Cathedral Read online

  The line clicked, Ethan raising his voice to me for the first time ever. “Jade!”

  “You need to leave now. I’ll have your things sent over in the morning.” I’d barely finished the sentence before there was a loud knock on the door. “Be happy with your Kitty. Congratulations on the baby.”

  Angry, flabbergasted he was not getting his way, he sneered. “Don’t make me choose between you!”

  He’d have to learn this lesson the hard way. Just like me, he had no choice in this.

  He’d be made to marry me. There would be no more blondes. This Kitty, Ethan would keep her as a novelty for a little while, and then he’d start to chafe. He was right; he couldn’t take a stripper on his arm to the Met. He couldn’t take her to gallery openings, or to the fine restaurants his kind populated. She’d be out on the street with a baby he’d conveniently forget he’d fathered before the year was up. Then he’d be back at my side, loving and funny, and everything that kept my nightmares away.

  Until then… I’d survive.

  The door opened, a familiar security detail entering my house.

  “Goodbye, Ethan.” Padding barefoot over cold marble floors, I made my way through the beautiful penthouse my father made me live in, and left Ethan to Malcom’s daylight team.

  It took twice as many hours to apply my makeup, my cheeks embarrassingly wet.

  Chapter Seven

  Sundays, from sundown to sunup, belonged to the Cathedral. Ethan had always believed I’d attended evening Mass; that I escorted my infirm, eccentric father to take the Eucharist and drink the blood of Christ. The boy had found it equally hilarious and appalling that I kept to my family obligations in such a way.

  I, the sexual deviant and sinner.

  And never questioned why he wasn’t invited.

  The man would joke that he’d rather be beaten within an inch of his life than attend church—that even his senator uncle had never made such demands.

  More than once I’d been beaten within an inch of my life. So faithfully, I arrived on time to my father’s seat of power and left thoughts, regrets, agitations, and dissatisfaction at the door.

  No savior carried the weight of my sins here.

  There was no worship on site, not of God anyway. A great deal of sacrilege took place in its stead.

  Ethan would not have survived five minutes under these ancient, hidden spires. Buried at the blackened heart of the city, an entire block wasn’t what it appeared. Innocuous row houses, well-kept and quiet. Picket fences and garden pots. Cars parked on the street.

  No human soul would be the wiser of just what haunted the shadows here… just what was tucked behind those houses.

  I preferred to access the hidden Cathedral through a less conspicuous entrance than a magiced portal into the main hall. A cab down tree-lined streets, a regular key on a Tiffany’s keychain, a modestly decorated façade of a foyer, and a contract bound, recently changed servant waiting with modernity’s tablet in hand to greet those granted access through my favored private entrance.

  Heels clicking over waxed wood floors, I stripped off my coat, handing it to an unfamiliar fresh-turned, without breaking stride.

  Fumbling fox fur and hand-held device, a pretty brunette whom I suspected had been chosen for her particularly stunning eyes, made a noise of impatience at my rudeness.

  I never came home to make friends with new and very expendable servants. And hungry, I was in no mood to try as I might have decades before. “Is there anyone set for execution? If so, send them to me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Blowing over her non-question, I tried to shake off the itchy feeling this place pressed upon me. Impatient, I snapped. “The conservatory. Send me something to eat.”

  Having made my way through the townhouse, I reached the end of what hid my father’s fortress from a city of cattle. Hand to a spike-riddled door more ancient than this country, I pushed the weight no human might shift alone. Hinges groaned, and candlelight waited.

  We did things the old way here.

  Well, it might better serve to say we blended some human novelties with beeswax, scented lamp oil, slavery, and the distant sounds of screams.

  Many of those echoing shouts were of ecstasy. Not all though.

