Blood Pact, Ep.1

This is the first episode of Blood Pact (Bloodline Saga 3), which is going to be published as a serial fiction. I’m not sure when, or on which serial platform it will be published on yet, but as soon as I do I’ll share! Note that while this isn’t a rough draft, it’s not final either. Things could change, and you’re bound to hit a typo or two. Thanks for being cool about reading something that’s more-or-less a work in progress.

Zithrany

If someone sees me here I’m fucked. 

Like, front and center, viral video seen by millions, no way to deny it’s me, fucked. 

Or maybe nobody would be that surprised. Still, as a golden boy–the only son of the most powerful immortal in North America–I have a long way to fall. And it wouldn’t just be me, I’d take my whole family down with me.

Our entire kind, actually. 

That’s the rub when your mother is the leader of the free vampire world—Madame Vampire President, basically. Except we call her the Heiress. 

In essence, the Heiress “inherits” the prophecies delivered by seers—vampires with the gift of foresight—and interprets them all to guide our kind into the future. 

Also, she “inherited” the title from the last leader, but seeing as how vampires don’t fucking die, it was more a hand-off than a last-will-and-testiment sort of thing. 

Knowing my mother’s predecessor, Zackery, the little that I do—and sensing my father’s absolute hatred of the guy—I have a feeling the handoff was more like a stand-off. That was thirty years ago, though, so bygones and all that. 

Fuck I am twitchy. 

I desperately want to move, but I need to stay still. Standing in the shadows, making everybody’s attention just sort of slip over me as they walk past is part of the twitchyness–and why I need to be still. But hiding like this makes the lying feel bigger. It makes the drugs feel less like fun and more like coping.  

Actually, the drugs make the lying feel less bad, and the lying makes the drug use possible—they’re a package deal, and a total necessity since the whole fucking world expects me to be exceptionally functional. And, believe me, I’ve tried it on my own. I don’t want to be the fuck-up who jeopardizes everything his family has built because he can’t get his shit under control. It feels real fucking bad to surf the tides of everybody else’s emotions, the pull stronger than even my own. 

I have dear old dad to thank for that. 

Fucking genetics.

Just when I think I can’t sit still any longer, the lobby clears out and I can step up to the desk where a human woman with hair the color of the sun when the sky fills with smoke—that orangey yellow—jumps when she sees me. 

If I concentrate and I’m still, I can make people just sort of not notice me. It doesn’t work if I’m moving, or talking. It’s not like being invisible—I couldn’t go rob a bank, and cameras can still see me. I simply become easily ignored, the data human brains skip over in their limited cognition of the world around them. 

It doesn’t work as well on other vampires, especially turned immortals.

The human recovers from the startle, and her eyes go slowly wide. She recognizes me. 

Of course she does.

Blue-black hair, six-foot four-inches, and photographed as much as the president. I’m hard to not-recognize. 

I smile and pull a hundred bucks worth of credits up on my phone’s screen before laying it face-up on the counter. “This is yours if you never saw me here.” 

She taps her wrist to the screen, taking the money, then adjusts the black, vegan leather bra she’s wearing. It barely contains her tits, which, given where I am, is entirely the point. 

I lean down, not caring about her tits, keeping my voice low, “I’m here to meet Candy. She’s expecting me.” I feel like I might come out of my skin. I never meet Candy here–where she works–but I’m out of my meds two days earlier than usual. She said she couldn’t meet me at her place tonight. Desperation drove me here, despite the danger.

“She told me to expect you.” The screen behind the counter uplights her features and her pulse thrums along the column of her throat as she swipes at it. She’s really pretty, actually. 

She’s really young. 19 or so, I’d wager. Too young for my taste, even if I am excessively young by vampire standards. There are plenty of immortals who wouldn’t give a damn about the age gap, but ever since I turned 25 I can’t go for somebody who still has the word ‘teen’ in their age.

Call me prince charming.

“Candy is about to go on stage,” she blinks her long, fake lashes up at me. “She said to seat you if you got here when she’s busy.” 

I bite back a curse. That’s an even worse idea than being here to begin with. Candy knows I can’t be seen here. 

The cute little vixen leans forward, “She reserved a booth for you. It’s private. The only people who will see you are the girls—and we’re very discreet.” 

Discreet. I’m sure they are, but…

“It’s better than waiting out here,” she says. “Less visible, too. Candy’s words.”

