Sweet Blooded

Fifteen: Marked

The yelling erupted not long after I finally pulled myself from my pity party and disappeared down the rabbit hole of yet another new book. Their voices carried down the hallway, bouncing off the bare floors and walls, so that I could just make out the angry tones from where I sat in the study.

I set the book back on the coffee table, marking the page I’d been on with one of Gabriel’s stray pens, before quickly and quietly crossing the room, to the doorway. I leaned into the doorframe, trying to get the slightest glimpse down the hallway. 

The shouts were loud, accompanied by animalistic snarls, but they were just far away enough that I couldn’t make out the words. One of the voices was definitely feminine though. It didn’t sound quite like Talia.

The feminine shouts stopped when the front door closed loudly, making the whole apartment seem to shake. I could hear the distinct sound of Gabriel’s steps coming down the wooden floor of the hallway and I backed away from the doorway, afraid of being caught eavesdropping. 

He barged into the study, and the air that he brought with him was violent. I tensed when his eyes made contact with mine. But it wasn’t the anger that caused my blood to run cold. It was their color. They were crimson and glowing in the light of the flames.

“Is everything okay?” I had asked, but the words hadn’t even all left my lips when he was suddenly standing directly in front of me. Wide eyed, I stepped back, angling my head to look up at him. 

But he reached out, violently, wrapping his hand around my throat as his head snapped forward. My strangled cry was nearly soundless as his fangs tore into the flesh right next to my collarbone. His fingers dug into my skin, holding my neck at an angle so that he had better access. His other hand was on my waist, holding me still as I shoved against his chest with both hands in a frenzy, trying to push him away.

The sensation of being fed from swallowed me. I clawed at the hand wrapped around my neck, prying at his fingers, trying to make it easier to breathe. He squeezed tighter the more I struggled. 

“Gabriel-” my plea was silent, my lips barely moving. 

He stopped the feeding and shoved with the hand still wrapped around my neck. I stumbled into the back of the sofa, massaging my throat and gulping down air, lifting my eyes to him. His eyes no longer glowed and looked more rusty than crimson now. He wiped the blood trailing down the side of his chin, then turned, pacing to the desk.

“Get out.”

I took the opportunity to duck through the doorway, but ran into what felt like a brick wall. 

Lukas caught me, wrapping his hands around mine as he steadied me. When I looked up at him, trying to pull my hands from his, he was frowning slightly. He quickly maneuvered me so that I was in front of him, and he herded me back to my room. At the door, he spun me around to face him, licked the pad of his thumb, and then rubbed it over the fresh fang marks Gabriel had just bestowed upon me. 

His eyes narrowed suddenly when he pinched my chin, lifting my head up. I could see he was staring at my neck. His narrowed eyes slid to his left, back down the hallway, toward where we’d just come from. As though they’d been communicating telepathically, Marks appeared on Lukas’ other side. 

Lukas still had my chin in his firm grasp, giving Markus a perfect view of whatever he’d been staring at. Markus’ expression soon mirrored Lukas’s. 

“What is he doing?” Markus asked, so quietly that I wouldn’t have heard it had I not been standing chest to chest with the two of them. 

I was immediately pulled away from my room and instead into the bathroom. I stood in the doorway, dumbstruck, as Lukas ran to the garden tub that I hadn’t seen used in my time here. He filled it, dumping in bubbles and oils, then approached me and promptly began removing my clothing.

In response, I promptly started trying to shove him away. He easily restrained me, still stripping me down to my underwear and then pointed to the tub.

“Get in.”

Get in, get out? I was getting ordered around, a lot and I was pretty f*****g sick of it. Especially when I had no clue what was going on or what I had done to deserve this.

“Don’t think I won’t throw you in there with your underwear on,” Lukas warned when he saw me still standing near the door.

“Why do I have to get in the bath?” I demanded, surprisingly steadily considering it was the first time I’d ever back talked to anyone in my entire life. But the fear from Gabriel’s attack had finally faded away, leaving adrenaline and anger behind in its place. 

“Because every pet needs a bath every once in a while, just get in. Soap now, questions later.”

“I’m not a damn dog! And I had a shower last night!”

The vampire turned around slowly, his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. I swallowed, immediately regretting my outburst.

