Damned by Blood

Chapter One

Mikhail kicked in the door of apartment 501. The chains and bolts securing it tore from the frame with a clatter. Kobryn bolted for the window. It didn’t matter where he ran, because Mikhail had a man on the fire escape, another on the roof, one on the ground and one in the hall to intercept the neighbors. He caught Kobryn before he made the window—caught him by the hair, spun him around, and shoved a polished steel spike through the hollow of his jaw and into his brain.

“This one’s alive.”

Mikhail let the body fall and went to his brother, who crouched over a human female sprawled face down on the blackened floor of the kitchenette. A male, obviously dead, slumped in the corner behind her. By the smell, other bodies rotted in the apartment, or had recently. It was a wonder the neighbors hadn’t called the police yet.

He flicked on his radio and called his men. “It’s done. Omar, I want you to take his body to 313. Daniel, come in for clean up. There’s two, maybe more.”

“Jesus, why do they all have to live this way?” Gregor said. Under his breath he added, “Fuck me if she’s sixteen.”

Mikhail gave a half shrug as he knelt down by his brother. Kobryn was trash. This is what trash did. If Gregor could still be shocked, he hadn’t spent enough time patrolling.

The girl had long, magenta-streaked hair. Tattoos covered her skinny arms. Examining her, he found plenty of scratches and bruises, but only two bite marks—one below the ear, the other on her inner thigh. Her pulse told him she’d live. Mikhail scowled. Survivors caused complications.

Gregor said, “Do you want me to take her to the clinic?”

At the clinic, his people would give her some plasma, treat her wounds and distort her memories so she never could say exactly what happened to her. Memory wipes were expensive, time consuming, and in his opinion, made the survivors victims twice over. Mikhail turned over her pale hand and examined her broken, dirty nails. She was a street kid, the kind no one would listen to if she started talking about vampyr. The city hospital would rehydrate her and drop her back on the streets. With her memory intact, she might learn to be more cautious. He drew one of his knives.

“We’ll give her back to her own kind.”

Pressing her to the ground to be sure she didn’t move, he obscured the puncture wounds with a few quick slashes. She didn’t even moan.

Daniel and Omar arrived to secure the scene. Mikhail told Omar to go to a payphone, call 911, and leave the girl next to the phone. Gregor gave him a look. It wasn’t quite a challenge—but he was definitely questioning his judgment.

“You’re too sentimental about them,” Mikhail said. His phone rang. He answered it, narrowing his eyes at Gregor as he did. No matter what Gregor thought, they’d leave as soon as he hung up. He was too busy to babysit foolish humans.

It was his father. His father who never picked up a phone. “Come to the hall as soon as you can.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. No emergency. Is Gregor with you?”

Mikhail frowned at this vagueness. “Yes.”

“Bring him, too.” The line went dead.

Faustin family business played out in two places—the hall and the house. The house being the brownstone where Mikhail and his brothers had grown up. If his parents called a meeting there, the subject was likely to concern only the immediate family. The hall was their place of business, a basement bakery their father had transformed into a wood- paneled, antique-stuffed sanctuary back during Prohibition using funds he’d hijacked from bootleggers. Back in those days, the hall could have doubled as an elegant speakeasy, and in some ways it was one. It served a very exclusive group of East coast vampyr.

A meeting at the hall meant the business was public, something to be deliberated by the council. But his father had retired two years ago. If anyone were to call a meeting in the hall, it should be Mikhail himself.

Gregor called their other brother, Alex, and learned he and his wife had been summoned too, as had Gregor’s wife, but none of them knew anything. Something extraordinary had happened, and all Mikhail could imagine as he and Gregor sped uptown were the grimmest of scenarios. Their consortium with Europe had collapsed. Their brokers had bilked them.

They made it to the hall fast, descending beneath the street, sweeping past the defensive rings of both personnel and magic protecting their sanctuary from intruders, making their way to the heart of the building—the library. Mikhail pushed open the doors and strode straight to his father, who waited there with his back to the fireplace. They burned a fire all year round in the library, because the room was damp, and vampires could never be too warm.

“Well? What is it?”

His father said, “We wait for Alexander and Helena.”

“You can tell me something.”

“No.”

They locked eyes and tested wills—the old knyaz versus the young one. His father had diminished some in retirement, but he was still formidable. Mikhail was stronger than ever, but not strong enough—not quite yet—to stare down the old prince.

