Retribution (Book 3 of The Dominion Series) (43 page)

But here they are, both of them enjoying themselves in this setting. I wonder if, when it comes to it, whether either of them will stop it. Or will they just let it happen and see what the fallout brings?

Michel can't be compelled. From what I've read of him in my journal and from what I've felt from him due to our shared connection, he hates being a vampire. He wants vampires and Ancients dead. He wants to die himself, hoping that his efforts to stop Dominion will win him back his immortal soul.

Soren sits there and watches Michel and Julien, drinking his wine and smiling to himself as if he's a puppet master and we're all his puppets. I sit beside Michel and watch Soren covertly, my hatred boiling over despite everything Michel has done to calm me.

Finally, Soren turns to me and I avert my eyes.

"Eve," he says. "How are you doing? Is the food to your taste? I see you've given up your silly vegetarianism."

"My Lord," I say and keep my eyes averted. "I don’t remember being a vegetarian so it doesn't bother me to eat meat."

"Good. When I and the Twelve share your blood and you ours, we'll be counting on you. We need you nice and healthy, full-blooded."

I freeze at that. I know he plans on using me as his 'medium' – I'll share his blood and that of his group of Ancients, and through me, they'll be able to connect to each other the way they once did – or so Michel told me.

At that moment, I realize that I've never seen Soren drink blood. Of course, I've seen Julien and Michel drink blood, but I've never seen Soren. Michel and Julien both have crystal goblets filled with it, and are drinking it to augment their meal of food. Soren has none. He's drinking wine only.

Is he even an Ancient? Is he even a vampire at all? He suggested he's more than what we think he is…

I sit and think of this while Soren chats with Michel about the Council. I listen with half an ear, the other half of my mind wondering what he is. Julien and Gabrielle are leaning in close together, laughing over something private. When I see him with her, I feel a twinge of regret, remembering our time together and how happy I was. How much I enjoyed being with him.

"Michel, have you filled Eve in on what I'm planning?"

Michel takes his napkin and wipes his mouth.

"I've given her a minimal briefing on it. Nothing specific."

"She knows my plans to claim Dominion once we've taken care of Blackstone."

"Yes, in very general terms."

"What do you think, Eve?"

I say nothing. I can't lie. I just can't. I try to hide behind Michel's body, my eyes not meeting Soren's.

"Come on, now. Tell me the truth. What do you think?"

I struggle not to reply in a snarky or impertinent tone but I can't hold back.

"If you think I'll help you, you're crazy."

"Eve!" Michel says, taking my chin in his hand, staring in my eyes. "Remember your manners."

I feel tears bite at the corners of my eyes and press my nails into my palms, to get control.

"I'm sorry, my Lord, but I don't approve of Dominion. I can't willingly support you."

Soren rises from his chair and comes over to where I sit. I cower a bit as he stands over me. He's so tall and has such a strong build. He's a bit terrifying with his white skin and hair, his eyes so clear blue they look transparent.

"I don't expect your willing support. I expect your support only through coercion. I'm not an idiot. But I will get it. I have the perfect tool to gain your compliance. I have the twins."

He tilts my head up and even though I try to avoid his eyes, I can't. I put up my blocks, squeezing my nails into my palms to ensure he can't read me.

"When I get my blood into you, when you have the blood of the twelve in you, you won't be able to block me, Eve. Shall I give you a demonstration?"

I try to pull away. I don't want to have his blood in me.

"Please don't," I say and shrink away.

"Oh, I think so. Here," he says and runs a nail over his wrist, drawing a thin line of blood. "It doesn't take much, my blood is so powerful." He forces his wrist to my mouth and I can't help but take some of his blood onto my lips and tongue. Before I know it, I'm under some kind of drug-like spell, my body numb, my senses focused in on his wrist and the blood that drips from his wound.

"Yes, that's it, Eve. Drink a bit more."

Then he lifts me up and I'm helpless to resist because of his blood, and he pulls down the shoulder to my dress and bites me. His mouth is cold on my skin, the pain of his teeth sharp. He feeds only for a brief moment and then lets me drop back to my seat. I see into his mind when he steps away, see myself momentarily from his point of view, how my head leans against Michel's shoulder, how Michel tries to hold me up, his brow creased with concern, his lips pressed thin.

It's so good, isn't it?
Soren says to me in my mind.

"Michel, feed on her just a bit. Then feed her your blood as well."

Michel complies, biting me over his mark, taking only a mouthful of my blood. He presses his own wrist to my mouth after he's made a wound there and I swallow, unable to resist.

The three of us are connected. Soren takes us back, far back in time to when he sent Marguerite on her quest to find and turn the de Cernay twins.

He's away in Germany and can't be with her, and so he sends her to find them and turn them for him. He plans to start a coven in France and Carcassonne is his desired location. He needs servants who know the area and can get a safe home for him and his entourage.

He'd do it himself, but he finds that using a woman to enslave men is one of the easiest and most fool-proof approaches to gaining their compliance. Men are such slaves to their cocks and hearts. He thought women were slaves to the heart, but men are even more so. They're such weaklings when it comes to cunts and their attractions.

Marguerite was one of his favorite mortals, and when he turned her, she became his primary lover. He'd grown quite fond of her because she couldn't be compelled. He had to spar with her mentally, use pain and threats, use coercion and promises, use pleasure and love, to control her and even then, he failed more often that not. It was that which made him love her –he realizes that when he sees me with Michel and Julien.

