Blood Ex Libris Read online

  “You know you are mated to him for the rest of your life? As his special swill? He will not let you leave him, and if somehow you did, you would not be safe from any…from all am’r, who would use you to get to him, and who would devour you for your irresistible blood. You know this?”

  “I know all that. I’m still getting used to it.”

  “Did he tell you before he irrevocably changed you?”

  “Yes. Sorta. Well, he told me I would become am’r-nafsh, but he didn’t explain fully what it meant.” Why am I telling her all this?

  “Did he tell you that am’r-nafsh are never revealed to full am’r? That those of your kind are kept safe, guarded. Not brought to a dangerously large gathering of our kind?”

  “Well, not until we got here. Things have been a bit rushed.”

  “And did he tell you that you can never rejoin the kee world? Or such facts as now you can never bear a child?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “He could not sire one on you, and if you could leave him, if he let you, and you made your life back among the kee, your body has been changed too far. You are not a true woman anymore. You are not a living being. You can never go back, even if he would let you. Even if he had not made it too dangerous for you to even attempt.”

  Well, that was a lot to process. I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted to have kids, but it was not one of the permanent changes he’d listed in the hot tub. In fact, he’d said he wasn’t sure what would happen if I wanted to go back to trying to live a normal life, which would have been a prime moment to bring up that going back to a normal life was not an option. Little details like those might have given me more pause and possibly kept me from just saying, “Take me now, big boy!”

  I know no one gets anywhere with what-ifs, but a person does have to be able to look back and reevaluate decisions. What if Sandu had committed the sin of omission—combined with criminal distraction—past a place where I could forgive him? Bagamil must be able to do some kind of am’r divorce proceedings or something? Sandu had said most am’r did not stay in intimate couple relationships. Or maybe Bagamil might know if there was some way to go back to my old life. There was no guarantee either Sandu or this bat-looking gal was telling me the full truth. Even if there was no way to go back, maybe I could shop around for a new am’r—um, companion—who would place more value on things like truthfulness and telling your partner all the stuff they need to know in a timely manner. It certainly seemed like there would be no lack of willing am’r to partner up with me.

  I didn’t know what to think about all this. Shaqîqah watched my face as I tried to order my thoughts. My gut was telling me she was not someone I’d ever be close friends with, but plenty of the am’r gave me bad vibes.

  I needed to go back to Sandu’s rooms and have my nap, after all. It would clear my head a bit, and at least help me get started ordering my questions for when Sandu had finished with the am’r summit meeting. I could even ask—insist—to talk to Bagamil and get the answers I needed from someone who seemed more responsible and trustworthy.

  I was just opening my mouth to thank Shaqîqah for her thought-provoking information and excuse myself from our hallway conversation when she moved faster than I could see. Her hand blurred up and then down hard against my neck, where I felt a sharp pinch. “Owww! Hey!” I rubbed my neck and backed away from her. “What the fuck? I’m going to...”

  Neither Shaqîqah nor I found out what I was going to do, because darkness swam up over my vision, along with a nausea-vertigo combination that encompassed my entire being. And I was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  At some point came the nightmares. My blood was on fire. It burned through me and left me a charred wreck. My blood was filled with broken glass. It sliced through every artery and vein and capillary and arteriole and venule. My blood was a black nothingness. It ate through me with fangs of pitiless obliteration and left an aching hole where once I had been.

  But I ached, therefore I existed. I hurt, therefore I am. The unfunny joke ran through my brain, and I didn’t want to laugh. I felt too shitty to laugh.

  I heard a language I didn’t know being spoken around me. It was a mushy flow of “sh” and soft “juh” but also unexpected hard sounds. I felt like I should recognize it and almost like I should be able to understand it, but it flowed and thumped around me, and I floated helplessly in it.

  I cracked aching eyelids open. I couldn’t see. I can’t see! But I realized the air I breathed was close and stale, so there must be a bag over my head. This was not a comfortable realization, although it was better than blindness. Probably.

