Page 29 of Crimson Oath
“Poshani?” She’d never heard the name. “Is that where you’re from?”
“You’ve never heard of Poshani?”
Tatyana shook her head.
“Ah, you are new.” Sibella sat back and spread her arm over the back of the small couch, a tiny queen in her domain. “Poshani are a clan. We travel, like Roma people, but we’re a little… different.”
“Because you know about vampires?”
“Because we have a lot of them ourselves,” Sibella said. “Our clan leaders are all vampires. We work with them, we elect them to their positions, and they take care of us.”
Tatyana had never heard of such a thing. “So you’ve known about vampires…”
“My whole life.” She shrugged. “My uncle is a wind vampire now. Well, my great-uncle. He’s one of the Hazar of the kamvasa now.”
Tatyana shook her head. “I do not know what any of that means.”
“The kamvasa is…” Sibella pursed her lips. “Well, it’s our caravan. It moves in the spring, all around Eastern Europe. Poland, Belarus, Russia, Romania, of course. While the weather is warm, we move.”
“That sounds fun.”
A giant road trip with your friends and family. If Tatyana had a family like that, she’d never want to leave it.
“It’s our way of life.” Sibella looked into the distance. “It’s goingto be hard remaining here for two years, but it’s the quickest way to get my own caravan.”
“Yourowncaravan? I thought you said?—”
“My own rig, I mean.” Sibella leaned forward. “A bus? A little trailer? Something like that. I don’t want to live with my parents forever.”
Okay,thatmade sense to Tatyana.
“I’ve been there.” She reached out and offered Sibella her hand to shake. “And to support you, I am happy to be your paying customer. Thank you for your blood.”
“Very nice to do business with you.” Sibella cocked her neck to the side.
Tatyana held up a hand. “Amnis?”
“Please.” Sibella nodded. “But no altering my memories.”
“I can do that.” Tatyana put her hand on Sibella’s arm and let her amnis creep up her skin, soothing her and lulling her into a dreamy, relaxed state.
“You know…” Sibella’s voice was already drowsy. “I have immortal family, but I don’t think I’d ever want to have to drink blood.”
Tatyana couldn’t blame her.
The young woman continued, “But my uncle seems happy enough to be a Hazar.”
Tatyana talked to her to gauge her mental state. “You told me about the kamvasa, but what’s a Hazar?”
“They’re… the guards.” Sibella’s shoulders relaxed, and her head dropped to the side. “On the kamvasa for… the paying guests.”
Tatyana had been about to lower her mouth to Sibella’s neck, but she pulled back when she heard what the woman had said. “What do you mean, paying guests?”
“Sometimes…” Sibella shrugged. “It’s worth a lot of money to vampires to be able to disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“The Poshani hide them,” Sibella whispered. “I won’t knowwhere they are. The vampires don’t even know where they are because the darigan move the kamvasa in daylight.” Sibella giggled a little bit. “No one can find you. What do they call it in the movies?” She smiled. “A safe house, yes? It’s like a… moving safe house. But forvampires.”