“Soon enough, you will know.”

Mikhail’s mother arrived next, along with Gregor’s wife, Madelena. His mother, who usually dressed in kimonos and fringed shawls, wore the smart black suit that she only pulled out for funerals and meetings with lawyers. It showed off her legs, legs which once made men weep in the cabarets of Weimar Berlin. It was not a good sign that she’d put it on. She offered him a worried smile and gave him a dry kiss on the cheek.

He was beginning to get annoyed.

Madelena hugged him. No one else in the world hugged him, but he tolerated it from her, perhaps because so much of his own blood ran in her veins. She’d been converted from her human state via massive transfusions of Faustin family blood––including his own––making her one of the strongest converts in recent memory. Not that she seemed to notice, since she spent all her time sitting at home, writing science fiction.

“Big drama, huh?” she said.

Gregor had poured himself a scotch and found a comfortable chair. There was something to be said for his pragmatism, but Mikhail wanted to keep a clear head.

“Alex,” Gregor said. He didn’t have to say more. Everyone sighed in agreement. Alex was always late.

Madelena went to perch on the arm of her husband’s chair. “Give them a break. I don’t think those two have left bed for days.” She grinned at him. “They’re loopy. You remember how it was.”

“Yeah, I’m going all mushy just thinking about it,” Gregor said, throwing back his drink. But Madelena kept grinning at him until he cracked a smile, and they shared a look so full of private communication that Mikhail had to turn away.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through his text messages, trying to ignore their...whatever it was. Happiness? As much has he’d approved of his two younger brothers marrying and settling down, he found he could do without all of the preciousness of the newly bonded.

Though he’d always been solitary, he’d never realized how different he was until he watched his brothers fall in love. He couldn’t imagine sharing his life with another person. The thought was as alien and repulsive as the prospect of growing an extra limb. Besides, he had nothing to give a wife. Nothing inside.

Perhaps that was why he was born to be knyaz. Living like a monk, he could devote himself entirely to the work of protecting and leading the East coast families.

Not only was he unfit to marry, he had no compelling reason to marry. His brothers would breed, and he’d make one of their boys his heir. He’d take the child into training as soon as it was biddable. True, it was irregular for a prince to have no children, but not unheard of. If Gregor and Madelena couldn’t have children, he’d take one of Alex’s sons. Now that Helena had finally decided to convert, he suspected it wouldn’t be long until she was pregnant.

As he considered that possibility, Alex and Helena staggered into the room like a pair of drunks. Which was essentially what they were—blood drunk. They were completing their blood bond, feeding off one another until they were one, and converting Helena along the way. Only an extraordinary emergency would induce his father to call them to this meeting.

“Sorry we’re late,” Alex said, straightening up. Though he was too thin, and spots of high color stained his cheeks, his dark eyes gleamed with contentment. His lanky bride, Helena—who also resembled a fever victim—nodded in agreement, nervously pressing the pad of her thumb against the sharp new point on her right incisor.

Mikhail planted himself in the center of the room, folded his arms and looked at his father expectantly. No more waiting. No more—what did Madelena call it? No more drama.

His father hadn’t left his place by the fire, and his face, as always, was unreadable. His mother joined him there, taking his hand. Something was very wrong.

To his surprise, his mother addressed them instead of his father, another unusual event outside of their home, and particularly in the hall, which was a man’s place. Nerves made her English more eccentric than usual.

“I bring news. You will not like it, I know. But it is the will of God. So it is right, yes? Even if for now we do not understand it yet.” Gathering courage, she put her hand to her heart and closed her eyes. When she opened them she said, “I have dreamed the name of your true bride, Mikhail Ivanovitch.”

Mikhail shook his head, the denial automatic. As sure as he knew the sun rose, he knew he had no mate in all the world.

And why would they tell him here in the hall, instead of at home, where his brothers had learned the names of their wives? And why were they so grim? Why the secrecy?

Then his mother answered all his questions. “She is Alya Adad.”

Her words hit like a bat to the knees. In an instant, his father was at his side, holding his arm to keep him upright. Though the man had passed his hundredth year, his grip could crush bone. The pain cleared Mikhail’s head.

“I’m sorry.” His mother wrung a handkerchief in her hands. “But we must believe it is right.”

Mikhail could only gape at her, his lips numb, the blood roaring in his ears.

