Secret Worlds (193 page)

Lawrence returned bearing the gift of a young man in his early twenties with attractive features, the type of man who doubtless had many admirers. “Here, my dear. For you.” Lawrence held the man in front of him, keeping his grip tight enough to leave bruises against the man’s futile struggles.

Amaia approached, and as the breeze picked up, a scent wafted to her nose that made her stomach lurch. She stopped breathing to curtail the scent. It was the only way she’d be able to get through her meal.

“Now come here. You have to kill him. Eventually, you’ll learn to feed more discreetly, leaving the victim alive, but these first few times, we’ll just work on achieving a clean kill.”

The man who had appeared to be shocked into silence found his tongue at the repeated use of the word “kill.”

“Please, don’t. Don’t do this,” he stuttered. Despite his hysterical pleas, her meal hardly moved. Lawrence’s hold was firm, and the man was petrified by terror. His eyes widened, the whites standing out against his dark pupils. A fresh wave of scent drifted to Amaia, and she noticed a line of moisture above the man’s lip. Terror made him sweat. His eyes met hers, pleading with her. She had all the power, and this man knew it.

Amaia took a deep breath, and her lungs filled with the scent of her power. She felt a familiar rush. She had always enjoyed wielding power over men. She would be the arbiter of his fate.

“How do I do it?” The instinct was there, but she didn’t want to repeat the gruesome mess of her first kill. It was unbecoming of someone capable of calmly deciding life and death matters.

“Your fangs grew during your transformation sleep. It’s time to use them. Simply think about applying pressure with your top teeth, and they’ll emerge.”

Amaia concentrated, pushing her tongue to the roof of her mouth, and was stunned when she felt a gentle pressure lower her canines. After they descended, she caressed them with her tongue. How had she not noticed sooner how sharp they were? These would make for a much more elegant kill. As quickly as she thought it, she was at his neck. Her teeth hovered over his skin where his heartbeat visibly throbbed. Her sleek fangs sank smoothly into his skin. As the blood rushed into her mouth, the air that reached her nose smelled more divine than any bouquet. She hardly noticed the scent of urine.

“Make note of how you feel, my child. It is important. Can you feel his life slipping away?”

Amaia drank and drank, losing herself in the ecstasy of the warm current of life flowing into her. This was a much better way to live than subsisting off food and water. She tried to follow Lawrence’s directions and focus on more than the taste. She felt the man’s energy flowing out of his body and into hers until the buzz of his fear subsided into a faint hum and then ceased altogether.

She released his neck, taking care to lap up the stray blood before stepping back. His head lolled to the side as Lawrence threw him to the ground.

“Better?”

Amaia smirked. “Much.”

“Good. We’ll have to bury or burn the body. That’s your first lesson: we never draw attention to our kills or our feeding.”

“Why does it matter? What could humans do to us?” Amaia’s words slurred. She rode the high of her kill.

“One? Nothing. But a mob with torches? Quite a lot. We’re not invincible.” Lawrence knelt and dug a shallow grave with his hands. “We have no natural predators. Our prey is our only enemy. Remember that. Our prey and each other.” Before rolling the body into the hole, Lawrence ripped off a piece of the man’s shirt. After the body was covered with dirt, he wiped his hands on the cloth and buried it with his foot. “The graves don’t have to be deep. The wolves will stay away. There’s no blood to interest them, and they hate our scent on their food.”

“What about you?”

Lawrence cocked his head.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Part of Amaia was eager to see Lawrence feed. She had always been in awe of him, and she wondered what it would look like when he did it.

“I ate when I was getting him.”

“Oh.” Amaia tried not to sound too disappointed. There would be plenty of opportunity to see everything.

Lawrence adjusted her cloak, making sure her dress was well hidden. “Think about that kill on our way home. We’ll discuss it there. You performed beautifully.”

Amaia beamed under the praise and followed him from the cover of the trees, matching his human pace. As they made their way home, Amaia tried to focus her mind, but distractions were all around. She ceased breathing to avoid the smell, although it was more tolerable knowing that the fresh scent of blood lurked just below the surface.

