Blood from Stone, chapter 4

Chapter 4

The meal was delicious, putting Liliana even more at ease. She was almost disgusted by how much food she packed away. Uncertain if it was merely from the twins drinking from her, or a combination of that with the stress of the morning, she pushed the worry to the back of her mind. Her metabolism had always been anything but slow, and she had a feeling the word “sedentary” was the farthest thing from how her life would be under the care of the Winterbourne clan.

When the meal was finally finished, servants flooded in to whisk away any uneaten food and the dishes. The banquet table became sparkling clean without any of them having to leave their seats. Liliana whistled softly at their speed and precision. “We could have used a few people who could clean like that, back home.”

Leon leaned forward in his seat, elbows resting on his knees. He steepled his fingers together beneath his chin, Liliana’s full attention going to him. “Speaking of your home, the twins told me that we have many things to discuss. Mostly catching you up to speed, since your information was largely the stuff of a madman’s ravings from several hundred years ago.”

“I do have more than a few questions,” she replied in agreement.

“We’ll get to all of them. My primary concern is your negative reaction to vampire venom.”

“Venom?” Liliana was surprised.

Leon gave her a barely perceptible nod. “Vampires have a neurotoxin in our saliva. It makes feeding easier for us, as it causes instantaneous arousal, and often subsequent climax to any human we sink fangs in to. Essentially, the neurotoxin floods the brain with dopamine, oxytocin, etcetera via orgasm. It makes our donors compliant, and makes the process painless for them, save an occasional ache at the site of the wound once the effects have worn off.” He sighed, shoving his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with a fingertip.

“Your reaction, however… Pain, inability to speak, sluggish movement. All those things are more in line with the effects of snake venom. So either you’re highly allergic to our bite, which will complicate our relationship for the time being, but not make it impossible… Or there’s another piece of the puzzle that we’re missing. Some other bloddukke specific ritual or item that we need to be able to totally nail this thing.”

Liliana found it hard to meet his gaze. “I was taught that none of you would give half a damn about my wellbeing, beyond me being your protector while you slumbered, and you taking… Frankly, whatever you wanted from me.”

Leon nodded his understanding. “The relationship between a vampire family and their bloddukke is a sacred bond, Liliana. If you’re to spend a long life with us, we want that life to be as far from the torture you were probably expecting as possible.”

She was doing her best not to get her hopes up but hearing another of them say that she was more than a walking sippy cup was lifting her spirits. “My blood isn’t crucial to your survival, then.”

A shrug was his response. “We’ve lived a long time without a bloddukke. The last one has been gone for nearly three decades. If you’re wondering about us being able to eat: food is for fuel, blood is for power, Liliana. We can’t live on blood alone, but our lives are better with a bit of it now and again.

“You’ve got several options, when it comes to giving blood. You can either let us chew on you anyway, the stress of which will probably lead to your becoming sickly and withdrawn, or we can have our live-in phlebotomist take a pint from you every sixteen weeks and we’ll ration it like it’s prime rib during the thirties. We can use that time to figure out a more permanent solution.”

Liliana cocked her head. “The thirties? You mean the Great Depression?”

Leon merely nodded. Jaxon stretched his arms above his head, his shoulders popping and his leather jacket creaking in a way that drew her attention immediately. “Leon and I were just children then, but we know how to get by with less than what should be the bare minimum. It’s not ideal, but if we have to take your blood in drops like it’s medication, it’s better than the third alternative.”

She wasn’t a fan of needles, but she was even less a fan of the sensation of fire burning through her veins and the paralysis from their venom. “What’s the third alternative?”

Draven, who’d been extremely quiet through the entire meal, spoke up. “We all avoid tasting your blood in any capacity, as long as we can, until our instincts take over and we accidentally slaughter you in a feeding frenzy.” His words were softly spoken, matter of fact. And they made her blood run cold.

The air around her suddenly felt heavy, thicker than it should have, making it hard for her to breathe. The sheer amount of power radiating from the seven men surrounding her was squeezing the oxygen from her lungs as surely as the scales of a python, their hunger a palpable thing. It reminded her that these creatures, while looking like normal human men, were something else entirely.

Still as a statue, Aubrey put in his two cents. “Draven will be the one to start it off. Being the youngest of us, he has the least amount of… Restraint.”

“Is that what happened to the last bloddukke?” Liliana’s own survival instincts were activating, making her hands ache longingly to hold her blades, and to eliminate any threat to her personal safety. Simultaneously, that urge battled with her training to protect these men, even at the expense of that same personal safety.

“…He died of natural causes. Draven wasn’t even born yet when he passed.” Oberon replied, his eyebrows knitting together and his lower lip trembling.

“He?” Liliana asked softly, feeling the depth of grief that flowed from the six elder Winterbournes.

“We’d rather not talk about him, right now. It may have been a lifetime ago, to you, but for us… It feels like yesterday.”

“To allay your confusion,” Leon added, “vampires have different appetites, and aren’t just male. Bloddukke can be women or men.” Turning to facts seemed to distract them from their wistful reminiscing.

“I see. That makes sense. In that case, when can I meet with the phlebotomist?”

“Whenever is most convenient for you. The sooner, the better. He’ll assess whether you’re fit to be drawn from yet, after Orion and Oberon sank fang into you last night. We may have to wait a few days, until your body’s had time to regenerate what you’ve lost.”

Liliana crossed her arms over her chest, drawing her lower lip between her teeth, fingertips absentmindedly tracing the hilts of the slim daggers sheathed on her forearms. “If it takes a few days, will I be safe until then?”

