Blood Stain: Book Three of the Blood Type Series (complete)

The Verdict

I didn't know much about the Queen, other than what I'd gleaned from Margaret and the others. She and her male companion had slaughtered an entire ship of emigrants. She had also killed the youngest Abernathy and turned the remaining five to vampirism. Upon reaching the colonies, she had sired countless others. No telling how many innocent lives she had taken in the process. Whatever happened to her companion, I hadn't heard and didn't care to know. Some vampires claimed the Queen was mad because she lacked a blood type truly compatible with vampirism, not to mention the intricate web of blood bonds she'd spun over the years.

"If you squeeze my hand any tighter," Josiah said as we made our way down the staircase, "you will break every one of my bones."

"Sorry," I said, releasing his hand and wiping my slick palm against my jeans. "I'm nervous."

"Nervous?" He had the audacity to sound surprised.

I glanced at him. "What if she, you know, tries to bite my head off?"

Josiah answered with the ghost of a smile. "I highly doubt the Queen made the journey to, as you say, bite your head off."

"I hope you're right," I replied as Josiah steered me in the direction of voices coming from the library.

The Queen, with the assistance of another vampire, stood upon our entrance. She was a young woman, about my age in human years, and yet there was an underlying frailness that made her seem less than imposing. I understood now why she kept to herself these days and was rarely seen. Any innate power she had once possessed had since vanished. The stories of power and bloodlust I had heard were in the distant past.

"I gather you are the one I have heard so much about." She stretched out her arm and I grasped her hand obligingly, cold and paper-thin. Unsure whether to shake or kiss it, I settled on an awkward curtsy.

"Your majesty," I said, rising to my full height, which was several inches taller than her own.

Her smile was slight. "My name is Abigail."

She returned to the chaise lounge on which she'd been sitting and gestured to the vacant chair opposite. "I understand my progeny have been causing mischief," she said as I sat.

"That's an understatement," I replied.

She exhaled audibly, her pale lips pinched. "Although disappointing, it is not completely unexpected."

"You don't seem too surprised," I said. The Queen met my eyes directly with a shrewdness that caused my heart to stutter in my chest, and I realized with a start that she did, indeed, still hold a spark of power.

"I was reckless and impulsive once upon a time," she said. "There were few vampires then and I craved the company of others like me." She shook her head and closed her eyes momentarily. "Chance gave me my first progeny; a hunger for power, the others. I did not realize the harm it would cause to me, to everyone."

"But you instituted the laws," I said.

"I spent my childhood in a nunnery and had a high regard for human life. Even after I was turned, I had rules about whose life I took."

I glanced at Thomas, though he was watching the queen intently and didn't see the confusion on my face. The Abernathys made it seem the Queen killed indiscriminately. Or maybe that's the truth I had chosen to believe.

"When I was changed, the urge to overwhelm and feed on helpless prey was, I admit, too strong to resist. Not even God could help me then. Or perhaps it was God's plan all along," she said. "I have not yet solved that puzzle. Still, I found my way back."