Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

I’d sucked that bastard’s cock down my throat, choked on it—gagging and drooling the way men preferred.

“Jade.”

Hands to my marble bathroom vanity, burning as if the fires of hell had been born in my womb, I refused to look toward the one who had reduced me so low. “Get out.”

But Vladislov was not moved by something as pathetic as I. “Come, love. We’ll find a place in your palace to talk.”

It was then I realized sunlight drenched us both, the remainder of the day. A pink sky. Death to any vampiric immortal.

“Come, child,” he murmured to me. Beautifully ugly. That long, waved brown hair shining and glorious. “You’ve had your tantrum. Let it be done.”

My clothing was shambles, my skin left with marks of broken things and self-harm. Still I turned to face my savior. “Can you really steal the throne from Satan?”

“Let’s talk of the River Seine. And beautiful things.”

The melody of his song, the very look he laid upon me. My own father had never looked at me in such a way. “I would have been a good daughter…”

How he dug in so deep with so little effort. “I know, child.”

“You asked before if I would burn the Cathedral with everyone inside.”

“And?”

“I like Marie. She’s always been kinder to me than the others.” My forehead softened, my lips growing lax. “Perhaps it is her Hapsburg jaw and lack of ‘immortal’ beauty. Or the fact she lost so many babies when her kingdom fell. She was the first to ever offer me cake. Did you know that?” Brushing rooted glass from my forearm, I continued. “I don’t think anyone does. Something so inconsequential wouldn’t even have interested my father.”

Footstep cracking more broken glass under his heel, Vladislov dared come nearer. “And did you care for the cake?”

“I devoured the attention. Sitting on her lap like a prized poodle.”

“You’re lonely.”

“Yes.” None could be more lonely than I.

With a wink, something evil professed. “No fire then. The only friends you’ve ever known are here, terrible as they are.”

Enough. I’d had enough of being toyed with on all fronts. “You said we were going to talk of the Seine.”

He moved with the same speed as my daddy. There one instant, in another before one might see. Picking a feather from my hair, Vladislov blew on it to make it fly away. Together we watched the bit of down tumble and float, to land in the chaos. And then silence.

Which fed me.

This man, this thing who could tolerate just a touch of dying light, grasped me by the soul.

Glancing up from the wreckage on the ground, I caught his eyes, daring much in my request. “I’m hungry.”

He grinned. “Don’t be greedy.”

Yet still he offered me his wrist.

It was like drinking ebony. Glassy warm and blacker than pitch.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Telling someone as spoiled and rotten and twisted as I not to be greedy, was, in itself, silly. Even at my age, I was incapable of being anything but. Lips to skin that felt like dry paper, cautious in how I punctured, and feeling the strangest itch upon the parts of my skull that had been put back together, I sank in my fangs.

Delicately.

Like a lady sipping port, pinky up.

Rapture hit me harder than my brains had hit that wall years ago. It took me by the throat, stole my soul from right out of my body, and had me tearing my lips away before more than a few drops of infinite darkness smeared my tongue.

I could not have been greedy if I’d wanted to! To drink of that man would kill me.

“Sure you’ve had enough, child?” He made a show of rolling up his sleeve, exposing the veins in his strong forearms and tan skin.

He stood in the last of the day’s dredge of sun, had entered my pretty prison without effort, had offered me the taste of infinity. Did my father’s blood hold eons like this? How had I survived drinking from this man as a child? “What are you?”

“I am whatever I want to be.” He cut me a secretive smirk, teasing, playful even. “Old, to be sure.”

Wiping my lips as if some of that dreadful perfection might still linger there, I spoke plainly. Because there was absolutely no point in prevaricating with this one. “The older they get, the more their minds warp. What’s to make you any different than him should you take his throne?”

He cocked a brow. “Nothing at all.”

“I’m less than one hundred but I feel ten thousand.” I felt older than any river he might want to discuss.

“Yet you act like you’re five.”

True. I was aware of my faults. More aware by the minute, blockages in my mind easing until the overspill of ugliness behind them left me reeling. “I think I might need another drink.”

If just a few drops of him had untangled hints of what was hidden in me, a mouthful might give me back what I lost that day my brains hit the floor.