Page 44 of Queen Takes Blood
He pressed the pad of his thumb against the razor-sharp blade. The scent of his blood bloomed in the night air. “I find it incomprehensible that Aima now rely solely on blood to sustain them, when there are other more entertaining options.”
As much as I hated to admit it, my mouth watered. My fangs ached. I hadn’t fed in years, and his blood was ripe with power.
“So it begins.” His head fell back on a rattling sigh. “I call upon the Flayed God whose blood burns in me and my son, who bears witness to this sacrifice tonight.”
“Please,” the woman cried, twisting frantically in his grip. She tore at his side, leaving long, bleeding scratches in his flesh.
His breath caught on a soft moan of arousal.
A sound that stabbed me like a thousand vicious spears. Blood. Pain. Yes. The same need lived in me.
I hated it. I hated him. I hated myself so much my fingers locked around the hilt of my knife. I partially drew the blade before catching myself.
Zuma—my sire—stared at me with eyes that glistened like black oil in the moonlight. Pupils dilated, nostrils flaring, erection straining at the thin pants. “Pain flavors the power. Hers. Mine. Yours. I’ll feast on it all tonight, and it’ll make me stronger than ever. I don’t need a queen’s blood to be invincible.”
His arm whipped downward. The woman didn’t even cry out. The blade was so sharp she didn’t feel it at first. A long cut opened on her cheek, deep enough the skin gaped open and the corner of her mouth sagged. He must have cut some of the nerves or tendons.
“Better than pain,” he whispered in a surprisingly tender voice, “Is the horror. The fear. The dread. These are the spices that make the pain sweeter than anything you’ve ever tasted in your life.”
A sound tore out of her throat. The bleat of an injured lamb. The shriek of a wounded rabbit. My stomach churned, my palms clammy, my thighs trembling with the urge to leap into battle. Strike him down. Even run. Anything was better than sitting here and allowing such an atrocity to happen.Answers. I need the truth first.
“My mother,” I whispered, my voice cracking with strain. “Did you feed on her like this?”
“Ahhhh, sweet little star. I remember her well.”
Releasing the human’s hair, he seized her right arm with his other hand and jerked her wrist up over her head. He dug the tip of the blade into the fleshy, underneath part of her arm just above her pit. Ever so slowly, he drew a long red bleeding line to her inner elbow. The woman’s scream cut through the night just as sharply, a high-pitched keen.
“If you somehow survive this night, lad, let me teach you one thing above anything else. While you can survive on a human’s pain and fear, they’re far too delicate. They die too quickly. You have to hunt at least once a week to sustain your power. Even then, the need will only grow over time until you want to hunt every single day. But a queen…”
With exquisite precision, he twisted her arm in his grip and continued the cut across her forearm to her wrist. The rest of her body flailed and quivered, but he held her arm perfectly still for his blade. “You can keep a queen alive for weeks. Maybe even months. Especially a young, ripe fledgling without any Blood of her own. A queen who has a wealth of power—that she doesn’t know how to wield yet. That power will keep her alive for a very long time.”
“Say it,” I rasped out. My stomach heaved, bile burning up my throat. I tightened my fingers on the blade. “Tell me what you did to my mother.”
Dipping his head, he licked up the cut in the woman’s arm while she thrashed against him. “Fear and horror and pain, lad. They feed our power like nothing else. I’m the Blood I am today because I fed on her suffering while my three brothers fucked her as often as they wished.”
My ribcage ached, bones popping in my back beneath the strain of holding myself still. “You raped her too.”
He laughed, a soft, velvety chuckle. “Of course,son. Though I waited until she was nearly dead. I like my meat well tenderized. It was all I could do not to kill her and revel in that incredible rush of power as her soul fluttered in my hand.”
I quivered on a razor’s edge of violence. “Why? Just to feed on her?”
“Not at all. Feeding on her was merely a bonus. House Tocatl needs a new queen to bring us back to our former glory. She wasn’t meant to ever leave Teotihuacan.”
My jaw ached, my teeth grinding to dust. My chest heaved, air sawing in and out of my lungs. “She wasn’t of Tocatl blood. How could she be your queen?”
Ignoring me, Zuma cut a circle around the human’s wrist and then moved to her other arm. His breathing was quicker, too, though with lust, not with the strain of containing a volcanic eruption of rage. “We hoped one of us could sire a queen on her. But if not, our queen has her ways. She isn’t just tocatl. She’s papalotl too, and I’m descended from the god of rebirth. There’s a reason I know how to take off the skin so easily.”
Papalotl. Butterfly. A symbol of transformation.
Mama had never been supposed to leave this place.
Instead, she was supposed to become the next Tocatl queen of Teotihuacan.
23
TLACEL
As before, I stood at the base of the steps leading up the Pyramid of the Moon, though this time, Tecuani stood on my right and Itzcoatl on my left. My blood was still bright against the steep steps, wet and glowing like gems in the moonlight. Gazing up at the slender crescent shining in the black-velvet sky, I lifted my right fist to my heart in a silent salute.