  I realized I recognized Mehmet’s voice, and that bitch Shaqîqah. Shit, piss, and damnation—I’d been kidnapped. Am’r-nafsh-napped. It did not bode well for my future, which I assumed now looked more or less like “Be a tasty snack for some quantity of vampires TBD. Die in process, certainly unpleasantly.”

  It’s funny, I mused in my sack, imminent death sure puts a whole new perspective on things. Sandu seemed entirely forgivable at this moment. Sure, he’d been imperfect at telling me the things I needed to know, but life had been moving pretty fast, and it was hard to talk with your mouth full, as it had often been when we were alone together. Oh, how I wished to be alone with Sandu now. Or in a room full of people with Sandu. Just with Sandu, and not with Mehmet the Nose and the nasty Bat-Bitch!

  I wondered if I’d be dying today because they were getting back at Sandu for some ages-old drama, or if it was just for my piquant bouquet. A gal likes to be wanted for her own qualities. Would I get to say any last words? I’d at least probably get a final sight since they probably wouldn’t drink my blood with this bag rucked around my neck, what with necks being the canonically popular spot for a vampire to enjoy a nip.

  “She is awake,” Shaqîqah said. How did captors always seem to know this? Was it breathing patterns? A special bond with their captive? What?

  The sack was tugged roughly off my face by Bat-Bitch. I was sprawled on the floor. Mehmet stood in front of me and offered his hands to help me to my feet. I refused his help and urged my body upward on its own, stifling moans and gasps as the last bits of fire, glass, and darkness shot through my nerve endings, making passing out again seem all too possible. My legs hardly got me up. Once I was standing, I realized they were not capable of keeping me up. I looked around in a hurry and saw a place to the left where I could sit, a bench built out from the wall and covered in carpet. I managed to make it over there and collapse gracelessly onto it. Shaqîqah snorted. I bit back everything I desired to say to her.

  Not inciting vampires to kill you was the better part of valor.

  “Sevgili, my apologies for your treatment on the way to being with us. It was felt you would not come on your own, and we needed you to join us without delay.”

  “Join you?”

  “Peki...let us start over. Even from the introductions. Do not think of me as Mehmet. It is a name I left behind when I realized what I am become. Merhaba, adım Iblis. That is, ‘Hello, my name is Iblis.’ My sister here is the Qarînah. And you...we cannot call you such an uncouth name as ‘Noosh,’ but in my native tongue ‘naz’ means ‘coy.’ I rename you Naz hanım, Miss Naz, and you will become jinn like us after you transit from being mere mortal clay to the eternal smokeless fire.” As he said this, he’d grabbed my hands with both of his and leaned in and kissed me ceremonially on both cheeks. It was a fast movement, but I still had time to freeze in terror, thinking he was going for my neck already. But he did not. He let go of my hands and smiled delightedly down at me.

  I just looked at him. What do you say when you discover your abductor is batshit crazy? Back away slowly was the best advice I could think of, but I had a stone wall to my back, and as I looked around helplessly, I realized I was in a dungeon. Specifically, three walls were stone, one was metal bars. Mehmet/The Nose/Iblis saw me looking. “Apologies for the temporary lodging, sevgili, but we must keep you safe. Our enemies will
be searching for you.”

  I was still floored. My tendency in uncertain situations is to babble, and seldom before have I been at a loss for words. However, this was such an unexpected turn of —not that I understood how events had turned—that it seemed not-unreasonable I should have a whole new type of response to them. I just looked mutely at the Vampire Formerly Known As Mehmet.

  He was uncomfortable with my staring silence. “We have much to discuss, Naz hanım, and there is much for me to teach you.” Bat-Bitch snorted again, and The Nose gave her a sharp glance. “You may leave us, ‘ukhti al-saghira. I am sure you thirst. Take care of your needs. And see to the others. Let them know to be on guard.”

  After a muttered, “Hader, ya Sultan,” Bat-Bitch swished out, obviously in a temper. Good riddance. At least this left me with only one insane vampire to keep an eye on.

