Page 19 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Nineteen

“ A nything?”

Josephine and Gwen leaned over the far curve of the receiving desk, waiting—for how long, I didn’t know. Madame Georgina had thrown us out of her rooms with a severe look and nothing more. She hadn’t expressed her thanks for Morrigan’s help; perhaps laying blame had rankled her. I had been in the middle of my fifth attempt at evaporating the darkening crimson stain that wended down the front of Morrigan’s tunic. An unsuccessful attempt, like the last. Morrigan had banished it with ease before we had arrived downstairs, sorcery trickling out while we walked together.

Josephine glared down at the pouch tucked to her hip. Her brows pulled together again. “The signature’s messy, but we think it says D . S. Signed in about six hours ago. They weren’t here for long—by the stars, this cursed blood’s chilling me to the marrow already—ten minutes. Ten minutes almost exactly.”

Morrigan glanced at me. “Do you recall anyone with those initials?”

I shook my head. “None that I can think of.”

“And the other incident? ”

“Madame was tight-lipped, didn’t want to talk out here,” Josephine said. “Took her a minute or two to admit that another dhampir worker hasn’t shown up in weeks. She says it wasn’t like him. I told her she better keep a closer watch over them for now, stop them from seeing patrons until everything is sorted.”

“That’s reasonable advice,” Morrigan replied, sagging into the edge of the desk. The young man in a tailcoat with a rather impressive, curling mustache behind its counter kept daring interested glimpses of her. Suddenly overcome with spite, I wrapped my arm around Morrigan’s waist. “Unfortunately it’s bad for business, so let’s not assume she’ll follow it.”

Gwen straightened from where she had been propping her elbow on the closed leather-bound ledgers. “Estella couldn’t remember much at all,” she said, rooting around in the depths of her dress pocket, “but I found this in her room. I know they’re told not to question their patrons because they’re taught to gratify every desire. But when I find out which of her despicable coven-mates poisoned her, I’ll tear them apart limb from limb and stake what’s left of them with their own splintered bones.”

Her fangs showed the real danger behind her threat as she presented a half-eaten apple for Morrigan and I. The skin was rather innocuous, a dappling of red and light green, likely plucked from one of the orchards down the coast and brought into the harbor’s markets. But the pulp was a striking, deadly shade of ichorous burgundy, the same as what Josephine and Morrigan had trapped. Power still twisted inside it.

Morrigan didn’t touch it. “No end to her wickedness, I see.” Gwen went to stow the apple into her pocket, but Josephine held open the leather pouch instead. “Be careful with that. She’s likely bound the ichor to the apple with some warding magic. Perhaps it’s not dangerous until consumed, but it’s still potent.”

Josephine snapped the pouch shut. “Better get to work on this—no time to waste. I am going back home to my wife. Keep the debauchery respectable and mind the time. Be home before midnight.”

Gwen jutted out her bottom lip in a pout, her eyes still somewhat glassy. She shook out her fingers as though the apple’s flesh had bitten her. “Won’t you stay for a drink, at least? You’ll work yourself to exhaustion, Jo.”

“It’s the only way I’ll sleep.”

“ Please ,” Gwen sang, her arms hooked through one of Josephine’s, skirts swishing around her ankles with her impatience. “I need a drink before I go back up to check on Estella. Don’t make me drink alone.”

Josephine’s exhale was one of noisy resignation. “ Only if you’re quick about it. And I mean it, Gwen. I won’t be carrying this stars-damned poison any longer than I have to.”

The two of them wandered off with a parting wave, meandering through the plush furnishings of the receiving room and past a curtained doorway’s stony arch. Between the velvety drapes, I caught a glimpse of fluttering gaslamps and more lavish furniture, the scent of blood veiled behind fermented grapes, cigar smoke and lively conversation wafting toward us. I guessed that I was scenting the blood-wine they served to their patrons—a popular libation in Dreadmist’s social circles, especially among dhampir with a low tolerance for blood-drinking.

“Well,” Morrigan drawled, her lips at the curve of my ear. “Since we aren’t going home yet, we have some time to waste until midnight. Would you like to stay?”

The sultry edge to her promise was invitation enough. When I gave her an eager nod, she left my side to retrieve a room key from the young man whose gaze slipped between us with vague disappointment. She offered more coin than the empty room might have been worth.

This place seemed so labyrinthine that I imagined there were many to spare, as the blood-drinking going on in the brothel’s parlor-tavern would inspire amorous feelings. Mortals and vampires often courted in the brothel halls, too—a friend of mine, a longshoreman, had met his vampire husband after their sessions of blood-collecting turned to courtship. It wasn’t always just for seeking out warm blood and filling an ache.

