably he had dozens of Jennifers, I couldn’t know. “You’re not his human servant, are you?” I murmured. “You’re his drudge.” His human slave. His feedbag.

“You don’t know anything about it,” she said, then gestured sharply at the two men. “Get her out of here.”

As we walked, and to take my mind off my nervousness, I recalled what I’d been taught about vampires.

Vampires didn’t turn humans into vampires simply by biting them or feeding from them. The turning of humans was much more complicated than that. They killed the human with their bite, then brought them back by a rather complex series of events that included magic, feeding them the mixed blood, and going into the earth to sleep with them for days. After that, the human had to be raised nearly like an infant to survive his turning and be taught how to be a vampire.

A lot of younger and less experienced vampires killed humans by attempting unsuccessfully to turn them, and that practice had been forbidden long ago by the vampire council—at least that’s what the wolves were taught. I was sure the vampires had their secrets, but that was the gist of it. It was not easy, by any means, to turn a human into a vampire. It was, however, horribly easy to turn them into corpses.

Though no one knew for sure, it was believed that an accidental mishap with magic had created vampires to begin with. Dark magic. It was always dark magic that created the monsters.

Creating human servants was yet another complicated process. Only vampire masters could make human servants, and they could do it without the human’s permission. Once they did, that human was bound to him forever, would give his life for his master, and would find it literally impossible to disobey him. In return, the servant lived longer than normal humans, was taken care of and protected by his master, and was highly important in the clan. The human servant was given servants—though not human ones.

It was all magic.

Scary fucking magic.

Vampires might have the ability to live forever, but when your life was shit, who wanted to live forever? And to my way of thinking, vampires' lives were shit. I mean, they couldn’t even eat. All they could do was drink blood.

They didn’t take me up the staircase, but to a discreet door behind which a small lift waited, complete with red velvet walls and silver fixtures. I didn’t want to get into a small moving cell with two vampires, but honestly, they seemed harmless, all things considered.

A few seconds later the doors whooshed open and I stepped out into a long, dim hallway. The floors were gleaming dark wood, the walls a muted shade of dark green and covered with art that looked old and expensive, not that I knew much about art.

And finally, I was shown into a large room off the hallway. The master’s bedchamber.

Ewww.

The room was large and violently red, resplendent with gold decorations and long, thick blood-colored drapes. The walls were white but so covered with other things that one didn’t tend to notice the color of the walls.

Standing in the shadows, so still and dark I almost missed her, was a bent old woman who stared out at me from eyes almost lost in the folds of her many wrinkles. Her hair was long and icy gray, and she was dressed in a plain black robe. I knew what she was, but I didn’t know why she’d be standing in the master’s bedchamber, watching him in his debauchery.

As Lennon was my alpha’s seer, this woman was likely Axton’s. Vampire witches were full of power, danger, and death magic. I shuddered and quickly looked away from her, hoping she wouldn’t zap me with some of that power. I didn’t know how to fight that shit, though the spells and charms tattooed into my flesh would help. I put my attention back on the room and the master vampire.

There was a blazing fireplace and antique furnishings—too many of them—but the centerpiece was the huge, four-poster bed.

Axton sat up against huge black pillows, and there were five people in the bed with him. Three females—all blonde, all with long hair, and all human—and two males. One of the men was human, the other was a vampire. Every human in that bed had empty eyes.

None of the people—including the master—seemed concerned with the fact that they were all in bed together or that they were all naked—or that they were all very bloody.

“Oh, Ms. Silver. The expression of disgust and disdain on your expressive face is so insultingly sanctimonious that it almost detracts from your beauty.”

His voice was like slithery dry husks, dark, dry things layered over the filth and pain and evil that usually tried to hide beneath them. He wasn’t trying to keep his darkness from me. He was trying to disturb me. Frighten me.

I reached automatically for my blade, but it wasn’t that gesture that caused the vampire master to flinch—it was the cross tat on my left hand.

I relaxed slightly. The older the vampire, the more sensitive he was to holy items. And Frederick Axton was pretty damn old. Young vamps were not strong enough to be masters.