Page 3 of Saved by the Vampire Goddess (Dark Wine Vampires #1)

Chapter three

Valroy

Minnesota Prime Ark—An hour later

T he smell of charred flesh stirs me from my lethargy. It isn’t the burning of human flesh. I’ve whiffed that before and will never forget the acrid smell. It isn’t chicken either, the main animal meat available to the masses in New Rome. This meat smells deeper, more robust. Could it possibly be the precious beef the emperor hoards?

Or have I died and gone to the underworld?

The painful throbbing in my head persuades me I’m still alive, but it also convinces me that an unknown assailant is repeatedly bashing my skull with a rock.

In between throbs, vague memories flit through my mind. The creeper drove some kind of fast-moving wagon over the icy ground, and I recall moments of lucidity crossed with blessed unconsciousness as I bounced against the wagon’s hard floor. At the end of the rough ride, which left me achy and frozen to the core, I glimpsed an oversized door that rolled up to let us into a large indoor space.

My head pounds even more. I wish Somnus would pull me back into a deep slumber, but no such luck. At least I’m warm now, resting on soft cushions. A dry quilt covers me. I touch the fabric sewn from scraps, shocked to find it’s real cotton. The sale of the quilt would feed a family of four for a year in New Rome.

Finished assessing its value, I look around for the source of the smell that woke me, but my eyes land on the creeper instead, who hovers over me.

“Geez Louise. You should eat while it’s hot.” Tsking at me, she waves at a small table. “It’s not getting any warmer.”

The table stands next to the couch where I recline. I don’t want to deal with her—or what she might have planned. The rumors of what creepers do to humans from New Rome aren’t pretty. Basically, they’ll keep us as their own personal feed bag and harvest blood from us until we’re weakened to the point of death. I touch my neck, feeling the fresh wounds where she drank from me. Is that why my head pounds?

Yeah, a pleasant future awaits me.

Something wet and cold brushes against my hand, and I snatch my arm back.

“You better eat your dinner before Ricky forgets his manners and grabs the steak.”

The wet and cold nose presses into my face, sniffing. A black and tan furry beast stares at me.

Despite the headache and lethargy, I jump to move away, blinking twice.

Is that a dog?

I’ve only seen them in the forbidden movies—never in real life.

“Ricky, come here.”

The beast looks at me, then at the source of the seared meat smell. A plate sits on the small tray table next to me. The beast whines.

“Here, now.”

The beast trots over to the creeper. So, she keeps it in her home. A creeper like her living with a beast makes sense.

I lift the quilt to peek underneath and confirm my suspicion. “Where are my pants?”

“In the autocleaner. They’ll be fine. It’ll kill any mold or bacteria.”

Rubbing my aching head, I only vaguely recall when we arrived here. The creeper swept me out of the wagon, tossed me over her shoulder, and carried me into a smaller room. She then stripped the animal hide off me, along with my boots and pants, before sitting me naked on the floor of a hot shower. The water had a harsh chemical smell, but the warmth felt blessed by the gods.

Oh Jupiter . She’s seen me naked.

I don’t recall her dressing me in a short robe, carrying me here, and dumping me on a couch, pants-less.

“Do you know how to use a knife and fork?” she asks.

I nod. What does she think I am, a barbarian? And why would she trust me with a knife? If I could slide the sharp blade under the blanket—

“Oh fer cute, stop planning your escape and eat. You need food.”

The plate contains meat, smelling heavenly, and what I think is a mashed vegetable. My mouth waters. Picking up the knife and fork, I carve off a piece and chew the meat.

Oh Jupiter! I’ve tasted nothing better in all my life. Rich juices run from the charred slab, lean with no fat. Give me a regular source of this meat, and I’d open a restaurant that would double my wealth.

I point with the knife. “What is it?”

“Grilled elk, marinated in red wine.”

“What is elk?”

“Have you seen deer?”

“Pictures,” I mumble around the next bite.

“Like deer, but bigger. The two tablets are ibuprofen. They’ll help with your headache. As will the lemonade. Freshly squeezed.”

I raised a questioning eyebrow. “Lemons? You have lemons?”

“Yes.”

