“Sadist?”
“Rough. Often feeds from masochists, but not exclusively. I don’t have a lot of details on that aspect of him.” She shrugged. “You already know the sadists want to taste you even if they can’t hurt you. Not many vampires have tasted dragon blood.”
Chapter 5
A month later, Emmy had near-perfect grades in all five classes, and still hadn’t been face-to-face with Zander.
Felix spent two or three nights a week in her bedroom, and she had a little fling going with Chase. He was actually fun to fuck and feed, and he’d managed to get her onto his schedule every third or fourth day. When she didn’t have a ton of homework, she spent three or four hours with him — fucking, talking, and watching documentaries they could tear apart.
And imagine her surprise when they were watching a documentary where Thomas Aquinas was mentioned, and Chase started correcting things as if he’d been there.
Turns out, he learned from Albertus Magnus, making him a contemporary of both Bonaventure and Aquinas. She appreciated Albertus Magnus because he’d written extensively on natural philosophy, alchemy, theology,metaphysics, botany, zoology, and astronomy. But also, and this was what had fascinated her at nine years old — he believed dragons existed.
Chase wouldn’t tell her how he went from being a student at the University of Paris to being turned by a vampire, but she had a feeling it was truly an interesting story.
But she had a million questions about Albertus Magnus, and Chase could answer them as someone who’d fuckingknownthe man.
For instance, when she asked, “Did hereallydissect eels to prove they didn’t reproduce through spontaneous generation?”
Chase had smiled and told her, “Oh yes. Dozens of eels. The lab reeked of them for weeks. He was convinced they had proper sex organs, and wouldn’t be satisfied until he sliced them open himself, to look for them. He never found them, mind you, but he insisted the absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence.”
“And he really, truly believed in dragons?” The books said he did, but she wanted verification.
“He believed dragons existed somewhere. Maybe not in the forests of Europe, though he kept hoping, but in distant lands, in the unexplored East.”
“European dragons like me? Not just the Asian ones?”
Chase nodded. “He catalogued them the way he did lions and eagles. Wingspan, breath weapon, temperament. He’d say, ‘If God made crocodiles, why not fire-breathing lizards with wings?’ He believed the world was vast and unknown,and that men who claimed to know all of it were fools. Dragons made the world more complicated, which meant they were probably real. Now, get your mouth back on my dick, little dragon. I want your ass again, and maybe another snack.”
There wasn’t much power play between them, and no pain. He expected her to obey based on her contract, meaning she’d follow orders for feeding. She was with him longer than a simple feeding, but she didn’t mind following orders that would give her more orgasms.
And when she was tired of him, she could always just say goodbye and return to her rooms once he’d fed.
So, Felix gave the bossy sadist in her room to play, and Chase gave her a sexual partner who could keep her satisfied.
It couldn’t last, of course. Felix would find someone who actually loved him, and either she or Chase would eventually get bored and move on, but for now, it worked.
But with these two as regular fixtures in her life, she hadn’t fucked anyone at school yet, a little more than a month in. That hadn’t happened since her freshman year back when she was fourteen. She hadn’t had sex until about two months in, back then.
And she had fun hanging out with the flock on nights she wasn’t fucking anyone and didn’t have much homework. Meals were also interesting. Some days were fend-for-yourself, others were meals cooked by either Spence or a flock member. Everyone had their specialty, it seemed.
And so, that Saturday, she found herself making a huge batch of homemade, from-scratch buttery alfredo sauce while stressing over getting the bucatini pasta cooked exactly right. The recipe screamed for garlic knots, but since that wasn’t an option, she’d soaked spices in oil a few days, and then baked bread that was about to come out of the oven, so people could dip the bread into the oil.
A few flock members took charge of salad and plating while others set the table, and before long, nearly two dozen of them were sitting down to eat, laughter echoing off the high ceilings of the common room — and Emmy’s ears went warm every time someone gushed about how good her sauce was.
Toward the end of the meal, Spence reminded everyone about the mandatory meeting in the underground theater that evening. Groans met his announcement, but no one argued.
Emmy was looking forward to it though. Rhea told her it would most likely be a rundown of what happens at Mordnik, and the options and pay scales available for people who wanted to make the trip.
She’d actually looked into whether she could do a few months of her post-grad work on campus and then move to doing three months of it through distance learning, and it looked like she could. Maybe. It would mean finishing the fall semester online, and then starting the spring one from a distance, but if she could come up with an acceptable reason for it, it was possible.
Someone had brought a small stage into the theater, which is usually just the huge wall in front of them, waiting for the overhead projector to beam the movie onto it.
But a stick-in-the-mud wearing a wool-blend suit stepped onto the stage and began talking without introducing himself.
“Vampires pay a base rate of a million dollars for the decadent three-month experience of being awake twenty-four hours per day, with endless debauchery available. A single-occupancy room is three times that, and some pay double even the most expensive rate because they wish for evenmoredebauchery, and we are more than happy to provide it — for a price. This means that, if you choose to go, you will be well compensated.”
A spreadsheet showed on the wall behind him.
