Page 39 of Blood as Sweet as Roses

Crimson

“What was her name?” I demand, glaring furiously down at Alin from my throne.

“It wasn’t Paige, my king,” he says quickly, accurately guessing what my main concern is. “I think her name was Jocelyn.”

Relief floods my chest. Thank god Paige is safe. But this still isn’t good news. “Who found her?”

“Some joggers,” Alin replies, his expression grim. “They called the police, who recovered the body. According to our source, they’re doing an autopsy, but they know that she was one of our donors.”

“Fuck,” I hiss, rubbing my eyebrow in frustration. Can I just have one week where nothing explodes in my face? Aren’t vampire kings entitled to a little respite now and again?

“She…was in a bad state, sir,” Alin continues, eying me nervously. “Completely drained. It’s clear it was a vampire, and that they had attempted to dispose of the body.”

Murad sighs from his spot at my right hand side. “And just when we were getting along with the district chief…”

“Can we pin it on someone else?” I look at Murad. “Cedric’s gang? The police chief must be aware that they’re operating north of the city. Maybe we can spin it.”

“It will be tricky if the victim was one of our donors,” Murad answers. “It’s an open-and-shut case. Why would Cedric’s vampires drain one of our donors?”

Sabina raises an eyebrow from where she stands on the left hand side of the war room. “Unless…Cedric and Oana have someone on the inside.”

“What are you insinuating?” I snap.

But it’s Murad who responds. “There’s no way Cedric and Oana would be able to find out who our donors are. We keep that information extremely private. Unless they have an informant among the Night vampires.”

There’s a hush across the war room. This is an incredibly inflammatory statement to make, and I know Murad and Sabina wouldn’t make the suggestion lightly.

Since my ascension, there have been more and more events to suggest that someone from the outside could have infiltrated our ranks.

Cassandra being staked, Eloise’s suspicious allergic reaction, even the shifters turning against us…

it would be nefarious, but certainly within Oana’s capacity to orchestrate, if she had a contact among the Night vampires to do her dirty work.

My eyes slide over the two lines of vampires standing along both sides of the war room. They gaze at each other suspiciously, the older ones still as statues, the younger ones flickering like shadows, the whites of their eyes and fangs flashing.

But there’s one young vampire…who’s very still. His eyes are fixed on the ground in front of him, his pale hands clasped in front of him.

Jocelyn. Why does that name suddenly ring a bell?

And why is he the only young vampire…who stands so still?

Slowly, I rise from my throne. Careful to keep my gaze from him, I descend from the raised platform, pacing in front of the two lines of vampires.

I can see them resisting the urge to flee, to reach for their stakes.

Every one of them knows what I’ll do if I sniff out a traitor.

Everyone one of them knows who I am. Every one of them remembers.

I pause in front of him, keeping my tone as measured as I can.

“Jocelyn,” I whisper. “Wasn’t she…your favourite donor, Thomas?”

His eyes flicker up to me, just for a second, before settling back on the stone ground.

“Lots of vampires liked Jocelyn, my king,” he mutters.

“Like Cassandra?” I ask, taking a step toward him. “You were fighting over her with Cassandra, weren’t you?”

Silence. Thick, heavy silence.

“And you were Cassandra’s partner. You were the last one to see her before she was staked.”

Silence that screams his guilt.

I have no choice.

And that’s what ignites my fury.

In a fraction of a second, I’ve grabbed the young vampire by the front of shirt, and I’ve hoisted him into the air. It would be his throat, but I need him to talk.

His desperate fingers claw at my wrist. “It wasn’t me! My king, it…I swear it wasn’t…”

But his whimpering is weak, without heart. His grave is already dug.

“Why did you do it?” I snarl, furious not at what he’s done, but at what I’ll now have to do.

“I…I didn’t…”

I slam him against the stone wall. “It’s too late, Thomas. Now tell me…why did you do it?”

And he stops wiggling, his body going horribly limp. When he opens his eyes, they’re red, down to the irises.

And when he speaks, his voice is impossibly quiet, a spectral whisper. “She…she found out.”

“Found out what?”

“That I’d…I’d staked Cassandra.”

My fingers tighten, itching to relieve my anger. “And Eloise? Did you cause her allergic reaction? Take her epipen?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” he moans. Then he presses his lips together, realizing how he’s implicated himself.

But there’s no bittersweet satisfaction in my words. No joy in finding the perpetrator. There’s only cold, hard fury. “Were you working for Oana?”

Fear makes his fangs descend, cresting down along his chin. He closes his eyes again, tightly. He knows what this means.

And I could do it. Could throw him in the dungeon, could torture him until he’s completely broken. Vampires exist until they’re staked. Nothing else will destroy them. And I know how to get information.

But I don’t need it. The answer is written across his face.

