Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (The Order Saga Book 1) by Brian McKinley Read Free Book Online

keeping you from the object of your desire, then it all comes down to willpower. When was the last time you were so thirsty your throat burned and you didn’t take a drink from a glass of water sitting on the table in front of you?
    “My insurance didn’t scare him,” Caroline said. “He’s planning something … something big.”
    I just nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak because I could feel my mouth watering and my canines pushing down again. As my injuries healed, my body cried out for fresh energy to feed it. Energy it knew was readily available.
    “Avery, look at me.”
    I didn’t want to. I knew it would make it worse to see the little girl lying there against Caroline’s chest but after a deep breath, I turned and tried to stare into her eyes—only her eyes, because there was safety there.
    Caroline looked worried but with an underlying sadness that could only come from understanding. She nodded and said, “Give me your jacket.”
    I slipped out of the denim jacket I’d been wearing and gave it to her, grateful for something else to think about. Caroline wrapped the little girl up in it and gently settled her sleeping form down onto the floor beside her. With the temptation removed from my view, it was a little easier to concentrate on what she was saying.
    “Now do you understand that physical force and bold attempts aren’t going to be enough to get us out of here?”
    As much as I still wanted to entertain fantasies of pumping Sebastian full of machine gun fire, I’d realized by that point that it wasn’t gonna happen. I nodded.
    “Good,” she said. “Because I do have a few ideas about how we might but they depend on both of us playing The Game, as they call it. We have to make Sebastian believe that we’re submitting to him. We have to be allowed to move around when the Gathering occurs. I can’t go into much detail now but I need to know that I can count on you to follow my lead even if it’s difficult.”
    I think I sensed even then that this wasn’t a small thing she was asking. So I didn’t just toss off the immediate “of course” that was my first reaction. Instead, I looked into her gorgeous green eyes for the love that I knew was there and when I found it, I leaned forward and kissed her. “You can always count on me. I swear.”
    Even concentrating on Caroline’s scent as we held each other, I still felt the smell of the girl’s skin tickling my nose and the throb of her tiny heart teasing its way into my ears. Caroline sensed this somehow and removed one of her earrings. Vampyrs should always carry multiple items that will allow them to draw blood if they don’t have their canines sharpened (as neither Caroline nor I do). You’d be surprised what you can use, if push comes to shove.
    She gave me the earring and as delicately as I could, I pierced one of the smaller arteries at the bottom of her neck. I handed the earring back to her and bent to drink. While I did, she punctured my neck in the same way and put her lips to the wound. This is probably the one major advantage a starving Vampyr has over a starving human, this mutual-cannibalism we can perform. I guess it’s a little like having sex while freezing just to generate bodily warmth but among Vampyrs, this is considered the purest form of lovemaking. It didn’t have the climactic intensity of sex but it was a warmer plateau, like riding that pre-orgasmic moment forever. Or, for those of a more gastronomic bent, imagine eating the best chocolate sundae you ever had and never reaching the bottom of the dish and never losing your appetite for it. It made me feel close to her in a way that was impossible with any other form of verbal or physical expression. At that moment, we were literally one being, one system circulating its life between our separate halves.
    We fed and kissed and comforted each other for the rest of the night. When sunrise came, we fell into our daytime hibernation coma holding each other. We