I’m torn. I shouldn’t go in there, but I can’t leave without the meds I came for. Even the thought of it makes me sweat. I wish I was a seer so I could predict how this was going to go. Not being a seer, I run a quick assessment. 

I need to be at an event in two hours and seven minutes. It will take me twenty some-odd minutes to drive there. Ten minutes to change. Ten minutes to talk to Candy, including the niceties required in an exchange between dealer and buyer. Two minutes to get back to my car. Thirty seconds to take a dose. Five minutes for it to hit. “I need to leave here within ninety minutes. Can you ensure that happens?” 

My sister, Calistus, will flay me open with her sewing sheers if I stand her up at another event, but there is no way I’ll survive the night without meds to take the edge off everyone else’s fucking feelings. 

“Absolutely,” the little blond teenager assures me. 

So I give a single nod. “Fine. Lead the way.” It’s not like I really have a choice.

At least the woman wasn’t lying when she said she’d seat me somewhere discreet. As she walks away, I settle back into a horseshoe shaped booth the color of red wine. All I can see is the stage. I can’t even see the other tables. To get here, the blond escorted me through a blank, dim hallway to a door that delivered us right to this booth. Before sitting down, a quick glance confirmed what I knew to be true by the silent din of emotion rattling against my skin: the strip club is large, and busy with patrons. 

It makes me wonder why Candy has a side hustle selling drugs. She certainly isn’t lacking for clients here. And I trust the immortal clientele, at least, tip well. 

Illumination draws my eye down to a small round table next to my knee, where a screen is perched asking me to order. For something to do, I order a straight scotch and scan my phone when the machine asks for a chip. As soon as my payment has gone through, the lights in the place dim. The timing would almost make me believe the two were related, though I know it was just a coincidence. As the house lights lower, the lights on the stage rise to reveal two women. One, the immortal, brunette with blunt cut bangs and high cheekbones, I know: Candy. The very woman I’m here to see. 

The other is a human with hair a striking sunset-orange that damn near glows under the stage lights. She’s so thin I can count her ribs as she breathes, but her arms and legs are lined in muscle. The two women stand back to back, and when the music starts, I can’t take my eyes off the human’s corkscrew curls and lithe grace as she executes a complex routine, less strip tease and more art.

The way her body moves… Turns and bends, stretching and contracting. I’m hypnotized, glued in place. Have I ever seen someone move in so captivating a way?

Her routine brings her near the edge of the stage in front of me, where she spins and falls to her knees, then lays out flat on the stage. When her head tips back–it happens. 

For one 3-beat moment, her eyes lock on mine. Green, soft and light.

My blood simmers with desire so strong I have to lock myself into my seat so I don’t act on the impulse not to let her get away when she turns and continues the routine. 

She’s gorgeous, but it’s more than that. 

I’ve been with women and men, immortals and humans, and it’s never happened that one mesmerizes me the way this redhead does as she dances up on stage. Something in the way she moves, or the expression on her face while she does it–like she’s doing what she was meant to do, with effort but no strain. Like she’s lost in it. I know that feeling, when the world falls away and all there is to you is music. I’m no dancer, that’s for sure. But watching this woman, I think music is to her what it is to me if only in impact. If only in the way it transports her.

I know the song she’s dancing to; a friend of mine produced it. It’s fucking awful, but it works here—especially when the beat changes at the bridge and out from behind the stage flows at least 20 women in similarly small degrees of dress. They walk in time with the beat, all stopping at the same moment for a three-count routine before continuing on. The musicality is so impressive, their skills as dancers undeniable, my fascination is doubled. I slide to the edge of the booth and risk being seen so I can sneak a peek at the rest of the room to watch them take positions at tables all over the space, somehow arriving in the same measure of music despite the disparate distances they each traveled.

Tables dot the room, set onto risers so every seat has a view of the stage. Around the edge, a balcony looks down onto our floor from above, casting a deep shadow that benefits my booth as well as others.  When I turn back to sink into my shadowy booth once again, the redhead with the spiral curls is standing in front of me. 

Saliva floods my mouth and blood rushes to my hips. Up close she’s even more fascinating than she was on stage. Her skin is fair, pale green eyes intense, but it’s the light behind her eyes—equal parts intelligence and cunning—that makes me lean forward when the music fades. 

“Do you want a lap dance?” Her voice is clear and musical, like she’s either younger than the mid-twenties she appears to be, or a vocalist. Or both.  

