Moonshifted(93)
“We have the right!” said a man, one of those entering late. “I am the leader of this House. I get to have a vote.”
“The votes have already been counted.” The master of ceremonies grew before me, the shadows around him gathering, taking up more space, crowding out the air.
“What would you find acceptable?” Anna said, stepping in front of me. At her intrusion, the master of ceremonies seemed to shrink and withdraw. All fights tonight were hers.
The man, dressed as an imitation of Henry the Eighth with a stomach to match, stepped forward. “We would prefer enough blood to bathe in, of course.” Only members of his retinue laughed at his joke. “But we will accept a small sacrifice. One of your court, perhaps. Or more blood from your wrist divine.”
I realized that as a whole, they lacked bargaining power, knowing she wouldn’t let them slaughter us, her court, off one by one. But their dissent could cause chaos, and if she was low on blood, no true vampire would think twice about sacrificing a pawn for their cause.
How much had she bled? How much more could she make? How fast? The longer this took, the more they would know she was stalling for time, and there were thirty vampires that still needed sating.
“I accept your challenge.” She took another step forward. “I am afraid I cannot put my Ambassador again through such stress.” She gave me a look overly full of pity, and then turned back to them. “I am forced to let you all drink from the source.”
She crossed the distance between them and held her wrist up for the taller man who neared. He was looking for a trap. To drink was to put yourself in danger. Everyone here had also, if only in distant memory, been a gazelle.
“Drink deeply,” she demanded, shaking her wrist as the last of the scarificator marks healed. He grabbed her arm, steadied himself and her, and bit her.
They were like sharks when they fed, eyes open, dark, then rolling back. His teeth fastened into her wrist, both sides. I could hear the force of his bite, fangs cutting into her. Behind him, the members of Bathory House leered. He couldn’t even drink all of her blood—it seeped beyond the edges of his pulled-back lips, and dripped onto the floor.
Other jealous vampires were becoming restless—and not all of them were Bathory.
It would not go well for me in a bloodbath.
I watched him as they watched her. He closed his eyes.
She beheaded him. Without changing position or alerting him in any way, her free hand punched through his neck. Maybe he was drunk on blood, entranced by power—one second he was drinking, hunched over, and the next his head was still attached to her arm while the rest of his body staggered to the floor.
Instead of dusting, blood spurted out of his neck’s open wound, on both sides. House Bathory crowded, stunned, dismayed, and she kicked his body toward them.
“You may drink of him, and through him, drink of me. When my blood in him is gone, all you will get is dust, and those of you who are not mine will die.”
They fell on him like wolves. I heard fabric shred, then the sound of tearing meat, the break of bones. Anna pried his head off her wrist, where it sat whole, latched on, like a rattlesnake. As it fell it started crumbling to dust, peppering her clothes. The rest of the body crumbled accordingly, and the Bathory vampires who hadn’t fed yet wailed.
Anna turned to the master of ceremonies. “Am I a member of the Sanguine, or am I not?”
A cruel smile played across his lips. He looked around to the others whom I had thought were mere servants, stuck holding trays, and I watched them nod one by one—the other members of the Sanguine, walking among us all along. The vampires had known, of course, but not me, till now. When he spoke, he showed black-stained teeth. “If you were not when you walked in, you have become so.” He turned toward the Bathory vampires, now licking at drops of blood in the carpeting, eating fistfuls of dust. “We will handle the herd.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see what came next.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I didn’t know I was pressing my hands to my ears until I felt someone tugging at them. I’d been through too much tonight, done too much, seen too much blood.
“Did we break you?” Sike was holding my hands now, and shaking me. I focused on her again. Her face was clean, her smile high and bright. She raised a hand between us and snapped her fingers. “She’s going to be very busy for a while now.” We both knew she meant Anna. I didn’t want to look around.
I’d never hurt someone intentionally like that before. And then I remembered how I’d stabbed Jorgen, and was still covered in his blood, and the blood of the driver before him, and—