Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen) - By Joey W. Hill Page 0,3

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“Alanna, tell me what you feel.”

She never refused a vampire’s command, but Lord Brian asked her a question she’d never been asked. She couldn’t remember when she’d stopped thinking about it, or if she’d ever thought about it at all. Service was above ego, above individual need and want. There were only the Master’s feelings and needs. Yet she’d spent the past . . . she really didn’t know how long it had been anymore . . . resisting Stephen’s screaming command for her to die, to take her own life. Because Lord Belizar had told her no, Lord Brian had told her no. She refused to be a total failure. Perhaps she did have a will of her own, which meant she’d never been as good a servant as she’d thought.

“Alanna. Tell him how you feel.” The painter was giving her the command now. He pressed down on the wet paint, his thumb making slow, easy passes over her pubic bone, charging the nerves at the tops of her thighs. He gave her the command as if she belonged to him personally. Did he understand that had been the biggest loss to her? For the first time in so many years, she didn’t belong to someone. Cut out of the circle, no longer a part of anything.

“Do I need to tell you twice?”

“No, Master.” When the unplanned response rasped from her lips, the two sets of fingers stilled. Yes, she’d only called Stephen that, but it felt right. Maybe more right than it had with him, ever. That also didn’t make sense, but her mind and soul were broken. Sanity and logic were beyond her grasp.

She was too tired to dissect anything. She didn’t spend much time on such things even on a good day, and this was certainly not a good day.

“I feel . . .” Searching the scarred battlefield of her mind and soul, she latched on to the word that meant the end of her usefulness.

“Abandoned. He’s gone.”

Lord Brian had at last found a chemical combination that blocked the nightmares, but it also blocked Stephen’s access to her. She didn’t understand why they’d bothered to keep her alive after that. She’d proven too weak to resist his dismemberment of her soul, the scrambling of her mind. As long as she was taking those injections, they couldn’t use her to pinpoint his location.

However, during the weeks of her illness and months of recuperation, remarkable changes had occurred. The Vampire Council was now under new leadership. Lady Lyssa, last of the vampire royals, had staged a coup and knocked Lord Belizar from his position as head of the Council. She’d killed the only other made vampire on the Council, Lady Barbra, and installed Lady Daniela from the Australian territories to take her place.

Soon after Alanna had been moved to a regular bed to be fed and assigned a daily exercise regimen to recover atrophied muscle, Lady Lyssa had visited her. Alanna had struggled to leave the bed, go to her knees, but the vampire queen had forbidden it.

“You will preserve your strength.” Those cool jade eyes assessed her state, kept her pinned in place. “I command you to regain your health. I will determine what to do with you shortly.”

So now, at last, “shortly” had come. As she waited outside Council chambers, in this cold, silent hallway, Alanna couldn’t hear what was going on behind the solid doors. She should be able to hear the occasional murmur caused by a raised voice, which was why this hallway was kept clear during Council sessions. However, the blocker had a devastating side effect. The exceptional strength, speed and senses that came with being a third mark were neutralized. For the first time since she’d become Stephen’s third mark, at age sixteen, she felt merely human.

Lady Lyssa’s command to “regain your health” was the second hardest thing that had ever been demanded of her, but the queen was the closest thing to a Master she had now, however temporal that would be.

Alanna recalled the fingers on her stomach, the vampire attached to them commanding her to answer Lord Brian. She also thought about the Scot’s soothing tone. He’d spoken often while she was being painted by his Master. His accent was like music, the way he dragged out the vowels in some places, made them dense and strong in others. Fiiinal . . . Book was buek . . . Certainly was cairtenly. And the wonderful rolling rs . . .

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