Moonshifted. Part 29

Anna walked in from off stage. She was dressed simply, in white. It made her already fair skin paler; her blond hair gave her the only color she had.

She made her way down us, like she was in a receiving line. She spoke to Veronica and Gideon first, then Mr. Galeman, then me.

Anna looked me up and down. "You're magnificent."

"I'm not feeling it right now."

She slipped her hand into mine briefly. Then she smiled at Sike and went to the front of the stage.

"Bathory isn't here," Sike whispered, barely breathing beside me. She took her earpiece out of her ear.

"What does that mean?"

"They're not voting."

I tried to stare out past the lights, to figure out by the crowds where the lines of allegiances ran.

A vampire who appeared to be the master of ceremonies took the stage. He gestured for Anna to join him. "Anna Arsov, begin."

Anna opened up her arms to include everyone in the gathering. She looked so young beside him, and with all the lights s.h.i.+ning down, her shadow was slight. "I have pa.s.sed every test that you've given me. I have shown grand restraint, and I have known grave thirst. All the positions on my court have been filled. Who here would dispute my right to ascend?"

"House Arachne!" A lone vampire in the middle of an empty area of seats stood. "House Arachne does not recognize the right of the Arsinov to ascend to the Sanguine of the Rose Throne!"

"Old, but not as old as we are," Sike murmured just for my ear. "Powers include insect and small animal servants. Spiders, birds, and the like."

"And why would you dispute me?"

"You picked this place, so you have no taste. Worse yet, you picked these people-"

Anna cut her off. "It was within my rights to choose the locale, and to choose my own people. I have done nothing wrong."

"Many of them hate the church. They believe in the power it holds over them." Sike continued her narration.

"And you?" I asked of Sike.

"I believe in her," she whispered back.

"Does anyone else dispute?" the vampire overseeing the proceedings intoned.

A young woman in a tight burgundy velvet dress with swooping sleeves came forward. "The House of Bathory is undecided. We choose to abstain."

"Nouveau riche pretenders," Sike murmured to me. "Weak."

"Is that all?" the ceremony master asked, taking a moment to look around. "Together, two Houses cannot sway the vote. Sanguine rules of order say we should proceeed." He turned toward me. "Human, can you present your knife?"

I'd forgotten I had it. I held it out. He took it with a gloved hand and spun the hourgla.s.s in the hilt.

"There's blood on it-but none of it's in you. That's what counts." He put it in his own robe. "We may begin," he said, and snapped his fingers.

One of the hovering observers came up with a small bra.s.s box. It had a crank handle and was set on a silver tray.

Anna turned to me and pointed at the box. "Edie, please."

I didn't want to ask what it was. I wish she'd told me more. I picked it up carefully and looked at the handle, then the sides, and finally underneath. There were grooves cut into the bottom, lined with tiny blades. The metal was old. The blades were unclean.

A scarificator. I recognized it from our introduction to nursing cla.s.s, when our teachers had explained how far medical practices had come, and how far it had to go, and how we, the nurses of the next generation, were going to take it there. It was meant to bleed people, from olden times, when just lancing someone wouldn't do. Shown to be medically useless, despite the esteem it once held. Just like cocaine-spiked c.o.ke, magnet treatments, and the benefits of smoking.

No one made them anymore-because no one believed in the health benefits of bleeding.

Except for vampires.

Anna rolled up her white sleeve and proffered me her wrist. Another observer brought up a golden urn that had been fitted with a delicate tap.

"I trust you," she said, looking down at me. I knew what the stakes were, but-"Edie. It will be okay. I trust you."

I knew I couldn't hurt her-doing this wouldn't hurt her. And many times vampires, and even sometimes me, found pleasure inside pain. But still.

Where was the difference between piercing someone's skin with a needle, for their own good, and setting this thing's blackened grinding blades onto her? How many times had I hurt to make things better-hurt other people, and hurt myself?

She wanted me to do it. If I didn't, it might be the end of her. And the end of us.

I set the box on her skin. Then I stabilized it with my thumb, holding it still, my fingers cupping her wrist. I could feel the smoothness of her skin.

And then, G.o.d help me, I spun the handle around. The blades dug down. I didn't dare look up.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX.

She didn't flinch.

The blades were dull-it'd been a century since they were sharp. At least sterility didn't matter-this predated the idea of germs, much less the autoclave-since there was nothing Anna could contract. I pressed the box harder and spun the handle with more force. I felt like a perverted organ grinder's monkey, paid a pittance to liberate someone's blood.

