Tempted by Blood. Laurie London

tonight she wasn’t sure if this simple black sheath, businesslike yet elegant, with a long strand of freshwater pearls, a few chunky bracelets and diamond studs in her ears would get her what she wanted. For that to happen, those present needed to see her as capable, serious and in control. They needed to trust that she could do the work her predecessor couldn’t.

      As the elevator descended deeper into the depths of the Prague mountainside, she was thankful she’d thought to bring along hard copies of her documentation. Surrounded by all this rock, she doubted she’d get internet coverage on her tablet, although she’d brought the thing with her, as well.

      With a smooth swoosh, the doors finally opened up to a large vestibule. She tucked her handbag under her arm and walked out.

      She’d heard stories of how beautiful the Darkblood Alliance headquarters were, but nothing had prepared her for this. Her heels clicked on the marble flooring, the sound echoing off the chamber walls, emphasizing the vastness of the space. Various suspended sculptures hung from the frescoed ceiling, not unlike the Chihuly glass pieces in the lobby of the Bellagio in Las Vegas, a hotel she was intimately acquainted with. As she looked closer, however, she realized these weren’t glass works of art. They were made from various human bones.

      From floor to ceiling, the walls were covered in human-skull sconces. The lower jaws had been removed, replaced instead by pairs of femur bones, making the skulls appear to be biting them. Unlike jack-o’-lanterns where light shone out the mouth, nasal cavity and eye sockets, each one of these skulls glowed, the bone sheer enough to be illuminated by the candle inside. Hanging down from the coved ceiling was a chandelier made from artfully arranged bones and skulls. The overall effect was a stunning visual representation of the power vampires would always have over humans.

      “Lovely, isn’t it?” said a silky male voice behind her.

      She spun around to see a thin, middle-age vampire standing behind a reception desk. She’d been so distracted by the beauty of this place that she hadn’t noticed him. She knew better than that. It wouldn’t happen again.

      With his dark hair slicked back, he wore a hand-tailored Italian wool suit and a crisply starched white dress shirt. In an obvious display of individuality, a flamboyantly colored silk tie completed the look.

      “Rumor has it that a monk in the Middle Ages collected the skeletons of humans who had died of the Black Plague. Forty thousand people, to be exact. Our people did the same. It’s quite a masterpiece, wouldn’t you agree?”

      The Black Plague had changed everything. Until then, vampires had been at the top of the food chain, hunting and feeding from humans as they were meant to do. Humans at least had a small chance of surviving the Black Death, but for vampires, drinking the blood of an infected human was a death sentence. Their population dwindled to just a few pockets of survivors scattered throughout all of Europe—their race had almost been exterminated.

      Fear of death had caused a significant philosophical change in vampire culture. As an act of self-preservation, vampires stopped draining and killing humans, learning, instead, that they could survive on much smaller amounts, and feedings could be stretched out over longer periods of time. They took only what they needed and left their human hosts alive. A complete denial of a vampire’s true nature, she thought in disgust.

      Most of their kind came to believe that humans and vampires could coexist peacefully, which led to the formation of the so-called Governing Council, those watchdog pigs who made her life and the lives of anyone who didn’t agree with them hell. Having fangs and needing blood didn’t mean you should make friends with your food. The mission of the Darkblood Alliance was to usher the culture back to its roots and live the way they were meant to live.