A Life In Blood (Chronicles of The Order Book 1) Read online

  “Right, very good, first of all, wait to be invited in, what you just did was bloody rude. Second of all, did it ever occur to you that maybe I initiated that ritual?”

  She looked positively horrified at that.

  “You...what? Why? Why did you do that?”

  “Because I love her, Lev. I wanted to show her that I wanted a full, open and pure relationship with her, and only her. I initiated that ritual, and I am telling you now, her feelings for me are real and she has no ulterior motive concerning me. We’re linked now, she couldn’t hide it from me if she tried.”

  Lev sighed heavily. “Look, I’m sorry I went off on one, okay? It’s just that I do genuinely consider you a friend, and I look out for my friends. And Her Ladyship concerns me.”

  I went to my drawers and dragged out a fresh pair of trousers, laying them on the bed as I replied.

  “Lev, if we are friends then I need you to do something for me.”

  “Alright, but if anyone asks you propositioned me.”

  “What?”

  “What do you need?”

  The woman was mad, I was sure of it. Well actually, now I’m more convinced than ever that she is in fact slightly barmy. Still, she’s a good person to have on your side.

  “Corvi is my...” I drew a blank, as I tried to define what she was to me now. Girlfriend? Well, she hasn’t been a ‘girl’ for at least a thousand years, so that seemed inaccurate and condescending. Mate? No, neither vampires nor mortals are animals, and in England it makes her sound like she’s my best friend. Which is true to a degree, but nowhere near the whole of it. And ‘lover’ just makes it sound...well, wrong.

  “She’s important to me,” I decided, using the most diplomatic term I could. “So please, lay off her? Try and be nice, or just less of a bitch, maybe?”

  She seemed to deflate a little at my request, but she finally relented.

  “Alright, fine, I’ll leave your girlfriend alone,” she said at last. “Now get dressed, we have a date with an old friend of yours.”

  “Oh?”

  She grinned wickedly.

  “That Geoffrey guy? He’s been brought into our custody. And I’m helping interrogate him, which means I can have you present and class it as ‘training’.”

  “Lev?”

  “Yes darling?” She was insufferable sometimes, she really was.

  “I fucking love you.”

  Twenty minutes later, we walked into the base’s prisoner wing, where another vampire was waiting.

  “You took your sweet time, Levaertes,” the man growled, in a voice that seemed to have emanated from somewhere near his knees. It was low, rough and dangerous, much like the man himself - he had the muscle of someone who didn’t hide from fights, and the intimidating air of someone accustomed to winning them. His dark hair was short, his dark blue eyes narrow and steady. He was not a man to cross, basically.

  “Sorry Kalin, had to pick up our friend here. Kalin, meet Deimos Black, the newest recruit to the Sentinel programme.”

  Surprisingly, he held his hand out to me, and I accepted it readily. There was a slight pause as he shook my hand, and a knowing smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  You’re him then, the gleam in his eye seemed to say. Guess Corvi wasn’t wrong when she said the other vampires would know.

  “Not many would have the courage to do what you did, Mister Black,” he told me, his tone ambiguous. He could have been sincere, or he could have been making a threat. I couldn’t tell. “You’ll have to tell me why you made that choice sometime.”

  “Buy me a beer first and I’ll be glad to.”

  Kalin laughed.

  “I may have to do that, Mister Black. You’ll have no problems with me - any mortal who willingly chooses one of us for a mate is either insane or devoted, but worthy of respect.”

  “Believe me,” I started with a grin, “insanity and devotion aren’t always mutually exclusive.”

  Kalin laughed again, louder this time, before Lev interrupted the conversation.

  “If you two are finished fellating each other, perhaps we could get on with this? Kal, you have the paperwork?”

  The man pulled something from his jacket pocket and passed it to Lev, who in turn passed it to me.

  “This is what allows us to ignore tricky little details like laws involving fair treatment of prisoners. We can do with him as we see fit.”

  I unfolded the piece of paper and looked it over. Then I felt a cruel smile spread across my face.

  This was going to be good.

  “Geoff! So glad you could join us!” Lev called out cheerfully, as Kalin took his own place at the table Geoff was chained to. “My name is Levaertes Grey, I will be your interrogator today, with me is Kalin Bryant, the moody bastard, and special guest star Deimos Black, who I think you remember.”

  “The traitor to his own kind, I remember. You know you can’t keep me here, I have committed no crimes and I have rights. I’m not telling you a thing.”

  Lev held up the paper she had shown me earlier.

  “Who wants to do the honours? D? Kal? Anyone?”

  “It’s your show, boss,” I told her, leaning against the back wall with my arms folded.

  “Fuckin’ A,” she said, striding over to the helpless man. “I never get to do the fun bits usually.” She unfolded the paper and placed it in front of Geoff, before taking her own seat.

  “If that’s a confession, I ain’t signing.”

  “You must have traded smarts for bravado,” I told him. “Look around, you moron, there’s no pen so we don’t expect you to sign. We expect you to read - that is, if you can manage on your own. I can help with the big words if you want.”

