The Vampire Queen's Mate

Chapter 7: Set Up

Sophie and I walked through rows of body storage shelves in the cooler as she located the ones we were looking for. 

“I thought they were a little off when they came in,” Sophie chattered as she looked, “you know not your usual M.O. in terms of attack patterns. No offense cousin but you don’t always leave them as pretty as these two, not to mention a woman is generally not your favorite flavor unless it’s seasoned with revenge. 

It was Sascha’s turn to let out a wickedly evil laugh now. A woman how insulting. If they were trying to set her up they could at least try to make it look believable. None the less that should make proving her innocence that much easier. Besides, if Sascha can get Aldrick to see through what’s going on she would have a better chance of corrupting him. He was always a hard soul to crack, but she knew if the others were plotting against her he would be quick to switch teams so to speak. 

Sophie finally located the two bodies and pulled them out, “here we are,” she exclaimed. 

 Interesting was Sascha’s first thought. The woman’s face was untouched, no scratches at all and her throat was slit open. Blood had run out of it indicating her throat was slashed before her body was drained. Sasha glanced at her perfectly manicured nails. They looked fresh, maybe manicured a day or two ago. There were no skin follicles, blood, or hair trapped in her fingers in fact like her face there were no signs of any struggle, and they always struggle. Sascha leaned in closer looking for bite marks. 

“The bite is on her left wrist,” Sophie clarified, catching Sascha’s curious gaze. 

“Hmmm, interesting,” Sascha mused, “Not my preferred bite method. It leaves the rest of the body open and able to attach or injure me. If I had to make an assumption I would have to speculate the victims were under powerful mind control. The wrist was willingly offered and gently sucked on. The neck was slashed to speed things up like they were in a hurry to get the job done. To drain an entire body though would indicate either a new ravishingly hungry vampire or that at least a second person was involved to drain the other body.” 

“I have to agree, and I don’t think it is a new vampire. The bite marks are not aggressive and there is no bruising indicating there wasn’t a struggle,” Sophie concurs. 

Sophie continues, “I think we should do a bite mold to compare the mark on the wrist. The spacing on these fang marks is wider than yours and any other pure bloodline vampire. This alone tells me it wasn't an original, and it’s likely not anyone from within the founding coven. The council hasn’t approved the birth of new pure bloodline vamps for centuries, well, not after the unfortunate events in Rome. If dark blood magic like that was being done then the conduit’s would definitely know about it so I suggest setting Mrs. Alexandria to work on researching this immediately, but have her utilize an assistant that no one is very familiar with, because if someone notices her digging this information up it might be suspicious whereas someone else may go completely unnoticed. The archives should show any use of blood magic and any new souls created from it. I think you might be in deep this time Sascha if someone is using blood magic that means they have already found a witch to help them. I think it will be a dead end but since we don’t have any new pure bloods I am unsure if the bite pattern will be wide like a vampire that was created, or narrow like when we create an actual soul.”

“Just in case, maybe we should find a witch of our own, you know, family secret to ensure our power as the ruling family. Just think with a witch on our side, if we ever find my beloved Dimitri,  we will most definitely find Alexander with him and then we can do the blood ceremony to bring them both back. By the time anyone finds out it will be too late,” Sascha was already plotting. 

It was true, if they could find Dimitri the likelihood of finding Alexander with him was good. They both were banished together. At the time the elders in place tried to make it seem like they were a threat to our own kind as well as bringing shame to their family. Very slowly over time and over many centuries the truth had slowly surfaced to reveal itself and now vampires everywhere, well most vampires, feared what would happen to the comfortable and wealthy life they built in the modern world should the two be resurrected. Especially Dimitri and Sascha, so much so she was almost banned from ever ruling as Queen of the coven ever again. Though it is safe to assume there was no way Sascha being who she is was going to let that actually happen.