“No, but I want you to sit.” Suddenly I don’t care that I have somewhere to be. I don’t care that I came here to buy drugs. 

Her eyes dart to somewhere over the top of my booth and she sways her body, rolling her hips and giving a quick turn so I see a flash of her spectacular ass below the top of her g-string. “Can’t sit. Sorry. And I only stay if you pay.” 

“Fine. I’ll pay you to sit.” I will empty my bank account if it means this woman will stay at my booth all night. I want to know her. 

I want to fuck her, too, if she’ll let me.

I’m about to tell her I’ll pay her for a lap dance if that’s the only way to get her to stay, even though a dance isn’t what I want from her, when she speaks again. Leaning forward so all I can see is her cleavage over her ivory white push-up bra, she murmurs into my ear, “It doesn’t work like that, rich boy.”

I pull back slightly and see her smirk. She’s teasing me. 

Nobody teases me. 

I smile despite myself. “Did you just call me rich boy?”

“I saw you watching me,” she says, ignoring my question and swaying her hips while she runs a finger up between her breasts before grazing them over her collarbone. “While I danced with Candy.” 

I want to replace her fingers with my tongue. “I’m sure you did.” 

“I have to move on if you aren’t going to pay me—” she’s cut off by something she sees over the top of my booth. Her pink lips twist into a regretful smirk when her eyes fall back to mine. “Time’s up. I get off at 1.” 

Then she’s walking away before I can come up with a response, like I’ve forgotten how to fucking to speak. 

That never happens to me. 

Who is she going to dance for? The question shouts through my thoughts. I can’t stand not knowing. 

I lean out of the booth again and spot her red curls drawing close to a table where one man sits alone. It’s near the back of the room, not as private as mine, but benefiting from the shadows that line the outer edge. He smiles at her and I realize he’s not a human man, but an immortal one. A turned immortal. 

I need to sit back in my seat. It isn’t my business who this woman dances with, gorgeous or not. She’s doing her job. 

But I don’t sit back in my seat. Instead I watch as she begins to move for him, twisting her body with a fluidity that’s as hypnotizing as it is impressive. Turning around, she braces her hands against his knees and rolls her hips into his lap. I don’t know if I want to imagine myself in that turned immortal’s seat, or if I like watching what they’re doing from afar even more. Either way, I’m getting hard and my breath has gone shallow.

I want to be the one making her as turned on as she’s making me right now. I want to know I’m the reason she’s wet and panting. Begging for more.  

She turns around again, and our eyes meet as she  bends toward him, resting her hands on the arms of his chair. God, she’s stunning. I can’t tear my eyes away from her toned arms and lithely muscular legs, or the way her body moves–at once dance and foreplay.  

The whole room is buzzing with an electric kind of energy–sex, money, drunkenness–a low hum in the background of my awareness since I slid into this private booth. Everyone is riding the same high, the emotions so dense I can’t pick out one person’s feelings from another, they’re all mixing, blending into a din. Even the dancers’ energy meshes with the patrons, but I don’t want to think about other people’s feelings now–I came here with the sole purpose of forgetting them. 

Now, though, while I watch the enthralling red haired human dance, I feel her emotions drop below the buzzing arousal and excess around us–another distinct note in the mix, her emotions resonant like a cello while everyone else is playing an electric guitar. 

Apprehension crawls up my ribs. I’ve only felt that happen once before—

“Well, aren’t you out of your comfort zone.”

I turn and see Candy standing at the mouth of my booth, smirking with her hands on her cocked hips, looking damned pleased with herself. “Are you really out of pills again? Already?”

I am, yes, but right now I don’t give a shit. The gorgeous woman with the red corkscrew curls steals my gaze again and Candy follows it. 

“Do you want me to get her to dance for you?” she asks before I can conjure something to say from my red haired haze. 

I’ve never cared so much about a woman’s hair. It’s normally not even something I notice more than cursorily. 

“Who is that that she’s dancing for?” Maybe it’s better that I don’t know—since it’s not my fucking business—but I don’t take it back. I double down. “The turned fucker in the suit.”

“Um, you’re wearing a suit, asshole. And it’s wrinkled, by the way. He’s a regular. Why?” 

