Something Sweet, Something Sinister; The War Begins (A Vampire Novel)

Chapter 7

We arrived at the castle and my eyes were still fluttering open and closed. The princes wasted no time in bringing me inside. The whole time it was mostly Cyrus complaining and his brother carrying me again. It seemed even less likely that Cyrus would ever successfully be in charge of anything based on how much he was whining.

The main enterance was huge. There were two spiral staircases on both sides of the room, leading up to who knows where. The ceiling was high with chandeliers every few feet to provide a bright welcome.

There were many human servants running about the area. They all had similar collars on but no leashes in sight. Not a single one was followed by a vampire either. I felt a small smile tip on the edges of my lips. It didn't seem as bad here as I had expected. They may be taking orders, but none of them were limping or bleeding out on the floor either.

"She looks like she's going to pass out," Cyrus commented.

"No shit," his brother hissed. "Alex!"

One of the servants made his way over to us and bowed, awaiting his directions.

"We need a flask of type 3, immediately."

The servant, apparently named Alex, bowed again and rushed off to go get what he had been asked to.

"Type 3? We normally don't allow anyone outside of the royal family anything above a four, and that's for actual vampires! Why are you going to give it to her?" Cyrus protested.

"She needs type 3 to recover from being starved for so long," his brother countered. "Anything else might not be pure enough from outside contaminents. She would not be able to heal. I did not just pay what I did for her to die right when we got home!"

He carefully brought me over to a chair and slowly placed me down. I felt myself sink into the fabric automatically.

"Why would you be so interested in such an expensive pet?" Cyrus continued. "You should have just let me buy her instead."

"If you had, she would have died when you brought her blood from a disease-ridden squirrel instead of a properly vaccinated human servant."

"But then I would have drank from her until she did die. You have not taken a sip yet."

"I have patience! We all know blood tastes better when the host is healthy."

"With that logic, you should have thrown her away as soon as her eyes started to close. The moment she showed illness, you should have gotten rid of her."

"Yeah? Well why do you have so many then?" the younger prince deflected. "You do not get rid of any of yours, unless they have been dead for well over a week and the smell is so bad that mother and father insist you do!"

I winced at his words. The room started to spin around me and I could barely keep up with their bickering.

"Why did you never get one until now?"

Cyrus smirked triumphantly when his brother deflated and lowered his voice. There wasn't a thing he could have said that Cyrus wouldn't have fought against with something else instead anyway.

"I did not want a pet. If I had wanted one so badly, I could have borrowed one of yours. You would not have noticed."

"Sure I would have. A cage would have been empty." Cyrus chuckled.

I shuddered at the thought of Cyrus having so many humans locked up in a room somewhere just like everyone in the greenhouse had been. This castle seemed big enough that there could be multiple rooms like that and it wouldn't take up a tenth of the space.