Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [981]
There was a soft knock on the door. “What?” I asked, and even to me it sounded angry. Shit.
“I’m sorry, Anita, but Jean-Claude sent me to check on you.”
“Sorry, Clay, it’s just been one of those days already.”
“Breakfast is waiting in the living room,” he said through the closed door.
“Is there coffee?” I asked.
“Fresh, from the guards’ break room.”
I took in a deep breath, let it out, and went for the door. Coffee. Everything would be better after coffee.
I expected Graham to be with Clay, but it was Sampson. He wasn’t a guard. In fact, he was sort of a visiting prince. He was the eldest son of the Master Vampire of Cape Cod, Samuel. Their vampire group wanted a closer tie with us, and one way to do that was for Sampson to audition as my new pomme de sang—apple of blood, like a kept mistress. It had been Nathaniel’s job until he moved up the power structure to my animal to call. Now I needed a new snacky bit, whether I liked it, or whether I didn’t. The ardeur needed more food. So far I’d managed to avoid having sex with Sampson. Since he was almost as embarrassed about the whole situation as I was, well, it hadn’t been that hard to avoid. It wasn’t that he wasn’t handsome. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a fall of dark curls that were identical to his father’s. He even had his father’s hazel eyes. In fact, he was one of those sons who looked like the father had cloned himself, except he was a few inches taller, and somehow softer. But then Samuel was over a thousand years old. You didn’t survive that long in vampire society by being soft. You certainly didn’t rise to be Master of the City by being soft, and you sure as hell didn’t stay there by being anything but hard.
Sampson smiled at me, and it was a nice smile, boyish, a little bashful. He was wearing a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled back and the collar loose. The shirt was untucked over dress slacks. He was barefoot. His mother was a mermaid, a siren, and it made Sampson react more like a shapeshifter sometimes. He didn’t like shoes, though he did like clothes better than my furry friends. Maybe water is colder?
“We’re shorthanded, remember?” Clay said.
“I remember.” Though I didn’t sound happy about it.
“Am I that big a disappointment?” Sampson asked, but his smile widened, and his eyes twinkled with it. He never seemed to take my bad moods personally. Of course, I’d met his mother, Thea. She was like the ocean: calm one minute, rising up to kill you the next. I think she’d sort of broken him to the thought that women were moody.
“Thanks for volunteering to be food so the red shirt guards could be elsewhere,” I said, and my voice sounded nicely dry and sarcastic.
“I heard you’d already fed the ardeur,” he said.
I nodded.
He held his arm out to me. “Then allow me to escort you to your master, and real food.”
I sighed, but I took his arm. Sampson was supposed to have been a short-term loan. To the larger vampire community he was here to try out for the position of pomme de sang. That was half the truth. The other half was that his mother was a siren, and the last of her kind. She was a genetic queen among the merfolk, magical, powerful, and most of that magic was sexual in nature. All mermaids could be alluring to mortals, but sirens could force you to wreck your ship. They could call you down to the sea and drown you and you’d enjoy it. They were sort of like master vampires, except more specialized, and more rare. Like I said, Thea was the last of her kind, unless her sons could be brought into their full power.
Problem was, the only way to bring a siren into their power was sex with another siren. Since Thea was the last of her kind and her sons were the last potential of her bloodline, well, it was all too Oedipus Rex for comfort.
She actually had no problem with doing the job herself. She’d been worshipped as