Sacrifice (Bloodline Vampires 1)

I come again instantly.

I keep coming, wave after wave, until I’m sobbing and begging, but I can’t begin to guess what I’m begging for. For him to stop. For him to fuck me. It doesn’t matter. Before I can decide, he lifts his head.

And then he’s gone, a flash of motion up the curving staircase, and I’m left alone in the entrance hall. Wet. Bleeding. And filled with enough confusion that my head feels like it’s spinning wildly on my shoulders. “What the fuck just happened?”

2

I think I blackout. I must, because one moment I’m lying on the cold marble floor and the next I’m blinking up into a darkened bedroom. I go perfectly still out of habit, forcing my heartbeat to slow and my breathing to stay even. I can see well in the dark, courtesy of my vampire blood, and I pick out the features of a bedroom that must have been the height of luxury sometime in the last few hundred years. It hasn’t been kept up in the meantime. There’s dust on every surface of the heavy wooden furniture and the canopy overhead is filled with holes and worn nearly transparent.

I count to one hundred slowly, and then do it again.

Nothing moves in the room except for the steady rise and fall of my chest.

I can’t lay here forever, no matter how much part of me wants to curl into a ball and wait for this all to be over. Maybe another woman in my position would. Maybe the last sacrifice sent to this place did.

It’s not who I am.

My life has been hell since I was old enough to realize my position within the vampire colony my father rules. I am the worst of all things. Magic-less. Bastard. The product of my monster of a father and one of his human mistresses he pretends is there of her own free will, rather than an exotic pet he likes to keep to prove his power. Unlike other dhampir children of bloodline vampires, I have no magic to speak of. I fit nowhere, and so every move I made was an insult deserving punishment.

For years, I didn’t understand why he resisted killing me and getting me out from underfoot once and for all.

Now, I do.

This is where he planned to send me all along. A sacrificial lamb. A womb just waiting to be filled with one of the failing vampire bloodlines my father holds so highly. And if I die before accomplishing that? He’ll lose no sleep over it.

Under other circumstances—mainly, if I’d inherited his magic like I should have—my getting pregnant would make me his heir. Now, he wants me to serve as a vehicle to bring another bloodline under his control. It seems particularly cruel, but I’ve long since stopped expecting anything resembling kindness from my father.

I let rage propel me to sit up and gingerly touch my neck. The bites are small puncture wounds. The vampire didn’t so much as tear my skin, though I’m not about to thank him for it.

Him.

Malachi Zion.

If my father is to be believed, this vampire can trace his bloodline back to one of the original seven vampires. There are only two types of vampire. Turned and bloodline. Over time, the number of turned vampires has far outnumbered the bloodline ones born—something rare even before vampires withdrew and hid away from humans, and now practically non-existent—which means those family lines are in danger of dying out.

Which is supposedly where I come in.

I sigh and climb carefully off the bed. My thigh aches, but my busted knee aches worse. The hike did me no favors. I limp to where my suitcase is tucked near the door. It appears untouched, but when I lay it down and open it, I find things rifled through. “Nosy ass vampire,” I mutter. A quick search finds what I feared. He’s taken my knife. I glare at the mess of clothing in the suitcase. “What’s the fucking point? You’re like two hundred years old, and I’m half human. I couldn’t kill you with that knife if I tried.”

If he’s lurking close enough to listen to me rant, he makes no appearance to reveal it. It’s just as well. Even with my vampire side accelerating my healing, I’m a little light-headed from blood loss. I need to eat something, but I might as well wish on a star as hope that kitchen is stocked.

Still.

The alternative is hiding in my room until the vampire starts wanting a snack and seeks me out again. My body hums at the thought, entirely too onboard with the idea. I’d heard bloodline vampires had a pleasurable bite, had even seen it play out during my father’s services when he moves through the room and bites a few of his chosen followers, but I chalked it up to vampire-on-vampire nonsense. The few times I haven’t been fast enough to avoid one of the turned ones’ fangs, it hurt.