‘What the fuck was in that syringe?’ I demand, turning away from the spectacle behind me. Damian and Elliott have wrestled Tim down from the island and are dragging him, kicking and snarling, out the door. It’s good that he’s in the land of the unliving, but I’m sure he’s going to be highly embarrassed when he recovers from his extreme bloodlust—or whatever that was.
Lucy licks her lips and stares at the pool of my smeared blood on the black-and-white tiled floor. I don’t want her guzzling on that.
I spin her round and bind her arms to her sides with my power. ‘Answer me, bitch!’
‘Er, I’ll clean this up,’ says Hester diplomatically. ‘While you two ... chat.’
‘I’ll help you,’ says Floss and slinks off to find a mop.
Lucy struggles against my bond, but I’m too strongdespite her being a newbie vampire, something that gives me a lot of satisfaction. I consider squeezing her until her eyeballs pop, but I know Elliott will be angry with me if I do that.
Eventually, she stops wriggling and shrugs.
‘Dunno. It’s a concoction of Alexander’s. It turns humans into vampires instantaneously.’
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ I grind out. ‘So that’s his intention? To turn thralls into vampires for his own amusement?’
‘I’m not sure. At least that wasn’t the initial intention,’ she says. ‘The early preparation had his own blood and venom, and it didn’t do that. That was more of an energy boost, to give him and us thralls increased sexual stamina.’
I shudder. Alexander is such a vile bastard!
‘Then when Elliott arrived, Alexander seemed quite excited about drawing and testing his blood,’ she continues. ‘He locked himself away in the library and seemed to be working on a secret experiment. I sneaked a peek at his notes when I was allowed in to clean. He’d written that Elliott’s blood when mixed with his own created a serum that had “superpotent vampire properties”. Apparently, he’d tried it on a field mouse he trapped in the kitchen, and it grew tiny vampire teeth and tried to bite his big toe. Then he trapped a female and injected it into her too, and his notes said the two mice had humped for sixteen hoursstraight. Until they died from sheer exhaustion.’
My mouth falls open. ‘Sixteen hours! Oh my god, that stuff is like supercharged vampire Viagra!’
There’s an anguished howl from the lounge, and I glance at the kitchen door worriedly. ‘So Tim’s probably going to die anyway.’
‘That was mice. I’m sure your uncle Tim won’t die.’
‘And you know this because ...?’
Lucy hitches a shoulder. ‘I was Alexander’s first guinea pig. And his last since I nicked the rest of his syringes.’ She lifts her chin defiantly.
I gape. Wow, she’s like the world’s first test-tube vampire and kind of a heroine for rescuing Elliottandnicking the syringes. She’s effectively cut off Alexander’s access to that stuff in one fell swoop.
‘So did you ...?’ I look at the kitchen floor, which Hester and Floss are currently mopping up.
‘Twitch and rip my clothes off? No. Alexander didn’t give me a full syringe. But the little he did give me was enough, and he took full advantage of my highly sexualised state. I wore him out. It’s why I sneaked down to the dungeon and bit Elliott. I wanted to keep going.’ She giggles, and my grudging respect for her morphs into irritation. I squeeze her throat until her laughter is cut off.
‘Hey, I had no control over myself!’ she croaks. ‘It didn’t seem to affect Elliott the same way, though. Even when he turned, he was fully faithful to you. And I did try to get with him, believe me. He’s super hot and a really nice guy. You’re lucky. I wish I had a boyfriend like him.’
I humph, feeling bad about my hissy fit in the forest. Elliott was telling the truth. Hearing her, a stranger, call him ‘my boyfriend’ gives me a wake-up call too. I’ve never referred to him that way. He’s always my ‘colleague’ or ‘friend’, or I say that we have a ‘business arrangement’. But fuck, who am I kidding? Elliott is the most amazing guy I’ve ever met, and I enthralled him for forty years because I didn’t want him to leave me and find someone else.
Yet he’s never complained about it. He’s helped us survive all these years, and now that he’s a vampire, he’s still helping us. I’m starting to think I’m the one who’s been enthralled by him rather than the other way round.
There’s another loud howl from the lounge, and we all look at one another. ‘I suppose we should check on him,’ I say, releasing Lucy. But really, there’s nothing I want to do less. I didn’t want Tim to die, but having him exist in this unpredictable aroused state is making me incredibly nervous.
In the lounge, we discover Tim thrashing around on the polished concrete floor, his shoulders pinned by Elliott, though someone has put a cushion under his head. Damianadjusts the throw blanket from the couch over his lower half. From the way it’s tented like a teepee, Tim is obviously still undergoing his severe reaction to the vampire Viagra.
‘What should we do?’ pants Elliott. He sounds exhausted, and he’ll need to sleep soon.
‘I can take over,’ I tell him. ‘Take a break, baby vamp.’ He smiles gratefully at me, and I glow a little under his sunshine.
It’s the least I can do, love of my life.Of course he doesn’t hear me think that, and I make sure no one else does either!
We all perch on the velvet couches while I concentrate on holding Tim in place. Elliott sits next to me, his thigh resting against mine, which is kind of distracting.Focus, Sadie!Otherwise, Tim is going to do himself an injury.I purposely avoid staring at his thrusting hips and the enormous bulge under the blanket and focus on his bloodshot eyes and glistening fangs instead. Still, it’s difficult to ignore the animalistic grunts and moans he’s making. If it wasn’t so horrific, it would be hilarious.
‘Ideas? Anyone?’ I say through gritted teeth.
