Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

Not unless they wanted to spend an eternity as my father’s newest plaything. After all, the devil could think up extraordinary acts of pain, make a symphony from tortured screams.

A dark-haired servant—another freshly-turned contract worker—walked past me as I moved through narrow stone halls. The delicious scent of a well-fed vampire wafted, drawing my eyes for a lingering look.

Mouth watering, I fought the urge to feel the silken slip of my fangs slide down. Gums tingling, I repressed the need. I left the unknown immortal alone.

One, who unlike my yammering shadow sniping about protocol, knew who I was.

No damned soul wanted to be fed upon by a daywalker. It was an embarrassment of sorts every last member of my father’s herd avoided at all costs, though none were allowed to deny the king’s offspring should I ask for a taste.

All designed to keep them hating me. To keep me from making a home with the only creatures in existence who wouldn’t die with each passing year.

To keep me lonely and politically weak, while giving me more power than any creature haunting this hellhole.

The tight smile the male offered, the subtle nod of his head said just as much. Please, I’m new and already fodder for the ancients who toy with us at will. Please, I might be too weak to survive the things I’ve heard Satan’s daughter likes to do.

“My lady.”

Those two words, and still the young female tracking me kept yammering. “You can’t be back here. I don’t have you on the list!”

Instead of helping a fellow contract-bound fresh-changed, the male slipped away when I forced my head to turn away from the appetizing temptation his very presence presented.

My hands shook, but my feet continued forward on the well-worn stone. Conservatory before me, head aching from denying the feed, throat parched in a way water might never relieve, I put my hands to the unguarded double doors of a room made of glass.

A room made to harden the soft skin of a baby daywalker to sunlight.

Before I might find sanctuary in my private indoor garden, the freshly-changed vampire female grabbed my wrist. “I told you, you can’t—”

To my left, shadow became flesh. And before the youngling might finish her complaint, her head became pulp against the wall. Smell of blood overwhelming, a shudder vibrated from my spine to bloodless fingertips.

There was no preventing the excruciating way my fangs descended, long and deadly, behind my tension thinned lips. Eyes to the door I’d only barely cracked open, I tried not to slur through my teeth as I deadpanned, “She didn’t know who I was.”

Malcom stood stoic, the embodiment of disapproval. “Nor did you tell her.”

Which meant he blamed me for the death he’d doled out.

Abandoning the blood-splattered hall that left my stomach loudly growling. Refusing, even famished as I was, to feed upon the dead, I left stone floors for sumptuous Persian rugs, ivory inlay, and cobalt tile. Victorian architecture made up my beautiful cage, the scent of growing things, and a room that, come daybreak, would be drenched with stinging sunlight.

Home.

The little glass coffin my father had once demanded I sleep in still had its place, untouched by time, yet polished to a sparkling sheen by some unknown slave in my absence. Edwardian couches, ancient wardrobes, tables set for a feast that would never be laid. Branching glass side rooms for sleeping, bathing, reading—every need readied and staged for immortal and mortal alike.

There were even trickling fountains granting the air a pleasantness that the sheer beauty of the room could never accomplish. No amount of sunshine, tended roses, fruit trees, or satin might break up the taint of this place.

Fisting my fingers until knuckles cracked, I grew irritated that the dead servant in the halls had never placed my order. No breathing undead meal waited.

What was the point of having a smart device in these dead halls if the greeter for the Broad Street entrance didn’t use it? What had she done with my fox fur coat? If her blood was on it, I’d never be able to wear it again without salivating constantly.

“Jade… your eyes are red.”

Malcom’s impatience at being left unacknowledged fed my impatience at his lurking. “You were not invited into my rooms.”

“I have leave to enter any room you choose to grace with your presence.” He dared run his fingertip down an errant drip of blood his little show in the hall had left on my bare arm.

“Not here you don’t!” Already I had him by the throat, his shined shoes barely scraping the ground once his back hit the wall. “No soul has leave to enter my rooms without permission. I know that for fact.”

What a vision I must have made: lips drawn back, fangs glinting, and eyes as red as the demon who’d sired me. Holding one of the most powerful males in my father’s guard pinned by the throat.