“You brought me this mortal as a sacrifice. You said she was an offering to show me that you came in peace when you entered my private tunnels. You—my enemy’s greatest ally,” Morshiel drawled.
“I’m offering to become your greatest ally,” Aubrey said, slouching back in his chair. “She is prime flesh—a prostitute for which I paid the equivalent of an average Londoner’s annual salary for one night. Her name is Margarite. I hope you enjoy her.”
“You will be the one to enjoy her…here, in front of me and my revenants.” Aubrey watched, unmoving, as five more revenants tramped into the room. He recognized four of them by name and had fought innumerable battles against all of them, over the centuries. Several of them bore scars from his ravening claws and teeth.
He’d once been the lover of one of the monsters.
Rosetta Vanderpool leered at him. Though she was one of the walking dead, her skin was as white and her breasts as plump as the day he’d feasted on them with mortal lips. Only her fangs and the film over her once brilliant sapphire eyes betrayed her status as a revenant. He knew from experience that she shifted into one of the most vicious forms a revenant could take—a prowler.
“I wish to see your skills at pleasure,” Morshiel instructed in a bored tone. “Then I want you to drain the whore. But leave the last drop for me, won’t you?”
Terror broke through Margarite’s shock. She shrieked and scurried on hands and knees toward the exit. Rosetta Vanderpool walked in front of her and gave a negligent but brutal kick with a pointed-toe boot. Margarite fell to the carpet again, clutching her cheek and whimpering in pain.
Aubrey’s bored posture as he watched the cruel treatment belied the ice-cold tingles of panic spiking through his flesh. Morshiel and the six other revenants in the room would tear off all his limbs and leave him in a helpless state for days, weeks—who knew how long?—before they finally took off his head and ended his misery. Despite his betrayal here today, Aubrey had always admired Blaise’s fortitude in refusing to take life, and had followed his dictates without fail.
“A test, is it?” Aubrey asked.
“Yes,” Morshiel said warmly, as though pleased by Aubrey’s perceptiveness. “I know that my clone forbids murder among the Literati, a practice I’ve always considered heathen…a blatant betrayal of our kind. Show me firsthand where your loyalties lie. Show me.”
Candlelight gleamed in the depths of his agate-like eyes.
Aubrey shrugged, stood and approached the woman cowering on the carpeted floor. Compassion swept through him when he saw the absolute terror reflected in her eyes. He must calm her, first and foremost. Only Blaise’s ability for ascendancy—the power to influence and control a mortal—was stronger than Aubrey’s among the Literati.
“Shhhh, do not be afraid,” he crooned. He pressed with his ascendancy, reached into the woman’s mind, taking her back just hours before to the moment when he met her in the Angelus Salon and whispered hotly in her ear, causing her to swoon in his arms. He knelt and put his hands on her forearms. “Do not let nightmares overcome you, Margarite.” He gently helped the woman to her feet, glad to feel the trembling in her flesh cease. “You are safe here with me, within Sanctuary. Look around you. Is not all well?”
Margarite tore her now worshipful gaze off his face. Her stare ran over Morshiel, who looked like an amused spectator at the theater, and swept across the half-dozen nightmare creatures who watched her with manic-like, ravenous stares. Aubrey made it so that all she saw was the luxurious, fire-lit interior of the Angelus Salon—and him, of course. She smiled and went up on her toes. She kissed him, not like a seasoned prostitute, but like a child who thanks a protective parent for awakening them from a bad dream.
Aubrey put his hands on her waist and deepened the kiss until she was fully his slave. She plastered her body against his and writhed. Behind him, Aubrey heard Morshiel chuckle appreciatively.
“Impressive,” Morshiel said.
“Enough,” Rosetta Vanderpool said loudly. “Make him show us blood. Make him eviscerate the whore.”
“Now, now, Rosetta, where are your manners? You’re as bad as a drudge in need of a fix,” Morshiel remonstrated. “You are witnessing prodigious skill. Watch and learn.”
Aubrey had to use all of his focus to maintain his ascendancy when he himself was frightened. One thing he knew for certain—it was either him or the woman. The least he could do was make her death as pleasant as possible.
He whispered to her as he slid the robe off her body, baring naked flesh. He praised her beauty, her vibrancy, her warm, vitessence-rich flesh.
He meant every word.
She went to the worn velvet couch obediently enough when he requested it. He came down over her, worshipping her with his mouth, losing himself in fragrant, blood-rich skin, trying to force himself to ignore Morshiel, the walking corpses and the vaporous demon who surrounded the couch in a circle and watched his display with hungry gazes.
He tried to ignore them, but it was difficult.
He parted the woman’s firm thighs and tasted her nectar on his tongue. His eyes closed of their own accord as her taste permeated his senses. This…yes, this always made him forget. Aubrey adored the taste of pussy, loved to play in it with his sensitive tongue, relished drowning his consciousness in the rich, musky cream of womanhood. He tickled the woman’s delicate folds with the tip of his tongue and agitated her with firm lips and a gentle suck until she squirmed and moaned and he had to restrain her with his hands at her hips. She shuddered and the energy of her climax poured into him.
He once again recalled his situation as he raised his head, but sluggishly, as if through the haze of a dream. Before he sank his teeth into one of Margarite’s firm breasts, h
e glanced up at Rosetta Vanderpool and snarled a taunt. Rosetta was nothing more than a breathing, eating corpse, while he—Aubrey—would continue to feast on ripe, succulent flesh and feel the vibrancy of life for an eternity.
He blessed Blaise for the incomparable gift he’d given him. The pain of betraying his first and only love was like a squirming, living sliver beneath his skin.
He could withstand the pain of it, however.
Margarite mewled with pleasure as she experienced yet another climax, her body writhing beneath him. He heard a sound behind him—a growl of arousal deep in Morshiel’s throat. Despite Aubrey’s fear, his cock throbbed in desire.
Before he sank his fangs into Margarite’s carotid artery, he saw a flash of fear in her eyes. He hesitated, but then he felt Morshiel’s hand on his shoulder, stroking him in a reassuring gesture, the caress of a lover. He clamped his jaw and pierced warm, juicy flesh. For the first time in his immortal life, Aubrey drank his fill. For the first time in his life—either mortal or immortal—he understood what he was.