Page 1 of Tainted Blood

1

29 APRIL, 2021

It’s easy to be brave while hiding behind a screen, isn’t it?

Everly stared at the question. It was. That was a simple fact about the internet. People could say whatever they pleased from their side of the screen, and normally, they got away with it. It was a simple fact of life that people would say things in a digital space they would probably never say out loud where they could be heard.

It makes one wonder if you’ll be so bold in person.

“Well, that’s… concerning,” I whispered as I pushed back from my desk and stretched as I stood. I had been sitting for so long, thinking about how I’d found myself here, staring at this new email, one I hadn’t expected to receive this evening. Alexius had officially made me his assistant in February, and the workload had doubled within a week of my starting the job. Something to do with people being glad he finally had a second vampire to read sensitive information rather than one of his human staff. Most of the correspondence were invitations. Since he was working again, people believed he was coming back to the public after the death of Jacob.

I had a blanket order to decline all invitations, and I did just that.

There was only one gathering he planned to attend, and I would be joining him. We were going to a gathering the ancients held once or twice a year to keep in touch. From my understanding, there were strict rules about who could and couldn’t attend these gatherings, and I was going only thanks to my connection to Alexius and his long-term friendship with Isaiah, Master of New York and member of the Tribunal. The Tribunal was the secret government for supernaturals, which enforced the laws of different supernaturals in an effort to keep the peace between the species and keep more supernaturals from being exposed to humanity.

Whether or not they wanted it, every human had a toe dipped into the supernatural. The werewolves had revealed themselves in the 1980s and become a simple fact of life to the general public. Witches were slowly stepping further into the light. The fae were often found in stranger means, refusing to engage with human governments, but were a known supernatural, regardless. Just two weeks ago, I was bombarded with alerts on my phone because there had been breaking news. The werecats, the proverbial cousins of werewolves, had gone public. I didn’t know if they had done so willingly, but they were now a known entity to humanity, a new monster that normally went bump in the night was now trying to share the sun.

Not to me, though. I couldn’t remember meeting one, but I had certainly heard of them.

I had always known a bit more than most humans. While everyone had their toe dipped into the magic of the world without a choice, I had made a choice and dove right in. My family had worked for vampires for generations. When I was ready for college, I’d had a choice to turn away from the tradition, but I continued it. I knew vampires could be monsters, but I always had a decent experience with them. It was that single choice at seventeen that got me to where I was now. If I had chosen the other direction at that crossroads, I would have lived an entirely different life, but I made the choice I always wanted to pick. The one that wasn’t exactly expected of me but wasn’t unexpected, either. Everyone believed I would join my family in the halls of Jacob’s nest as a human, and I hadn’t been trying to make a splash by abandoning everything I had grown up wanting. At seventeen, I had too much anxiety to try making any sort of splash.

So, I had made my choice, and no one had any reason to believe it was the wrong one. It was the safe option, the secure option. My life’s path unfolded ahead of me, and all seemed normal, just as it had been for generations of my family before me.

To say my life was unfolding in a way no one could have expected would be an understatement. I couldn’t think of anyone I knew that would have thought I would be the assistant to one of the more infamous vampires in the world. I certainly didn’t think they would have believed I could kill someone, either.

Both of those things had happened in the seven months since my mother died… and so much more.

Such as the fact that I wasn’t human anymore, and I wasthirsty.

I went to my personal mini fridge, the secure little blood bank kept stocked just for me. Checking the time, I sighed to see I still had ten minutes before it would unlock and reveal a single blood bag for me to feed from. It was like a timed vending machine, and it frustrated me, but it had been a gift.

I wish Isaiah would tell me who he hired to engineer this.

It was a fancy contraption designed for young vampires like me. Some nights, it felt like I was always thirsty, my throat always burning, but I couldn’t bother Alexius all the time to get me blood. Strict schedules were necessary to teach me how to manage that pain.

While it felt weirdly childish, the stupidly complicated fridge was doing the same thing Alexius did—making sure I didn’t overfeed. It could be easily scheduled so I could properly wean down to a manageable amount of blood. I didn’t attack Alexius anymore on my bad nights.

Standing there, I glared at the mini fridge until it gave me what I wanted. It worked silently when the time hit, and I was on autopilot as I prepared my meal. If I was in the house, I couldn’t just sink my fangs into the bag. I understood the rule. No one wanted to replace carpets because blood stains were hard to remove. I nearly spilled the blood, though, because my hands were shaking, but not from a lack of blood.

I kept thinking about that single choice and how it had remarkably changed my life, forcing me onto a path I never thought I would ever take. I had no idea of where it would lead me in the future. I thought I would just work with the nest until I retired and live a quiet, withdrawn human life.

Instead, I became a vampire, something I was still getting used to, and I worked with the vampire who made sure I was Turned, though he didn’t actually sire me. Alexius had used another vampire’s blood, and Edwin had been dead before I woke up. Alexius trained me now, and Isaiah, one of two rulers of all vampires, helped him. I rejected all the invitations coming from other vampires, either attached to nests or for private gatherings among friends. There was only one event I was scheduled to go to with Alexius.

Back in January, I had been warned not to work for Alexius. The message had been clear. His enemies would become mine if I decided to help him in any way. My response had been just as clear. I called whoever the sender was a coward and told them to go to hell.

Which is what had me thinking in silence tonight.

The conclusion I had reached was a simple one, and even now, sipping on my nightly meal, I couldn’t think of another.

“I guess I have a new pen pal, and I’ll get to meet them soon,” I mumbled to myself, wondering how I was supposed to tell Alexius about this. It should have been as simple as printing it out and showing it to him. It was clearly the same sender who had threatened me in January. My new pen pal had been silent since my response to their initial email, but now they were reaching out just before we left on a trip. There was no way these things weren’t connected.

They could be trying to rattle me, but it would be stupid of me to hide that from Alexius. He would flip if something happened in New York, and I said nothing ahead of time.

I knew I didn’t have long to think about how to go about this. I had to figure out how to stop my hands from shaking before I could even be in the same room as Alexius, which was a hurdle to deal with. It was only growing worse as I fed, my heart growing more powerful and racing wildly.

I was afraid. It was a reasonable response to threatening messages from vampires who I knew could overpower and kill me in a second. If my pen pal thought they could go against Alexius and Isaiah and win, I wasnothingto them. That they would get the chance to meet me at the gathering Isaiah was hosting meant they had been designated as an ancient. Only newly sired vampires of those allowed to attend could go with their sires. I was given special permission because I was newly sired and considered Alexius’s responsibility. I was the only newly Turned vampire going.

So, I was being threatened by an ancient and would soon be in a room with several. Fear was entirely reasonable. I couldn’t hide it from Alexius, but I kind of wanted to.

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