The blood brothels appealed to everyone’s desires, whether they were carnal or sanguine—polite society’s term for bloodlust—in nature. As the two often tangled with each other, it made sense that these houses kept the harbor alive, not just the dhampir and vampires who lived in it. The Scarlet Veil was a vessel for the life-blood of Dreadmist, a sanguine pillar of community.

A trio of vampires pushed through the curtains, their arms snaked around each other while they walked toward the curved staircase. The woman in the middle was nibbling playfully at the neck of the woman to her left, sparsely clad in breezy underclothes, one of her breasts spilling out over her corset. There were fresh bite marks on its heavy, rounded curve, the partner to her right baring red-stained fangs.

Morrigan laughed lightly from behind my shoulder, and I realized she had been watching me while I took in the lascivious scene. She reeled me in by the waist. “You’ve never been inside a blood brothel, have you? I would’ve thought otherwise after hearing the sounds you make whenever my fangs graze you.” As if to prove her point, she pushed away my hair to kiss the back of my neck, nipping at the tender skin.

I shivered out a breathy gasp. “Never.”

Morrigan steered me to the stairs after them, and we climbed up beyond the first floor, beckoned into The Scarlet Veil ’s understated elegance. I imagined the blood brothels of the high-born social set were more luxurious, but I found the red damask papered walls and warm gaslamps and lively patterned rugs running beneath our feet to be quite welcoming. Most of the numbered wooden doors were identical, their crystalline handles glinting in the sensuous low light.

We happened upon a pair whose needs couldn’t wait for them to get behind a closed door, their moaning breaths and the scent of blood hitting my senses first. The mortal had her legs spread for the vampire kneeling before her, the gap between her thin bloomers bare for easiest access. Her toes perched on the edge of the bench underneath, head tipped all the way back, she buried her fingernails in the tufted cushion while vampire feasted. The coppery fragrance of her menstrual blood churned in my senses.

That was one way to keep it from going to waste.

I’d heard of others who spent their bleeding days being tended to by willing vampires and dhampir. Some swore it helped with the discomfort, the aches and painful cramping.

It looked like something I should’ve tried at least once when I was mortal.

An erotic thrill spun through me that Morrigan seemed to feel, because she barely gave my head a chance to catch up with my feet when she pulled me around another corner.

Morrigan knew her way through The Scarlet Veil ’s maze, it seemed. I couldn’t help but wonder how many others she had sated her bloodlust with before her fangs pierced me and she took the last of my mortal blood. An uncomfortable doubt shoved to the front of my lust-addled thoughts again. A question I hadn’t the bravery to ask.

I’d known, of course, that Morrigan had lived entire lifetimes before I’d inherited her blood magic. But—Clarabella and Josephine’s immortal marriage notwithstanding—I wasn’t sure if being tethered to me so unexpectedly was a reasonable expectation. It wasn’t fair to her no matter how much my fledgling hunger drove me wild.

Eternity was an incomprehensible amount of time, after all. Bloodlust couldn’t be a strong enough foundation. My feelings for her had grown stronger, but still, I did not trust that we would last this way. She would get bored of me, have regrets once I had put a few years behind my Turning.

Morrigan’s eagerness made her fumble with the key she was attempting to jam into the brass keyhole.

Now or never , I thought. Before we get each other’s clothes off and my resolve breaks when she’s wearing nothing but that coat.

“Morrigan,” I started, wringing my hands.

“I know, I’m trying, I just can’t seem to—”

“It’s not that.” The point of my fang scraped my cheek. I heard the door unlock, but Morrigan left the key in, slumping against the polished red-hued wood.

“Then what is it?” She must have sensed my hesitation, a wrinkle forming between her brows. I feared I’d drained the excitement from her with a glance and a few stumbling words. “We don’t have to…”

“I want to, it’s just—” I cut myself short. “Were you ever…you and Sonia, I mean, were the two of you, you know… entangled like—”

“ No .” Her answer was firm, perhaps a little biting, as if I’d insulted her from the mere notion of it. “Not once. We were coven-mates, then academic colleagues in pursuit of a dangerous study…and you know the rest. Where is this coming from?”

I could not help my bleary vision. “Will I be enough for you?”

Morrigan huffed out a breath and wiped a palm across her face, her eyes flashing with indecipherable emotion.“You’re still having doubts?” She pushed open the door and turned up the gaslamps as she breezed over the threshold.

