Bloodlust

Chapter Thirteen

The hotel is busy when we arrive for the first time today. It's hard to believe that only a handful of days ago, I was in New Orleans, clubbing it up and living my life.

Now, the fate of vampirism is tied to me. The vampire who despises vampirism.

While I have Niklaus check us in, I pick up a package that has been delivered to my reserved room. I smile at the first, but it fades as I recognize the handwriting on the second.

Six, Nadya. Three by midnight, three by noon.

On Adama's life, non? Or those two little boys, maybe?

Leave them in your room. Such a pretty view of the Elysees.

I crumple the letter in my hand and curse Tomasz to the seventh circle of Dante's hell. I want to shake the package, break the glass tubes that instinct tells me lie inside of it. Furiously, I abandon the boys and move to the streets, searching wildly for a payphone. Finding a mostly abandoned booth, I streak inside it and punch in Adama's number - that which belongs to the kings and queens of the Otherworld. That now belongs to Tomasz.

The Otherworld, unlike much of the delights of the afterlife, was not inspired by my ideas. The first so-called 'King' was a mafia lord named Diego, killed by those in his own gang. His rage was almost concerning for a few decades, until he successfully killed every member of every family that had had a hand in his death.

After that, his attention turned to creating a sort-of afterlife mafia - a drug ring, I believe, was his initial idea. Instead, it became a vast underground network of goods that were...suspect, to say the very least. A plethora of kings followed, but none stood for as long as the network's first queen: Adama Bolina, a Russian aristocrat whose sly ways had earned her the nickname 'The Snake' amongst the living aristocracy.

I've done my fair share of business with the Otherworld over the years, much of my money going into procuring the services of witches and warlocks who would perform the tricky and underhanded spells I needed at the price of the Coven's wrath. It is only under the last years of Adama's reign and now, the beginning of Tomasz's, that I have paid in blood rather than paper money.

The price of your misdeeds will be blood, night child. You will drown in it, one day.

I shudder as I remember the words of the seer-witch, a rarity in the stores of the Otherworld. Only a few seers are born each generation, and many go mad. Many believe the ability to see the future is an uncompromising gift; only the seer-witches and I realize how awful it can truly be.

"I was expecting your call, Nadya." The smooth tone of Tomasz's voice breaks me from my rapidly confusing thoughts and red overtakes my vision.

"You have some fucking nerve, Tomasz," I hiss. "Stay out of my room and don't you dare touch those boys. I have always delivered on my promises and I won't back out now."

"Won't you?" His chilling question freezes my body as I listen to him. "You were never one to stick around long after you procured services from Otherworld vendors. I mean, your debt was skyrocketing until you paid it off in bulk at the end of the century. Unfortunately, I don't work as Adama did. Better for you to know that now."

I close my eyes. "I swear, Tomasz--"

"You don't. I know everything, Nadya, that you try to keep hidden. I know the secrets of those two boys you seem so desperate to protect. Interesting, don't you think, how they seem so interchangeable?"

Again, Tomasz's use of words tickles a memory in the back of my brain. Interchangeable. It licks at the forefront of my memory, but fades just too soon. I slam my fist into the wall of the booth, shattering the glass. Tomasz tsks into the phone. "That legendary temper is still around, I see."

"I'll get you your payment," I hiss, "but if you intrude on my space again, I will not hesitate to kill you and your lackeys."

"I think you misunderstand, Nadya." There is nothing but uncompromising force in Tomasz's long-silenced voice. "Adama was afraid of you. I am not."

I look out onto the street, where a man dressed in black stands, his eyes trained on the phone booth I occupy. "You should be."

It takes less than half a second for me to exit the booth and cross the street, my hand plunging into the Otherworld vampire's chest as I rip out his heart. His screams are not unexpected, nor is the shock and horror of the humans that watch. In disdain, I drop his now-dead heart onto his body.

Without another word, I lick the fresh blood from my fingers and walk back to the hotel, eager for a night of feasting and dancing.

It is clear to me that while Tomasz may know some things about my long-hidden past, he does not know the heart of it. 

He does not know enough to be afraid. 

a couple of filler chapters are headed your way, just a forewarning. i promise something interesting will happen at the long-awaited ball. xx, k