Page 31 of The Star's Sword

“I’m sorry, but that won’t be necessary or possible. If you were on the level of beating me, I wouldn’t have been able to kidnap you.” He eyed my hand. “But I do sense you have hidden power or I would feel far more fear from you through all of this than I have.” He cocked his head, walking around me in a circle as I turned to keep eye contact with him.

“Why did you take me?” I asked.

“Well, I was coming to see you anyway,” he said. “Plus, I couldn’t just leave you outside.” He gestured to a couch. “Please, sit. Let’s talk more properly.”

“You put me in a sack, kidnapped me, and then pinned me on the ground and threatened to feed on me. I think we’re a little past talking?”

Mark grinned, thumbing a hand at the other side of the room. “Ready for the bed, then?”

I choked slightly, but let Mark use his imposing height to back me into sitting on a chair.

“Here, I’ll get you a drink,” he said, turning to an ornate wooden cabinet that held many crystal decanters with many different colors of fluid. “Hm, what would a human-demon-wolf hybrid like?”

I blinked, still trying to catch up with Mark’s pace.

“Look,” he said, pouring a blue liquid into a glass with a long, delicate stem. “Sleeping out in the open with a vampire around, you’re lucky you weren’t already fed on.”

“How was I supposed to know there’d be a vampire around?”

He handed me the drink, which I immediately set down a table next to me. Mark sat on a huge chair next to me, sprawling his legs out in front of him, not caring that his boots were on another elaborate rug.

Seeing my gaze, he smirked. “I can always have celestials fabricate another one.”

My mouth dropped at that, but then he was onto the next topic.

I could tell this man was a man who did what he wanted, when he wanted, and took very little notice of what other people thought or did.

“But as to your question, you really were raised in the havens, weren’t you?” He laughed, a dark, gravelly sound. “You should always assume there is a vampire around. Unless you have gained one’s protection. And I would never leave one of my thralls just sitting out.”

“Well, I’m no one’s thrall,” I said.

“Then you should be careful someone doesn’t make you one,” he said. “There’s no law in this land, Cleo. The strong take what they want. The vampires are allowed a huge berth by the celestials as long as we don’t try to breach their veil.” He grabbed the drink I’d set aside and drank it back in one go, then tossed it at the wall, where it shattered. “And they tell the humans and shifters in the havens that we can’t go through the veil, but in fact it is possible. We just aren’t supposed to. So basically we can do whatever we want to.”

I stared at the glass on the ground.

“I thought celestials hated and feared vampires,” I said. “When I grew up in the havens.”

“Quite a shock, isn’t it? To find out they made us?”

I blinked. “What?”

“You know, to cull the human population a bit. Just the non-shifters. And keep other flying creatures out of the sky-realms.”

“Other flyers?”

“Most are extinct now, hunted by the celestials. We had Pegasi, dragons.” Mark counted them off on his hands wistfully.

“How long have you been around?” I asked.

“Five hundred years, give or take,” he said. “Not as long as your Mr. Card.”

“He’s not mine,” I said.

“That’s right, he belongs more to that incubus he follows around everywhere. Waste of vampire space, that one.”

“You don’t like Simon?” I asked.

Mark shook his head. “Too soft on the thralls and humans. His stupid ‘free-range’ consent-based feeding system just doesn’t work. Not with the current shortage.”

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