“Of course I am.” I elbowed the door shut behind me. “We fell into each other so quickly. You didn’t have to do any of this. Certainly, you had every reason not to.”

Morrigan paced over to the bed, where she sunk down at the edge to untie her boots. The room was small and sparsely furnished, but no less elegant. The same papered walls and reddish wood carried over in here. Globed brass gaslamps adorned its perimeter, a washed out oil painting above the headboard. The bed appeared spacious with rich linens and a velvet coverlet.

One of Morrigan’s boots plopped onto the rug. “You came to me for help, Ella. Your life was more important than the consequences.”

“To you ? A blood sorcerer? Why ?”

“You wanted to live, and it was not my place to steal that choice from you. Unlike our long-dead monarchs.”

I began to pace in front of her, wearing a track into the soft rug, my words scurrying as fast as my thoughts. “But I have to know for sure if you’re doing it out of obligation because you’ve given me your blood and now you have to satisfy my relentless needs or it’s likely I’ll go feral from bloodthirst, or if you want to do this at all. Tell me that this—that it’s real . Because I thought that was it at first, but then I found myself thinking of what eternity might look like, and I’ve decided I can’t—can’t do this if it’s not real. I can’t, I just—”

Morrigan kissed me, hard, to stop the rambling flow of words. I hadn’t even realized she’d stood up from the bed. I fell deeply into her kiss, feeling the same primal urgency she’d had that day in the estate’s corridor. The day I said I’d fight for her. Morrigan drew me into her mouth with her tongue, an eager taste, breathing a promise of eternity into me. She sucked my bottom lip between her fangs and blood beaded up on our tongues. Morrigan moaned, savoring it, knowing she couldn’t take more.

When she was finished, she held me at arm’s length.

“I want to be with you,” she said, her breaths coming heavily. “And yes, we were thrown together unexpectedly. That happens, sometimes. Other people often call it fate.” Morrigan assured me with that gentle laugh of hers, brushing her knuckles down my wet cheek. “I won’t always have the answers, and I cannot promise I’ll always be the most agreeable partner. But I know in my heart that I started falling in love with you once you took a swing at me with the fireplace poker.”

Her kiss had rendered my thoughts useless, so I wasn’t entirely sure I had heard her right. “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever—”

“Hush, darling, I’m not finished.” She pressed her forefinger to my lips, and my nostrils flared at the crust of blood under her nail. “I fell for you then because I saw the fight in you. From the moment we met, that fire was in your eyes. That stubborn determination. When you landed on our doorstep, nearly gone, but still fierce enough to live, in whatever form…” She let the words float between us on a gusting exhale that might have been holding back tears. “And then, when you said you’d fight for me , I was undone.”

“Really?”

“I know I made the right choice that night. I don’t doubt it for even a moment.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” Her hands wandering to my hips, I let her push me up against the wall, her lean body crowding mine, kissing me all the while.

“Because,” I continued through a gasp for air, “I hear new vampires are nothing except lustful monsters.” I gave Morrigan’s lips a playful bite. “I might be this insufferable for years, Josephine said. Craving your blood day and night. Craving your body in every which way even more.”

Her laughter reverberated into my open mouth. She kept kissing me between my chattering, stealing each one, teasing me with soft bites. “Your fingers, your mouth, your fangs—” Morrigan gentled her tongue over mine, silencing the breathless overflow of words, the sensuous heat of her mouth pulling out a moan, impatient and wanting.

Morrigan’s hands bracketed my shoulders, her forehead rested into mine. “And I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to spend my immortal life learning every way to love you.”

The sob that wracked my chest seemed to overwhelm me out of nowhere. “Morrigan…”

I felt her kiss upon my neck all the way down to my toes. “I’ve just gazed into eyes of hell itself and tore a demon from a dhampir’s blood.” Morrigan moved down my body, pinning me to the wall as she went lower. “The only place I want to be right now is between your legs.” Her fingers reached for the hem of my dress when she’d dropped to her knees before me. “My tongue against your clit,” she whispered, the declaration suddenly hot on the inside of my leg, desire pulsating between them, “until everyone here knows whose blood you ache for.”

Her words brought a tremor through my knees before she’d even curled her tongue against me.

Even sequestered in the dim light of our private chamber, I felt vulnerable, laid bare with the muted noise of the brothel’s revelry rooms away. Before all of this, the prim, wilting Elspeth—the one who’d been taught to demure, to chase men and women with wealth and titles—wouldn’t have set foot in this place.

But I wasn’t her. I hadn’t been that Elspeth in a long time.