  Not that I could handle even one if it came down to it, but at least I only had to try to look in one direction at the same time.

  Said insane vampire sat down beside me on the carpet-covered bench, and I immediately started trying to inch away as unnoticeably as I could.

  “Yes, there is much to teach you, sevgili kızım. What my old friend Kazıklı bey and his patar, whom we call the Gâvur, have told you are lies. We are not am’r, but ‘cinler,’ or as you might say, jinn. Do not be surprised.

  “I have prayed and studied for many years, and it has been revealed to me that we are indeed other, but we are not godless, forsaken beings. There is a place for us under Allah, who created all. We fit in an order, not as some revenant of mankind, but of a different plane, with more powers than the beings of inferior clay. It is good you are but newly brought to the am’r world. You do not need to unlearn too many lies but can begin with a true understanding. You will join the jinn I have personally created who have known no other way but the truth. You come at the time of revelation and revolution when a world of lies is torn aside. We can begin anew, with a rightful leader who shall lead us out of shadow and shame into the light of Allah, with a scorching wind!”

  I could guess who this “rightful leader” was. He was the nutjob gesticulating frenetically by my side. Everything back at the underground Castle Dracula abruptly seemed reasonable and homey. All the am’r stuff that had seemed overwhelmingly alien was, in the face of these rantings, perfectly rational and practically ordinary.

  I realized that he had asked me a question and was waiting for an answer, but I had no idea what either of those things might be. “I-I’m sorry. I’m dizzy and weak. I think I need bl…food.” I had been all too close to saying I needed blood, but since the only blood I wanted was Sandu’s, it was better to ask for another sort of sustenance.

  “Of course!” he cried, actually slapping his forehead. “You are still of clay, and clay must have clay!” He went and shouted at the door to my cell. Another am’r showed up, and they said things in the mushy language. The other am’r went away. The Nose turned to me. “Naz hanım, I must leave you for a while. I will return and speak with you more after you have rested and fed. There is much to teach you!” He seemed utterly delighted. Dismay was the main emotion I could muster.

  I must have fallen asleep waiting for the food. It was there on a tray when I woke: a cold vegetable dish made with beans and chard, a still-slightly-warm dish of what seemed to be cornmeal with cheese, and tea in a funny two-pot system I was not sure I figured out correctly. There was a pot on top with tea leaves in, and a pot on the bottom with hot water. I poured the water from the bottom into the top and let it steep, then drank it from a little glass teacup. I ate and drank voraciously, and it seemed to knock the last of the drugs out of my system. Without thinking, I checked my pockets, but my phone was not in them. Of course not. I’d left it back in Sandu’s room. Undoubtedly, even if I had not left it behind, they would have taken it. I tried to use my now-undrugged brain to come up with a magical solution to being locked in a cage by evil vampires who thought they were genies. Genies, for fuck’s sake!

  No magical solutions came to me. I waited around for something to happen, but nothing did, so I rolled a bit of carpet into a pillow and went back to sleep on my stone bench.

  When I awoke, the dirty dishes had been removed. Disposable hand wipes and a strange bucket had been left in its place. It had a lid. When I lifted it, there was another lid underneath, with a hole in the center. I eventually realized it was a seat and the bucket was my...toilet.

  Just kill me now. Even the medieval jakes were better than this.

  But I used it, terrified someone who no longer needed to shit would show up while I was in what was an even more awkward and humiliating position than defecation usually was, just because I was this lesser being who still had to do such disgusting things.

  There were few ways to make one’s imminent unpleasant death look kind of attractive, but this bucket was one of them.

  I waited. I meditated on the patterns of the various carpets in the room. Whoever had prepared this cell for me had clearly thought the way to make a dungeon a home was to “just add carpets.” Since I no longer had to worry about the kee issue of muscle soreness after sleeping on a slab of rock, I would have traded those carpets for an equal quantity of books in a heartbeat since “home” for me is “just add books.” Being a captive, I would not have felt at home even in the Vatican library, though.

