Page 42 of The Witch They Crave

Aamon got himself into the house. That section nine play—I didn't see it coming, and judging by Leopold's face, neither did he. So she's not alone in there. Aamon is under the same roof, chained to her by the fail-safe protocol, and whatever else I think about the man, he meant what he said in that cellar last night. He'll watch her. He'll keep Leopold's hands off her. He'll buy time.

Time for what though?

For me to find something I can actually use. Leopold's weak point. The thing that explains why he's been hunting her since September, why a Vassard heir is wasting his political capital on a twenty-five-year-old witch who can barely hold a channel. There's a reason. There's always a reason when someone with that much power focuses it to a fault. I just haven't found it yet.

I'm halfway through hedging a plan—Leopold's quarters, his correspondence, the sealed wing where he met the Vane advocate—when my blood catches fire.

It starts in my wrists. It always starts in my wrists—the place where my sire's teeth went in three hundred years ago, the entry points, the original wounds that healed on the outside and never healed underneath. A heat that isn't heat. A pull that isn't physical. My blood, moving against the current, pulling toward something my body recognizes and my mind rejects.

Midus.

The name arrives with the pull like a signature on an invoice. I know who's calling before my legs start moving because the bond carries the caller's signature in the compulsion, and Midus's signature tastes like old iron and cruelty.

I’m being summoned.

I lock my knees. Brace my hands on the railing. Fight it.

The sire bond doesn't care. It doesn't argue, doesn't persuade, doesn't negotiate. It just pulls harder. My blood reverses direction in my veins—I can feel it, every drop of it answering a voice that isn't mine, and the muscles in my legs tighten and release without my permission. My right foot slides forward on the stone. Then my left.

I grip the railing until my knuckles go white. The iron bends under my hands.

“Fuck,” I grumble as the last of my strength against the call gives out.

Three seconds. That's how long I can resist. I've counted. Three hundred years and the longest I've ever held back from answering a summons is three seconds before the bond overrides everything—autonomy, dignity, the basic human right to stay where you fucking are.

I used to fight longer. When it was new, when I still remembered what it felt like to own my own legs, I'd fight until the pain made me black out. My summoner would find me on the floor, muscles locked, blood running from my nose, still trying to hold. It never worked. It just hurt more.

One.

The heat spreads up my arms, across my chest. My heart rate spikes—not from fear, from chemistry. The sire bond runs through my circulatory system like a second nervous system, and when it activates, my body goes to war with itself. The part of me that's still a person tries to hold. The part of me that was rewritten three hundred years ago by a vampire who wanted to punish me answers the call.

Two.

I was human once. I don't remember his face—the one who turned me. I don't remember why. The memories are gone, dissolved over centuries like photographs left in water. I remember the feeling of sunlight on my arms without a spell to protect me. I remember a woman's laugh with no face attached to it. I remember the exact moment the teeth went in and the world changed, and then three hundred years of this. Of being called. Of being sent. Of being forced to become a monster. One horrendous deed at a time.

Three.

My fingers release the railing. My body straightens. My legs carry me toward the stairs, smooth, unhurried, compliant—the well-trained animal responding to a whistle only it can hear.

The walk to Midus's office in the training complex takes four minutes. Basement level. No windows. The hallway is lit by fluorescents that buzz at a frequency that makes my teeth itch, and the door is open. Midus is sitting behind his desk eating an apple.

He doesn't look up when I walk in. He never looks up. I'm not a person entering a room—I'm a tool being retrieved from a rack.

"Took you four and a half minutes," he says. Chewing. "You were fighting it."

I don't answer. The compulsion has released—it always does once I'm in proximity, the sire bond going slack like a leash that's been walked to its full length. My body is mine again.

For now.

"There's a collection run tonight." He takes another bite. Looks at a clipboard. "Three addresses in Kenner. The donors are behind on their agreements."

Donors. The word he uses. The word the academy uses for the humans who supply the blood stores—the bags that fill the dispensary, the clinic, the faculty lounge. Some of them are voluntary. Paid contracts, regular draws, compensation that makes it worth the needle. Those donors don't end up on Midus's clipboard.

The ones on the clipboard are the ones who stopped showing up. Like faulting on a gambling debt.

"Behind how long?" I ask.

"Two months. Three months. One of them changed her phone number." He flips a page. "Remind them of the terms."