Blood Double (God Wars #1)(3)

"Yes, sir." Skel Hawer turned smartly and walked out of Norian's office.

Norian sighed and shook his head. He'd gotten good service from Skel in the past. Drake and Drew wanted Hawer brought up on charges for beating the woman and then leaving her in the Queen's dungeon for three days without medical care, but Norian pointed out that the woman hadn't been properly registered as an Alliance citizen. Drake argued that he and some of the others had been away on assignment and hadn't had the opportunity. Norian cut them off, claiming he had other business.

*

Breanne's Journal

Eleven days. Eleven days it took, for me to become vampire. The beating had revived old nightmares and I only wished to die. I'd shaken my head and muttered no through lips so bloodied and swollen it was difficult to say the word. He'd asked me if I wanted to live. I said no. He asked me if I wanted to be strong and live forever. I said no again, with difficulty. "Wrong answer," he whispered and cut into my wrists.

I'd been fleetingly surprised that any blood remained in my body. As it was, I became sleepy as my blood drained away; then he'd forced me to drink from him. When I refused his commands at first, my throat was stroked and I swallowed unwillingly. Someone else was in the room with us, counting time. After what seemed an interminable period, the other man asked him to stop giving me blood. That's when the darkness came.

*

After waking with a start, I shook and trembled as I gazed upon my sire for the first time. My eyes had swollen shut from my beating before, and I hadn't been able to see him. I saw him now. Dark hair, cut very short, dark eyes, straight nose, strong chin. Handsome enough, but I could see through that. My curse assured it—every time.

He'd killed many times throughout his life. Most of it was deserved. A few deaths were at another's command and perhaps not so deserving. My first glimpse of the Queen of Le-Ath Veronis was seen in his eyes. She was lovely, no question about it. She was also absent, and he had no idea where she was or when she'd return. That made him angry. In fact, many things made my sire angry, and one of those things, unfortunately, was me.

"Drink," was his first command and a bottle of blood substitute was shoved into my trembling hands. I stared in confusion as he gave the order. Gavin Montegue was my vampire sire's name, and he frowned deeply at my hesitation.

He hadn't introduced himself, but that didn't matter. I knew who he was, through my curse. I also knew that Gavin Montegue wasn't his given name. He was Roman by birth, had no idea who I was and had no care for me. He should have let me die (and he would have), but someone—a voiceless, nameless someone, had instructed him to make me vampire, no matter the cost. Therefore, I was now vampire.

I wasn't stupid—I'd learned that humanoid females seldom survived the turn to vampire. The comesuli, however, turned regularly and roughly half of them would become female after the turn. Humanoid women usually didn't live through the attempt. Perhaps one in twenty-five thousand attempts might make it. I'd done plenty of reading after I was so callously deposited on Le-Ath Veronis, and what my curse didn't tell me, my curiosity did.

Turning my gaze away from Gavin Montegue—I'd seen all of him I wanted to see—I slowly drank the blood substitute he'd given me. Knowing it wasn't real blood made it easier for me to swallow, but I really didn't want to consume it.

Yes, Gavin should have reassured me. He didn't. He should have begun teaching me that first day. He didn't. Instead, he took the empty bottle away after I'd finished my first vampire meal, pressed a comp-vid in my hands, told me to read through the vampire laws and said he'd answer questions later. "You'll continue your assigned work," he added as he walked away. Then he vanished, leaving me inside the bedroom I'd been given after my arrival eight weeks earlier.

"Hello." I greeted my likeness in the mirror. The face that stared back was an unfamiliar one. Perhaps it was how I should have looked when I was young, but fate had not been kind to my face or my body. Thankfully, too, the arthritis and other difficulties had vanished with the turn, and for the first time in more than forty years, I wasn't in pain.

A bath was in order as soon as Gavin left me, and I blinked again at my altered appearance in the glass over my tiny dressing table. Early twenties—vampires usually appeared to be in their twenties. My hair had always been my best feature, but it had gone very gray over the years. Now it was dark auburn, shoulder-length and curled frantically about my face. I also had clear skin and delicate features.

I might be considered beautiful by some, except for my eyes. Those had never changed. Hadn't since my birth. My eyes had always been a deep, cobalt blue with barely a visible pupil, and they told me many things, most of which I had absolutely no desire to know.

"They're just too awful," one of my foster mothers claimed as she handed me back to the social worker when I was seven. She'd shuddered, too, making me feel small and ugly as the social worker took my hand and led me from the house. She'd been talking about my eyes, and her reaction wasn't the worst I'd experienced through the years.

I'd always been thin, so my clothing still fit. Except it wasn't my clothing. A few things had been culled from the Queen's closet and lent to me—things that didn't cost so much or had gone out of style. That's what I wore now as I did as my vampire sire instructed, walking down the marble hall toward the small office I'd been assigned. No, his compulsion didn't work, and that was out of the ordinary. Vampires, even King or Queen Vampires, were generally susceptible to their sire's compulsion. Only a few very rare ones weren't, and most of those were destroyed immediately, according to the records I'd read.