  Wait, no. Honestly, if The Nose held me captive there, I might not even notice my lack of liberty.

  I was, for lack of anything else, still pondering what might be hidden in the Vatican library when The Nose arrived and joined me in my cell. While this could mean my painful death at any moment, I was bored enough that any diversion was welcome. At least he was easy on the eyes. Today he wore a black-on-black-on-black three-piece suit; the suit was matte black, the shirt glossy black, and the tie a textured matte. His shoes, I could see my reflection in. It made his dark-red hair and metallic eyes look even more pronounced, more surprising. He was not unhandsome, but it was not a comfortable attractiveness.

  “Naz hanım, tatlım! I have so many things to say to you. Where do I begin? But first, I must ask myself, are you missing Kazıklı bey? For you must have believed you loved him to have made such a commitment to him. I understand such a connection cannot be broken so very easily. It is known that he was not forthcoming with you, and no one was surprised. He is a distant, secretive man. You would say ‘damaged,’ öyle değil mi?” He waited impatiently for my response, so I nodded, not trusting what would come out if I opened my mouth even a little.

  “So, let me tell you about the man named Impaler. He is damaged indeed. Has he said to you that he is misunderstood? That he did what he had to do in order to survive? That those times have changed, and those living now can surely not understand him? I have heard just such excuses from him, but I am his age. He was born—born to his living mother, that is—just one year before me, did you know? We all change over time—indeed, I am most changed myself, being now a creature of smokeless fire, hehehe!” He again impatiently waited, this time for me to laugh with him. I managed a strangled chuckle.

  “But you do not hear me making excuses for my past because I do not have such things to account for. Listen to me: Kazıklı bey might say times have changed, but he did such things as horrified us all back in those ‘bad old days,’ as he would tell them.

  “Dinle! He had a castle called…what was it, eh? Cetatea Poenari, that was it. He built it just as he wanted it. He built the dungeon right under his bedroom so he could listen to the screams of those he ordered tortured to death. This is true! He was no stranger to captivity, but when Mátyás—he was King of Hungary and Croatia, and we all fought each other, oh, many times—when Corvin Mátyás had imprisoned him, I can no longer remember who had betrayed whom first, he impaled insects and rodents to relieve his boredom. That is also true! When he had people, not just small, helpless things, to torture, he did this: he would skin the feet of the person and pour salt onto them, but that was not e
nough. He would bring in goats to lick the salt from the skinned feet! Can you imagine? It also is true! And he roasted children. Not bad enough? Then he fed them to the mothers! And the mothers—he cut off their breasts and forced their husbands to eat them! And after all that, he had those husbands impaled! Yes, those things are true, but they are not all. When he ruled the Wallachians, those you would now call Romanians, he got rid of the poor and weak by burning them alive. Does that shock you? It is true! In only seven years of rule, for, tatlım, he did not rule very long, he killed at least one hundred thousand, many of which were his own people! And what have I seen with my own eyes? After he failed to assassinate me in a most cowardly effort, I marched to Târgovişte to fight him on his own ground. But when I got there, I found twenty thousand of my men impaled like a forest before me. And this after he had invaded Bulgaria and impaled even more of my people, men and women. I tell you these things are true since I saw them with my own eyes. I can still see them.”

  I sat through this, mute. The Nose had that effect on me. I’d known the bare facts of Sandu’s history—When He Was Vlad, as it were. I had read explanations that the impalement of the twenty thousand Turks had ended a war and saved his people, but at the time, it hadn’t borne thinking about, not in detail. Being forced to hear it from someone who’d been there, well, it was horrific. Beyond horrific. I couldn’t imagine ordering the deaths of twenty thousand people, even by humane methods. And impalement is a most gruesome death: the greased spike sliding up through your body, puncturing its way through muscle and organs, to come out your chest or your neck. You might die at any time along the way or survive for days. I could not do it to even one person, never mind twenty thousand at one go.