The Relic Read online

  A servant appeared to pour more perfectly chilled wine in my glass. Wine I drank staring over the rim at my host… Vladislov.

  Who smiled an extremely beautiful expression on an interesting face. “Well done, brave queen.”

  “She really is a vision.” A female interloper. One who approached so regally I felt the need to call her ma’am. And would have had Vladislov not clearly unh-uh’d me under his breath.

  “Maya, might I introduce my bride? This is Pearl.” He kissed my fingertips, met my eyes, and finished, “Pearl, she was meant to be your breakfast.”

  The statement was so utterly ridiculous that I snorted a quick laugh. Mortified an instant later. Cheeks flaming, I faced the insanely beautiful woman, and said, “Hello.”

  Insane had to be the perfect word for all of this. All of me. The fact that my hand was still caught in the clutches of the name I would not think.

  To which he laughed, full-bellied and thoroughly amused. When glittering eyes left mine, after an improperly long stare, he addressed the patiently waiting woman. “She’s shy.”

  “Weren’t we all when life was new? Now come, Pearl, I promised the other ladies I would tempt you from your lover’s side so they might meet you.”

  My fingers were freed, and a hand came to my lower back, propelling me gently toward the woman who countered the space to assure no physical contact was made. Yet still smiled and waved me nearer.

  This too made the host chortle, the same host urging me to follow her. “Go on now. Everyone here will be lovely. Just don’t touch any of them.” At my back, his voice darkened. “I wouldn’t like it. And they wouldn’t like what I’d do.”

  Maya chuckled yet still stepped back, assuring, “He won’t always be so obsessive. It’s not in our nature to deny physical touch. You’ll be hungry for it soon enough. Besides, he’ll give you whatever you ask for, including mercy on our poor souls.” I followed as she continued. “Besotted, utterly. A fool in love.”

  Though Vladislov must have heard her, there was no waspish reprimand. Instead, I heard his tenor picking up a conversation about livestock with another, leaving me to the women who crowded as near as they might without the risk of physical touch.

  “This is Eloisa, Kami, Fhulendu…” Each lady introduced by dark-skinned, glowing Maya—most of their names beyond my ability to pronounce. Features and hair, histories, body shapes, and style all so foreign, so out of place in the world I knew. Each beautiful to the point it might leave a person breathless.

  All patient as I drank more wine and chose silence over conversation with demons. So they spoke to one another for my benefit, of pleasant things, of trysts, of jokes, of modern luxuries I’d never heard of. Of travel and far-off wonders. Of lost wonders. Of their children, their children’s children. A few bragging about the pure bloods they had produced, causing others to narrow their gaze as if in envy. Yet all had dozens—if not hundreds of offspring—chosen from the finest quality of humans to enhance Vladislov’s vision of Vampirekind.

  As if this was normal, they were normal, and the broken piece of this puzzle was me.

  I was a Daywalker. I walked in the sunlight, lived with humans, ate their food....

  A kiss fell atop my head, a strong arm circling my middle. More tipsy than I realized, I leaned back into the support of something solid when the ground was sand and the world was… strange.

  “What a vision the pair of you make!” A round of feminine giggles, then, “I should snap a photo to show my hive. Smile!”

  A rectangular device was produced. A flash.

  And the ladies laughed, the joke utterly lost on me.

  Warm lips at my ear breathed, “Because of the myth that vampires cannot be photographed.”

  “Oh, like how people think we don’t have reflections?” Had I just said we?

  I wasn’t like these things.

  Embracing me, another kiss to my hair, Vladislov spoke over the fading laughter. “My bride means no offense. Not that any of you have permission to peek, but her experiences with her kind have been unpleasant. Pearl doesn’t know what great company we can be.”

  “Pearl,” Fhulendu, dark-skinned, heavy braid, beautiful to the point I wanted to cry, said, “sometime, I’ll tell you about my early years. They too had been unpleasant, so believe me when I say I understand. We all do—well, maybe not those purebloods born to this life. But for many who were changed, especially in the old world, it was a challenging period of our existence.”