The high from her kill was wearing off, and she found herself craving more. Each person she saw represented someone whose life she could take, and she wondered how each one would react to imminent death. Her thoughts turned to the fact that she would likely never die. She would never know that feeling of fear. Would she mourn the life slipping away? Would she be angry, sad, scared?

She tried to drum up the memory of those emotions, but it was convoluted. How would it feel to experience them as a vampire? Only time would tell. It seemed patience would be a new constant in her life. There was no “quick enough” when hundreds of years stretched before her. She was eager to see what time would bring.

At home, she’d barely removed her cloak and entered the parlor before Lawrence began questioning her.

“So, did you feel it?” His voice was earnest as he stared into her eyes.

“What?” She was lost in her own thoughts.

“His life as it left him.”

Amaia sat on the couch, gazing at the cold ashes in the fireplace. “Yes. Of course. It went into me, filled me.”

“Good.” Lawrence grinned and joined her on the couch. “Excellent. All vampires eventually learn to notice this energy, but to do it so quickly is rare. I’ve never seen it.”

“I don’t understand. How could you not feel it?” Amaia couldn’t decide which part of the feeding she liked best: the actual taste of the blood, tangy-sweet as it was, or the pouring of her victim’s life into her body.

“You’ve always been perceptive, Amaia. It’s why Zenas wants you, why he let me get away with transforming you.”

“I don’t understand.” Amaia turned from the fireplace to Lawrence.

“Zenas is a collector of knowledge. His clan is one of intellect, not brute force. It’s how he’s managed to stay in power for so long. You have a gift. You can sense energies. It’s why you were so proficient at seduction. You reacted to the energy of the client, played off it.”

“I don’t recall being aware of it.” What he had seen was a mystery to her.

“Of course not. I didn’t think you were. It just came naturally. That made you even more appealing.”

Amaia didn’t know how she felt about being referred to so casually, as if she were a piece of merchandise with better features than the one next to her in the shop window. The thought was absurd. Her body had always been the merchandise she sold.

“Zenas and I feel that given your heightened senses, you’ll be able to learn about the life force of humans. He wants that knowledge.”

Understanding began to dawn. “Which is why he wanted to turn me himself, so he could have the link with me.”

“Yes.”

Amaia shook her head. “But you didn’t want him to have that.”

“No, I wanted it for myself.”

“Why?” She didn’t delude herself into believing it was a paternal bond.

“Because you are the link to our next evolution.” Lawrence stood and paced as he explained himself. “I’m not as intuitive as you, but before you, I had the strongest senses in Zenas’s clan. I’ve been studying human energy for more than two centuries. I’m convinced that if we are more selective in the humans we turn, we can create a new, superior race of vampires. And at the head of that race will be you and I, unencumbered by any outside force.”

“And what of Zenas?”

“There will be a place for him.”

“But not at the lead.”

“No.”

“He won’t take kindly to that.”

“I don’t suppose he will. But we are the future, Amaia, and he is the past. We will win in the end. I’ve kept much of my knowledge on this matter a secret from him. I believe that energy can be manipulated by a person with the right amount of natural talent and discipline to do it. I believe you’re that person.” Lawrence clasped her right hand as he resumed his position next to her on the couch.

“Me? I can barely control my own movement.”

“Nonsense, you moved quite well on the way back home. You can’t expect to wake up perfect from your transformation.”

“Just because I can feel this energy doesn’t mean I can do anything with it. Why do you think I’m different from anyone else?” So far, Amaia didn’t feel particularly special. Turning her seemed like quite the gamble on Lawrence’s part.

“A hunch. Don’t worry about it. I don’t expect you’ll be able to do much with it now. At the moment, I’m only concerned with your ability to detect the energy. You had the strongest aura of any mortal I’ve encountered. It’s why I took you in when you came knocking on my door as a little scullery maid at the age of eleven. I knew then that you would be the first of my clan. I want to seek out more like you, find more humans who have an extraordinary aura, encourage breeding between mortals to enhance their lines. And when the time is right, I will turn them into your brothers and sisters. We will have created a new race of vampires, the much needed evolution of our stale species.” Lawrence’s eyes lit with a passionate gleam as he laid out his plans, entrancing Amaia with his words. He had always been a man of vision. Given Zenas’s strict reign over his clan, Amaia didn’t doubt this was the first opportunity Lawrence had to verbalize his desires.

