My heart started to pound harder. Blood wine... containing an ingredient that was incredibly rare. An ingredient that somehow increased the health and vitality of the human body. Dear god—I wanted so badly to be wrong about this.
“I need to see this wine,” I said, barely recognizing my own voice. “Where do they keep it?”
Sharalynn was looking at me oddly. “Whoa there, girl. You need to slow down and take a breath. Come on, let’s go talk to one of the elders about this.”
I nodded. “Li Wei. I want to talk to Li Wei.”
Of all the elders I’d met, I felt most comfortable with Li Wei after spending time with him as he attempted to get through to my father over the past weeks. He greeted us with a pleasant smile, which morphed into a curious frown at seeing whatever expression was currently on my face.
“Hello, Zorah... Sharalynn. Is everything all right?” he asked.
“I need to see a sample of the blood wine,” I blurted without preamble. “It’s important.”
He blinked. “I’m afraid we have none at the moment. The next batch won’t arrive for two days.”
Frustration welled, but I pressed it back. “What can you tell me about it?”
He gestured us inside his dwelling. “Come in, both of you. We might as well be comfortable.” When we were seated, he met my eyes. “I fear I cannot give you many details as to the blood wine’s magical composition. The demons provide it, and they have never been forthcoming. I can only tell you its effects.”
“It stops human aging?” I asked.
“Well, it slows aging to nearly undetectable levels, certainly,” Li Wei said. “It also heals wounds and diseases.”
It heals wounds.
I covered my mouth with one hand. It was shaking. After a moment, I pulled it away and spoke. “I need to see it, as soon as the new batch arrives.”
Li Wei looked taken aback, but he nodded. “You understand that we cannot spare much, but you are welcome to examine a small cupful.” He continued to watch me carefully. “You are clearly agitated about this, Zorah. So I ask again, is everything all right?”
I was caught out for a moment, unsure how to answer him. Whatever was in the blood wine, humans here had apparently been using it for well over a century. For them, it was a boon, not a problem. I needed time to think about the implications of what I’d learned, before I could sort out the tangle of different threads that seemed to be converging around me.
“I don’t know,” I said after a short pause. “I think... maybe my understanding of what’s going on here was... lacking.”
Li Wei tilted his head at me, a frown marring his high forehead. “All that’s going on here is life, Zorah. Just... people. Living.”
But right now, it wasn’t these people I was worried about. Maybe it should have been, but that wasn’t the thing setting alarm bells off in my head. I tried to tell myself not to jump to unwarranted conclusions. Wait two days, I thought. Wait until you can see the stuff firsthand.
“I get that,” I told him. “I’ll... uh... I’ll just come back in a couple of days when I can get a sample. It may be nothing.”
* * *
Two days later, I held a clay cup containing a few ounces of red liquid that was, in fact, the precise shade of freshly spilled blood. Other people were coming and going from the meeting hall, claiming identical cups and downing them in a gulp or two. Meanwhile, I was examining the drink like a wine connoisseur, waving it back and forth under my nose.
It smelled like wine, anyway. Fruity, with a hint of toasted oak and truffles, I thought irreverently. Or something else equally ridiculous sounding.
Swallowing against the dryness of my mouth, I took a small sip and rolled it around. The minerally, vaguely metallic aftertaste was far from overpowering... but it was definitely there. Blood wine, indeed.
Still, it could be argued that the demons’ truth-in-labeling practices proved nothing. Yes, the blood wine appeared to have actual blood in it. But there was one more thing I needed to try before I reached the conclusion I desperately didn’t want to reach. Moving to a shadowed corner, I pulled out the little paring knife I used to prepare our food. With a deep breath, I sliced the blade across the meat of my forearm, forcing myself to make the cut deep enough that it would take some time to heal even though my inner succubus was topped up on sex energy.
And son of a bitch, it hurt. Biting my lip hard—because if I thought that hurt, this was going to hurt way more—I poured the remains of the cup’s contents over the gaping slice. A hiss of pain escaped my control, and my eyes watered as I stared fixedly at the wound.
I’d experienced what followed on only a handful of occasions before, but they’d all been memorable. The wound began to close from the inside out, flesh knitting together like a time-lapse video on high speed. The burn of alcohol gave way to a deep tingling, then itching... and then, nothing. The wound was gone as though it had never existed.
It was vampire blood.
The demons were feeding the humans in Hell vampire blood. And there was only one possible place they could have obtained it.
The cup fell from my nerveless fingers to the floor. I ignored Li Wei calling my name as I more or less fled the hall, my hurried walk turning into a jog, and then a run. I didn’t stop until I was back at Dad’s hut, slamming the door behind me and
