Page 15 of Blood

I’m panting heavily by the time I finish my spiel, heat clamoring up my cheeks and sweat beading on my forehead. Somewhat absently, I realize that everyone is gaping at me, varying expressions of disbelief etched across their faces.

Alex looks horrified, as if he half expects the monster council to smite me dead at a moment’s notice.

Spider chick and Pan both look angry, Dorian appears confused, Frankenstein is as impassive as always, and the White Stag...well... Dare I say that he looks impressed?

His booming voice sounds through the cavernous room. It’s the first time I’ve heard it since I arrived down here, and it has the fine hairs on my arm turning to keen spikes. That voice of his has a way of innately demanding my complete and undivided attention. I can’t look away from the majestic creature glancing down at me with surprisingly kind eyes.

“That’s a heartfelt speech, Violet Dracula...though I suppose that name doesn’t really fit you now, does it?” I can’t tell for sure, given the fact he’s a stag, but I swear he’s smiling.

“My name is Violet Dracula. That won’t change. Dracula is my father just as much as—” I cut myself off abruptly before I can reveal the truth about my parentage. Somehow, the White Stag seems to know about my birth parents, though it appears as if the other council members remain oblivious.

“We should kill the insolent girl!” the spider lady screeches. “How dare she—?”

“Enough, Spidey,” the White Stag booms.

I have to hold in my snicker.

Spidey?

Really?

The strange woman—Spidey, apparently—purses her lips, the movement causing the spider from before to scuttle up her cheek and disappear into the web interwoven with her locks of dark hair.

“Is what you said true?” Dorian asks, fidgeting nervously. “Is Zeus really consuming the souls in the afterlife?”

“He is,” Alex answers diplomatically, taking a step forward and moving to inconspicuously stand in front of me. Is he...attempting to protect me? Something warm and foreign—at least, in relation to the necromancer—unfurls inside of me. “And he’s also taken some of the most powerful monsters hostage, including Dracula—”

“Good riddance,” Spidey grumbles.

“Lucifer and Hera,” Alex finishes.

Silence settles across the chamber, startlingly pronounced. My lips are suddenly dry, as if I just swallowed something acerbic and bitter. It scorches my throat and has me shifting from foot to foot.

“He also took my mates,” I continue, swallowing obsessively.

After he killed one of them.

But I don’t say that out loud.

I can’t.

It’s too painful to even think about, let alone articulate.

The White Stag cants his head to the side, regarding me with wise, curious eyes. “You love your mates very much, don’t you?”

“More than anything,” I blurt, attempting to step out from behind Alex.

“You’ll die for them, won’t you?” the White Stag continues. His voice is a deep baritone more befitting that of a voice-over actor or an audiobook narrator than a monster.

“Of course.” I don’t even need to think about it. I would slice my own neck if it means keeping them safe. Only a few months earlier, that realization would’ve sent shock rattling through me, accompanied by a cloying odor that bit into my esophagus, closing my airways.

But that’s the old Violet. The selfish one.

I may be a monster, but for my mates, I’d don a cape and tights to protect them. I can wear a halo just as good as devil horns, thank you very much.

“And they’d die for you,” he continues, and his gaze briefly flicks to Alex, who still stands slightly in front of me, his stance defensive. “One of them already has, hasn’t he?”

I can’t speak. Not with the gaping wound in my chest where my heart should be. It hurts to breathe or even think. Pain barrages me from every direction—razor blades that slide across my skin, knives that embed themselves beneath my nails, swords that slash at my back, ripping apart flesh.

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