All Giovanni needed was someone with powerful magic.
What sort of magic was the question.
“From the Dominico personal library,” Gabriel had said, dumping them in my lap, along with a cloud of dust. “Nobody will miss them, and if an answer exists, it’ll be in there.”
Then he’d left to play the grieving son.
I’d watched him leave, fighting the urge to go after him. There was a tense, desperate urgency to him that no one else seemed to notice. Because I’d fed from him, his emotions echoed through my blood.
He was conflicted over his father.
Stewing over my uncle. Unsure about the future.
But asking him anything so personal… he’d never let me inside, that much I knew.
Outside, the muted thud of bodies hitting each other was paired with the sharp breathing of hand-to-hand combat, the occasional barked curse. Dante and Nico were training in the high-walled garden where old statues watched with blind eyes.
It was strange how much I missed something so simple.
Muscles straining from sweat, discipline, and repetition. Burning off some of this seething panic I couldn’t seem to shake these days. Maybe when they were done, I’d take a turn out there myself.
Clear my head of the fact that Giovanni wanted to enslave us all.
Now we knew the truth—the Basin was his primary target—his grasping for power took on a darker meaning. There was a big difference between being governed by a soulless bastard and being bound to his will with none of your own.
A mindless puppet was not the way I intended to live out the rest of my life.
But the Basin was safe on the Draconi island, locked away in an impenetrable chamber in the center of the fortress. A fortress I’d seen with my own eyes. My uncle would never even get close, but it behooved us to find out everything we could about how the thing worked.
I cracked open another book, smelling faintly of mildew.
“This had better be worth it because if I get a sinus infection and not one piece of useful information, I swear, I will burn you.”
Pages ruffled, the book whispering something that might have been a protest, and I smoothed my fingers down the page. I’d heard the Dominico family library held sentient books, so full of forbidden magic, touched by so many hands, that they’d taken on personalities of their own.
“I’m just kidding about the burning. But seriously, we need to know the truth about the Basin, or you’ll never get read again since we’ll all become robots. I’m sure you don’t want to waste away on a shelf somewhere, right?”
The pages ruffled again, so fast they were a blur. Finally, they settled, open to a place that was, unfortunately, very enlightening.
This account spoke of the Basin as a dark, terrible gift from a high priestess jealous of the newfound power the vampires brought to these lands. We were a threat to thecovens, greedy for power and hungry for blood, and the Basin served both appetites. Enslaving us may have been the witch’s ultimate goal, but in the end, that first Don had been the one holding all the power.
The high priestess was never mentioned again.
I picked up my pen, massaged my aching neck, then began copying the handwritten notes along the edge of the page. Every book was full of these half-finished notations from previous scholars who had cribbed their thoughts and interpretations into the margins and then… stopped writing.
Or…they hadn’t lived long enough to finish.
But after two days of research, I learned enough.
The Basin did not simply test for loyalty and truth.
The magic imbued into the stone coded DNA, like a modern-day sequencer, logging each and every separate member into some sort of geological inventory. Every ten years, the Basin accepted their new donation, and the coding grew deeper, more permanent.
All the evidence formed a monstrous and inevitable conclusion. For each blood offering, the Basin engraved something invisible and eternal into the donor. A sigil not on the flesh but deeper.
A mark on your very soul, a brand on your psyche.
I shivered, reaching for my cold cup of coffee.
