“That’s exactly what a mother wants to hear,” Mrs. Bright called from the kitchen.
The oh-so-beloved woman in his arms gazed into his eyes and laughed. “Sold. But I think you’d better come meet my mother properly.”
“I’d love to.”
And that was the last normal thing they ever did.
Don’t miss
Skin Heat
by Ava Gray,
now available from Berkley Sensation!
Angel-Claimed
JORY STRONG
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks to my critique partner, Sue-Ellen Gower. Your insight and support are greatly appreciated!
ONE
Sajia woke to the acrid stink of fear. Her nightgown clung to her body, wet with sweat. Or perhaps from the fog creeping in off the San Francisco Bay as night battled with day, streaking the sky with hints of color.
The chill she felt at seeing the drapes pulled back and the window open pebbled her skin in a way the cold didn’t. Though she now lived in a mansion guarded by vampires and their servants, old habits remained, as did a human’s inherent fear of the night and predators that roamed it.
She’d shut drapes and window alike before going to bed. It was a habit drilled into children from the moment they were old enough, mobile enough, to unlock a window and die as a result of it.
Sajia rubbed her chest as though she could slow the thundering beat of her heart. She tried to shake off the fear-smell, but it clung like a heavy shroud, making her think it belonged to her until movement, a nervous fluttering at the doorway, jerked her from a terror that had only recently crept its way into her life with each awakening.
She saw the blood-slave then, and dread descended, as thick and heavy as the fog outside. The girl was pale, wringing her hands, frightened that she would lose her life because of something others had done.
There was only one reason a blood-slave would come for her, and it jerked Sajia from the bed. “Corinne?” she asked, naming the scion she’d only recently become companion to.
“It’s not my place to say,” the girl whispered. “The Master demands your presence.”
There were many masters in the Tucci household, but only one by that name.
The blood-slave continued to hover in the doorway, trembling like a field mouse. Afraid to be in the presence of anyone who might draw The Master’s ire, afraid too that when the audience was done, she’d be the one called to The Master’s bed and bled dry.
Sajia offered no reassurance. Anything she said in an effort to comfort the girl would be a lie.
She stripped the damp nightgown from her body, tossing it onto the bed and dressing quickly. Supple black pants molded to her legs. A sleeveless shirt in swirling earth tones of yellow and brown and green left her arms bare, revealing the marks carved into her upper arm, pale, freshly healed symbols identifying her position and indicating she served the Tucci family.
She pulled soft, short boots on last, and the blood-slave turned without a word, scurrying down the hallway as if wanting to put as much distance as possible between her fate and Sajia’s.
Sajia followed. Despite the worry for Corinne that tied her stomach in knots, her steps sounded confident against the tile floor. Her footfalls echoed off the unadorned walls, their stark white surfaces a reminder of a servant’s place where the rest of the estate was lavishly decorated. A manifestation of power and wealth, though compared to the Tassone and many of the other vampire families, the Tucci were paupers.
The moment Sajia passed from the servants’ living area, two vampires positioned themselves behind her, trailing her to The Master’s parlor like deadly shadows.
Additional vampires waited outside that room. And more inside, a mix of inner-circle guards and family members.
No one spoke. No one moved. Yet Sajia felt their presence against her skin in a frigid blast, like a grave opened to reveal icy horror.
The Master sat behind his desk, caught forever at the age of thirty-five, his pockmarked face a testament to a time when vaccines didn’t exist and bleeding by leeches was a common treatment.
Whatever name he’d gone by then, at his death and rebirth he’d shed it like a snake does its skin. What the vampires called him privately, beyond Sire, she didn’t know. The humans knew only one word for him. Master.
Even fearing something had happened to Corinne, Sajia didn’t blurt out a question. She bowed her head and waited for The Master to speak first, forced any hint of rebellion deep inside herself at the required subservience.
She knew her place. It was well defined in a world forever changed by a long-ago war that decimated human populations and crushed nations, then was thrust into years of violent anarchy after the supernaturals made their existence known.
Peace, of a sort, had finally come with the carving up of territories. In San Francisco, vampires ruled. Absolutely.
They were apex predators. And humans, little more than cattle to be counted by the head instead of as individuals.
And I am one of those cattle, Sajia told herself, resisting the urge to touch the small gold scorpion at the base of her throat—a talisman and the only thing she possessed that belonged to parents she had no memory of, a reminder that she’d chosen to remain in servitude rather than leave San Francisco. No human beyond their childhood was allowed to live in the city unless they were found to be useful to the vampires. She didn’t want to move away from the aunt and uncle who’d raised her after her mother and father perished in a fire in the San Joaquin, or from the cousins who were like brothers and sisters.
Becoming bajaran, confidant to the still-human scion of a vampire family, not only allowed her to remain in San Francisco but also put her in a position to intercede on behalf of her own family if they needed help. It came with significant risks to them and to her, though even from the start it had been more than a role taken for benefit.
She’d liked Corinne from the moment they met by chance on the pier, and had come to worry for her future. But then that was the point of providing scions with bajaran, so there would be a trusted human in place should they survive their transition to vampire.
Finally The Master broke the silence, perhaps convinced she harbored no guilt, since she hadn’t gone to her knees and confessed in an effort to save herself. “Did Corinne tell you arrangements have been finalized for her to be sent to Los Angeles?”
An ache seized Sajia with the thought of being torn from her family. “No, she didn’t tell me.”