Gregor broke the silence. “Are you out of your frigging mind, Ma?”

“Gregor!” their father said. “Don’t speak to your mother that way.” As he said this, he pressed Mikhail into a chair and put a glass of scotch in his hand. Had that glass been poured and waiting? Had they guessed how this would affect him? Talked about it in advance? Was he shaming them with his weakness? “Drink.”

Mikhail did not drink. The room buzzed with his brothers’ excited voices, his parents’ low, slow answers to their questions. It was just noise, static to accompany him as he fell down a deep hole.

Alya.

Even in his shock, his analytical mind did not retreat. It turned the idea over and over and around and around, trying to understand…

Like a corpse breaking the waters of a dark lake, a single memory surfaced in his mind. A warm summer night. The blaze of torches and the flash of knives. A drop of blood on her hand. Her laughter. His kiss.

He’d tasted Alya’s blood. Just a single drop, and so long ago, but she’d been his destined bride. Merciful Jesus. All this time, all these grey years, he’d been bonded to her.

The truth was perverse. Unjust. Appalling.

And it made perfect sense.

Helena’s shrill whistle cut through the sludge of noise. Mikhail lifted his head and looked around the room with fresh eyes. In just a few seconds his world had collapsed and been rebuilt in a terrible new form. Helena threw out her arms in frustration. “Excuse me. I’m new here. Could somebody please tell me who this Alya Adad is?”

His father said, “The eldest child of Prince Zouhair Adad of Morocco.”

His mother said, “Mikhail’s first love.”

Gregor said, “She’s the fucking queen of the damned.”

Mikhail stood. That surprised them all, he could tell, and he hated their worried glances. He cast a long, slow gaze around his family circle, warning them against pity. “You should know her name, Helena. She rules the entire West coast. And we’re at war with her.”

Throwing back his head, he downed his scotch in a single swallow and pitched the glass into the fireplace. A plume of embers shot up the flue. “Excuse me.”

He stalked into his office, which adjoined the library. On the wall behind his desk hung an ancient banner bearing the Faustin dragon crest, hermetically sealed in a glass frame. It was over one thousand years old, but the brown sprays of blood and the marks of fire on the fragile silk still told the story of the battle in which his ancestors established themselves as lords of Kabarda. The Faustins were always at war, one way or another.

He dropped into his desk chair and leaned his head back against the cool leather. Alya Adad. God was laughing.

In a dynastic sense, it would be a perfect match. Alya’s lines were impeccable, more ancient than his, running back to the line of Darius the Great if the Adads were to be believed—and believing an Adad was always unwise. Nonetheless, she came from an old family, and a powerful one. A child born of the two lines would be a prince among princes.

But what chance would a child have born to a mother like her? Alya was power hungry, ruthless and cruel. She’d shown herself to be so at sixteen, and over the intervening thirty years her appetites had only sharpened. When she was younger, she took only the most powerful vampyr as lovers and took what she needed from them before moving on. Men were stepping stones to her. He’d merely had the privilege of being the first.

Like him, she had two brothers, and as far as he knew, both were still in Marrakech waiting for her father to step down, or for their chance to kill him, or however the Adads managed matters of accession. Alya, the girl child Adad planned to marry off to seal some alliance or another, turned out to be the wild card.

After refusing an arranged marriage, she’d run away from Adad and traveled the world. Along the way, as far as he could tell, she’d slept with most the vampyr princes of Europe and Asia. Eventually she settled down in California. From her home base in Los Angeles she gathered power. Over the course of ten years, she systematically challenged the old families who once held California, Oregon and Washington— and, to everyone’s surprise, won all those territories. Since then she’d claimed the title and privileges of a prince. The only other woman to have done anything similar was three hundred years dead.

One of those privileges was the right to exsanguinate her enemies, a right he’d exercised himself. This was a dangerous privilege. It granted you the power of your opponent, as well as his memories, but it could also drive you mad. Mikhail counted on his fingers the vamps he knew she’d exsanguinated and the number made his skin crawl. She’d be unspeakably strong.

His father knocked. Mikhail gestured him in. Even after two years it still felt odd to invite his father into the office he’d occupied all of Mikhail’s life.

His father said, “You see now why I called the meeting here.”

“It would be a marriage of state.”

“And it has bearing on the situation in Minnesota.”

