Escape (Vampire King Book 1) (5 page)

“The locket has no
value.” I removed it from his hands. “The robe cost three times more than this
trinket.”

“But the locket means
something to you, so I want it.” Samuel snatched it away. The chain snapped in
half. A few of the links fell down my chest, rolled over my breasts, and dropped
to the ground. I gritted my teeth until my gums ached and held in my protests
while he clutched the locket in his huge hands.

“Can I at least have
the picture in there?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“Is it a picture of
your king?” Samuel inquired.

“No. It’s a picture of
my husband and girls back in Zumaya. You can have the locket, but the picture
is mine. Just in case I don’t make it home, I want to see my family’s faces
before I die.”

Samuel averted his
eyes. A low groan escaped his lips. He handed the locket back to me. “Never
mind. The vials are enough.”

I placed it in my bra
and tucked it near my right breast.

Ty giggled into his
hand. “See. Samuel is a big softy. He only plays the bully for people who don’t
know him well.”

Samuel scowled.

I put on Samuel’s
shirt, pulling it over my face. His sweet aroma drifted from the thin material
and reminded me of the purple herbs my mother used for creating her popular
scented candles. She died three years ago with the food shortage from the
drought. I inhaled the memories, sucking the fragrance through my nose like it
would make my home or mother appear.

“Enough.” Samuel slowly
backed away. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry.” I dropped
the material from my nose. “Your shirt smells sweet like tenna herbs.”

“Don’t you worry about
what I smell like.” Samuel ran his fingers through his blond-and-black strands.
His fangs vanished. He stomped out of the alley, saying nothing else. The
massive muscles on his shoulders and back flexed with his movements.

“Relax, domina. Sam
will warm to you eventually.” Ty picked up Samuel’s gray coat and my robe off
the ground. “Come with me. Our camping area is near.”

Chapter Three

“You
first, domina.” Samuel raised a sewer cap and pointed into the darkness.

The two moons hung in a
horizontal line and signaled dawn was near. We’d walked through the city for
hours, remaining within shadows and hiding in darkened corners when other
vampires were on the streets. I gazed down into the hole and could only see
darkness. I sniffed and caught a disgusting stench. It seared my nostrils.
Coughing, I covered my nose with my arms.
The
area reeked of vampire bodily waste, decayed blood ripped of life. Nothing was
worse than the odor, not even feces or rotting flesh. It stunk with sharp,
metallic whiffs and garbage undertones. Since the majority of a vampire’s diet
was blood, their waste came out stringy and red. I’d learned this
vomit-inducing fact from my maid on my first night in
Capitol
City
.

I
can’t go in there.

“Get in. The sun will
be up soon,” Samuel hissed. This was the most he’d said to me since leaving the
alley.

“Don’t worry,” Ty
assured me. “There are only friends down there and refugees like yourself
trying to escape the city.”

“Thank you.” I
delivered a half smile to Ty and avoided Samuel’s glare as I climbed down into
the sewer.
Ambi, help me.
I breathed
out my mouth and tried my best not to gag.

The gloomy space
swallowed me up. Hot metal served as the ladder’s rungs and burned the palms of
my hands.
Since it is underground, the
sewer must retain a lot of heat.
I refused to whine or complain, knowing
Samuel would seize the opportunity to use it as an excuse for why I shouldn’t
be with them. The blistering ladder rungs burned my fingers. Scars formed. The
flesh on my palms hardened. Plus, it was so dark. I couldn’t even see how bad
the injuries were as I journeyed farther down. A scraping noise sounded above.
I looked up. Ty pulled the sewer cap down, which meant Samuel must be the
person right above me on the ladder.

“Are you okay, domina?”
Ty asked. His voice soothed me in the darkness.

“Yes,” I called back,
still climbing down. Something crawled up my ankle. I kicked it away with my
other leg and quickened my pace.
Don’t
think about what it was. Just concentrate on something else.
I pictured my
husband Ethan the night I left Zumaya with the castle guards. He’d told me that
I’d sacrificed myself for our town and family, that he had never deserved me. I
waved his comments away and embraced him. I begged him to take care of our
girls, Lily and Rose, and make sure they knew who I was and what I’d done for
them.

My left foot slipped
off the ladder and somehow my grip left my hands.

I screamed, falling
into the darkness, grasping for anything, and only feeling wet, hot stone slip
out of my fingers. “Help!”

My hair rose with the
rush of wind as I dropped. The shirt rippled and scaled up my body. Strong, warm
hands clasped onto my waist. A massive arm hooked around my back. My breasts
pressed into a hard chest that rose and fell into the curves of my body.

“Oh, my Ambi!” I
wrapped my arms around my savior’s neck, smelling the sweet, earthy scent of
tenna herbs.
Samuel?
“Thank you.”

Samuel only grunted. I pulled
my shirt down with one hand and kept the other one around him. We remained on
the ladder and didn’t lower.

