far medical practices had come, and how far it had to go, and how we, the nurses of the next generation, were going to take it there. It was meant to bleed people, from olden times, when just lancing someone wouldn’t do. Shown to be medically useless, despite the esteem it once held. Just like cocaine-spiked Coke, magnet treatments, and the benefits of smoking.
No one made them anymore—because no one believed in the health benefits of bleeding.
Except for vampires.
Anna rolled up her white sleeve and proffered me her wrist. Another observer brought up a golden urn that had been fitted with a delicate tap.
“I trust you,” she said, looking down at me. I knew what the stakes were, but—“Edie. It will be okay. I trust you.”
I knew I couldn’t hurt her—doing this wouldn’t hurt her. And many times vampires, and even sometimes me, found pleasure inside pain. But still.
Where was the difference between piercing someone’s skin with a needle, for their own good, and setting this thing’s blackened grinding blades onto her? How many times had I hurt to make things better—hurt other people, and hurt myself?
She wanted me to do it. If I didn’t, it might be the end of her. And the end of us.
I set the box on her skin. Then I stabilized it with my thumb, holding it still, my fingers cupping her wrist. I could feel the smoothness of her skin.
And then, God help me, I spun the handle around. The blades dug down. I didn’t dare look up.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
She didn’t flinch.
The blades were dull—it’d been a century since they were sharp. At least sterility didn’t matter—this predated the idea of germs, much less the autoclave—since there was nothing Anna could contract. I pressed the box harder and spun the handle with more force. I felt like a perverted organ grinder’s monkey, paid a pittance to liberate someone’s blood.
The first drops emerged. Snaking down her arm in red tributaries, joining on her wrist to become a river, following the same path of least resistance to pool in the palm of her hand.
Warm in a way their blood would never be, hot as it rolled down to drip drip drip into the urn. I could hear the first few drops ting, like rain on a cheap window, before there was enough blood to make it sound like slow running water.
I couldn’t see the vampires in attendance, but I felt their attention, rapt. How much blood did one body hold? Her size, her slight weight? I knew the answer, somewhere. I tried not to think about it. Hard.
Those who were helping with the ceremony came up and twisted the tap, decanting Anna’s blood into trays of small glasses, which I realized with a shock were communion cups. Some of them were precise, catching every drop. Others were wasteful, overfilling glasses, letting blood drip down between. Anna ignored them, I almost said something, and she put her free hand on my shoulder before I could speak.
“I heal quickly, even now. Keep going,” she said.
I hadn’t counted the congregants before. I wished I had. Tray after tray of glasses was filled, dispensed, and filled again. Anna’s hand on my shoulder didn’t change; it didn’t claw me with pain or fade away with the urge to faint.
I wanted to think I would have stopped all this if it had.
After what seemed like hours, the last tray was full, and there was no one else in line. Anna stood there, still white and gleaming, if you ignored the carnage down her right arm. Sensing things were through, I lifted the scarficator, saw where it had ripped through the skin and into the muscles of her forearm, the shreds of exposed white tendon, the dull gleam of living bone. Just as quickly, she began to heal, tendons reknitting, muscle sheaths regrowing.
I had never seen the process up close before. I gasped aloud. It was genuinely miraculous.
From the front of the stage I could finally see the crowd—and I knew now why I had been chosen. They were rapt with lust. The room was silent, charged.
“So you see,” Anna announced to the group before us, rolling her sleeve back down her arm. “I have passed the final test. I thank you for those who donated to my trials. Drink now, and think well of me.”
Some vampires darted long tongues into the small cups, others tipped them back to drink each drop, and still others swirled elegant fingers inside, pulling out drops of blood to lick like cake batter. So cruel to be limited to just a sip of her blood, when they could take—and she would make—so much more. If one of them had been here, instead of me, and she hadn’t been absolutely sure of their loyalty as she was of mine—
There was a commotion at the back of the room. A group of vampires forced their way in, jostling one another and the already seated host, each of them dressed as elaborately as the lone Bathory speaker before. None of them wore their attire like they were born to it, like they shared its age. Instead they looked like a well- funded Renaissance fair troupe had gotten loose.
“The House of Bathory will now decide!”
“Your time has passed,” the master of ceremonies intoned.
“We have the right!” said a man, one of those entering late. “I am the leader of this House. I get to have a vote.”
“The votes have already been counted.” The master of ceremonies grew before me, the shadows around him gathering, taking up more space, crowding out the air.
“What would you find acceptable?” Anna said, stepping in front of me. At her intrusion, the master of ceremonies seemed to shrink and withdraw. All fights tonight were hers.
The man, dressed as an imitation of Henry the Eighth with a stomach to match, stepped forward. “We would prefer enough blood to bathe in, of course.” Only members of his retinue laughed at his joke. “But we will accept a small sacrifice. One of your court, perhaps. Or more blood from your wrist divine.”
I realized that as a whole, they lacked bargaining power, knowing she wouldn’t let them slaughter us, her court, off one by one. But their dissent could cause chaos, and if she was low on blood, no true vampire would think twice about sacrificing a pawn for their cause.
How much had she bled? How much more could she make? How fast? The longer this took, the more they would know she was stalling for time, and there were thirty vampires that still needed sating.
“I accept your challenge.” She took another step forward. “I am afraid I cannot put my Ambassador again through such stress.” She gave me a look overly full of pity, and then turned back to them. “I am forced to let you all drink from the source.”
She crossed the distance between them and held her wrist up for the taller man who neared. He was looking for a trap. To drink was to put yourself in danger. Everyone here had also, if only in distant memory, been a gazelle.
“Drink deeply,” she demanded, shaking her wrist as the last of the scarificator marks healed. He grabbed her arm, steadied himself and her, and bit her.
They were like sharks when they fed, eyes open, dark, then rolling back. His teeth fastened into her wrist, both sides. I could hear the force of his bite, fangs cutting into her. Behind him, the members of Bathory House leered. He couldn’t even drink all of her blood—it seeped beyond the edges of his pulled-back lips, and dripped onto the floor.
Other jealous vampires were becoming restless—and not all of them were Bathory.
It would not go well for me in a bloodbath.
I watched him as they watched her. He closed his eyes.
She beheaded him. Without changing position or alerting him in any way, her free hand punched through his neck. Maybe he was drunk on blood, entranced by power—one second he was drinking, hunched over, and the next his head was still attached to her arm while the rest of his body staggered to the floor.
Instead of dusting, blood spurted out of his neck’s open wound, on both sides. House Bathory crowded,