They can't help but fall in love with me because they have to treat me like a person – one who looks almost identical to their first love, Danielle .

When he comes back to Carcassonne to find her and see the results of her seduction, he learns she was burned at the stake by the very brothers he hoped to have as his servants.

He is livid when he realizes that the young whelp of a priest and his warrior-brother had the audacity to kill Marguerite. Burn her at the stake like a common witch? She was a princess from the Norse family – the daughter of kings!

He wanted the brothers enslaved, but he wanted her to be their constant source of torture. He misjudged her ability to keep them both under her spell.

He failed. He finds the charred remnants of her bones and takes them with him, keeping them safe in a golden casket until one day in the future when they will once again be of use to him – when she will once again return to him and be his plaything and servant. Until then, he plans on torturing the brothers as often as possible as just retribution for their crime.

He lets Michel and I separate from his mind so that I'm back in the room with Michel at my side and Julien watching me from across the table, concern in his blue eyes. Michel and Julien will play a role in the future he has planned, only because he's become fond of Michel. A priest who has fallen – Soren can't resist him. Michel still believes, even after everything. He still longs for a place in the Church. Soren's promised him one, as his own High Priest. As his Pope. Michel couldn't be one among humans because of his vampirism, but now, in his ascended state, he is no longer in danger from mere mortals. Only Soren can destroy him.

Together, the three of them will rule the new Church. The Twelve will rule the world. I'll make that possible.

I'll comply, Soren thinks, because when it comes time, Soren will kill them both if I don't. He's counting on my love for them both to make me help him gain power.

He knows that I want to kill him. He knows that Michel has promised to help me. It doesn't matter what the two of us plan. In the end, he knows I
will
submit. That whatever little plan we have to use against him, I won't let him kill Michel.

He's counting on it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"Though lovers be lost love shall not."

Dylan Thomas

Soren says nothing for a few moments as Michel and I recover from sharing Soren's and each other's blood. We're speechless, for the experience is far too intimate. I feel as if I've had sex with them both, without the pleasure, for it puts me right into their point of view, into their bodies and them into mine. Now I know why drinking a human's blood is so sexual to vampires.

Once we recover enough to speak, the five of us leave the dining room and sit by the fireplace, the three men talking about the Council and its plans.

While I listen, Michel rubs my shoulder, then strokes my neck affectionately. I think of being in Soren's mind. He didn't hide his thoughts from us. Soren
knows
Michel and I are planning to destroy him, but he doesn’t care. He knows we must try. He also believes that ultimately, he'll use me to keep Michel from doing it himself and he'll use Michel or Julien – or both – to keep me from doing it.

He figures the bond we three share will be all he needs to keep himself safe, no matter what scheme we cook up.

Our task will be to find a way to kill him where he can't use us against each other.

As I sit at Michel's feet, I dig my fingernails into my palms and it's then I know Soren is no Ancient. He's
is
a fallen angel just as Terri suspected – or at least, he sees himself that way. He took physical form and was made a vampire in a moment of weakness with a female vampire he knew.

He doesn't care. He loves being a vampire, loves the connection to mortals he feels by having a body and requiring our blood to keep alive. He thinks it's the final joke against a god who cast him out of heaven. The greatest joke of all – he, an angel, forced to worship humans by a god who loved us more than the perfect creatures he created first, now drinks the blood of those very mortals who replaced him in God's heart.

His own brand of heavenly-father vengeance.

Now, with me under his control, he thinks he can create a new pantheon of gods from other fallen angel/vampires and reign over us all.

Finally, with Soren no longer apparently interested in harassing me, we leave, each couple going to our own rooms on the second floor. Michel closes the door behind me and turns the lock. I stand in the semi-darkness by the fireplace and wait for him. It's late, but I wait to see if he has something else planned for us. I don't need to feed now – not after drinking both his and Soren's blood. The way I feel from Soren's blood alone is like ten times the effect of Michel or Julien's.

Michel comes right to me and embraces me, kissing me, his passion overwhelming me and I can't help but respond. But just when I think he's going to push me down onto the floor and ravish me, he stops and presses his forehead against mine.

"Now do you believe?"

I pull back and look in his eyes. "Believe what, my Lord?"

"That angels are real. That there is a God."

I say nothing. Soren identifies himself as a fallen angel. One of the two hundred around the world who took physical form as shape shifters after a battle with heaven.

"I thought the fallen angels were cast into the pit. That's what the Bible says…"

"It was a figurative pit, Eve. Being separated from each other and from God, cast onto the mortal plane was hell for them. They've been seeking some kind of heaven to replace it ever since."

"I take it 'The Twelve' are all vampires, like Soren?"

"Yes. It's the key to their creating a new heaven, using the Church to give them access to worshippers, and you to channel that worship so they can take power. They can do small things individually – shape shift, heal wounds, manipulate matter on a small scale, but nothing really big that would impress a humanity inured to special effects, nuclear bombs and trips to the moon. They need to do something impressive to really show their powers and gain believers but they need to be connected to really mass their individual power together into one force."

"And that's my role? Collect that power through sharing their blood?"

He nods. "Soren is planning his own version of Ascension, using the Twelve and you. Do it in front of a mass of worshippers, use the sharing of blood to really pool their powers. Impress the worshippers. Do that over and over until he has the whole flock believing he's a god. That they're all gods. A new pantheon, like the Roman gods before Christianity."