“No one said you were a dog, Evelyn,” Lukas sighed, “Just, please get in the bath. Or shall I go inform Gabriel of your insolence.”

My eyes burned. I wanted to say go ahead; tell him. But as much as I wasn’t afraid of death, I was very much afraid of the Original- apparently, royal vampire. Reluctantly, I stripped the rest of the way and climbed into the tub, sinking through the bubbles and into the water. As I settled, I bit my tongue, forbidding the contented sigh from escaping my lips. I hated how good it felt to be immersed in the warm water- I hadn’t had a bath since I was a girl. But the question of why still burned brightly in my mind.

As soon as Lukas returned, I let loose the questions. 

“Why am I in the bath?”

“Because you’re more scared of Gabriel than you care to admit,” he replied snidely, then laughed at my scowl.

He let loose his own sigh, then came to stand next to the tub, peering down at me. I was suddenly thankful for the bubbles, which I had first thought was overkill.

“Do you understand what he did to you just now?” Lukas asked me, so quietly that I couldn’t hear him.

Strangled me? Bit me? Took out his anger on the first helpless target he saw? I shook my head, no.

“He marked you.”

I blinked once. Twice. “What are you talking about,” I questioned, matching his low volume.

“That isn’t just a normal bite, Evelyn. He marked you.”

“Okay… but what does that mean? The mark will fade.”

“He marked you as his…”

“He bought me, did he not?”

“Most Originals only mark two kinds of people in their lives, Evelyn. Their mate, and their paramour.”

He explained it… he said the words, but he suddenly wasn’t speaking English. He couldn’t be…the words that came out of his mouth didn’t make any damn sense. I certainly wasn’t a mate-a vampire mate.

“No.” I shook my head, disturbing the bubbles around my shoulders.

Lukas just looked down at me pitifully. 

“Talia is his paramour,” I argued, “Isn’t she? And I’m certainly not a mate. You’re wrong. He only bit me because he was angry and I was the first thing he saw to take it out on.”

“He may have been angry, but that is no bite. And Talia was being groomed to be his paramour, but he was never going to keep her permanently. Only for a few years or so, out of respect to her sponsor.”

“You’re wrong…” I whispered the words. But Lukas just looked at me with the same look of pity, like I was a child whose puppy had run away.

“This…” Lukas’ cold finger traced a small circle at the end of my collarbone, right over the skin Gabriel had just torn open, “…is a mark. I tried to heal it. It won’t heal.”

The blood pounded in my ears, my heart beat so fast I thought it might rip a hole in my chest. “I’m cattle,” I whimpered. “Talia told me what paramours are for- Lukas, I’m cattle.”

Lukas crouched down so that his face was closer to mine, and it occurred that he didn’t want Gabriel to hear. 

“So it’s a role switch, you can still fill it pretty easily. He’s never tolerated a human like he has you, and we all like your eyes. Blue eyes are about as rare as blue chips these days.”

I blinked. I could see that he was trying to comfort me, to coax me into agreement. But he didn’t understand.

“Lukas…what does a paramour do?”

Lukas did something I didn’t know a vampire could do- his face flushed red. “Well if that’s what you’re worried about, I’m sure I can find a book that will educate on how your body-”

“No!” I hissed, shaking my head again. “Not that part…the other half. Why do vampires have human paramours? Talia told me it’s to reproduce.”

“Oh,” Lukas looked relieved.

“I’m sterile. All cattle are sterilized, Lukas. They don’t want us reproducing.”

Lukas stared at me, blinking slowly, and I felt as though we’d just switched roles. Suddenly I was the one with the knowledge and he was the one in the dark.

“Surely… you and he know that cattle are sterile.”

“They sterilized you when you were eleven years old?” Lukas demanded, his brows pinching together.

I nodded. 

Normally, cattle are sterilized at birth, or at the very least, at a very young age. There are specific breeders for cattle, and the newborns are sterilized as soon as possible. But since my sister and I were much older when we were dumped at the auction house, we underwent a major surgery. A surgery that I survived…but that killed my sister.

I blinked away the memories, instead focusing on the bigger issue, but I blinked only to find Lukas looking at me with even greater pity than before. And I wondered if it was because he knew, or because Gabriel didn’t. And what would Gabriel do when he found out that he had brashly chosen his human cattle for a paramour, and now his paramour was unable to fulfill her purpose.