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Garnet has the blood of the legendary Morrigan...and legions of vampires and witches will go to war to possess that power.
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“She doesn’t look much like the Morrigan. Or much of anything, really.”
The vampire queen reached toward me and took my chin in her hand. I tried to jerk it away, but she held me fast in her black-painted fingernails, gazing at me with cold blue eyes.
“Look at the mark, Varya,” my captor, Merrel, said. His hand lay on my shoulder protectively. I shook it off. He’d kidnapped me, had me stuffed in a ridiculous evening gown, and hauled me down to this underground lair to hang out with his creepy vampire friends. He was going to be on my shit list forever. And with vampires, I knew that forever was going to be a very long time.
Varya circled me. I could feel the prickle of her eyes on me as she stared at my back, where a crow-shaped birthmark spread over my shoulder blade. I stifled a shudder as she traced the wings with a nail. I jerked my shoulder away.
“So she does,” Varya said. She drifted back into my sight, seeming bored. She flicked her hand at me. “Get on with it.”
A low murmuring sounded. A chant, from the witch Emily’s lips. It sounded like Latin, but my Latin was strictly limited to what I needed to know for anatomy class. But I thought I recognized the word “sanguis” —blood. It was beautiful in its way, like a song. The hair lifted on the back of my neck, and the circle I stood in began to shimmer with red light.
I tried to make a break for it. I jerked away from Merrel, my hand reaching up to my hair for the daggers hidden in my hair pins. But Merrel’s hands clasped around my wrists, and he turned me around to face him.
“This will all be over soon,” he whispered. “I swear.”
He dipped his head toward mine. I stomped on his foot, kicked him, struggled with all my might. But his cool lips descended upon my throat, and I flinched.
Sharp pain twitched through me, and I tried to twist away. But his mouth held fast to me, and I felt a runnel of hot blood drip down my clavicle to stain my dress.
I was not a delicate fleur prone to fainting. But as he drank, I became lightheaded. I realized that I was going into shock. I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet, and my pulse roared in my ears. I felt hot, sweaty, nauseous. This wasn’t the passionate embrace shown in every vampire film I’d seen. This hurt, and I could feel myself slipping away.
I slumped against him, my knees buckling. One of his arms came around my waist, and he held my neck in the crook of his elbow. Gently, he lowered us to the floor, that painted floor that glowed with lurid red light. My ear rested against his chest, and I thought I felt a heartbeat there. He had my blood to move his heart; now, I had nothing. I couldn’t even lift my hand. I knew I was finished.
Emily knelt beside us. She held a rough-looking clay vessel with one hand and opened the stopper with the other. She handed the jar to Merrel, who poured its contents into my mouth.
“Take the blood of earth, the blood of my beloved Morrigan,” he said.
It tasted like oil and coppery blood and dirt. I rejected it, spitting it out all over his shirt. I did not want to become like him, a monster.
But he pulled open my jaw and poured it in. I felt suffocation coming over me, the liquid clotting in my throat and strangling my breath. I passed out, there on the floor with him, my dress and skin stained in blood that was mine and someone else’s.
I chose not to submit to it, and spiraled down into the dark.