  “Well said.” Maya smiled, running a hand down the arm of the woman at her side.

  And they seemed so nice I didn’t know what to make of it.

  They felt real. So real I wished I might see what they looked like under their pretty skins. Were they pitch like Vladislov? Did they crackle with fire? Wings? Claws? Fangs dripping venom?

  Did their touch burn?

  “Only mine will burn you, my soul.”

  Shivering from the feel of cool lips brushing my ear, I failed to resist when he took the hand dangling limp at my side, lifting my arm so I might cup the cheek of the creature at my back.

  I felt a face freshly shaved, the sharp angles of high cheekbones.

  I felt my eyes grow wide when he turned his head to press a hot kiss to my palm.

  And then I began to cry, because I would not be fooled. Not by Lucifer, or Vladislov, or Darius, bright lights, crystal, beauty that was little more than a husk to conceal real monsters from a world that made no sense.

  Breaking down into hiccupping sobs, unreasonably mortified, I was turned, my painted face pressed to the white, starched shirt of my keeper. Ruined by cake mascara and lips painted with rouge.

  I sobbed, I clung, and knew I had drank far too much wine too quickly.

  My teeth ached; the part of me that had always brought me shame tried to elongate. The part of me, I’d been told, that would not regenerate like any other bit of my horrible body. But would grow back over centuries.

  My stomach rumbled obnoxiously loud. I was enfolded, yet there were no bat-like wings. My hair was gathered into a fist, my mouth turned up, and a throat slit with a dagger I knew had an ivory handle poured a fountain of perfection on my face.

  I drank.

  Climbing the figure who bled in my gaping mouth like a monkey. I burrowed my fingers into bronze waves.

  Gulping, rocking my hips despite how my mind screamed to stop such things, agelessness poured down my throat.

  When I was done crying, nose stuffed and sniveling, I broke suction on skin that had already mended, smeared in black fluid from nose to breast—rivulets from that once gaping wound having run down my throat, staining the modest collar of the priceless gown.

  Looking every bit the horrific vampire.

  “Did you see that?” Hushed murmurs so soft no human might hear moved like a breeze through the enrapt room. “She drank from his throat.”

  “She really is his soul.”

  My hair still fisted in the grip of the man I’d just feasted upon with wild abandon, he made me meet his burning eye as he loudly proclaimed, “And she is perfect.”

  Before pressing a bloodthirsty kiss to my mouth.

  5

  Pearl

  If one could be devoured, have their very soul sucked from their being, the kiss conquering my mouth accomplished such a feat. I was consumed.

  Legs already wrapped around his waist, nails already digging into his scalp so I might hold my prey still while I gorged, I was tangled up with no escape.

  Prey became predator.

  The tongue twisting about mine was anything but gentle. The palm under my rear had grown claws I knew were black as sin and sharp as the nails driven into Christ.

  Yet despite razor-sharp fangs, despite talons, despite ferocity and thirst and monstrous passion, I did not bleed. The demon was careful in his assault.

  Hard where I was liquid fire.

  Dangerous, snarling, savage, and so strong I never stood a whisper of a chance.

 
; He fed on me as I had fed on him. Uncontrolled. Unabashed.

  With a mad mind and unquenched hunger.

  Was this how lovers kissed?

  Did it always destroy one so completely?

  Pain would come next. Rending. Penetration that would kill another part of my tattered soul.

  Probably here before the room. Probably over and over until I screamed for mercy while the audience laughed, only to wake up in the crypt to find that book and the horrible notes again.

  Yet… as savagely as it had begun, it ended.

  The force in which he’d pulled his swollen mouth away left mine searching out missing sensation. An action obstructed by his grip on my hair. “I apologize for being so forward.”

  What? What nonsense was this?

  Men never apologized! They followed women through blizzards and raped them on the street. They locked girls in rooms and caused reckless, horrible harm.