  In my father’s expansive region, it wasn’t considered tasteless to fuck what you fed from. After all, how else was his flock to make new little vampires with pretty eyes and bad manners? It was best to woo them first. Those always made the best contract servants. Forced changes rarely ended well. After all, if you’re signing away your life to practical slavery for three hundred years, it was best to at least get an orgasm out of it.

  Besides, sexual procreation was difficult, and wars that ate up fresh meat were always fought between ancient rivals.

  This time of dusk, few lurked around the Cathedral halls, the ritual of preparation to be seen so deeply ingrained in many of those who ranked highest here, that it might as well have been the court of Versailles. Like the others of my station, I too had spent an inordinate amount of time dressing.

  I had to be perfect.

  My father expected it.

  A princess was a reflection on her king, wasn’t she?

  Even an outraged one.

  Immaculate, coiffed, makeup flawless, and new necklace a glittering reminder that I’d get my Ethan back clinging around my throat, I looked the part. More care was taken with the choice of sapphire blue cocktail dress than I might spend on the red carpet for the Met’s outrageously ostentatious annual costume gala.

  Hair gathered back from my forehead, sleek and long, it hung from a ponytail so my throat might be bare. A subtle fuck you to my father’s people—Vampires who went to outrageous lengths to keep their weak points concealed with jewelry, collars, ruffs, turtlenecks.

  Yes, I was physically weaker than even the freshly turned, pretty-eyed female who still stalked behind me asking questions I ignored. Yes, I feed from immortals who could snap me in half on a whim. But none would ever dare.

  Not unless they wanted to spend an eternity as my father’s newest plaything. After all, the devil could think up extraordinary acts of pain, make a symphony from tortured screams.

  A dark-haired servant—another freshly turned contract worker—walked past me as I moved through narrow stone halls. The delicious scent of a well-fed vampire wafted, drew my eyes for a lingering look.

  Mouth watering, I fought the urge to feel the silken slip of my fangs slide down. Gums tingling, I repressed the need. I left the unknown immortal alone.

  One, who unlike my yammering shadow snipping about protocol, knew who I was.

  No damned soul wanted to be fed upon by a daywalker. It was an embarrassment of sorts every last member of my father’s herd avoided at all costs. Though none were allowed to deny the king’s offspring should I ask for a taste.

  All designed to keep them hating me. To keep me from making a home with the only creatures in existence who wouldn’t die with each passing year.

  To keep me lonely and politically weak while giving me more power than any creature haunting this hellhole.

  The tight smile the male offered, the subtle nod of his head said just as much. Please, I’m new and already fodder for the ancients who toy with us at will. Please, I might be too weak to survive the things I’ve heard Satan’s daughter likes to do.

  “My lady.”

  Those two words, and still the young female tracking me kept yammering. “You can’t be back here. I don’t have you on the list!”

  Instead of helping a fellow contract bound fresh-changed, the male slipped away when I forced my head to turn away from the appetizing temptation his very presence presented.

  My hands shook, but my feet continued forward on the well-worn stone. Conservatory before me, head aching from denying the feed, throat parched in a way water might never relieve, I put my hands to the unguarded double doors of a room made of glass.

 
; A room made to harden the soft skin of a baby daywalker to sunlight.

  Before I might find sanctuary in my private indoor garden, the freshly changed vampire female grabbed my wrist. “I told you, you can’t—”

  To my left, shadow became flesh. And before the youngling might finish her complaint, her head became pulp against the wall. Smell of blood overwhelming, a shudder vibrated from my spine to bloodless fingertips.

  There was no preventing the excruciating way my fangs descended, long and deadly, behind my tension thinned lips. Eyes to the door I’d only barely cracked open, I tried not to slur through my teeth as I deadpanned, “She didn’t know who I was.”

  Malcom stood stoic, the embodiment of disapproval. “Nor did you tell her.”

  Which meant he blamed me for the death he’d doled out.

