As a dhampir, I can sense the sun setting as well as any full-blooded vampire. I have about an hour until it’s officially sunset. Thank God for winter! My favorite time of the year here in Oregon.
Humming slightly under my breath, I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to catch a few Zs. But even in the Verenim Family House, I had to sleep with one eye open, so to speak. I wasn’t permitted weapons inside—go figure—so I’d just have to make do with the dirty little secret no vampire wants to admit.
A dhampir’s bite can be poisonous. Some latent gene gets activated when vamp DNA mixes with human, so we actually have venom we can inject at will. Crappy part about that is, the venom kind of affects us, too. It’ll kill the vampire we bite, and hey, maybe it’ll kill us along with them—or at least incapacitate us—but it’s a good backup plan.
Some vamps won’t let a dhampir bite them because they’re paranoid about it, but it’d be impossible to do by accident. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but most people don’t walk around shitting themselves either. It’s a bodily function we can control.
“Are you going to sit there for the entire meeting so I can dock your pay again or are you going to get your ass in the throne room?” Atticus asks, kicking my ankle.
My eyes—both of which were closed incidentally—snap open, and I’m up with my hand around his throat before I even realize what I’m doing. Atticus’s back slams into the wall and he lets out a strangled cry.
“Do not ever sneak up on a sleeping dhamp, you fucking idiot.” I shake him a little and squeeze my fingers a tad more tightly than I should. But this might be my one and only opportunity to scare the crap out of the little weasel. Not even his master will fault me for reacting after being snapped out of sleep. Vampires are cranky motherfuckers when they’re woken prematurely.
I drop Atticus and he slides to the ground, clutching his throat, his blue eyes wide with terror. Considering he spends his days waiting on both crown and royal vamps, I’m surprised. What a wuss. He’ll never survive here. And no matter how pretty he is, they’re never going to turn him.
If there’s one thing vampires and dhampirs alike despise, it’s cowardice.
I leave Atticus trembling on the ground and head for the open double doors of the throne room, glancing at the clock as I pass by. Holy hell, I must’ve been tired. An hour and a half passed in the blink of an eye and all I got out of it was a crappy dream where I explained to myself about the uses of dhampir venom? What gives?
Nobody looks at me as I move into the room, but they all know I’m there. A few lips even curl with disgust.
Racist asswads.
Weaving through the crowd, I take my place in the back-left corner with the rest of the for-hire outcasts. I’m the only dhampir there—we’re sort of a rare breed—but I’m not intimidated. I’ve lived my whole life learning how to toe the line around vampires and hide myself from humans. It sucks, but I’m used to it, and I don’t expect anything to ever change. How could it when I’m a goddamn pariah in one world and invisible in the other?
My eyes scan the dimly lit room, the crimson chandeliers washing the crowd in color, tainting faces red. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in here is pale. There are vampires in every shade of the same rainbow humans fall under. Well, okay, vampires can get a bit lighter—I’m talking white-as-fucking-virgin-snow—and a bit darker, all the way to pitch-black-no-stars-country-night-sky. And undead vampires always have an ashier complexion, but basically we use the same color palette as our food, i.e. human beings.
Reaching my hands up to my hair, I move to rake my fingers through the golden waves and then remember how perfectly sleek and styled it is right now. When I’m around these people, I need to look my best. It’s the only way to get any of them to even remotely take me seriously. Besides, my hair is only ever tamed into some semblance of order once in a blue moon. Might as well enjoy it.
I cross my arms over my chest and glance around at the myriad designer dresses, suits, shoes, and jewelry. There’s enough wealth in this room to triple the GDP of a small country. It’s a little ridiculous, but hey, maybe I’m just bitter because I grew up sleeping in cars and on park benches.
A human servant circulates with blood-spiked champagne and I snatch a glass, lifting the bubbly red liquid to my nose and inhaling. Human. Female. Definitely young and definitely excited. Lifting my head up, I take another sniff and realize that the waitress herself is the donor of this particular cocktail.
Huh.
The drink is bubbly and fizzy and metallic in my mouth, and luckily, since I haven’t had any real food in hours, the booze goes straight to my head. By the time I finish that glass and switch it out for another, I’m having a much better evening.
Almost an hour later because, you know, why the fuck should the king have to show up on time—he’s superior to everyone else in here, obviously—the room gets eerily quiet. Most people don’t even bother to breathe. Since I’m half-human, I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter and my body does it for me. Never in my life have I heard a sound so loud as a single dhampir breathing in a room brimming with vampires.
It makes me stand out...in a bad way.
The king saunters in from the direction of the crown chambers, an entire entourage surrounding him. Since most people in this room would gladly kill him and usurp the family seat if given the chance, he has to keep around either those who are bound to him, who actually like him, or who he pays ridiculously well in order to stay alive.
The man can’t be more than three years older than I am, but he has a tired, almost bored face, like he’s just done with life and can’t be bothered. If I were someone else, I might find him attractive with his thick, curly black hair, spring green eyes, and big lush mouth. But there’s just something about him that fails to get my lady parts in a tizzy.
Not like Sorrow and Vyce, I think, daydreaming about my one-night stand for far longer than I should. There are many reasons why those kinds of interactions should only last one night, and even though those guys were hot, like fucking hawt, spelled wrong and everything, I need to let them go.
I exhale sharply and draw the eyes of all the vampires in my immediately vicinity. Even though they’re about as low-ranking as they can get, shit on the bottom of the shoes of the royals and the crowns, they look at me like I’m something the cat threw up.
Good thing I’m not a sensitive person or that might bother me. In reality, I have the emotional complexity of an eggplant, so the fact that they hate my guts and want me dead doesn’t bother me in the least.
The king slouches lazily in the intricately carved wooden throne some pompous a-hole dragged over from the old country. He looks a tad ridiculous in it, dressed in thousand-dollar designer jeans, boots, and a loose black button-up.
His ice-blue eyes vaguely remind me of Sorrow’s. Actually, as the king flicks his gaze over to me, I realize they’re more like mine. Well, like my one blue eye anyway. He stares at me for a disturbingly long time, drawing the attention of the crowd. Great. Just what I needed, a bunch of nosy, entitled vampires staring at me in the velvet and diamond dress. Half of them look at me like they want to rip my throat out and drink me dry, and the other half look like they want to fuck me...and then drink me dry.