Page 5 of Cruel Vampire King (Honeyblood Vampires #1)

Even though no vampire whisked me off that night, I knew they’d been around. Because in the morning, a small, silver tablet had been left on top of Thessa’s pack. Ysara proved herself a wolf shifter by taking her wolf form and sniffing around the area, but couldn’t find any traces of them.

“What do you think it’s for?” Kael asked, picking up the tablet. “A message? I don’t recall this being in the Blood Trials before.”

“We never had a year with the Trials that didn’t start with bloodshed, either,” Greyson pointed out lazily. “Something’s different this year. Wonder what it is.”

Me? Could I be the reason things had been… uneventful so far? I tried to shove aside that thought. I wasn’t going to be pulled into the fairytale again. There was no grand love; there was no destiny. Luken wanted something from me and he was punishing me for denying him. I wasn’t going to grow complacent. I wasn’t going to let myself start thinking I was special . It would only get me killed.

“I bet he’s planning a spectacle,” Ysara said. “It is an anniversary year, after all. They tend to have something more exciting every five years.”

Yes, that must be it.

The tablet flickered to life. Luken’s image appeared on it, smiling broadly. The sight of him caused my heart to ricochet off my ribs, and I scolded myself harshly for it.

“All of you, contestants and viewers, are no doubt wondering why we have this strange start to the Trials. Where is the bloodshed? Why have there been no attacks, no action? Are these the Blood Trials or a picnic in the forest?” Luken chuckled, sending prickles wash under my skin.

Why did I still respond to him like the na?ve eighteen-year-old I once had been?

I struggled to pay attention to his words when my head was so full of other thoughts. My body was responding to the sound of his voice, heat pooling in my belly. There was something dangerously seductive about him. I understood now how I could have been so deceived four years ago. That girl I was didn’t stand a chance?

Taking a deep breath, I dug my fingernails into my palm. Hard enough to cause a slight prickle of pain, but not hard enough to cause damage.

It was how I’d trained myself to preparing to bring drunk from at the end of the Trials. It had been a… difficult task. A vampire drinking caused a surge of hormones in the person they bit, sending that person into sexual bliss. I’d started small, putting myself through pain every time I was sexually aroused. I’d even allowed vampires to drink from me before, pairing these instances with more pain. It was supposed to train my body not to respond to the stimuli… and except for these damned reactions to Luken, I believed I’d gotten to the point where I masted my own body enough to ignore the arousal.

It was hard to be horny when you were writhing in pain. Even now, with that low simmering heat in my belly, my shoulders were tense, waiting for the pain to befall it.

The sting of my fingernails in my palms helped ground me. But it also highlighted an unfortunate side effect I hadn’t counted on when training myself. Every now and then, it worked in the opposite way. The pain would cause this heat to flash through me. It was rare, though, and I knew I could handle it.

“Glory be to the Gods,” Luken said. The image disappeared off the screen.

I blinked, cursing myself. I’d missed the whole speech! What was the real reason for the delays? I glanced at my team to find their faces all grim, except for Thessa, who had both hands over her mouth. Did I dare ask what I’d missed? It would show a terrible weakness on my point… although, it might also make them underestimate me even more.

I gripped my staff in both hands and leaned against it. Quickly, as the others were still staring at the tablet, I arranged my face into a confused expression.

“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head slowly.

Greyson arched one manicured brow. Today, his hair was braided into a single plait, exposing the slender, pointed tip of his ears. “You don’t… get it?”

“What’s there not to get?” Kael spat. “They’re letting loose creatures into the forest that have been specially trained to hunt us down and have twice as many contestants as they normally do. It’s going to be quite the spectacle, isn’t it? Bad enough that they’ve made watching the channels mandatory.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk like that,” Thessa said, her hands fluttering.

Kael turned on her. “Why not? I never even wanted to be here!”