I was Ella. I was Morrigan’s. And I’d be damned before I pushed away the vampire whose ancient power trembled within my veins. The vampire whose heart I could hear beating its delirious cadence for me while her breath warmed my inner thighs.

I wanted her. Here, now, tomorrow, forever.

Moaning at her feverish kisses, I leaned my head back against the wall and let myself succumb to her pleasure. With my fingernails biting into her scalp, Morrigan braced my boot’s heel against her shoulder, her head tucked underneath my skirts. Her breath teased my skin, kisses hovering closer. My knees shook when at last she ran her tongue along me, tasting my need for her, taking every last drop of that desire as it came .

“Are you sure you have the energy for this?” I worried. “You did just fight a demon’s blood.”

“Not at all, but I want to, so I’ll find it from somewhere.”

Morrigan brought me to the edge and left me there.

“You’re wicked ,” I groaned.

“I’m not nearly finished with you yet.” She crawled out from my skirts, already divesting from her trousers. “Be a good girl and undress for me.”

The request skittered hot beneath my navel.

“Only if you promise to keep your overcoat on.”

“Do you realize how heavy this material is? I’ll be dripping sweat.”

“Your coat,” I drawled, the demand scalding the air, my eyes narrowed as I tipped my chin upward, “and nothing else.”

Morrigan combed her fingers through her silvered hair, the petulant groan dissolved into a crooked grin. She knew very well that she couldn’t say no.

We helped each other out of our clothes, only driven to distraction once when I found myself lured by Morrigan’s heightening pulse. I’d had her shoved into the wall, sucking on her neck—that drumming beat right underneath my tongue—and she pushed me off, denying me the pleasure of feeding from her vein. Even when I begged for a taste, she wouldn’t. I knew she was already drained from our fight, but I was left to wallow in that discomfort a little longer, hoping I’d find temporary relief if she at least brought me to orgasm.

Then again, I was afraid the rush of blood would make my cravings more insistent.

Morrigan brandished her arms and gave me the honor of putting her overcoat back on.

“Well?” she asked, straightening the lapels. The contours of her breasts peeked out from the tailored facings, a daring suggestion of bared skin, a tease of her stomach and the scattering of silver hair between her thighs .

“Perfect,” I said, my bottom lip drawn inward with a tug of my bladed teeth. “Dashing as ever, blood sorcerer.”

She wrinkled her nose at the title.

Coat sweeping in her wake, Morrigan went to the small chest of drawers beside a wash basin. She rooted around a few of the drawers, humming in consideration. Then she knocked the drawer shut with her hip, and when Morrigan turned back to me, she had a harness in her hands. A tangle of leather straps and buckles attached to a fake appendage, phallic-shaped. She grasped it by the root and nicked her fingertip on her fang, letting the fresh droplets gather into some kind of reservoir at its base.

I couldn’t contain my curiosity. I’d used a harnessed pleasure aid before with other partners, but it hadn’t ever required blood. Was it a vampiric trick?

My head tilted to the side while she fought with the straps, swearing. “I’ve never used one that needed a drop of blood.”

“This will heighten the pleasure for us both. And,” she continued, tightening the buckles as she walked, “it will make sure I can feel every exquisite part of you once I’m buried inside.”

The desire clawing up my insides stirred at the mere possibility.

“That’s brilliant,” I breathed. “Is it sorcery?”

“Another blood alchemist in the harbor. He deals in alchemical potions and tinctures and the like, specifically for pleasure.” Morrigan groaned. “These stars-damned buckles—would you tighten that?” Brushing her coat out of the way, I gave the strap a hearty tug and notched it into place. “The alchemy will wear off. It won’t last, but it’ll be enough.”

I scoffed. “I had a partner who told me something like that once.”

Morrigan laughed so hard she doubled over, her palm against the wall beside my shoulder to keep herself mostly upright. “I’ll bet they did. ”

“Kind of a pity I can’t set foot in his tavern anymore—he was great fun.”

“His tavern , as in…”

“He owns a fairly popular drinking establishment down along the wharf?” Now I was the one melting into a fit of side-aching laughter. “You thought I was being euphemistic?”

“I don’t know, I’ve met plenty of men who like when their wives or partners wear the harness.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve known that well enough.” I rubbed at my side, took another breath to regain my composure. Morrigan waited, then moved into me—I still scented the blood she’d brought to bloom in the air. And her pulse, stronger, laced with heat, a desirous throbbing between us. “Can you really…you can feel it?”

I wrapped my hand around it. For it to be a blood alchemist’s work, it must have been a kind of metal, I thought, but more yielding, a mimicry of flesh. Morrigan sucked in a sharpened breath. I stroked from root to tip, circling my thumb there with a bit more pressure, and her knees turned tremulous.