What I wouldn’t give to taste a twist of the peel in a martini right now.

Except she seems to misunderstand my hesitation. “Trust me. Nothing on that tray will harm a mortal.”

Yeah, right. Trust her? Not likely. But I have to eat something. I point at the two furry beasts curled at her feet, one larger, one smaller. “Why do you have those in here?”

Her gaze follows to where I point, and she pats one on the head. “These are dogs. An Aussie and a German shepherd—”

“I know they’re dogs. I’ve seen them in movies.” Raising my chin, I can’t help but say that a little proudly. “But I don’t understand why they are inside your living quarters.”

“This is Lucy and Ricky, and it’s their home, too.”

“You named your beasts?”

She scoffs. “Among my other duties, I’m in charge of breeding the working dogs. These two sweeties are mine. The rest are in a dome annex.”

I only understand a bit of what she says, although it sounds like English. No context, and I refuse to use people’s names for beasts. It’s insulting. But she said they’re hers. They must be pets like in the movies, rather than wild animals.

Though they’re a bit on the large size. Don’t women in the movies usually have small beasts for their laps? Wait. Those are called cats .

“Beasts do not live in homes in New Rome,” I say haughtily, then take another bite of the delicious meat.

She kneels down and places a hand over each beast’s ear, mushing their heads against each other like she doesn’t want them hearing our discussion. “Doncha know, that’s because your people ate all their dogs and cats before you were born.”

I blink. I was not aware of that. “How would you know what happened in New Rome? You’re a creeper.”

“No, keeper . Zookeeper. Your people screwed up the name.”

“What’s a zookeeper?”

“Uff-da. My current occupation. I take care of a microcosm of agriculture, wilderness, and animals, both domestic and wild, while I scavenge what’s left outside the domes. And I’m a vampire, too.”

Nothing new about that. “So, how do I know you speak the truth about New Rome’s beasts?”

She tsks . “I get regular reports from Ingvar.”

“Who’s Ingvar? Someone inside New Rome? Do we have a spy?”

“No, he doesn’t live in New Rome. You’ll meet him, eventually. I’ve got a whole library of reports going back to right after the domes dropped.”

Could those reports mention my grandparents? They told stories of being trapped inside the dome when the weather turned chaotic. A question for another time.

I bite into the cooked orange root, mashing the soft texture with my tongue. The sweetness catches me by surprise. “You grow this too?”

“Yeah. It’s called a yam.”

“Tasty.”

“Glad your majesty is pleased.”

I slice off another piece of elk and savor the flavor when it hits my tongue. “Dominus,” I say after swallowing. “Dominus Valroy.”

“Huh?”

“The proper form of address is Dominus.”

She snorts. “Well, that’s not happening. “I’ll call you Val.”

“My name is Valroy, not Val. You will call me Dominus Valroy.”

She laughs. Not tiny, tittering giggles. Instead, big guffaws rise from her throat until tears bleed from her eyes.

“You are a hoot.” She wipes the tears with the back of her hand. “There aren’t any lords or ladies here. Just zookeepers.”

“Creepers, you mean.” I’ve had enough of her sense of humor. If she wants a sword fight with words, I can parry whenever she lunges. “Why do you have food if you’re a creeper?”

“They have to eat.” She scratches the heads of both beasts. One rolls over, and she rubs its belly. “So you’re eating dog food.”

I shrug. “You feed this to them?”

“Well, I don’t marinate theirs in red wine first. I did that because I wasn’t sure if the flavor of game meat would be too strong for you.”

“Wait. You cooked the elk?”

“Yeah, don’t you like it?”

“It’s fine. I’m just surprised you cook at all since you don’t eat food.” I cut another bite. What a waste of a good steak, to feed it to beasts. “Where do you get the game meat ?”

“What part of zookeeper don’t you understand? I have an elk herd. Have to cull it occasionally when the wolves don’t.”

I mull over her answer and finally get up the nerve to ask my burning question. “Do you have a bottle of vodka?”

“I doubt any survived. Vodka isn’t my favorite—more of a gin girl, myself. And any I have will be over ninety years old. Don’t know how well that stuff ages. I’ll check later.”

