Page 7 of Born in Blood

Alexandros turns to me, a wicked smirk dancing on his lips. “You are counting on Alastair here to plead your case, child? He who had so little humanity in him even before I made him what he is now?” He flicks his tongue over his bottom lip and glares at me, awaiting my response.

But my head is spinning with so many questions. What does he mean? What has he made me? My curiosity is outweighed only by my hunger. That thirst for blood which grows stronger and more urgent with each passing second. Until it is the only thing I can think about and feel. All-consuming. Hot and fierce and demanding.

I grind the heels of my palms into my eyes and roar, “What have you done to me?!” Tears, unbidden, streak down my cheeks, and my chest heaves with every painful breath I take.

Within a split second, he is standing before me, his hot breath ruffling my hair. “I gave you salvation, Alastair. Power.” He dips his head close, and his breath, sweet with the scent of blood, dusts over my ear. “I gave you immortality.”

Dropping my hands from my face, I stare at him, and the fiery dark coals of his eyes draw me in until I’m falling into their abyss. The raging beast inside me is soothed for a moment, and I take the opportunity to suck in a breath.

“You must feed, Alastair.” He glances behind him at Lynette and the duke. Two hearts beating fast, tempting me with the delicious ambrosia pumping through their veins. “But choose wisely, for your beast must be fully sated this night.”

I glance at Lynette, her pretty face a mass of swirling purple and violet now, the dark bruise slithering down to her neckwhere it splinters like fingers. Blood continues to leak from her mouth, dripping down to her collarbone. Sweet, sweet Lynette. My eyes drift lower. Her heaving bosom peeks out from her torn corset. Her skirts, shredded enough to reveal more violent purple marks marring the pale flesh of her thighs. She would surely be sweeter than the duke.

The duke. Still cowering on the floor like the fat, bloated weasel that he is. I sniff the air. His blood smells appealing enough, although I am sure any would right now. And he is twice her size, his veins and arteries longer and thicker than hers. He lifts his head from his curled position and blinks at me. “I will give you money. A title. Whatever you desire. Alastair?” He says my name on a plea.

How long have I coveted such things. The true wealth of a gentleman. Along with chasing women, that has been my life’s single ambition. To one day return to my father’s home with all the trappings of a wealthy London gentleman and prove to him and my rotten excuse for a mother that I am worthy. That I am someone.

Duke Welsby reaches out his hand. Pleading. There’s a second when he seems sure that he has broken through to me. Sure that I would give anything for what he offers. But I cannot see past the disdain on his face on all the occasions I met him previously. When he looked down upon me as though I were nothing.

With a strength I did not know I possessed, I brush Alexandros aside and lunge for the duke, lifting him into the air by the back of his shirt.

“Alastair, unhand me. Ple—” His protests are cut off by a hoarse gurgling sound when I snap my teeth into his gullet and rip out a chunk of his flesh. Rich, coppery, intoxicating blood gushes from the open wound, and I drink it up like a starving animal, letting not a single drop go to waste. Instinctively, hestruggles for a moment; however, his strength is no match for my newfound might. It takes but maybe a minute for his corpulent body to go lax.

I drop to the floor with him, falling to my knees and cradling him in my arms while I feast. Even after his heart stops beating, I continue to feed. Blood no longer pumps through his body, and I am forced to bite deeper and harder, drawing all of his sweet nectar to my mouth.

Once again, Lynette’s scream pulls me from my trance. I look up to see her in the arms of Alexandros and let out a feral growl as I lick the residual blood from my lips. He holds her close to him, her back to his chest as she trembles.

My beast has taken all he can from Edmund, but he is still not entirely sated. “I can make her forget, Alastair,” Alexandros says, dusting his teeth over her neck. “One bite and she will recall nothing of this night.”

My eye twitches. She will still have the bruises and the marks. She will wake here in the duke’s house with him and his dead footmen.

“We can return her to her bed.”

Tears roll down her pretty cheeks, and I step closer. Her blue eyes plead with me for mercy. Am I capable of such an act? Is he right? Do I have any humanity left within me? Did I ever have any? Not for a very long time. Not since the only soul on this earth whom I ever loved took it with him when he was slain at the hands of our cruel father. I close my eyes and see Frederik’s straw-blond hair and bright blue eyes. If I concentrate, I can sometimes recall the sound of his laughter. How it would fill my ears, brightening my world on the darkest of days.

“Alastair,” she pleads once more.

Before I can think, I find my hand wrapped around her slender neck and my fangs in the tender flesh there. Sweet, sweet Lynette. She tastes as good as I remember.

I siton Lynette’s bed, fascinated as I watch her sleep. “How does she have no marks? No bites or bruises?”

Alexandros draws in a breath through his nose. “You recall when I told you to cut your tongue with your fangs when you were feeding on her?”

The heady rush of drinking her blood a few hours ago comes flooding back to me, lighting up my veins with fire and ecstasy. Feeding on her was different from the duke and even the women from Alexandros’s bed. It was much less… frenzied. Driven by desire rather than hunger, and it was a high like I’ve never experienced before. I was too far gone to ask him why he gave me such a command and simply obeyed. “I remember.”

“Our saliva is enough to heal bite marks, but our blood…” He sucks on his top lip. “Our blood can heal all kinds of wounds. If we are going to make Lynette forget her ordeal, then it seemed pertinent to heal the wounds sustained from the duke and his men.”

Her pretty pink lips are open, and her soft, steady breaths fill the room. “So she won’t recall any of it?”

“Nothing from the last four days. I have given the same courtesy to her father. So nobody will recall you two being together on the night we met.”

I focus all of my attention on him. “How do you do that? Make them forget so much?”

He offers a casual shrug. “It is a gift.”

Everything that’s happened since I met this man has me more confused than a chicken in a pond. “It’s been four days since I met you?”

He nods.

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