  My pupils dilated, the oddest sensation coming over me. Blood drunk and wine saturated, I whispered between pants, “I killed a man when he pushed me down in the snow and tried to shove inside. He might have, I was never sure. But I remember his blood all over my coat. I vomited and scrubbed, but the smell would not go away. So, an angel came to deliver judgment. I was dragged from life into death to be thrown at the feet of the Devil.” A living corpse dressed in tatters who poked around every last part of me for a century. “I… I am lost. God no longer loves me.”

  “The God you speak of never did, Daywalker. Not from the moment your mother birthed you, not from the sad rejection of the screaming child she dumped on the mission doorsteps. Not when you were brutalized. Bewildered. Starved. Or left hanging from that tree as a child.”

  He took my chin. “I loved you. No other.”

  “You are evil.” Of that, I had no doubt.

  “Then be my goodness.” A peck on kiss-stung lips. “Be my sun.”

  Yet he could walk in the sun… a thought that left a few startled gasps in a roomful of glittering nightmares.

  He could walk in the sun where they could not.

  But in that instant, I knew why he burned with fire. He could walk in the sun, but he could not feel it. He couldn't feel anything but where my mouth had just been joined with his.

  The stroke from buttocks up my spine as he unwound and slid me down his body was a screaming declaration that I was correct. The hands that came to steady me when my shoes hit the parquet floors were black, fire licking from between the cracks in the skin, singeing my dress.

  But his face, that forgettable, interesting face, was so human it made my heart ache.

  “Let me see.” Show me the night winged demon lurking behind that gaze.

  And he did, to the sound of screams.

  Screams that didn’t come from my throat.

  “They didn’t know?” How could those creatures not have? The centuries they’d spoken of. The epochs in which they had known this being.

  The room was empty, those who could vanish without a trace gone. Those who could not having fled through the door.

  “They didn’t know.” Fanged and hideous, a monstrosity smiled, preening, wingspan stretching to knock items from carefully arranged tables and crash against crystal chandeliers. Making a right mess. “Only you have seen what becomes of a man whose soul is stolen. Who will make any sacrifice to see it returned. Who has been trapped in endless monotony waiting for his lost love to be reborn as she swore she would be.”

  But others had seen him when I’d been pulled from the tomb.

  Chuckling, running strands of my dark hair through his claws, Vladislov said, “Not any who lived.”

  My next words died on my tongue, what he’d implied sinking deep into my belly. “So, you’re going to kill all of your friends who came tonight?”

  His response was so simple. “Yes.”

  “And if I asked you not to?”

  “Not to slaughter the monsters you feared?” A shrug. More crystal shattered against the floor when those terrible wings flexed and bent. “I suppose I could restrain myself. But… it’s going to cost you for the terrible mess your request will create.”

  Of course. The devil and his deals.

  “Ah, ah.” That thing clucked its tongue, bending over me so I need not crane my head so high. “There is no need to always think the worst of me. I can’t help but love you, and I am trying rather hard. Be kind.”

  Kind?

  Maya had let it slip in might conversation that I held their lives in my hands. Had they been as terrified as I to be there?

  “Some of them, yes.” The beast slouched and took a knee. Like a knight—like a villain. “It seemed only fair you not be the only frightened person in the room. Please note how I called them people. Your train of thought tends to be a bit less gracious. And mayhap you’ll consider that none of us had a choice in what we became. Not really. Not when the orchestrations of the universe are so… unavoidable.”

  Braced, knowing exactly what men wanted in trade, my fists bunched in my skirt.

  This creature was very male. I had already seen what the tatters of his clothing could not conceal on more than one occasion. An organ massive, inhuman, and pulsating.

  Yet, as I was already condemned, already made the whore in that god-forsaken pit. What did it matter if I did this for strangers? “Do you want me to lay down here?”

  A great sigh sent heat to ripple in the air, Vladislov answering, “I want you to go for nightly walks with me, outside. Once every three nights, we’ll take dinner in a restaurant. Where you can order anything you want and I can spoil you with compliments.”