“But they’re watching,” Thessa insisted. “And if they don’t like what we say…”

She trailed off, looking around nervously as though a vampire was going to jump out of the bushes and attack us. I wondered, suddenly, how many people were turned into our channels. Every person in the Trials had their own channel, broadcasted through the kingdom. It would keep playing until that person died. Betting on the Trials was a common practice among all levels of society. Not that it helped anyone within the Trials. They didn’t get anything from it, except recognition if they won.

Winning the combat section of the Trials did bring recognition and fame. The person who survived the colosseum was given land and wealth. They often made even more money by writing about their experiences or using that fame to propel their careers. None of them had successfully resisted Luken when he drank from them, but that didn’t mean they came out with nothing.

I’d watched the interviews with past winners. Whenever they were asked what it was like to be drunk from by the King, they would all get these wistful, far-off looks. Most refused to talk about it, and those who did ended up waxing poetic. One woman I remembered had said, “It’s what I think about every night and every morning. I would go through the Trials again just to have the honor.”

Funny how that worked, though. Once a person went through the Trials, they weren’t permitted to volunteer again. Now, I couldn’t help but wonder if Luken chose the winner every year, the person he wanted to taste, and manipulated the Trials to ensure their survival. And then I wondered how far he went with them when he drank; men and women both had won the Trials. Orcs, elves, shifters, gnomes, humans, even other vampires. The winner could be of any species.

Surely, not all of them could be his type. Surely, he wouldn’t want to sleep with every winner. But then, perhaps he did. Maybe it was less about who and what he laid with, and more about the power he held over them as soon as his teeth sunk into their skin.

A shiver ran through me as I tried to imagine Luken with, say, Kael. But in my mind’s eye, it wasn’t Kael in Luken’s arms but me.

Dammit.

We started to move through the forest with Ysara leading us in her wolf form. We moved in a tighter group than we had the previous day. The same silence hung over us, but it seemed darker and deeper than it had been before.

When a twig cracked behind us, it echoed like a gunshot. Kael and Thessa whirled. Greyson pivoted, facing to the right of us. Ysara gave out a short bark and lunged to the left. I brought up my staff in a defensive position. I searched the brush around us.

The ambush came at us from all sides. They shouted and whooped as they came at us. A human with a broadsword charged at me. I braced myself, caught his first blow on my staff, and then shoved him away. Pirouetting, I faced off with him. He laughed, a sound that sounded both fascinated and desperate. The human already had a gash on his forehead and moved with a jerky gait. Clearly, he’d been wounded before. His lips pulled back over his teeth, his eyes wild and bulging. His pupils were blown, so huge it filled nearly his whole eye. Drugged or concussed?

I lifted my staff, blocking the swipe of his broadsword. The blade sunk into the wood and lodged there. I spun the staff, yanking the sword from his hands. It went flying, smacking one of the attackers in the back. No time to think about that. I followed up with a solid blow to the man’s chest, and another to his forehead. He stumbled back, wheezing and coughing. His hands fluttered a moment before he drew a knife.

My heart pounded in my throat. This wasn’t like training. This wasn’t learning. It was real. Kill or be killed. I let my body move, shutting off the parts of my brain that would cause me to hesitate. I used the staff to fling myself forward, kicking both feet into the man’s chest. He soared away, slammed into a tree, and then crumpled at its base.

I didn’t stop. The staff went above my head, and I brought it down, using the leverage of its weight to crack that man’s skull open.

Bits of human splattered every which way. He wouldn’t be getting up from that. I whirled, swinging my staff out and around. An elf had crept up on me, and the staff slammed into his ribs. I heard a crack, but he lunged, stabbing toward my throat. I twisted aside just in time to avoid being skewered. A cry burst from my mouth as I twisted my staff around behind my back and turned the other way. My hand met something wet and sticky as I rammed the butt of the staff into the elf’s ribs again.

Then Kael roared. He jumped behind the elf and brought down a double-handed axe. It cleft through the elf’s neck with ease.