“Where her actions there are making less sense every day.”

“If this goes forward, you can ask her herself what the hell she is doing in Minnesota. In the meanwhile, we will need to consult the lawyers, and ask the council’s permission to move forward. We’ll send an ambassador to Prague to lay the groundwork among any families who are her supporters. We don’t want any of them giving her shelter. You understand she’ll have to be taken by force.”

Mikhail leaned back in his chair, glancing up at the tattered battle flag. Here we go again. “I wouldn’t imagine she’d be pleased to marry me after all these years.”

“Don’t forget she’s your destined bride. She will be pleased. Eventually.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” They’d already been together––and it had ended.

“Back then, it wasn’t the right time. Now it is.” His father began to pace the rug, his hands behind his back, thinking aloud. “You’re coming into your full power. The families love you. They’ll back you in this. Everyone agrees Alya is dangerous. Everyone will thank you for bringing her under rein.”

“And let’s not forget the small matter of her territory.” Mikhail knew this, more than anything, drove his father’s interest in the marriage.

Whirling around to face him, his father said, eyes gleaming, “Claim her, my boy, and we rule both coasts.”

If Mikhail did not know his mother considered her dreams sacred and would never lie about them, he would suspect this entire scheme to be a pretext for war. In his way, his father was as much as an expansionist as Alya. Mikhail had deep reservations about expanding their holdings across the country, when their own territories needed all of his attention.

Mikhail steepled his fingers under his chin, imagining all the players in this game as pieces on a chessboard. As knyaz he spent a good deal of his time enforcing law at the street level. But what he really loved was the intricacies of politics, unwinding the thin strings of self-interest that kept their world united. Considering the possible reactions, and how the various interests played off one another, was such an engaging problem that, for a moment, he was able to forget Alya. Until his father said,

“But you may not wish to marry her. It is within your rights to refuse the dream. This is what you must decide before we take another step.”

Mikhail watched his father over the tips of his fingers, wondering how he would take the news. “I can’t deny the dream. I’ve tasted her.”

His father stiffened and his eyes darkened with interest. Master of understatement, he said, “Ah. I see.”

Mikhail hadn’t bitten Alya. He hadn’t been that stupid. But one night she’d nicked herself while practicing with her knives. A single, ruby drop had welled on her knuckle. Without thinking, he’d kissed it clean and sealed his fate. Because she was his destined mate, that one drop was enough to alter his chemistry and bond him to her for life.

If he’d tasted any other girl in the world, nothing would have happened.

If he’d had more than one drop that night, the mistake might have killed him.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So you see, I’m damned already, and twice damned if I take her as a bride.”

His father leaned on the desk, his gnarled hands splayed wide across the glossy wood. “If I’d known, I swear I would not have rested until—”

Mikhail waved his apology away. “I wasn’t strong enough. That’s why she left me. Even if we’d known, I couldn’t have claimed her. Pity isn’t her strong suit.”

“It isn’t ours either.” His father pushed up his coat sleeve. A fine, silken black rope wrapped his arm from the wrist up. “Give me your hand.”

The black rope came to life and slithered across their joined hands, unfurling from his father’s arm to twine around Mikhail’s right wrist. Mikhail watched wide eyed, but did not flinch. This was old vamp magic. Rarely used, and seen less.

“It is called bride rope. Have you heard of it? This my father gave me to capture your mother, long ago.”

“She didn’t come to you willingly?”

That was hard to imagine. Even after sixty years, his mother doted on his father, and his father, though less demonstrative, loved her still. It was in his every look.

His father only smiled at that question. So, tracing the lines of the rope around his wrist, Mikhail asked another. “And Gregor? Alex?”

“They did not need this to claim their little girls, but one such as Alya will never respect you unless you bring her to heel first. When you capture her, give her no quarter. A proud woman will never trust her heart to a man who isn’t strong enough to protect it.”

“And the rope?”

“The rope knows your desires. It will teach her how to bend to them.”

His father spoke man to man rather than father to son. The suggestion was clear. Mikhail supposed he should imagine Alya hogtied on the floor, naked, and begging. But the thought did not excite him. He’d been shut down so long, he couldn’t remember what it felt like to desire someone.

Not in that way, at least. All his adult life, no matter how often he hunted, hunger gnawed at him. Now he knew it was all because of her. Only she could satisfy him. What he desired was her flesh between his teeth, her hot blood flooding his mouth. The next conclusion followed naturally, an idea as sharp and ruthless as Alya herself.