At least she knows enough to remain silent and doesn’t bombard me with a barrage of questions while I eat. Between bites, I take surreptitious glances, not wanting to engage her further. She’s a strikingly beautiful woman, one the emperor would lay claim to in a breath. Eyes the color of the deep waters of the Caribbean Sea. I’ve seen underwater images on the glossy pages of my most favorite picture book. My mother bequeathed it to me before she died. She saved it from the book burnings fifty years ago, and those precious pages capture the beauty of something that no longer exists—or so she told me—except maybe in the color of this creeper’s eyes.

I take another bite and note the creeper’s blonde hair is almost white—a color unknown among New Rome residents. Her ruddy cheeks make her look almost human. Then I focus on her small nose, which is unremarkable. The imperial elites value large Roman noses.

But her lips… Angels would sing praises to their perfect upper peaks, and her bottom lip’s plumpness makes me want to bite it. Her face reminds me of the movie goddesses I’ve seen in the films from before the Collapse.

And I haven’t even gotten below her chin, where worship-worthy breasts and slender hips give her a pleasing appearance.

A throb in my groin warns me to quit studying her person. Something about her excites and enthralls me.

I don’t like it.

Besides being beautiful, she’s wealthy. Pre-Collapse rarities cram every space, every surface, of the expansive room where I eat. Books line one entire wall, and proper furniture with wooden frames are scattered throughout. Not the stuffed, oversized pillows or chairs formed from plastic most homes feature in New Rome.

Imperial families I know might have a few pre-Collapse belongings passed down from grandparents who were born prior to the Collapse. But to have an entire room filled with them? Never.

And it is the casual way she displays her wealth that tells me she is rich beyond all imagining. Only the truly affluent show such casualness about their possessions.

Or is she a servant of a rich person? Perhaps. I’ve seen no sign of any others in this room, but she’s the one who prepared my dinner. On the other side of the large room is what must be a kitchen—or at least, that’s my guess, since only servants prepare food in New Rome, and I rarely invade their domain.

Is it possible to be both this wealthy and perform the tasks of a servant?

When I finish eating, I look up at her, and strike upon a way to narrow down my wild suspicions. “Your servants may remove the tray.”

A loud laugh shoots from her. “There are no servants here. Just you and me.”

“How curious,” I say, and move the small table aside and stand. The meal has renewed my strength. “If I may borrow the hide cloak, I’ll take my leave.”

Facing me, she laughs again. “And just where do you think you’re going in the middle of the snow bomb that’s dropping tonight?”

“I must return to the dome. I have a task to do.”

More than a task. I have a duty to my sixteen-year-old sister. I need to kill the forty-four-year-old reprobate who plans to defile her.

The creeper smiles at me. “We’re six miles from your dome. With the wind chill, the temperature outside is minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit. And in case no one told you, it’s a one-way trip.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The reclamation bin they put you in? No living thing can enter through it.” She removes my empty plate, leaving the tray, and strides over to the sink. “They don’t want us giving you live animals—what you started with is all you get.”

“But certainly—”

“The dome has no other entrances. You’re stuck here for the moment until I talk with the Lux about you. Though I gotta admit, I didn’t know a living mortal could exit through it until tonight.”

A chill runs down my spine, and I touch three fingers to my forehead in reverence. “You speak to the angels?”

“Ah, gee whiz.” The dishes clink as she plops them in the sink, then turns around, leaning against the center counter, facing me and crossing her arms. “Is that what they teach you kids in there?”

“I am not a child. I am a man of twenty-three years.”

She scoffs. “You’re a child.”

“And you are what? Twenty-four?”

“Close. If you include my time as a mortal, I’ll be two hundred and eight this year. I was twenty-six when I died. You do the math.”

“You lie.”

“For cripes’ sake. Let me see if we can summarize your ignorance. You think the Lux are deities, and you know nothing about vampires. No wonder they left you to die. Just culling the gene pool.”

I growl at her. How dare she insult the sacrifice I made?

She removes a frozen red bag from the refrigerator, dumping it on the counter with a clunk . “At least tell me what you did to get the death penalty.”

I dip my chin. That is a different matter. How to admit my shame?