“You nearly knocked Rick’s head off his shoulders, and had the tip of one of those things aimed at Aubrey’s throat before he reached you. I think you’ll be just fine.” Jaxon reassured her with a chuckle.

Liliana scoffed. “Good to know someone has faith in my abilities.” She lightly tapped her fingernails against the hilts of her blades on the opposite forearm, doubt swelling inside of her with the strength of a patient tidal wave, waiting to crush and drown her when she’d least expect it.

After a moment of quiet reflection and doing her damnedest to calm her racing pulse, Liliana’s voice came out reedy and thin. “Since we’ve already eaten, point me to the phlebotomist and I’ll get this over with.”

The twins pushed their chairs back and stood in sync with each other. “We’ll walk you down.”

“That doesn’t exactly seem fair, you two.” Rick’s voice made her skin crawl and she instinctively dropped back into a defensive stance, the roar of her own blood in her ears loud enough to silence the static of anxiety that had paralyzed her only a moment ago.

“Chill out, Rick. We all know that she won’t make it there in one piece, if you go with her.” Oberon half snarled the last, and Liliana knew his irritation with his brother over the events of the morning still lingered.

The Winterbournes were nothing like she’d expected. Being raised as a bloddukke from birth, she knew the contents of the ancient text like the back of her hand. Vampires were monsters. They weren’t capable of human emotions. Ruled entirely by their id, they were nothing more than super powered machines with no interests other than domination, drinking blood, and rutting. She’d half expected to get gang banged the moment she arrived. But here they were, having breakfast with a modicum of civility, and most of them seemed more concerned with her safety than just sucking and fucking her until she was a husk to be discarded, like an empty juice box. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the whole situation, but the grimoire couldn’t have been more wrong. Or so she hoped.

“Orion and Oberon already drank of her. They’re the safest ones to be near her until we’ve obtained some relatively pain-free plasma.” Leon, being the voice of reason, had Rick’s lizard brain under control.

The twins were at her side, each of them taking an arm and hurrying her out the door before she had time to protest. “Trust me, don’t fight it.” Orion murmured, quelling her urge to walk of her own volition.

When they were out of earshot of the dining hall, they released her and she rubbed her upper arms. Their thick fingers had left marks on her skin. They were faint, so they wouldn’t bruise, but it had her morbidly curious about how many pounds per square inch of crushing strength their hands were capable of.

Oberon caught the movement of her fingers from the corner of his eye. “Shit. Sorry,” he said with a sigh. “Didn’t mean to be so rough with you, but to say the natives were getting restless is an understatement.”

“And not just Rick, either.” Orion added. “Draven had his fists clenched so hard under the table that his palms were bleeding.”

Liliana arched an eyebrow. “You could smell his blood? Draven’s, specifically?”

He nodded, slowing his pace a bit to walk directly beside her, realizing he’d still been moving so fast she nearly had to jog to keep up. “Our noses can put a dog’s to shame.”

Oberon snorted, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Which is why Aubrey was all ‘I can tell you’re turned on’ and shit. Creepy bastard.” Orion shot him a disapproving look and Oberon held his hands up in front of him. “What? You shouldn’t say that to a woman at the breakfast table, surrounded by your brothers. It’s fucking classless.”

Orion just rolled his eyes and Liliana couldn’t fight the snicker that rolled from her lips. “Good thing you couldn’t hear what he said in my head, then.”

“I would have decked him for you. For being the oldest of us, he’s awfully damned lacking in manners.”

“When were you two born, again? I’d guess that just swearing around a woman was considered in bad taste. Maybe the sixties?”

Oberon shook his head with a little laugh, a lopsided grin flashing a bit of fang. “Is this how mortals feel when they get carded for booze when they’re older than twenty-one?” He folded his hands behind his head as he walked, his plain grey t-shirt miraculously managing to stay tucked in despite looking ready to burst at the seams, the flesh beneath the thin layer of fabric rippling deliciously.

Liliana managed to keep herself from drooling as he continued. “We were born in 1950. Our mother… She didn’t make it. Hospitals weren’t as equipped to deal with multiple births as they are now. We never really knew her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Oberon shrugged. “She didn’t miss much. Would have worried herself sick when we ran off and enlisted as soon as we turned eighteen, anyhow.”

“Eighteen? That would have been in sixty-eight… Holy shit!” She stopped dead in her tracks. “You two fought in Vietnam?!”

Orion nodded curtly. “You sure do know your history, Liliana.”

“My father was a history nut. He might not have been the best with math or technology, but history… My brain is stuffed with so many dates he felt were important, I don’t know how there’s room for anything else.” It was hard to contain her excitement. “Not to pry, and I won’t ask you any obviously stupid questions you should never ask a veteran, but I’d love to talk with you guys about it, some time.”

“Sure,” they said in unison.

“This is our stop,” Oberon said, coming to stand before a door that reminded her of a nurse’s office she’d seen in a movie. “Head on in there and Doctor Daniel will give you your assessment.”

Liliana was surprised that she felt a little disappointed. “You can’t stay?”

“If he says he can pull a pint from you, we shouldn’t be within sniffing distance. Even after having your blood last night… It’d be too much.”

She nodded her understanding. “I’ll catch you later, then.”

Watching them walk away, she sighed. She could sock a vampire in the jaw and put a knife to another’s throat, but she was a wimp when it came to needles. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Liliana opened the door and stepped into the office, ready to have her blood drawn by a different sort of vampire.