Bite of Cinder

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

HartI rubbed my fingers together, still feeling the warmth of the girl’s skin. I had been around for seven hundred years, and all I had ever felt was cold and hungry. Until now.

“You want to tell me why she’s still alive?” Blister asked quietly, his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall.

I turned the hand I had used to touch the girl’s face. No burns. It was just warm.

“Turning a sun fae is f*******n,” I replied.

“You think?” He rolled his eyes at me. “Why would you have her brought here? Have you lost your mind?”

Maybe I have. Maybe I just needed to know. And maybe I had more pressing concerns. I wasn’t about to say it out loud, not to Blister. He knew firsthand what happened when a sun fae’s blood touched a vampire’s skin. Biting one and drinking from them would be deadly.

“The sun didn’t burn her,” I said instead.

Blister leaned forward ever so slightly, and his pupils turned to slits, shifting to his reptilian form. “She’s freshly turned.”

I nodded. Freshly turned vampires were more resistant, and Golden’s bite couldn’t have been particularly potent. It would probably take at least two weeks for her to turn fully. But still. Her skin should’ve at least turned pink in the sun.

Damnation, my hands were still warm everywhere I had touched her skin to skin. What would it feel like to have her n***d body pressed against mine? To be inside her? Would she burn me up? Or would she melt the ice inside me?

What would it have felt like to drink from her?

It was too late to wonder about her blood. She was one of us now. Soon enough, we'll know if she would survive the turning.

"I still don't understand why you'd have her brought here in the first place," Blister said from his place against the wall right next to the window. Ever since his run in with a full-blooded sun fae, he was drawn to windows in these early hours of the day.

"Have you ever wondered why it was f*******n for vampires and sun fae to mingle?" I asked.

Blister snorted. He had a point. That was a stupid question. We were deadly to each other. But this girl...

"Golden and the girl are both alive," I pointed out. "She's not a full-blooded fae. Maybe it's not enough sun magic to kill us."

But it was enough for my hands to grow warm for the first time in my life.

"It would've killed you, though," Blister pointed out.

He was likely right. I still had the winter fae magic in my blood. Even seven hundred years after I had been turned, ice flowed through my veins.

But what if he was wrong? What if her blood had melted mine? What if she could end this everlasting cold?

"I'll go check on the product," I said instead of voicing my doubts.

Shadows wrapped around me as I stepped into the storage room deep below the mansion. The sound of the machine was a comfort. The last thing I needed was for it to break down with a fresh supply of blood.

The first batch of the dehydrated cells was already packaged and put away. Technically, they didn't need refrigeration, but this shipment was for King Barnabas, and he was a picky dickhead.

Fortunately, he wouldn't require anything else from us for the next six months. That's how much time I had to come up with a new plan. Or to give up on the idea altogether.

Maybe it was a blessing that Golden had bitten the girl. It gave me time to see if the plan would’ve even worked.

Sure, it was dangerous to turn someone without permission, but a failed assassination of the vampire king would entail worse punishment. Judging by how Golden is still alive, the attempt would’ve likely been a failure.

Someone hooted outside, claiming to remember last night. I froze and listened as the man described doing lines of coke with Blister.

Well, there was always one i***t in the crowd who pretended to remember. Still, we wouldn’t be able to do this for much longer. First, the band couldn’t last for more than a couple of decades without drawing attention to our ageless faces. Second, sooner or later, someone would start to really look into our parties. Something had to give.

With King Barnabas demanding dehydrated blood from every vampire, we would soon need a new way of harvesting it, or we would need a new king.

The old bastard thought he was keeping up with the times by asking for the new technology to be used. He was not keeping up with the times when it came to humanity's ability to find the truth. One missed camera or a microphone, and we were busted.

I walked to the giant contraption that whirled in the back. Every vampire clan had to have one because King Barnabas said so. It was a good thing we had this mansion, but what about the others? How many new clans had to hide in large cities with this thing churning human blood?

The bastard had to die. It was for the best of the entire vampire race.

As dangerous as it was for my clan to keep the girl Golden had turned without permission, a half sun fae at that, there was still a chance I could use her to kill the king. At the very least, she could reveal if using a halfling was even an option because a full-blooded fae certainly was not.

Speaking of the girl, what was she and Golden doing?

I concentrated on the shadows, on the cold air, on the void that resided in every atom. Slowly, Golden’s voice drifted to me.

“You’ll have to feed tonight. The longer you go without feeding, the lower the chance of you surviving the transition.”

Good. He was taking care of that. I’d have to make sure Golden had the list of the damned.

I wrapped the shadows and stepped into my office. Here, I had the list and all the necessary paperwork to cover our tracks.

We needed an explanation for why she was even here. It didn’t mean we had to tell anyone she had been turned. Saying she was our cook had been a good idea, but it would only work for humans, not in the vampire world.

I could hire her as an assistant, but what good was an assistant who couldn’t answer the phone during the day?

I plopped in my chair, propped my legs up on the desk, and tried to come up with a better idea. What would work in both worlds?

I could say she was my girl. Humans wouldn’t question it, but a few fans might get upset. Vampires would think she was my personal feeding stock.

But what if someone figured out that she had magic in her? The supernatural community would start asking questions. Eventually, the truth would come out.

She’d have to be our maid. That excuse would work for humans and vampires. We did have a mansion that needed to be maintained. The fact that it had been enchanted to repel dust and clean up spills didn’t mean there weren’t other occasional problems. Like rinsing the cups after we had a drink of blood.

Damn it. This was a lot harder than it should be.

Wait, the girl had said she was close to graduating from college. What was she studying? Maybe I could go with that?

Would’ve been great if I at least knew her name, but I hadn’t bothered with it since I thought a little of her blood was all I would be getting.

Frustrated that I even had to do it, I called the bounty hunter that had found the girl in the first place. It had taken her years to find me what I needed, but half sun faes were rare. They hated mingling with humans.

“Hart, dear,” the bounty hunter’s saccharine voice answered. “Were you able to get the girl back?”

“Yes. Do you know what she’s going to college for? And I need her full name.”

“Cynthia Dereli. She’s studying accounting law. I didn’t think you wanted her for her brains.” She laughed at her own joke.

“Thank you for your help. I’m transferring your payment right now.” I hung up the phone, not willing to waste any of my time on the woman.

With the sun quickly rising, I had minutes to finish my work. First, I had to wire the money to the bounty hunter. Spring fae weren’t known for their patience. Second, I needed to draw up a contract between the band and the girl, hiring her as our lawyer.

As quickly as I filled out the paperwork, the early hours of the morning were taking their toll, making my hand tremble as I signed the document. There was no time to give it all to the girl–Cynthia. That would have to wait until tonight.

Unable to fight the exhaustion any longer, I wrapped myself in shadows and collapsed on my bed hidden deep below the mansion.