Amaia placed her left hand on top of Lawrence’s. “I’m honored you chose me, Lawrence. I hope you know that.”

His face softened, and his eyes crinkled at the corners, making him look like the father she had always thought of him as. “I do know, darling. I’m so happy to finally be able to share this with you. But there’s no need for you to worry about any of this now. Our immediate concern is to get you acclimated and working again.”

That stirred a thought. “Why does Zenas care what I do? What did he mean by an assignment? I don’t work for him.”

“No, but you work for me.” Lawrence was stern. “And I work for him. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own autonomy. Zenas is concerned with keeping his position as the head of the most powerful clan in the world. He’ll have us working to protect his territories.”

“I don’t know how. I’m not a fighter.”

“You’ll learn. Besides, Zenas values intelligence, of which you have plenty. You’ll be spending much of your time cultivating it. There are languages and customs to learn. We’ll have to move at least every decade, sometimes much sooner, to avoid suspicion. You learned how to play the English court, now you’ll have to do the same in foreign lands. You’ll be educated in science and mathematics. Zenas will mainly want you to spy for him. From science to politics, he wants to know everything first. When the time comes, you’ll be ready. I won’t let Zenas put you to work until you are.”

Lawrence had always been her protector. There was no reason to doubt him. She pushed all thoughts of Zenas and the other vampires from her mind. There was too much fun to be had in her new body. She hadn’t even thought of the travel her new life would involve. It was enough to overwhelm her, but instead she felt excitement. Her skin itched to run to every city in the world. Her eyes longed to glimpse castles, cathedrals, and magnificent buildings that she had only ever heard of. There was more to the world than she had ever hoped to see. She would experience it all.

Sunlight crept through the window. Morning dawned. “Where did the time go? I’m not even tired.” She stood and went to the window, eager to discover what the rising sun looked like to her new vision.

“The passage of time is one of the things that’s going to be harder for you to gauge. The mixture of eternal life and not being able to sleep all but obliterates your internal clock.” He stood behind her. The purple and pink hues were more splendid than Amaia had imagined.

They stayed that way until the sun rose fully above the surrounding rooftops. Amaia’s mind couldn’t grasp the concept of never sleeping again. It gave the coming years an even more surreal quality.

Lawrence moved away from her, and she took note of something that had escaped her before. “Why don’t I feel your energy?” She followed him into her bedroom.

“All living things give off energy. We are not, strictly speaking, living. We steal life. Our kind give off a muted energy, but it’s warped. You’ll learn to recognize it in time as all vampires do. To begin with, we’re just going to focus on human energy. Once you’ve become well acquainted with it, you’ll learn how to sense when it flows through the veins of a vampire.”

Amaia narrowed her eyes, focusing all of her concentration on feeling Lawrence’s energy. For a moment, she thought she felt a subtle swaying from him rather than the frenzied vibrations she felt from humans. Then it was gone. It could have been her imagination.

“Here, change into this.” Lawrence handed her a simple dress and untied the laces of her gown.

While she dressed, Lawrence packed some of her plainest clothes into a valise.

“Where are we going?”

“Scotland. We can’t stay here. You’re too well known. If one of your regulars requests you, there’s a chance he’ll notice the change. It’s not worth the risk. We’ll travel on foot, and I’ll teach you along the way. By the time we reach Scotland, you’ll be ready to take clients again.”

“And this is all we’re taking? What about my things? My jewelry?” Around her were a lifetime of possessions, all won by her hard work. Her right thumb caressed her ring, and she realized it was the only item she owned with any sentimental value.

“I don’t think you quite understand how this works, my dear. I have a home in Scotland. It’s outfitted with everything you’ll need. Money is not an object. We’ll buy you anything you like once we’re settled, and I’ll send for your things. Now come.”