Page 76 of House of Crimson Hearts
“What happened to her?” I ask.
“The vampires used to pay top whack for her, but the donor pimps would take most of the profit and leave her with only a little. And they didn’t look after her. They made her buy her own iron supplements.”
“Shit,” I say. Iron is not cheap and especially not when you need it in the quantities donors do. We supply our regulars for free.
“She fell into the cycle of needing more money… so she let them take more blood. And then one day, one of the vampires took too much and they ended up draining her completely.”
“Who was it?”Because I will hunt them, find them, carve their heart out and drop it at your feet if it made you feel better.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Vampires protect their own. I’ll probably never know.”
“Well, I will pray to the Mother of Blood that you do. Everyone says revenge isn’t sweet. But I think there’s something utterly delicious about retribution.”
“Careful, Octavia, you may chip some of my hate away after all.”
Chapter21
OCTAVIA
“OCTAVIA?” Dahlia’s voice screeches from the top of the corridor.
“We should go,” I say and wave Dahlia off. Mother is obviously impatient to start this meeting and tell us what we need to do in these blood forsaken trials.
We make our way to the end of the corridor and up the turret steps and into her enormous office.
It’s a gorgeous circular room with leather walls and Chesterfield furniture. Conference tables surround two dancing poles in the centre of the room. Rather distracting if you ask me, but Cordelia has a penchant for the taboo. Speaking of which, there are two men fucking against one of the poles, one a vampire, one human.
Not illegal, but not exactly encouraged either.
One of the meeting tables is full of people. Three vampires from the looks of it and half a dozen humans. All of them naked. Two humans are sat on the laps of two of Mother’s vampire guards. They’re fucking in long, slow rocking motions. Another two vampire guards sit at their feet, their fangs sunk into thighs and breasts draining the humans.
Oh, this is not good.
The Chief leaps across the room, silver stake in hand as she rips one of the naked girls off the vampire’s cock. She straddles him, pointing a stake right at his heart.
The vampire goes deathly still.
“CHIEF,” Mother screeches. “Please. They’re all here consensually.”
The human, suddenly aware of how many of us are in the room, covers her modesty. But blood drips down her torso and between her thighs, and I can tell Dahlia is struggling to hold herself together. Her fangs have dropped, her nostrils are flared.
Xavier leans against the door frame looking handsome and cocky as if this is all just entertainment for him.
Gabriel is already relaxed in an armchair, his head in a book, not giving a single fuck what everyone else is doing.
Sadie sits cross-legged on Mother’s desk. The rest of the hunters are busy pulling the humans away from the vampires and finding their clothes.
This is deeply awkward.
The Chief doesn’t move. Mother speeds across the room and places her hand on the Chief’s arm.
That single movement makes the entire room stop. Even Gabriel peers over his book to see what’s happening.
I haven’t seen Mother that close to a hunter, let alone the Chief, in years. In fact, the last time they were in each other’s personal space was twenty years ago. They gunned for each other and ended up tearing up half the Midnight Market in the process. I forget the details of what set them off, some cuss or badly taken joke and before we knew it the pair of them were fangs and fists drawn, blades and stakes, tearing chunks out of each other.
I do believe they caused enough damage for one of the canal bridges to need repairs, which they both ended up coughing up for out of their personal funds because the market people were so pissed off with them. They had to pay for the loss of goods too.
Honestly, sometimes Mother scolds us for being childish, and her own behaviour isn’t exactly becoming of a thousand-year-old vampire.