“Elspeth,” she hissed.

“I suppose you can.” Mischief sidled into my grin, and I seized her by the lapels of her greatcoat, reining her in. “What fun this’ll be for us both…”

Morrigan captured my mouth—perhaps to shut me up at last—and grabbed my hip, lifting me as her body pressed mine against the wall. A stolen breath, a shiver somewhere low in my belly, and Morrigan hooked my leg around her waist. Her tongue delved into my mouth again, bringing a faint taste of blood with her kiss when my fang—or hers, I couldn’t tell—caught the inside of her mouth.

By some wonder of alchemy, I felt that heat radiating from her, heavy and thick on my thigh. A heat like her sweet blood, her desire made palpable and glowing hot against me. Morrigan broke our kiss and worked her mouth down the side of my neck, rubbing the tip along my slit. Her breath came in husky gasps in my ear.

She flattened her other hand to the wall somewhere above my head. “Are you ready for me, Ella darling?”

The broad tip parted me with its blood-heat, Morrigan easing in and out slowly, slicking it with my own arousal. She grunted with the effort of her restraint, waiting, making sure my body would yield. Gripping me under the knee, she slipped in a little further, the curse on her lips mingled with my bright gasp.

“Please,” I begged, my knuckles stark on her coat lapels. “I can’t—stop your teasing and—”

Morrigan pushed into me, and we moaned together, hers twisting into a fanged hiss. Her blood simmered hot from the inside. I already felt a droplet of sweat wending down the small of my back. The sensation was strange at first, but my body welcomed it, especially as Morrigan found the right rhythm. She moved with cautious strokes at first, giving me a moment to breathe, to adjust to the feel of her. Then it became all the easier, her sultry blood-heat filling me, Morrigan drinking in every shrill sound that fell from my lips.

“By the stars, you feel so good like this,” she panted into my open mouth. “You all right, Ella?”

“You can,” I managed through a sigh when she buried herself in me again, that blood-drenched heat hitting the spot that made my back arch, “you can take me a little more roughly, if you’d—”

Her thrusting hastened, the shove of her hips more crushing. My spine crashed into the wall with each stroke—until I heard a distinct crackle, something giving way behind me.

“Ah, did we just…”

“Don’t,” Morrigan grunted out on a thrust, “care.”

We’d carved a divot into the wall. The paper had torn around it, and I was distantly aware of it poking my skin every time Morrigan slammed back into me. But I was too caught up in her unforgiving pace to linger on the slight nuisance, holding onto her coat in the shattering pleasure of her thrusts.

Grabbing my other leg, she had me wrapped completely around her waist, the blissful angle raking delirious fire on my clit. Morrigan pulled out again, then drove back in, deep and hard, and my body seized around her blood-heat. It didn’t take much for her to follow after me, her hissing tangled in a moan muffled into my shoulder. I could feel the blood waning now, ebbing while I clenched and jerked in the tide of its warmth. Morrigan helped me through the last of it with a few unsteady thrusts, her own orgasm working a quiver down to her knees.

Still buried in me, we melted into each other’s embrace and Morrigan collapsed onto the bed, a sweaty luster on her skin. I locked my legs around her waist, keeping her inside me until the last of the blood alchemy faded, stealing away its sensuous heat.

“My turn,” I breathed, tugging on Morrigan’s hips while she lay vertical across the plush coverlet.

I watched her abdomen heave with fast, shuddering breaths. She let me unbuckle the leather straps, boneless and spent from her vigorous pace. Her long legs fell open once she was free, hooked over the edge of the bed. I swept my forefinger through the cleft between her thighs, slick and still aching to be touched. Morrigan, still slowly composing herself, whimpered, her hips rising slightly.

“I’ll take care of you now,” I promised. The thought of taking her in my mouth seemed unbearably tempting while she was right there and only a precise stroke of my tongue would send her into oblivion again.

Morrigan’s eyes were hazy when her fingers latched around my arm, halting my slow progress toward her clit. “Wait… wait ,” she panted. “Stop.”

Not exactly the words I’d wanted to hear.

“What? ”

“I thought…” She struggled to catch the next lungful of air. “I thought I heard someone screaming downstairs.”

My mouth went lopsided in a burgeoning grin. “It’s a brothel , Morrigan, there’s always going to be someone screaming. The walls aren’t that thick.”

“No, no, not like that.” She knocked away my hands to sit up, entranced in her own deathly-still concentration. “This is something else.”