Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

“Were you playing when you tried to fuck me?”

Head in my hands, dirty hair covering my face, I couldn’t even try to defend such an unspeakable thing. “I have a quota…”

“Ahhh, but one you have failed to meet for the last three days.” But this disapproval he so thickly poured on me was not about required sex. It was about the rotting bits of torn apart immortals that decorated my circular cell and perfumed the air. I’d failed to restrain myself even a little, and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

As if I might explain myself, I muttered, “You’ve only brought me females.”

“But you could have cast a gate…”

There was no keeping the cracking weakness from my voice. “What is it you want from me?”

There was no answer, just a long incomprehensible look that was hard to read by the light of a single candle.

Hating pregnant pauses, having lived a life of filling them up with false laughter or banal jokes, I didn’t know what to do. What would ease the monumental itch that vibrated in my veins when he looked at me in such a way?

Unfurling from his crouch, he stalked closer, wrist out so I might drink.

The now familiar taste of him so near, the smell, and my mouth began to water. “I’m not hungry, Malcom.”

“Good.” Bumping my lips with the cool flesh of his inner wrist, he added, “Then perhaps tonight you might show mercy.”

My teeth sunk in, as if my mouth were separate from my psyche. And I looked up at him like a dirty, starving waif as I fed. The entire time he held my eyes. The entire time he praised me, petting my hair as if I were some puppy.

And then I heard the crying.

The child had been dumped in my oubliette. A clean little vampire girl in a blue dress. A replica of the one I’d worn that day. Red satin bow, hair in curls. All that was missing was a fluffy white kitten.

Chapter Fourteen

“It’s simple enough. Don’t kill her.”

But the sobbing, begging, traumatized kid was so frail one bite—even from a weakling daywalker—would probably rip her neck in half.

Thick, black, male immortal blood coated my tongue, mixed with the dirt on my face after I’d spat out his wrist to pace. Bare feet crunched over rotting limbs, squishing old meat into fetid dirt. Bone parting from bloated flesh squelched. I kicked a skull, half the face flying one direction, the bone smashing into the wall just as mine had long ago burst like an over-ripe fruit before my people.

The child screamed, clawing at the walls as if she might get out.

I ignored her, tearing at my hair, looking every bit the monster that I was. Clumps of black came away in my fists, bare feet still slapping through the remains of my last meals. Like some demon from Grimm’s fairy tales, I hunched and hissed, aware I was so ridiculous that even I had to scoff.

“Whenever you’re ready, Jade.”

Assurance, positive reinforcement? Why the hell did he use that tone as if instructing me on how to play the flute? Just lift the instrument to your mouth, purse your lips, and blow. It’s that simple, silly rabbit.

Under my breath, scattered, I muttered, “I think I’d rather play the harp…”

“What?” Real confusion was in his abrupt reply.

I was going completely insane, that’s what. “Malcom, I will drink from you every day, from any vein you want. I’ll do it on my knees before you. Bow to you as if you were my king. Do not make me kill a child!”

He spread his arms as if to call me to him, and I flew like a bird to his fist. Soft cashmere hit my cheek, molding myself to the creature however I thought it would best please him if that’s what it took to get that little girl to stop screaming. Lifted, cradled, maneuvered so my lips neared the juiciest of arteries in his neck, I sunk in the bite he silently ordered. And I drank until I thought I might be sick.

No hint of weakness came with loss of blood. Malcom didn’t stagger. The arms around my body didn’t twitch or sag. I swallowed far more of him than I ever had before, past the point of my discomfort, and then swallowed more.

A never-ending fountain of black, primeval blood.

Full vampires could eat dozens of humans a night, one after the next like popping grapes between their lips. Malcom, I suspected, fed a great deal, though I’d never once seen him do so before me.

“You’ve had enough, Jade.”

Truer words, even with my lips to his neck, my fangs in his veins, each swallow had a backwash of equal size. A vomit of blood that waved from my belly to splash against his skin for me to fight to swallow again.