  Why such a simple thing seemed more terrifying than spreading my thighs, I couldn’t say. A cold sweat on my brow, dryness on my tongue, I nodded. Because there was no agreement to be made that wasn’t even more ridiculous than this party.

  “Well, that settles that. They can live. They will adore you for such mercy, clever queen!” How it smiled with that face, I couldn’t comprehend. Not that I wanted to, or even stood a chance.

  And just like that, he was gone. One moment there, the next not.

  I was alone, in a roomful of broken things and scattered glasses. Of immortal blood spilt on the floor and smeared into my skin. What was there to do but seek out the trays of food that had been dropped by the staff and snack? What was there to do but walk over all that shattered crystal and feel my dress catch on the shards?

  What was there to do but drink every bottle of wine left to chill until I was thoroughly intoxicated.

  Passed out sprawled across a settee.

  To hardly wake when strong arms lifted me up and put me to bed.

  Cool sheets below, the mattress dipped and a warm body joined me.

  And I slept like the dead.

  6

  Vladislov

  “Ha! I knew this experience would be something. Just look at your face.” She was adorable with her eyes squinted and her cheeks sucked in. “I used the Yelp.”

  Mouth still full of overcooked oyster, my soul asked, “Yelp? Like a howl?”

  As if this were some new Vampire power she’d yet to see. How hard it was to restrain the laughter, but I did.

  Heroic as ever, I brandished my smart phone and pulled up the app so she might see. “Newspaper editorials are a thing of the past. Now, anyone can blab an opinion for the world to see. As humans so love to complain—especially where they think they might be heard the loudest—a clever monkey designed a platform where people might review a business and then all glory in their opinions.”

  Baffled, she stared down at the platter. “So humans like this dish?”

  “No. They hated it. And now you are part of that experience! Welcome to the twenty-first century.” Passing her my phone, a device it had taken three days to convince her to touch in the first place, I grinned. “Want to leave a review?”

  Missing the concept, but so cute I could literally eat her, Pearl leaned closer to my outstretched hand and told the phone. “The
seafood platter isn’t good.”

  “Ah.” We’d work on how to use the keyboard later. Tucking my phone away, I pushed back the wobbly chair, in full agreement with how it groaned over uneven wood floors, and offered my queen a hand. “Now, let’s see if humans are correct about the bistro next door.”

  Sipping water, still somewhat grimacing, she gave me such a pathetic look. “Does the Yelp say the food there is also bad?”

  “No. The chef is a hidden treasure, and she has prepared a feast specially tailored to your tastes tonight.” Which I had assured by sending Fhulendu with her favorite human pet to scout out the location. The human sampled every last dish on the menu, required to fully report each sensation. A twenty-five-page essay waiting for me to indulge in, mostly glorifying the merits of the braised lamb shank. “If you like it, I’ll buy the location. If you’re extremely happy, I’ll kidnap the chef and have her changed. She can prepare your meals for eternity!”

  Considering freshly changed humans were such a massive pain, the generous offer most assuredly would impress her.

  Except it didn’t.

  Though I knew Pearl required sustenance of the mortal variety, the snip dared lie to me, placing her napkin on the table. “I’m full. Thank you though.”

  This wouldn’t do. “Someday, you’ll see a human you just have to have. You’ll know your offspring at first glance, or maybe first smell. We, like any species, reproduce.”

  “I won’t turn a human into”—she gestured at herself, so full of self-loathing it made the air taste rancid—“this.”

  “No. You won’t. Daywalkers can’t. I will have it done for you.” This lesson was far more imperative than the Yelp, honestly. Or even her discomfort when I pinched her chin and raised her eyes to mine. “Mark my words. It is natural and normal. As is reproduction of the more erotic variety. We are a very physical species.”

  What power a bit of fresh air and bad food had on my darling. She brushed off my hand and even had the tenacity to glare as she sneered. “I don’t want children of any kind.”