Page 17 of Queen Takes Blood
A whiff of death.
Now she had my complete and utter interest.
Someone had died in this room.
I pressed my face to the pillow, taking in her scent. She had died. The queen. Right here beneath the stone Blood. The alpha, I’d hazard to guess.
Then she’d climbed on a motorcycle and rode away with her twonewBlood.
In a flash, I was loping down the winding asphalt road. Headed north, not east.
Perhaps this new queen would have need of a silent, silver wolf.
10
XIN
Ismelled trouble as I neared the queen’s nest. Correction, her living quarters since she didn’t have a blood circle up yet. I picked up the scent of another Aima who smelled of horse and sulfur and jingled like chainmail. She must have called a third Blood.
Would I be her fourth?
Pausing outside the iron fence that ringed her house, I considered my options. No nest, no blood circle. That was a concerning lack. Worse, there were humans making regular rounds through the property. She didn’t possess enough Blood to patrol her own grounds.
If she were a new queen, as I’d guessed, perhaps she didn’t intend to make this house her nest.
Or perhaps she was too weak to care.
I didn’t mind serving a weak queen—with ambition. My blade would eagerly make her position stronger, as long as she had that drive to win. Not all queens cared about how high their court sat on the board, while others were constantly evaluating their position and how best to rise toward the Triune.
I had only one use. If she couldn’t wield me appropriately…
I would be better off back in the mountains until I found a queen willing to kill to expand her powerbase.
House Skye waited to the east. The queen of New York City would certainly know how to use me to her gain. Yet I had to consider why I’d not been compelled to her side in the fifty plus years of my freedom, while here I stood outside this new queen’s house hours after finding her trail.
There would be no queen’s call for me. I’d lost that opportunity long ago, my punishment well deserved. Yet I could still serve. If…
She wanted a killing blade.
I slipped through the humans easily. I entered her house just as easily. No one even guarded the front door. I heard thumps and deep voices above. As I padded up the stairs, my nose worked overtime. Lots of blood. No surprise for a newly fledged queen. She had a massive appetite. Good. That spoke of strength and power.
A dry, scaly scent had my ruff rising, fur prickling down my spine. Snake. I hadn’t caught the scent of another Aima entering the house.
I crept into the queen’s room, taking in the scene. A massive black cobra coiled around a large Blood on the bed. Queen and alpha, respectively. He didn’t look good, not with her venom pumping through his veins. His skin sagged loose and oddly wet, as if he was dissolving from the inside out. Two other Blood waited nearby. One, younger and crying, the feline I’d scented, on his knees, leaning against a much older Blood for support.
I didn’t understand the young one’s tears. His queen was magnificent, her power incredible. Her alpha served her well.
The Blood who smelled of horse said, “I lived through it. He’ll pull through just fine.”
“Right,” the younger one growled. “So says the knight who had his head chopped off.”
The cobra’s tail rattled, her body undulating around her alpha. She struck, sucking his poisoned blood. She was too enraptured with her prey to notice me. Yet.
“Her venom changes the blood,” the knight said. “If you or I were to feed on him right now, we’d die. Even me.”
“Why is she doing it, though?”
Again, I couldn’t help but shake my head. A Blood who asked why his queen did anything was not fit to serve. At least the older one seemed intriguing, especially if the other’s words about him being beheaded were true. I’d heard of such a knight in the Triune High Court, but that had been a hundred years ago. Surely some other queen had snatched him up already.