“It felt so good,” he whispers, fangs making his quiet voice thick and demonic. “It felt so good to drain her…to suck every last drop from her body…”

Ice wraps around my unbeating heart.

And my fingers reach for my stake.

“Crimson,” Murad says, a crease between his eyebrows. “Let me do that. You shouldn’t have to…”

“No,” I growl, sinking my shovel into the soft earth. “I staked him. I’ll bury him.”

“Roslyn…”

I hiss, my rage casting a chill across the cemetery. “And if you don’t get out of here immediately, I’ll put you down in the ground beside Thomas.”

“Understood,” he whispers.

I don’t hear him leave, but I know he’s gone.

And I’m all alone again, under the heartless glow of the full moon.

I lose myself in the steady rhythm of my task. With each shovel of dirt, I bury the pain, the anger…

The memories…

Until there’s nothing left but a hollow emptiness inside me. A hole, as deep as the grave I’ve dug.

Thomas’s body isn’t the thing that’s heavy. I toss him easily into the ground, and bury him just as easily.

There’s no gravestone, or marker. There are no gravestones in our vampire cemetery. Just mounds of earth. Some new, some old.

What’s heavy is I don’t remember who is where. That I have no way to visit them, no where to put my sadness, my fury…

My guilt.

I return to my crypt, dirt fresh on my hands, blood fresh on my stake.

I don’t expect her to be waiting.

“Crimson,” Paige gasps, her eyes widening as she spots me.

I must look terrifying. But she doesn’t retreat. Instead, she comes closer, her hands clasped at her breast.

“What are you doing here?” I demand, my voice flat and heartless. “I didn’t call for you.”

“Murad told me what happened…”

“Get out of here,” I snap. I can’t look at her face. I can’t bear to see the expression in her eyes. “I don’t need you tonight.”

She inhales, her pulse strengthening. “Yes, you do.”

My eyes close. I should be furious with her. But I don’t have it in me. It’s as though all of my anger has burned itself out. And I’m left with that aching emptiness again.

“You don’t…you don’t want to see me like this,” I whisper.

I feel her step closer to me, the kiss of her warm breath on my skin.

“Yes,” she replies. “Yes, I do.”

And with my eyes shut tight, I have no will to stop her from taking my blistered hand and leading me into my bathroom.

With steady, gentle fingers she unbuttons my shirt, pulls it off me, and then does the same with my pants.

She washes the blood and earth away, pulls the splinters from my palms, and dries my raw skin with a towel.

Finally, she finds a clean nightshirt and shorts, which I pull on.

It’s only when I curl up on the bed, my head in her lap, that the pain comes. It comes in through the door she’s opened. It comes in without knocking. It comes in, and it shakes me to the bone.

Tears of ruby red stain her dress, but she stays with me. She strokes my hair, my cheeks…

When my Creator turned me, he turned my twin brother too. Xavian was creating as many vampires as he could, hoping to start his own empire, like his Creator had before him. My brother and I rose from the earth, equal in power and strength.

And we served Xavian well, along with his other progeny. We fought rival vampire clans and helped cement Xavian’s power in Midnight City where he had settled.

But then it started to get crowded. He had made too many vampires, and resources were scarce. There were only so many living humans we could drain and drink from before we started to threaten our food source.

And some of the older vampires were getting restless. Eying Xavian’s throne. I wasn’t the first progeny he created, but I’m the oldest to have survived until now. Many more before me were staked by Xavian himself, or destroyed each other in various coups and conflicts throughout the years.

Xavian wanted to know which progeny were loyal to him, and him alone. How far our loyalty would go.

And he didn’t like that my brother and I were close. That we had a bond formed before we were turned. We tried to avoid his wrath. We downplayed our relationship, insisted to him that we were loyal, that we would do anything for him.

Then he asked us to do just that.

To prove our loyalty.

To demonstrate how far we would go to survive.

To fight each other, to the end.

When he put the stake in my hand, I didn’t know if I could do it.

I still can’t believe I did.

And I still remember the expression on my brother’s face, right before I drove my stake into his heart. Like he didn’t recognize me at all. Like I’d become the monster that had created us.

I gained everything that night: Xavian’s trust, and my position as his right hand.

And I lost everything. I buried my brother in an unmarked grave.

Every time Xavian needed a vampire to stake one of his progeny, I was the one who did it. I carried all his worst sins. I bore the burden of what I’d become.

And I buried each vampire that I ended with my own hands.

Paige gazes down at me, wipes the bloody tears from my cheeks.

“You don’t have to carry it alone,” she whispers. “I’m here, Roslyn.”

“Nobody ever calls me that,” I reply, my voice hard and numb.

She runs a finger across my temple, more gentle than I’ve ever been touched. More gentle than I deserve.

“Maybe someone should.”