“I do have a choice. Roland’s Choice.”

His father’s brow creased. “There is that. If you take her soul, you’ll be free of the blood bond, but in doing so you make yourself a monster. Remember the story. Illysia was already dying when Roland exsanguinated her. No one will forgive you for murdering your destined bride in cold blood.”

“And who has ever been cursed with a wife like her?” He spoke too loud, and his voice cracked with frustration. Reining himself in, he continued in a lower tone. “We have the cover of war. We claimed Minnesota first—she is the aggressor there. If I take her down, who will blame me? No one need know the truth.”

As he spoke, his mother rushed into the room and threw herself at his feet.

“Mat’!” Appalled, he leapt from his desk chair, taking her outstretched hands in his. He tried to make her rise, but she would not. For all her smallness she was very strong.

“For so long I prayed, Misha. You have been alone too long. I hoped to bring you joy.”

“I don’t blame you for this. You know I don’t.”

“Who do you blame if not me? Do you say God is wrong? The dreams come from his angels. No one else.”

Mikhail sat back down in his chair to be closer to her, keeping hold of her fine-boned hands. “Yes, I call God wrong.”

Angry at his blasphemy, she snatched her hands away. “You loved her.”

“Once.”

“And she loved you.”

“It didn’t keep her from turning to that swamp rat Jean Courtableu in front of everyone. From humiliating all of us. From starting her long glorious fuck to the top at the tender age of sixteen!” He realized he was shouting and turned his face aside. “I beg your pardon.”

His mother stood, unfolding herself with her dancer’s grace. “You don’t know what was inside her head back then. She is an Adad. They are like jackals, that family.”

“I don’t want a jackal for a wife.”

“That girl, she is your only chance at happiness.”

Mikhail laughed aloud, for the first time in a long, long time.

“The. Dreams. Do. Not. Lie.” On each word she jabbed at him with her finger. “There is a path for you to follow. Have faith.”

“What faith should I have in a God that has left me to suffer for thirty years, and then completes my misery by giving me this woman as a bride? She is my salvation? She is my future?”

His father stepped forward. “Do you feel the pull?” He thumped his own chest with a closed fist. “Here. Now that you know?”

At the question, a fine tremor passed under Mikhail’s skin and he realized after long years in dormancy, his body was waking, his emotions churning. He wasn’t altogether in control, and he didn’t like it at all.

“Mikhail?” his father said, relentless.

“Yes, I feel it.” But numbness was better.

“Good. Follow it. Win her or kill her by your own strength. But do it like a man, not a machine. Love her if you can. If not, take her down hard and free yourself.”

Mikhail unclenched his fists. “That I can do.”

Later, when he thought everyone was gone, Madelena stole into his office and came to stand at his shoulder. She took in the maps on his laptop, leaned over the list he was writing and read aloud, “E-kit, tool belt, surveillance pack, fiber optics…putty explosives? Oh, hon. A first aid kit with an epi pen. Nice touch. Cold packs and six pints of blood. Titanium cuffs and a hobble?”

She sat on the desktop. Her tight leather pants creaked as she crossed her legs. Leaning back, she cocked her head at him and waited. And waited. He gave up on working and threw down his pen. “Yes?”

“I’m worried about you.” Absentmindedly she fingered the sleek battery pack on her hip that powered her heart, a device she’d wear forever unless they found a suitable heart for her. Gregor had very nearly lost his mate by seeking her too late. Mikhail’s mate, meanwhile, wasn’t awaiting rescue. His mate would as soon kill him as look at him. “Gregor says you won’t take him or Alex or any of your lieutenants along with you.”

“By tradition the groom goes alone to collect his bride. I know someone in LA who I’ll bring on to help with surveillance and some systems hacking. I think that’s fair. I’m under an obligation to do my best not to harm her people. And, of course, I want to take her alive. The more of my people I bring along, the more firepower I have, the less likely that is to happen.”

“So…you’re saying this is more like a ritual abduction. A show of strength, but not so much that there’s no one left to be in the wedding party.” When he didn’t disagree with her, she smiled and squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks, I’ll worry about you less now.”

Mikhail suffered the hand on his shoulder, and chose not to tell her that Alya had no similar obligation toward him.