The first drops emerged. Snaking down her arm in red tributaries, joining on her wrist to become a river, following the same path of least resistance to pool in the palm of her hand.

Warm in a way their blood would never be, hot as it rolled down to drip drip drip into the urn. I could hear the first few drops ting, like rain on a cheap window, before there was enough blood to make it sound like slow running water.

I couldn't see the vampires in attendance, but I felt their attention, rapt. How much blood did one body hold? Her size, her slight weight? I knew the answer, somewhere. I tried not to think about it. Hard.

Those who were helping with the ceremony came up and twisted the tap, decanting Anna's blood into trays of small gla.s.ses, which I realized with a shock were communion cups. Some of them were precise, catching every drop. Others were wasteful, overfilling gla.s.ses, letting blood drip down between. Anna ignored them, I almost said something, and she put her free hand on my shoulder before I could speak.

"I heal quickly, even now. Keep going," she said.

I hadn't counted the congregants before. I wished I had. Tray after tray of gla.s.ses was filled, dispensed, and filled again. Anna's hand on my shoulder didn't change; it didn't claw me with pain or fade away with the urge to faint.

I wanted to think I would have stopped all this if it had.

After what seemed like hours, the last tray was full, and there was no one else in line. Anna stood there, still white and gleaming, if you ignored the carnage down her right arm. Sensing things were through, I lifted the scarficator, saw where it had ripped through the skin and into the muscles of her forearm, the shreds of exposed white tendon, the dull gleam of living bone. Just as quickly, she began to heal, tendons reknitting, muscle sheaths regrowing.

I had never seen the process up close before. I gasped aloud. It was genuinely miraculous.

From the front of the stage I could finally see the crowd-and I knew now why I had been chosen. They were rapt with l.u.s.t. The room was silent, charged.

"So you see," Anna announced to the group before us, rolling her sleeve back down her arm. "I have pa.s.sed the final test. I thank you for those who donated to my trials. Drink now, and think well of me."

Some vampires darted long tongues into the small cups, others tipped them back to drink each drop, and still others swirled elegant fingers inside, pulling out drops of blood to lick like cake batter. So cruel to be limited to just a sip of her blood, when they could take-and she would make-so much more. If one of them had been here, instead of me, and she hadn't been absolutely sure of their loyalty as she was of mine- There was a commotion at the back of the room. A group of vampires forced their way in, jostling one another and the already seated host, each of them dressed as elaborately as the lone Bathory speaker before. None of them wore their attire like they were born to it, like they shared its age. Instead they looked like a well-funded Renaissance fair troupe had gotten loose.

"The House of Bathory will now decide!"

"Your time has pa.s.sed," the master of ceremonies intoned.

"We have the right!" said a man, one of those entering late. "I am the leader of this House. I get to have a vote."

"The votes have already been counted." The master of ceremonies grew before me, the shadows around him gathering, taking up more s.p.a.ce, crowding out the air.

"What would you find acceptable?" Anna said, stepping in front of me. At her intrusion, the master of ceremonies seemed to shrink and withdraw. All fights tonight were hers.

The man, dressed as an imitation of Henry the Eighth with a stomach to match, stepped forward. "We would prefer enough blood to bathe in, of course." Only members of his retinue laughed at his joke. "But we will accept a small sacrifice. One of your court, perhaps. Or more blood from your wrist divine."

I realized that as a whole, they lacked bargaining power, knowing she wouldn't let them slaughter us, her court, off one by one. But their dissent could cause chaos, and if she was low on blood, no true vampire would think twice about sacrificing a p.a.w.n for their cause.

How much had she bled? How much more could she make? How fast? The longer this took, the more they would know she was stalling for time, and there were thirty vampires that still needed sating.

"I accept your challenge." She took another step forward. "I am afraid I cannot put my Amba.s.sador again through such stress." She gave me a look overly full of pity, and then turned back to them. "I am forced to let you all drink from the source."

She crossed the distance between them and held her wrist up for the taller man who neared. He was looking for a trap. To drink was to put yourself in danger. Everyone here had also, if only in distant memory, been a gazelle.

"Drink deeply," she demanded, shaking her wrist as the last of the scarificator marks healed. He grabbed her arm, steadied himself and her, and bit her.

They were like sharks when they fed, eyes open, dark, then rolling back. His teeth fastened into her wrist, both sides. I could hear the force of his bite, fangs cutting into her. Behind him, the members of Bathory House leered. He couldn't even drink all of her blood-it seeped beyond the edges of his pulled-back lips, and dripped onto the floor.

Other jealous vampires were becoming restless-and not all of them were Bathory.