  Abandoning the blood-splattered hall that left my stomach loudly growling. Refusing, even famished as I was to feed upon the dead, I left stone floors for sumptuous Persian rugs, ivory inlay, and cobalt tile. Victorian architecture made up my beautiful cage, the scent of growing things, and a room that come daybreak would be drenched with stinging sunlight.

  Home.

  The little glass coffin my father had once demanded I sleep in still had its place, untouched by time, yet polished to a sparkling sheen by some unknown slave in my absence. Edwardian couches, ancient wardrobes, tables set for a feast that would never be laid. Branching glass side rooms for sleeping, bathing, reading—every need readied and staged for immortal and mortal alike.

  There were even trickling fountains granting the air a pleasantness that the sheer beauty of the room could never accomplish. No amount of sunshine, tended roses, fruit trees, or satin might break up the taint of this place.

  Fisting my fingers until knuckles cracked, I grew irritated that the dead servant in the halls had never placed my order. No breathing undead meal waited.

  What was the point of having a smart device in these dead halls if the greeter for the Broad Street entrance didn’t use it? What had she done with my fox fur coat? If her blood was on it, I’d never be able to wear it again without salivating constantly.

  “Jade… your eyes are red.”

  Malcom’s impatience at being left unacknowledged fed my impatience at his lurking. “You were not invited into my rooms.”

  “I have leave to enter any room you choose to grace with your presence.” He dared run his fingertip down an errant drip of blood his little show in the hall had left on my bare arm.

  “Not here you don’t!” Already I had him by the throat, his shined shoes barely scraping the ground once his back hit the wall. “No soul has leave to enter my rooms without permission. I know that for fact.”

  What a vision I must have made: lips drawn back, fangs glinting, and eyes as red as the demon who’d sired me. I had one of the most powerful males in my father’s guard pinned.

  And he could have broken my arm, broken my body, at any time in retaliation.

  But hunger made me as stupid as Malcom had warned me it would.

  I couldn’t truly hurt this man if I wanted to, and I did. I wanted it badly.

  I wanted to tear into flesh and sinew, gnaw his bones for marrow.

  I wanted to feel his last heartbeat while I sucked in the stygian blood that made him immortal.

  I wanted to feast.

  Reaching out, fingers soft because predators of the night were designed to be tempting in all ways, Malcom gave my earlobe a tweak. “You should have eaten. You promised me, Jade.”

  Hating how often he used my name, I meant to hiss, but found my head turning toward the subtle thump, thump, thump of the pretty arteries in a beautiful wrist drumming by my ear.

  Marble white skin, blue capillaries. A pretty delta spreading from a single, juicy vein.

  The groan left me before I might reign in the animal inside. Tongue flicking out, I forgot the man I held by the throat, the one suspended over the ground by my sheer strength, and tasted my lower lip instead.

  Pleasure waited with just one bite.

  Fulfillment.

  And I began to ache, I was so hungry.

  Right there, right before me was a balm to such pain. Right there was everything I’d ever wanted.

  Teeth sunk in, raking deep so cool blood might flow so much faster into my mouth.

  Pressing that wrist to my lips, I gorged, sucked deep… drained him.

  Until a horrifying moment of clarity broke though the frenzy.

  He must have noticed when sanity returned, for the bastard dared stroke my hair with his free hand… Or had been the whole time I’d acted the fool?

  “Take what you need.”

  I dropped him. I backed away. I ran the back of my hand over my blood red lips.

  And I could not meet his eye for the shame.

  That was nothing to the utter dread that surged into my breast a moment later.

  “Daughter.” A living nightmare whispered into the room behind me. “How good it is to see you.”

  Chapter Eight

  It had been five months since my Father had last approached me in his Cathedral. Five months in which I’d grown complacent.

  Five months since I felt raw fear the way I felt it when his dulcet voice drifted over my ears.

  Scrubbing my mouth of all traces of blood, as if that might make any difference, I’d made sure to straighten my dress before turning to curtsey and cast my eyes to the floor. “Father.”