“Are you okay for me to
take us down?” His lips brushed my right ear. He inhaled. I shuddered and was
glad he couldn’t see my blushing face within the darkness. His chin rubbed
against the curve of my neck. It had the rough edge a man gets when he hadn’t
shaved in a day or two. I relished in the rough surface, gripping him tighter,
just happy to be alive.

“Yes. I’m ready,” I
said.

“Did you catch her?” Ty
yelled. “Sam! Domina!”

“Would you shut your
mouth?” Samuel growled and carried us down, gripping me firmer than he needed
to. “I have her.”

“My name is Brie,” I
mumbled into his shoulder. His natural cologne wrapped around me.

“And why do I need to
know that?” His lips tickled the skin under my ear. His fingers trembled around
my hips.

“Because you both keep
calling me domina.” I leaned away from him right as the edge of his fangs
grazed my skin.
Did he just try to bite
me or am I imagining things?

“I call you domina
because that’s what you are,” Samuel insisted.

“It’s what I was. Now
I’m just Brie. What if I only called you pathfinder?”

A sigh left his lips. A
fevered intensity flickered from his hands and drowned me in his heat.

“Why are you so hot?” I
asked.

“You feel it too?”

“Yes. It’s pretty hard
for me not to feel it.”

“We’re on the ground
now.” He cleared his throat and released me from his grip.

I landed on the sewer’s
surface and edged back and waved my hands to feel where I was at. Then the area
illuminated around me as several candles were lit. At least ten human faces
glowed within the candlelight. Some seemed old. Others were children. A female
vampire with broad shoulders and wide hips stormed toward us. Her brunette
curls bounced as she marched my way.

“Did I hear correctly?”
Her silver eyes bore into me. “This one is a domina?”

I glanced over my
shoulder at Samuel.

 
“Yes. She’s a domina, and if you’re mad about
that, then talk to your idiot husband.”

Ty dropped to the
ground. Red stringy liquid splashed around his feet. “Look at the girl,
Victoria. She’s not the money-hungry type like most dominas.”

“I can’t believe you
brought her here! Didn’t we all agree we wouldn’t save anymore dominas?”
Victoria
raised her
hands. “She’ll get us all killed. There will be guards all over the city
tomorrow. Dogs will be sniffing the sewers.”

“They won’t notice for
at least a month,” I assured her. “The Quiet King left the city. The guards
don’t do nightly bedroom checks or perform a roster when he’s gone.”

“I’m well aware of what
the guards do.”
Victoria
narrowed her silver eyes at me. “I used to manage the castle. How long will the
king be gone?”

“Two or four weeks.”

No one said anything.
Candlelight danced around us. Our shadows bounced and wavered off the moist
walls. I clung to Samuel’s shirt that I was wearing, gathered some of the
material into my hands, and tightened it around the new scars on my palm. A
baby cried on my right. The mother stuck her dirty nipple into the wailing
baby’s mouth. The little one latched on and closed his eyes. His hands formed
into tiny fists and rested on his mother’s breast. He must have barely been two
months old.

“The domina will get us
killed,”
Victoria
said in a low voice behind me.

“Darling, we won’t get
caught,” Ty countered.

Samuel clasped onto my
wrist and guided me around the others until we were several feet away from
them. He led me to a wall adorned in a mural that resembled the Statue of
Creation. The Quiet King sat on a throne of skulls just like the real statue,
but this time the skulls were very tiny, suggesting they came from infants. On
the real statue, the two moons lay in the king’s lap. In the mural, it looked
like two mounds of brown crap piled on his leg. Instead of adoring dominas
lovingly gaping at the king, naked women were covered in scars and chained to
his feet, violence and horror etched in their eyes.
Well, I don’t think this group supports the king.

“If they catch us and
she’s with us, we’ll die.”
Victoria
put her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes.

“We always run risks.”
Ty shrugged.

“Rest your feet,”
Samuel instructed. I sat down and strained my ears to hear Victoria and Ty’s
conversation.

“No. If we are caught
without her, then we would just be slaves to the kingdom,”
Victoria
cursed and walked off into a
darkened passageway. “You’re not a royal guard anymore, Ty. Stop trying to
protect dominas and—”

“Now that’s quite
enough.” Ty marched after her and slammed a black steel door.

The other humans
whispered to each other. Raggedy clothes hung off their frail bodies. Most of
them were women and children. The few men in the group had wrinkles on their
faces and graying hair.

“Are they all The Quiet
King’s slaves?” I whispered.

“Pretty much. The women
were born into slavery. The men were imprisoned in the castle dungeons for
petty crimes.”

“How did they come up
with the money to—”

He held up his hand to
stop me as he remained standing. “I never charge slaves.”

“Dominas are slaves.” I
stretched my legs. “You charged me.”

He smirked. “Dominas
are willing slaves. Human women hoping for fame and luxury.”

“You’re wrong. Not all
dominas desire fame.”

“Are you hungry?”
Samuel seated himself down on the bloodied ground beside me.

“No.” Things crawled in
the crimson liquid, but I couldn’t tell what they were, just that it was
something smaller than an inch. I took comfort in the fact the creatures were
tiny and tried to think about anything else.