She reaches back into the refrigerator, concealing an object in her fist, then, with her free hand, she grabs a knife from a wood block. “Answer my question.”

Is she about to drain my blood? When she claimed me, calling herself Jonkill, it’s what I expected to happen right there in the reclamation bin.

But instead of coming at me with the blade, she slices open a vein in her wrist and pours the welling blood into a glass cup. She dumps the knife into the sink, then licks her wrist. “I’m waiting.”

“I disobeyed an order of the emperor.”

“And why would you do that?” She grips the glass, something still hidden in her other hand, and strides over to me, facing me where I stand.

“The emperor chose a husband for my sister, a man thirty years her senior. I refused to sign the marriage contract. It was a dishonor I could not allow.” My fiery rage resurfaces. “She is—”

Sixteen.

My shame lodges in my throat, choking me. Shame over my failure to protect my sister. Shame over what he might be doing to her right now. Shame over my assumption that my title and status would protect us both.

“She is…what?”

“She is worthy of more than that cretin,” I finally spit out.

“Aha. A hero type. Just what I don’t need in my life.”

“I am not heroic. The emperor was unjust to force her to marry such a man.”

“And where were your parents in all this?”

“Dead. They died from a terrible wasting disease when I was fifteen and my sister was only eight. I’ve been responsible for Tina ever since.”

The creeper stops five feet from me. “I’m so sorry.” She furrows her brow. “The doctors didn’t have medicine to treat it?”

“The temple of Diana provided vaccines against the illness, but there wasn’t enough to go around, and my parents insisted Tina and I receive the shots. I’ll never forget their sacrifice.”

The creeper sighs, but says nothing to that. Then she pockets whatever she had in her closed hand, pushes my robe off my shoulders, dips her finger in the glass, and draws her blood across the crusted skin where the Imperator carved HERETIC into my chest.

I leap backward, tripping and crashing onto the couch. “Why did you do that?”

“My blood has healing powers. Now stay still, unless you want to be scarred for life.”

This time, I hold my ground and let her. My skin, soaked in her blood, slowly mends.

She puts the glass aside on the tray and takes a vial from her pocket containing a red liquid.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“My blood won’t heal the bite on your neck, and it won’t heal any wounds I get. It takes the blood of another vampire to do that.” Unscrewing the cap, she holds the vial near my neck where she bit me. “We swap donations, just in case one of us gets hurt.”

Cold liquid drips onto my neck, and I flinch away. “Hey.”

“Hold still.” She grips my arm, and once I sit up straight, she uses her finger to dab the cold liquid around the bite, then blots the area with a cloth. My neck pain disappears. “Now, is there anything else to your story? I need to report to the Lux.”

Shaking my head, I refuse to tell her the whole truth. It will not matter to her or the angels that I challenged Maliff to a duel to spare Tina, but the Imperator denied me the right.

If only Maliff had been present, I would have driven my sword through him, notwithstanding the Imperator’s denial. But like the coward he is, Maliff didn’t attend the courthouse proceeding. So I did the only thing I could.

I pretended to acquiesce and picked up the pen to sign the contract. Instead, I crossed out Dominus Maliff’s name and wrote in Titus’s, then signed the marriage contract. The action sealed my fate.

In New Rome, the gods and goddesses appoint the emperor, or so we’re taught. Not only did I disobey the emperor—I defied a deity.

The Imperator branded me a heretic, stripped my lands and property from me, and imposed the death penalty. But because I’m a dominus, they didn’t publicly execute me. Instead, they cast me out with only a knife to defend myself.

At the time, filling in Titus’s name seemed the only option I had to help Tina. The Imperator was clear that she’d be married whether I signed the contract or he forged my hand. I couldn’t stop the marriage contract. All I could hope to accomplish was to change whom she married. New Rome society is based on honoring contracts. I bet on that respect, on giving my best friend a chance to protect Tina upon my death.

With my whole being, I wish I was back in the dome and able to protect my sister. I can only hope that Titus stepped in to make his claim. Despite the creeper’s warning about the weather and the distance, I’ll do everything I can to return and ensure my sister is unharmed. Because if Maliff forced himself on her, he’s a dead man.