  He swore under his breath at me, and looked down at the paper. Yes, I was immature, I know, but the fucker ruined my date. I was not happy.

  But then, all of a sudden, neither was Geoff.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s your death certificate,” Lev told him bluntly. “We have a lot of friends in a lot of places, high, low and the spaces in between. You, my dear boy, are quite alarmingly - and very officially - dead.Which means we get to do whatever. We. Want.”

  Geoff actually looked horrified, which was a look I treasured for a long time afterwards.

  “So, our first question - and I strongly suggest you answer honestly - is how did you know we would be at that restaurant?”

  “I still don’t have to tell you fuck-all,” he snarled, and I sighed dramatically.

  “Hey Geoff, I just thought - how’s your shoulder?”

  “What are you, stupid? You shot me in the l-”

  The thunderous report echoed around the small chamber, punctuated only by Geoff’s agonised screams. A gaping wound had been blown in his left shoulder, a spatter of blood marking the wall behind him.

  Kalin, who had been sat right next to Lev when she fired her Desert Eagle, was less impressed than I was.

  “Fuck’s sake woman, are you mad? That hand cannon of yours is ridiculous!”

  “I thought...you said...people who used those...were compensating?” Geoff snarled through clenched teeth, and I shrugged at him.

  “No, I said you were compensating. Believe me, Lev here has bigger balls than you do.”

  “Fuck you, I am not telling any of you shit,” he added, and I nodded.

  “Hm, you may be right. So we need other options. Lev, can we not just drain the fat bastard, get the info we need that way?”

  The white-haired sadist shook her head.

  “Nope. Only elder vampires have the mental discipline to sift through that much memory and find wh
at we would want, and we don’t have one of those.”

  “Okay...so what about psychically? Could one of you two pull it out of his mind?”

  Another head shake, from both this time.

  “Nah. I can speak telepathically, but that level of rip...it requires more power than I have.”

  I sighed impatiently.

  “Fine. So who’s the most powerful psychic we have on the base?”

  Lev grinned at me as if she knew the punch-line to a great joke.

  “That, sweetheart, would be your girlfriend.”

  “Great. Get her down here then. Well Geoff,” I said turning back to our prisoner, “looks like you get to wait just a little longer. Although, you’ll probably wish you had just opened up from the start.”

  “Whatever,” he grunted. “You won’t get shit from me.”

  I couldn’t keep the smirk from my face as I replied.

  “We’ll see, Fat Boy. We’ll see.”

  About ten minutes later, I could feel the small core of Corvi’s thoughts that lurked inside my mind growing stronger again, an indicator that she was on her way. Then I felt something else - anger. Something had pissed her off today, and I would have to wait a while to find out what, but she was really, really pissed.

  Nothing demonstrated this better than her entrance into the room. Ignoring any standard device for opening doors, she simply willed it to be open, the door bursting the lock and slamming against the wall under her psychic onslaught.

  “Oh, look who it i-urk!”

  Geoff’s attempted insult was choked off as Corvi fixed him with an ice cold stare, ramming a blade of psychic force into his mind and inflicting a huge amount of pain.

  I know that much, because I felt it too, my nose reacting as it always did in the presence of strong psychic activity.

  “Deimos, get your defences in check,” she commanded, without taking her eyes from our prisoner.

  “Now listen to me very, very carefully, Geoffrey. I have had a very unpleasant day, and I am not in the mood to fuck around, so I am going to lay my cards out for you.

  “One, I am over a thousand years old, and that means I have had plenty of time to hone some very specific psychic skills. Two, I have not had a date in over a century and a half, so you can imagine how pissed off I was when you ruined the first one I had in all that time. Three, I really, really do not have time for your bullshit, so tell me what I want to know right. Now.”

  To his credit, Geoff seemed to hold up relatively well.

  “Fuck...you...Aaagh!”

  She pressed harder, and blood streamed from Geoff’s nose as well.

  “Now that is just downright rude,” she chided softly. “You know only one person in this room will ever get that pleasure. Now, since you have made your decision, I can see I will have to take what I want by force. Farewell, Geoffrey.”

  The psychic pressure in my head became unbelievably intense, so it must have been agony for him. The blood pouring from the corners of his eyes, from his nose and his ears told me all I needed to know on that score. He was convulsing under my lover’s ministrations, and I was again reminded of the bizarre duality that Corvi had.

  The way I saw it, there was Corvi, the demure, sweet, caring woman who I loved so much that I had sworn myself to her. Then there was Corvina, the warrior, the woman who stood in front of me flaying a man’s mind bare, ruthless and unwavering. Yet I still didn’t fear her.

  I was too busy reeling from the backlash, trying to restore my mental defences, but the back-door our psychic bond created meant that it had little effect.

  Until I felt another presence in my mind, and Lev’s arms wrapping around me in a protective embrace.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the pressure subsided and Lev moved aside. At once I felt Corvi in my mind, her delicate touch on my arms matching the tender caress in my head.

