Page 41 of Taste of Fate

“If that were true, we wouldn’t have to sacrifice one of us every fifty years,” Amy said softly. “If they cared so much, they would just let us go to the human world, where they don’t exist and we’d be among our own kind.” She slouched against the headboard, hugging the pillow to her chest. “But I guess we’ve been here so long, the human world wouldn’t feel like home anyway.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, but sitting here with her no longer felt like home to me either. I’d been gone less than a month and while I missed her, I found no comfort in what used to be our shared space. Already I was craving the big, comfortable bed in Cyan’s spare bedroom, the spacious kitchen in the great room where I could make my wine, and learning about vampire culture on my friend-dates with Bea.

And I hated how much I missed being on a motorcycle, wrapped around a vampire who now hated my guts.

Chapter 15

Cyan

Iwas so beyond fucked.

Tavi was my blood mate.

I had my suspicions that this was happening when I first met her, but had given it no real thought. The odds, while not impossible, were slimmer than slim. No betting man in his right mind would have taken a chance on this.

But then I tasted her blood and that confirmed it. She tasted better than anything I’d ever had in my life. Her blood was everything my body had been craving because it was chemically perfect for me and me alone.

Everything made sense now, why her pulse and scent had affected me so much. Why all other blood sources had started to lose their appeal. My senses knew on a cellular level what I had been too blind to see.

Drinking any other blood would be nearly impossible now. Since the moment hers hit my tongue, my body would reject any other source. My life as I knew it was over.

I wanted to hate Tavi for this, but she had no control over it either. Fuck, even if she had the power and foresight to orchestrate this, I could never bring myself to hate that adorable, brave little human.

That didn’t make this situation any less fucked up or unwelcome.

After dropping her off in front of the human settlement, I headed straight for the neighboring vampire village, Marrowtown. These vampires, called marrowers, were a different sort, and as clearly indicated by the name of the place, they preferred feeding on bone marrow to blood. And I hoped that very substance would help me in my current situation, at least temporarily.

I parked my motorcycle next to a building so small that it could have been an outhouse. While many vampire homes and businesses were mostly underground, the marrowers took it to a whole other level. This little outhouse building was the only above-ground marker of the town. Easy to blink and miss it.

I opened the building’s door and proceeded down the narrow stone steps, taking care to not slip on the smooth, well-worn stone. Some believed the marrowers were the oldest clan of vampires, and that may have been true. Some lineages could be traced back to splitting off from the early ancestors of humans over a hundred thousand years ago.

Lively chatter began to echo up the stone walls as I descended deeper into the earth. Darkness gave way to flickering warm firelight. While the marrowers had access to electricity and modern comforts like the rest of us, they preferred a more rustic lifestyle. The air grew warm from torches lining the walls, the old-fashioned ones with an actual flame lighting the end of a stick covered in tar.

The door at the bottom of the staircase was warped and had seen better days, the brass handle polished smooth from the thousands of hands that had touched it over the centuries. I let myself through and the dark, empty underground exploded into a loud, lively dining room.

“What have we here?” The marrower behind the bar grinned, looking sinister with his prominent lower fangs. “A topsider burrowing with the voles?”

The room burst into raucous laughter, all twenty or so occupants turned to look at me from their various tables. The sound echoed against the stone walls and ceilings, bouncing around the room with no escape except for the two tunnels at the far side of the room and the door I just came through.

“Yeah, get a good look at this hot shit,” I joked on my way to a barstool. “I’ll be the best-looking fucker any of you will see for the next century.”

There were chuckles and clapbacks that rose up from the crowd, but nothing truly malicious. Marrowers loved to talk shit about those of us who lived above ground, but it was all in good fun.

“What an honor this is,” said the barkeep as I settled across from him, his tone only mildly sarcastic. “What brings you down here, topsoil twat?”

Even in the sour mood I was in, I couldn’t hold back my snort. “That’s a creative one. You been thinking on it all year, Drace?”

“Only about a month or so.”

“Keep telling yourself that, groundhog. Maybe you’ll get inspired next time you pop up to see if there’s six weeks of winter left.”

Drace laughed, leaning on his forearms. He looked like a typical marrower, big and muscular with greyish skin, a large square jaw, and fangs that were bigger on the lower row of teeth than the upper. Apparently, his subspecies had evolved in such a way in order to crush bones and suck the marrow out.

Not that they didn’t feed on blood as well, but bone marrow was what they depended on, and was the center of their culture and way of life.

“Seriously, Cy. You look like shit.” Drace blinked, his massive pupils like two black holes pulling me in. Marrowers had red irises like us, but they looked like thin red circles with how their giant pupils always stared into one’s soul. Probably something to do with how little light there was underground.

“I feel like it,” I admitted.

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