Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted by Cassie Alexander Read Free Book Online

mercy. I thought I saw something scurry from my shoe to the mattress, but I couldn’t be entirely sure. Maybe they were dividing up again, splitting their chances. I squinted into the depths of the hole I’d made in the mattress, and then into the toe of my shoe, where I didn’t see any abnormal darkness, then I pulled the sheets back down and tucked them into place.
    I pulled on my shoes, and rescued my vaguely clean underwear from the corpse of the cot to pull them on too, then went out to join Jackson in the hall.
    *   *   *
    “What now?”
    “Now I finish showing you around and make you useful,” he explained as he started walking.
    I remembered Raven’s comment from the prior night. “Will you be teaching me more manners?” I said, half teasing, half not.
    “Yeah, I’m a regular finishing school,” Jackson chuckled, leading us around a corner and down a hall. Other tunnels branched off to either side, lit, but led to doors or sharp turns, so I couldn’t see where they finished, although I got the idea that this place was enormous. “Today we’ll just go clean the club, and then we’ll see what Raven has in store for you later.”
    I wondered if our tour would conveniently include the prisoners’ cages, so I could say hi to my dream-time friend. Then I realized that if we were up, probably everyone else was too.
    “Will Lars be helping us?” I stroked one hand over the other—it was too easy to remember the feel of my knuckles hitting his ribs, the unreal strength I’d had, and the unfamiliar urge to use it on him.
    “No. But he’ll be there when Raven convenes us all tonight.” We reached a set of stairs and Jackson headed up. I stood at the bottom, pondering.
    “How did I know what to do? When he attacked me, that is.”
    Jackson stopped and turned. “The blood told you.”
    “What—how?”
    “You’re part of the system now. Blah blah death, blah blah life, black and white, yin and yang, epic struggle, entropy. You’ve heard it all before. What it means is that you’re now on the dying side, and you’ll naturally want to kill things.”
    “What?” I said, like I hadn’t heard him.
    “It’s worse when the blood’s fresh. Don’t worry, it’ll fade in time, unless you get a new transfusion.”
    “But I don’t want to kill anything.”
    He snorted. “That’s what everyone says in the beginning.”
    “No, really, I mean it—” I said, determined to convince him.
    “Well, I’ve never met a vampire who could live without death before. But you’re welcome to try to be the first.” He turned around and kept walking up, and I trotted after him. I felt the need to prove myself.
    “What would you have done, if you were me?”
    He shrugged. “It’s hard your first night. You seem to know the score, so you must have had some dealings with our system before now. And vampires don’t give blood to complete idiots, so—well, I don’t know. Before here I had what you would call a troubled past. Add to that the fact that I have a temper and I’m a man, and we’re more prone to beating each other’s heads in, and I’m older than I look—yeah. I probably would have killed him. And you should have no doubt in your mind that he was out to kill you.”
    The chip of rock Lars had taken off the floor with his first blow was a pretty big clue.
    “I’m not telling you to sympathize with him, but the day you don’t get enough blood to be able to fight back is usually the day you die.” Jackson inhaled deeply. We’d reached the top of the stairs, and he pulled a large key ring off his belt. “If you and I had to share the same Master, I’m not sure what I would have done in his place. And if you’d been stupid, or complacent, or scared, or naive, well, his problem would have been solved, neatly. But he failed, and you didn’t kill him, so we’ll all have to keep on being one big happy vampire family.”
    I frowned. “The last time someone told me that, she died.” And