It would not go well for me in a bloodbath.

I watched him as they watched her. He closed his eyes.

She beheaded him. Without changing position or alerting him in any way, her free hand punched through his neck. Maybe he was drunk on blood, entranced by power-one second he was drinking, hunched over, and the next his head was still attached to her arm while the rest of his body staggered to the floor.

Instead of dusting, blood spurted out of his neck's open wound, on both sides. House Bathory crowded, stunned, dismayed, and she kicked his body toward them.

"You may drink of him, and through him, drink of me. When my blood in him is gone, all you will get is dust, and those of you who are not mine will die."

They fell on him like wolves. I heard fabric shred, then the sound of tearing meat, the break of bones. Anna pried his head off her wrist, where it sat whole, latched on, like a rattlesnake. As it fell it started crumbling to dust, peppering her clothes. The rest of the body crumbled accordingly, and the Bathory vampires who hadn't fed yet wailed.

Anna turned to the master of ceremonies. "Am I a member of the Sanguine, or am I not?"

A cruel smile played across his lips. He looked around to the others whom I had thought were mere servants, stuck holding trays, and I watched them nod one by one-the other members of the Sanguine, walking among us all along. The vampires had known, of course, but not me, till now. When he spoke, he showed black-stained teeth. "If you were not when you walked in, you have become so." He turned toward the Bathory vampires, now licking at drops of blood in the carpeting, eating fistfuls of dust. "We will handle the herd."

I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see what came next.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN.

I didn't know I was pressing my hands to my ears until I felt someone tugging at them. I'd been through too much tonight, done too much, seen too much blood.

"Did we break you?" Sike was holding my hands now, and shaking me. I focused on her again. Her face was clean, her smile high and bright. She raised a hand between us and snapped her fingers. "She's going to be very busy for a while now." We both knew she meant Anna. I didn't want to look around.

I'd never hurt someone intentionally like that before. And then I remembered how I'd stabbed Jorgen, and was still covered in his blood, and the blood of the driver before him, and- "Do not throw up." Sike put her arm around my shoulder. Where she could have been angry or demanding, instead she finally seemed sympathetic. She led me through the groups of vampires still congregating. Tonight had changed things between us. She and I were finally on the same team.

This whole thing now seemed like some Hollywood-Halloween-themed wedding reception. The glamorous people in charge, those who toadied up to them, from all apparent walks of life and day jobs. Men in suits, trench coats, women in latex, necks strung with pearls. But then there were the off-kilter ones who looked like they'd just come in from the gym, or were just going out to a punk show.

I'd have sworn I saw a woman in sweatpants with something I could only see half of written across her a.s.s, talking earnestly to one of the men with anime hair. I saw a glimpse of white-Anna was the only one wearing it-but then she was whisked away.

"You still need to get to the hospital for were-shots," Sike said. She propelled me toward the church's front, helping me as I limped. She nodded to the people who were guarding the entrance, and they opened the doors. "I'll call a car," she said once she'd gotten me to where I could lean against the wall. Her earpiece in again, she rattled off commands, then returned her attention to me. "You look like h.e.l.l. Don't go were on me out here. It would make us look bad."

I plucked at the b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt that I was currently freezing in. "Gee, thanks."

She shook her head and started fis.h.i.+ng for a cigarette. "Sorry." When she found one, she looked up. "So what happened to you tonight?"

"How nice of you to ask." I watched her light up, wis.h.i.+ng I had a bad habit to count on in stressful times. "Jorgen-a bitten member of the Deepest Snow pack-came after me."

Sike's eyes narrowed. "Anna's going to have words with them then. Now that her place is a.s.sured-we can't allow that kind of affront."

"Why them, though? It was supposed to be some other were. Viktor."

She took a deep drag and exhaled smoke. "I checked him out. He's too young. Too brash. House Grey would never make use of him. And if they were orchestrating things against Anna-they would have done it here." She drew a circle in the air to indicate the church behind us, her cigarette leaving a tracer of light behind. "She's in. She can make her own House now."

"Yay?" I asked with sarcasm.

"You're so small-minded. You don't even realize what that means." She blew smoke out of her nose like a dragon. "Because she's alive she can make more blood whenever she wants. People who belong to her will never have to go to Y4 and beg." She smiled, and I could imagine a time in the near future when the act would show the world her fangs. "Blood is power, and Anna's a fountain of it."

"So you're saying I'm safe now?" I asked her, my hands tucked into my armpits. She was calm and glamorous, dressed up for the occasion, smoking dramatic, and not s.h.i.+vering. I was her opposite, and becoming too cold to care.