“Echo.”
“What we need to do, Echo, is release these halfbreeds.”
“Release? I don’t understand.”
Echo has a very appealing face and I am pleased that she is the halfbreed waiting outside Paul’s door. It feels like a reward.“No, Echo. You were not meant to understand. You were made to obey. Will you obey me?”
She nods her head enthusiastically. Then bows it and falls to her knees, pressing her forehead onto my bare feet. “I’m at your service, my lord.”
“Of course you are, Echo. You have no choice in the matter. Now get up. We have a lot to do before we can leave.” I take her back in the bedroom and motion to the bed. “Have a seat.”
She looks at the bed, then at me—eyes falling down my body to my cock, then back to the bed—only then meeting my eyes again.
“Don’t be a fool. I am not interested in having sex with you, Echo. You are not my type. But you need to feed, do you not?”
Echo blinks at me. And I can see the greed in her eyes. Halfbreeds don’t need the blood. Normally. But if they’ve been feeding on it—and she has, it was planned that way—then they do crave it something terrible. It’s an addiction.
“Go on,” I encourage her. “Lie down. This feeding, it’s going to take a little while. So you might as well get comfortable.” Then I turn, close the door, and by the time I turn back, she’s on the bed. Flat on her back, eyes already begging for that blood.
She will do anything for it.
I walk over to the bed, lie down next to her, and turn onto my side so I can see her better. I consider making myself at home with her body. Stroking her a little. Making her moan. But there’s no time. I bite the fleshy part of my palm and put it up to her lips. The moment she tastes my blood, she is gone.
Not dead. Just somewhere else. A place called Bliss, I suppose.
As she drinks, I let my thoughts wander back to Paul and our history together.
It was his idea to make Syrsee for Ryet to feed on specifically. It took decades to collect the right blood to breed her. Wewere hunting down the donors for more than a century. There were many clans of Black witches in America when we arrived, but they were well hidden in the native tribes. They did things differently than in the Old World and it took us a while to form our own little coven to use as breeding stock. We needed genetics from all over the continent. We went up as far as the Arctic and as far south as we could without impinging on the territory of the Amazonian vampires.
Every Black witch we had was used to make Syrsee’s genetics. And once we had that, we made Ryet. This was a much more difficult task than making Syrsee. We used one of our most precious Black witches as a surrogate and it didn’t exactly go as planned. She was not going to make it through her third trimester, so we tried something very unconventional to save the experiment—we turned her halfbreed and fed her our blood until Ryet could be born.
This had never been done before and so we were not sure if he was the one.
Not until now, that is.
It worked. And it worked beautifully.
But Ryet’s ascension is just the first phase of the plan.
There is much, much more to come.
Echo stopsdrinkingand when I look down at her, she’s completely unconscious. But I don’t require her to be conscious for what comes next, so I lean over, place my mouth on her neck, wait until I can feel the pulsing of her blood through her jugular, and then I bite her and drink.
Her blood is bitter and I pull back, letting it drip out of my mouth and onto her neck. It’s been so long since I had to kill a halfbreed, I guess I’d forgotten how bad they taste. Almost as bad as a pureblood human.
But it’s the only way, so I press my mouth back onto her neck and take her blood, sucking it out of her as fast as I can, just to get it over with.
Minutes later, she is drained, and pale, and limp. But this process is just getting started. I don’t bother trying to rouse her, she’s gone. I just bite the palm of my hand and let my blood drip into her mouth.
After a minute or so, she stirs. Moaning.
My reply to this is a whisper, low and sweet. “You’re fine. Just keep still for another moment now.”
I doubt she can hear me, but she doesn’t try to wriggle away when I lean into her neck and take another bite.
This time she tastes a little less sour. Not good, by any means, but it’s better than it was on the first round. After I’ve drained her a second time, she is much more eager to drink me back. And after the fifth round of performing this little ritual she tastes almost as good as Lucia once did.
At this point, I know I’m done. I’ve always compared Lucia’s blood to a weird appetizer served at an elite party, something meant to spur conversation, if only to discuss how gross it is. So Echo’s blood—while better than it was when we started—is by no means tasty.