Two thumps, one louder than the other, and everything grew still.

Ysara shifted to human form. She was utterly naked, her skin slick with blood. Especially around her mouth. She licked it off her fingers and laughed.

“Looks like we finally got our fight. Any injuries?” Her tone was cool and professional, as though this happened every day. What sort of life had she come from?

“None that I see,” Greyson said, glancing around at the team. His gaze lingered on me, a spark in his eyes that I couldn’t quite read. “You did better than I expected. I thought you’d hesitate. You don’t seem like the sort to have killed before.”

I lifted my chin, met his eye, and grinned, showing all my teeth. “Just goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Inside, I was not so calm. The sight and sounds of my staff doing its deadly work played in my mind. I breathed through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell the aftereffects. The bodies lay strewn about, and I carefully checked my pack, making sure nothing had gotten contaminated, to avoid looking at them. My blood felt like ice in my veins.

Despite my bravado to Greyson, this was the first time I’d killed another person. Knowing that the Trials would be a bloodbath hadn’t prepared me for the emotion of killing. My training with the coven hadn’t gotten to the point of killing. It was why Emily told me I wasn’t ready for this.

“Should we bury them?” Kael asked doubtfully.

“No, but we should take their weapons and supplies,” Ysara said. She’s already claimed the human’s broadsword. “What we can’t carry, we’ll throw in the river so nobody else can use them, either.”

I sucked in a breath and headed for Thessa. “You and I can look through their packs for food.”

Thessa shied back from me. Her eyes were wide. I hadn’t paid enough attention to the others in the team to know if she’d killed anyone.

Ignoring her flinch, I crouched near a pack that had been dropped in the bushes. I opened it up and started to move the food into my pack. Surprisingly, I found about half as much as what we’d been given. Had this team already gone through so much? Had they hid some of their bounty? I didn’t want to admit there was another possibility.

Thessa crouched next to me. “Elara?”

I glanced at her from the corner of my eye.

“If we do make it to the colosseum, will you kill me?”

My hands paused. I stared at the pack, the blood rushing in my ears. Was that a request or a fear? I couldn’t tell. After what we’d just done here, it was only natural to wonder who was going to kill who when we survived this. I didn’t know what to tell Thessa. The stark contrast between what I’d imagined and reality had put me on my hind foot. I felt this more keenly than I was prepared for.

“I—” I started.

The slight rustle of bushes was the only warning I got. The flash of a blade shone through the air and then there was a howling, a screaming. Thessa was screaming. I whirled, swinging my staff. It slammed into the side of the human who had jumped at us. The human keeled over, writhing and gasping.

A sleek, tawny-gold panther backed away from the human, blood dripping from its muzzle. The knife still lay in the human’s hand, unused. I turned to the panther, and deep brown eyes stared up at me. A sound like snapping bones filled the air, and the panther melted back into Thessa. Blood stained her mouth and neck. Unlike Ysara, she had stayed completely clothed in the transformation.

“Gods, I thought there was something familiar about you,” Ysara crowed. She’d pulled on a tunic and trousers and sauntered over. “That was quite the reveal, kid. A panther. You might actually come in handy after all.”

Thessa scrubbed her sleeve over her mouth, shaking.

I turned back to the packs and quickly took what I could, hiding my own surprise. It was just one more reminder here that I couldn’t underestimate anyone on this team. I had to put some trust in them so long as we were here in Wickham Forest, but they were out to get me. Thessa was clearly more dangerous than she appeared to be. She hadn’t hesitated when that human threatened her with the knife.

Was he coming for her or for me, though?

I shook my head, dismissing those thoughts. It didn’t matter. There was only one way that this was going to end, and I would not allow my emotions to get the best of me. I’d killed once already. I’d kill again. There was no room for hesitation here.

So yes. No matter how much she reminded me of Darcie, when we reached the final trials, I would kill Thessa.