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“Sing another lyric or pluck another cord and I’ll rip your throat apart!” I formed my hands into fists. “Where is the fake queen?”
“S-she left as soon as you went into the room,” the youngest-looking domina said from the corner. “A-and then the screams came.”
I’d been inside the room for a while due to waiting for the domina to get a red wig and return.
But how long had that been?
I scanned the room. “And where are the other two vampires, Ty and Victoria?”
“They left with her.” The musician set his guitar to the side. “Queen Regina ordered us to play the music louder if we heard noise and to keep you in here as much as possible.”
“Did she now?” I pushed through the door.
A freezing breeze hit my face, carrying the scent of blood and death.
What happened?
I covered my nose with my arm.
The smell is worse than in the sewers.
The royal court was empty and dark. Silent. Deserted. The few candles I saw lay on their sides.
Platters of food had been left untouched. Robes were slung across turned-over lounge chairs.
Headless bodies of royal guards formed a path out of the Royal Court into the city, as if some deranged vampire had sliced and killed his way to freedom.
Dear Ambi, let the deranged vampire be Xander and not an enemy.
Screams and cries rose higher up in the castle.
I raced that way, sniffing the air. A sour fragrance greeted my nostrils. It seemed similar, yet unique.
Hold on. What is that?
I inhaled again.
Odd.
I couldn’t place the smell, but I knew it. The scent sung to me, drawing me to it.
But. . .what is that?
I should have went the other way and continued to investigate.
But that smell. . .
I rushed toward that sour odor.
Perhaps, the scent held a clue of what happened today.
As I rushed forward, I spotted bloody footprints across the ground.
What happened?
There were so many bloody prints. Some of the shapes were small feet. Others were big feet. Then came boot prints, ones from sandals, and even a horse’s hooves, huge ones, the size of a massive horse perhaps.
Wait.
I slowed down.
Massive hooves?
I lowered to the ground and stared at the hoof prints.
Not a horse at all. A vampire king walked these halls, but. . .in battle form.
I sniffed the air again.
Not Nai either.
I knew my brother’s stench. We were twins, after all, and had lain inside the same mother’s womb. I grew up with him and could find his scent in darkness with my nose covered by cloth.
That is the sour smell.
I sniffed again.
The scent of a newly formed king.
Since Nai had killed all vampire prince babies in the land, it had been years since I’d caught the scent of a prince at the end of his ripening. No more vampire princes traveled the land. At least none that I knew besides Xander.
Dear Ambi! Xander has hooves? How could this be? It should have taken years for him to get to battle form, unless.
More cries filled the air. They rushed all around from high in the castle to all outside the gates.
I must figure out what happened.
I ran through a hallway shrouded in gray stone.
It took many years to ripen from prince to king and a hoard of his first queen’s blood to nourish him.
There was only one other way that I’d heard a prince ripening too soon and that was what had happened to my brother.
I thought back to what the fake queen had said.
A greedy king had broken into the castle, taken Phinova from my brother, and made Nai watch as they tortured and killed her. Nai had filled with rage and sparked the hormones to work overtime, growing into a vampire king before their eyes. His senses burned away, too. He lost his eyesight, ability to hear, or utter another word with his lips.
However, Nai had gained too. His body drummed with power.
When he resided in the city, his magical influence could be experienced anywhere, even in the grimy sewers under the castle.
It rattled my teeth, raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and waved against my skin.
I doubted others reacted the same way.
It was because I was a vampire king, too, and just couldn’t deal with one so powerful and so close to me.
Xander? You’re a matured king now?
In the old days, mature vampire kings never strayed too close to other kings. It had even been set into law that no more than five vampire kings at a time could visit one city and when they did, space needed to remain between them.
We were competitive beings, possessive, domineering, and some would say savagely psychotic at times.
When kings met, more rules controlled the sessions.
All kings could not bring their queens for fear there would be battles over the women.
Each king limited the amount of guards they brought to equal what the others brought.