  “Shh, my sweet,” she said quietly to me, pulling me close. “I’m sorry my darling one, I am. I told you our methods were sometimes unsavoury, but-”

  It was necessary. I know, my love, I told her through the bond, and I felt her relief pulse back to me.

  I need to see you later, my dearest, she told me. Today has been...unpleasant.

  “I’ll be there,” I said, lacking the strength to reply psychically again.

  She stood up at last, and turned back to Lev and Kalin.

  “I’ll need to speak to all three of you later on, to discuss what I got from him.” She gestured to the drooling, blood-smeared body of Geoffrey, now a living, breathing husk, his mind a vacant ruin.

  Not that much had changed on that front.

  “Do with the body what you will. If you two need a snack, tuck in.”

  She turned to me again, stroking my face gently.

  “My love...I’m so sorry to ask, I know that must have hurt you, but...”

  I hated seeing her like that, so afraid to say what she had to say, so afraid to cause me more harm due to her needs.

  But I could already tell what she needed. What she had just done would have drained her strength immensely

  “I know, Sythan’en.” I pulled the covering away from the wounds in my neck, and once again I felt her taking the blood she required from me.

  Thankfully I kept my thoughts in check this time, so we had none of the...incident from earlier, but as she pulled away from me I caught sight of Lev over her shoulder. It was only fleeting, but I could see Lev disapproved of the act. I think she still thought I had been pressured into the Bond, but I knew exactly what I was getting into.

  We learned later on from Corvi that those particular hunters had been getting information from a rogue vampire, hiding out in a village north of Oxford. It was going to be our job to find him, interrogate him and find out where he got his information. But first, I needed to see what Corvi needed from me that night.

  CHAPTER 8

  To hunt the hunters

  That evening I went to Corvi’s quarters again, this time getting odd looks from the vampires around what was known as the ‘Officer’s Wing,’ where the base command staff were all housed. None of them challenged me or seemed to show me any hostility though, which was good - I had read that sometimes people who undergo that ritual get harassed, or sometimes even killed by vampires who wanted the mortal’s partner themselves.

  And Corvi was an amazing woman. She would not have been short of admirers.

  I got to her quarters just after seven in the evening - she’d been in a few meetings that day, and those often dragged on - but surprisingly, when I got there her aide was just leaving.

  I greeted her in a normal, friendly manner, since I had no reason to dislike her. She responded with “Vel’sech kursaiedh” and stormed past me, probably expecting me not to know what she had just said to me.

  “Does Maria have an issue with me?” I asked Corvi as I entered, closing the door behind me. For a moment she didn’t reply, she crossed to me with all the speed only a vampire could manage and hugged me tight. I could sense that she was pretty shaken by something, and quite upset, so I held her tightly and sent her all the love and support I could muster through the link. She took a deep breath, letting out a long, shuddering sigh, and I kissed her cheek before she moved away from me.

  “Sorry, my love, I just...it’s been a rough day.” She poured herself a drink from the bottle sat on her dresser, and went to sit on her chaise-longe.

  “Have a drink, Sythan’en, and sit with me.”

  I looked at what she’d been drinking - a proper Scottish whiskey from 1902. Ouch.

  “Um, I think I’ll-”

  “I wasn’t asking.”

 
That made it a lot more difficult to refuse, so I poured myself a small glass of the lighter fluid and sat down with her. As soon as I did she pushed me over to the other side, then laid down with her head in my lap.

  “Better?” I asked.

  “I’d be better if I could be drunk.”

  Ah, yes. Vampires couldn’t get drunk. Something to do with faster metabolisms, or not having a metabolism, or something like that. Either way it generally did nothing for them.

  “Sorry, my love. You asked me something?”

  I stroked her hair as she lay in my lap, enjoying this tiny, simple act that so many couples shared. It reminded me that, apart from one of us being immortal, we were still just two people in a relationship.

  “Yeah. I wondered if Maria had something against me.”

  “I don’t think so, why?”

  “Because just then when I said hello to her, she told me to fuck myself with a sharp implement.”

  She sat upright quickly, nearly knocking my drink out of my hand. I didn’t like the stuff, I just didn’t want to be responsible for filling in the inevitable hole it would eat in her floor.

  “I didn’t hear her say that!”

  “She said it in vampiric, probably hoping I wouldn’t understand her.”

  She sighed heavily, and sank back into my lap.

  “I’m sorry, my love. I’ll have a word with her tomorrow.”

  I continued to stroke her hair, touching her mind with affection as I did.

  “What’s wrong, Corvi?” I asked her, sensing she wanted to talk but didn’t want to burden me.

  She sighed again, pinching the bridge of her nose as she often did when she was stressed or upset.

  “I found out another two of our bases were attacked. One of them, out near Buckingham, by sheer luck they were performing readiness drills when they came under attack. Basically, they were prepared for an attack they didn’t even know was happening, and drove off the attack with only light injuries. Apparently they beat the drill’s readiness time by three seconds as well!” She laughed weakly at that, not the usual musical laugh I loved so much but something that was trying to be like it.