I ignore her astute jab. “You don’t feel it? Or see it?” I throw a glance at Candy but I quickly return my gaze to the the turned immortal the woman who is quickly becoming my obsession is dancing for. She’s sitting in the turned immortal’s lap, now. I’m not a regular here by any means, but even I know sitting on that asshole’s lap is a bridge too far. 

“Shit.” Candy takes off, striding across the club on long, graceful legs that eat up the distance like only a dancer’s could. 

And, fuck me, I follow her, without thinking, right across the club–in plain view of everybody—immortal and human alike.

Compelling humans, or other immortals for that matter, is a big fucking deal. Most vampires can’t do it; a few of us can and it’s one of our most closely guarded secrets, for obvious reasons. How could anyone trust their free will if they knew it could be twisted and turned to another’s? It’s bad enough compulsion is a natural part of the fledgling-sire bond–the bond that connects a new vampire to their maker for an entire century. But if everyone knew there are some immortals who can compel anyone to do basically anything? 

Yeah, that’s not something we talk about much. 

So why this fucker is doing it in the middle of a crowded strip club, I have no idea, but it makes me want to strangle him with his own paisley necktie. 

The feeling of the immortal’s compulsion is like entering a soundproof booth in the middle of a rock concert. We’re steps away when the buzzing energy of the club disappears, converted into a cold, sharp void. 

As soon as she’s within reach, I waste no time plucking the dull eyed redhead from the immortal’s lap. The compulsion is so complete, she doesn’t even fight it. She isn’t limp in my arms, but still like a robot waiting for its next command. As I turn, a bouncer is ahead of me and, for one split second, I think he’s going to stop me. Instead, he holds open a door I hadn’t noticed, a clear invitation to carry this woman away from the arrogant immortal who just tried to make her his puppet. 

Vanity tables line the wall when I follow the bouncer off the dance floor. Each table is in various degrees of disarray, and in front of each, a chair sits, some piled with clothing, some empty. There’s more than one pair of underwear hung over the backs of more than one chair. Opposite the vanities, a set of what look to be lockers are painted black, one or two with a sleeve lolling out like a tongue.

“You good?” The bouncer asks. I give a nod and find an empty chair. 

“Cool, cause I gotta go out there and deal with this.” And then he’s gone. 

As the door closes behind him, I can’t ignore the quiet possessiveness that’s been simmering in my chest since the moment this tiny, inexplicably fascinating redhead first spoke to me. Especially since she first walked away. I gingerly sit her into one of the vanity chairs, her eyes still unfocused. Just thinking about the motherfucker who tried to hurt her sends the burn of rage crawling up the back of my neck. I haven’t raged in years—I haven’t needed to. My rage is there to protect me—that’s what my mother says, and she’s probably right. She would know. 

The only time I’ve raged, Calistus and I were out with mom and dad. Someone threw a glass jar at us. It hit my mother in the temple before shattering on the ground, liquid splashing on the sidewalk. I have to give it to the human, they had good aim, even if they were an idiot. We later found out the jar was full of holy water, like they thought we’d burn if it hit us. Mom was unharmed, but to my nervous system, we were under attack and the rage came over me. 

Dad, as much an empath as I am, felt it coming on. As soon as my eyes started to burn and my throat turned into a desert, he’d wrapped his arms around me and hauled my ass into a nearby alley. 

It was scary, at first—the sudden, nearly uncontrollable desire to chase down and destroy the human who had tried to hurt my mom, the way my eyesight went sharp and 2D, and my skin shrink-wrapped to me, too tight. 

I didn’t destroy anything—living or otherwise—mostly because mom talked me through it. 

She isn’t here to talk me through it now, though, and the instinct to go back out into that club, find that fucking turned vampire, knock him to the ground and make everyone watch while I pull his teeth out one by one as he screams is so strong I’m shaking with the effort of keeping my thoughts in this room. 

With this woman. 

Who shouldn’t be alone when the compulsion breaks. 

My vision returns to normal as I count the woman’s curls, the short ones that lay across her forehead. The rage slithers back along my scalp and down my neck. It falls between my shoulder blades and seeps, dripping down my ribs, dissipating as it goes. When I can breathe again, I let my vision zoom out to look at her gorgeous face—and watch the last traces of the compulsion clear, like the traces of my rage just did.

With a quick inhale, she looks around the room like she doesn’t know how she got here before her eyes land on me and her lips fall open. “You.”

Surprised, I’m about to assure her she’s alright when her expression shifts from recognition, to fear, to fury. “What did you do?”