DAMIEN
I’m royally fucked. I manifest underground outside the west wing of the Palace of Night Haven, feeling like I have a full-body case of blue balls. I need answers. Eloise Harcourt has sunk her claws into me and is performing some kind of voodoo on my inner workings. Maeve Gowdie may not know what she is, but she’s something. A godsdamned enchantress I haven’t encountered in five hundred years on two different worlds.
Even now, every molecule that makes up my shadowy body is aching to return to her, and not just for blood. My mating drive urges me to claim her. I’m strung out and wanting. Should I have stayed? The taste of her blood was pure ambrosia, and just like the ancient drink of the gods, it’s both delicious and deadly. I can feel it coursing through my veins like bottled lightning, throbbing in my still hard cock.
When she invited me to take her, I’d almost given in. The idea of fucking her until she screamed my name wasmore than tempting. Coming inside her while drinking that sweet nectar from her vein would be paradise. The only thing that stopped me was seeing that sigil on her back. She admitted that her parents had worn the mysterious pattern over their hearts. Strange place for a tattoo with no magical power.
No, there’s more to this little bird than meets the eye. I can’t risk her binding me further to this place. The last thing I need is a complication like Eloise Harcourt, no matter how soft and delicious she may be.
Since the night the Gowdie’s tricked me into their service, my only goal has been to find a way to break their hold on me and return home, and I’m finally onto something. I’ve made a friend here recently, a scribe who spends his days in the palace archives among books ancient enough to hold secrets even the Gowdies aren’t privy to.
Which is why I’m here.
I jog up the steps of the palatial building. Sunrise is coming topside, and the vampires of Night Haven, tired from a long night of activity, have headed home to sleep the day away, leaving the streets conspicuously empty aside from the occasional courier. This section of the royal palace houses an ancient collection of texts and scrolls that inform vampire kind. And vampires are nothing if not well educated about their world. Being immortal gives one plenty of time for intellectual pursuits.
I hurry inside, hoping to catch my new friend before he leaves for the day. But I needn’t have worried. I find Lazarus hunched over a massive dusty tome. The ancient vampire truly loves his work and would likely sleep in the stacks if it were allowed.
“Oh, Damien! It’s so good to see you again, my friend.” Lazarus shuffles over to embrace me,thumping my back vigorously. Truth be told, I get the sense that Lazarus exists in relative isolation. He’s old, even for a vampire. While this species is immortal, they do age, albeit far slower than a human. His skin has a thin, parchment-like quality, and his nails are thick and yellowing. Everything here eventually decays, and Lazarus, as far as I can tell, is thousands of years old. I asked him once if he was the Lazarus of biblical fame and he told me he was not, but he remembered the man from when he was a boy. That’s when I realized just how long he’d been toiling on this planet.
I try to remember to make my visit about more than just me. Lazarus doesn’t entertain many guests here in the stacks.
“It’s good to see you too, Lazarus. Have you been well?”
“As well as can be expected given the changing of the guard.” He lowers his voice. “I’m afraid the new queen has earned her reputation for being short-tempered.”
“A well-studied vampire like yourself should have no problem avoiding her attention.” I gesture toward the shelves. “I can’t think of a better place to hide from her than under a stack of books.”
He gives a low laugh. “True. From what I’ve heard, she’s not much of a reader.”
“Just who we need running the largest vampire nest on the East Coast.”
I’m not the type to take much interest in politics —ironic considering I was heir to a kingdom in my own world once. That was centuries ago, though. I’m more slave than prince in this world, and what happens here is none of my business. This isn’t home for me. The second I find a way to break the magical chains that bind me, I’m gone.
But living in Night Haven, it’s impossible not to hear the rumors. The last vampire queen and her consort died undersuspicious circumstances. Rumors that they were murdered by the current queen, chosen from the same powerful bloodline, seemed probable. “Maybe things will get better once her position becomes more… stable.”
Lazarus grins, his abnormally large eyes glowing in the dim light. “Once she takes a consort? Yes. It has been so in the past. I’ve lived through three matriarchies, and always it is so.”
The issue for these vampire royals is always safety and protection. Without a consort, the vampire queen is at constant risk of usurpation, usually by the very people she trusts most, those who share the royal bloodline —her family. Almost every queen chooses a consort from the military ranks, a male who can serve as a guard dog, lover, and politician. Even then, it isn’t always enough as the last consort’s untimely death proves. Poor schmuck.
As if he’s only just remembered something, Lazarus jolts, his expression becoming excited. “About your problem... I’ve found something.”
My muscles draw tight as a bow string. He gestures for me to follow him and I do, trying to tamp down the hope that rises in my chest. This wouldn’t be the first false lead I’ve had on an antidote to my situation.
“I have to say, the hold the Gowdie’s have on you has proven to be a most complex challenge for this old scribe. Their magic is rare and we are particularly vulnerable to it. The spell that holds you is in the marrow of your bones.” He points at the page of a book with a diagram of a vampire and an illustration of the inside of a bone.
“I don’t know this language.”
“Few do, my friend. It’s an offshoot of Gaelic that was used by a band of faeries in northern Scotland during the eighteenth century.” He picks up a set of readingglasses and perches them on his nose. “The clan was wiped out about a hundred years ago. Poached by shifters they say. Werewolves found them utterly delicious. Lucky for you, I spent some time among them and remember quite a bit.”
“I count myself extremely lucky to have met you,” I say, and the yellow-toothed smile the vampire gives me tells me he appreciates the sentiment.
“We’ve always known the Gowdies are animators, their magic can be used to bring almost anything to life. In one famous case that occurred in the fourteenth century, an ancestor animated an entire army of wooden toys to storm a castle and kill the lord of the manor over an argument concerning land rights. But what sets them apart from other witches with this power is their ability to use it to exert control over sentient beings, like you. And they do this by animating their bones.”
“Bones?”
“The closer to dead the bones are the better, but animating a vampire is quite easy for them. The spell that binds you, Damien, is rooted in your bones.”
I wait for more, but he just stares at me as if the answer is obvious. “I’m rather attached to my bones, Lazarus. Please tell me that you have a theory of how to undo it that doesn’t involve liquefying my skeleton.”