  Robed, he still dressed as if ruling the ancient Persian empire from which he’d hailed, vivid, gem-encrusted red scraped over the floor. He came nearer.

  “My king. Senator Rothschild has proposed a marriage between your daughter and his nephew. He seeks to keep your favor as he abandons your policies. Jade argued with the boy this afternoon, sent him to his mistress.” Just like that the only report of note I had to deliver was stolen, Malcom taking the credit and leaving me to look petulant, weak, and most importantly, disobedient.

  For I had not made note of the situation the previous evening, too busy scrubbing off the stink of garbage and cum. Then I had played at bed sport with the human who’d failed to seed my womb for years. Unable to resist the scratch of filthy fingers picking though my thoughts, I wobbled on my feet, regained balance, and tried my best not to resist King Darius’ mental probe.

  “It’s unbecoming, daughter.” I heard it. I felt it. I knew my daddy’s words in every last cell.

  My attachment to Ethan; the feelings of comradery. He and I, both servants to great houses. Trying to paint myself as if it was us against an unjust world. My righteous anger that he’d claimed to love a replaceable blonde.

  “How many times must we have this discussion? Did you learn nothing from your time with Gerard?” As if loving, as if he wasn’t seeking to make me squirm for his own amusement, my father chided, “Did that old corpse leave his wife for you? Did he love you back?”

  “No.” Yes. Yes he had. He’d loved me and he’d been sent off to die thanks to Malcom.

  And that was entirely the wrong thought to have in the presence of an all-seeing evil.

  The taste of King Darius’ displeasure soured the stolen blood in my belly. It turned my bones to mush. Even so, I looked up, certain my eyes were pleading for mercy I’d never know. “I wish to marry Ethan.”

  I wished to run away with him and hide where no shadows could ever touch me.

  “Hmmmm.” A warm sound that chilled my marrow. More beautiful than any ancient contracted to walk the halls of my father’s Cathedral, the king of my entire universe sighed. The unbearable weight of glowing red eyes left my body to settle on my guardian. “Tell me, Malcom. Has she been repeatedly disobedient?”

  My father’s favored guard did not hesitate. “She uses starvation as a means of rebellion, but in no other way has she dissatisfied.” Feet planted as if an entire temple was braced on his shoulders, Malcom was the perfect servant. “I suggest a mandatory feeding
schedule and the instillation of rotated offerings placed in her building to attend her requirements.”

  A trough of unwilling and embarrassed immortals for me to nip at when I had a hankering.

  Already my cheeks heated from the mockery that would be made behind my back should my father agree.

  I’d rather starve, eat once a week, and look strong in the only way I could than be forced to snack nightly like my brethren did. This rebellion, as Malcom called it, was all I had to own my place here.

  I hadn’t seen him move, but next thing I knew, my father’s thumb and forefinger pinched my chin. “You don’t look enough like your mother to please me, girl. Keep that in mind when you let your thoughts run wild.”

  Because I looked just like him. Same high forehead, same lush mouth.

  The only thing I had of her was the blue of my eyes… when they didn’t go red.

  “I apologize.” For being born the way I was.

  Next I knew, my hands were taken, arms spread so my father might peruse my clothing. “I like this color. Next thing you know, black will no longer be the staple at court.”

  Black had not been in vogue for years, but my father had not sat his throne or paid attention to such trivialities for longer than that.

  My thoughts made him smirk.

  Pressing a fatherly kiss to my cheek, I heard my sentence for whatever list of failings he’d compiled. “Malcom, you’ve done well. Tonight she’s yours.”

  “Sir.” Malcom said with perfect reverence.

  “Well, go ahead. She’s failed with everyone else. Enjoy your reward and give me a grandchild.”

  To protest in any other way than the hysterical quickening of my heart and shallow breaths was unthinkable. I hated Malcom more than I hated life itself, yet still I turned, bending over the nearest table to present.