Read Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 Online
Authors: V. M. Black
Tags: #vampire romance, #demon romance, #coming of age, #billionaire romance, #mystery, #mutants, #new adult
Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 (15 page)
Was any of this even true? I didn’t know why Cosimo would lie, other than that he was a Kyrioi, but I didn’t know why he might tell me the truth, either.
“You’re only telling me this to hurt him,” I said.
“Oh, most definitely,” Cosimo agreed.
But if he really was helping me, should I care?
“I have no way of knowing that it’s true. Having sex with a human could end up killing me, for all I know. It would be a pretty good trick, getting me to kill myself after the djinn the Kyrioi sent after me failed.”
He held up a finger. “First of all, the Kyrioi are no more a single group than the Adelphoi are. And I had nothing to do with the djinn.”
I looked at him narrowly. “But you know who did.”
He shrugged. “The secrets of others aren’t mine to share. No, what I want is Dorian’s humiliation. I want clear proof that the world he presents is not and never can be real.”
“Through me,” I said.
“You’re already his tool. His symbol,” Cosimo said. “What would be better to use against him?”
Maybe I really could be human again, free from Dorian and his impossible demands and control. As frightening as he was, I believed that he wouldn’t hurt me if I broke the bond. I could have a regular life. No more sunglasses and hoods. I could go to grad school. Date Geoff. I could have a real family. I’d grow old and die, but it would be after a life full of all the things I’d ever wanted.
If this was true, Dorian had hidden it from me deliberately, just as he’d hidden the fact that he expected me to have his children.
The car pulled up to the curb in front of the bookstore, where the woman Cosimo had given the phone to still stood, waiting. Cosimo got out and held out his hand to her.
“Thank you,
cara
,” he said with his most charming smile.
The woman blinked, then handed over the phone. She seemed to shake herself slightly, and then she walked away as if she hadn’t just been standing for the past two hours in front of a bookstore.
Shoving on my sunglasses, I slid across the bench seat to get out onto the sidewalk. I slung my book bag across my back.
Cosimo handed the phone to me. “Call Dorian. Ask him. See what he says about breaking the bond. I doubt he’ll lie to you. It doesn’t agree with his philosophy.”
No, Dorian wouldn’t lie to me. But if he thought it was important enough, he would change me. I knew that now. And I couldn’t think of anything more important than this. I would have to confirm it some other way.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “For telling me this. Even though I know you didn’t do it for me.”
He held out his hand. I didn’t take it, and after a moment, he shoved it into his pocket as if nothing had happened and said, “So nice talking to you, Cora. I hope you have a wonderful day. And that you make the choice that is best for
you
.”
“I will,” I said.
I hope.
He ducked back into the car. “See you around. Or not.”
I watched his car roll away, and I realized that for the first time since I had walked out of Dr. Robeson’s office with my terminal diagnosis, I might have a real choice.
There might just be a way out.
The story continues in...
Blood Bond
Cora’s Bond – Book 4
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The bite of a vampire saved Cora Shaw’s life—but at the price of an eternal bond that gives him complete power over her mind and body. Dorian Thorne offers worldly riches, eternal youth, physical pleasure, and even a kind of happiness. But the vampire had already shown that he will change even Cora’s innermost thoughts when it suits him, so Cora knows she has everything to lose.
But Cora discovers that the bond may not be eternal, and she finds herself facing a choice: to break the bond and resume her old life—or to keep it and choose Dorian at the risk of losing herself.
The bond, once broken, can never be repaired, so Cora is playing for keeps with the most important decision of her life. But each choice comes with its own terrible price.
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Blood Bond
Cora’s Choice #5
by V. M. Black
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Aethereal Bonds
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Swift River Media Group
Washington, D.C.
A
ll characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 V. M. Black
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.
Chapter One
T
he bond could be broken.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore, my phone digging into my palm as I grappled with the bombshell that Cosimo had just dropped into my life.
Free.
Could I really believe that I could ever be free again?
I didn’t dare trust anything Cosimo said. I needed to be certain. Looking down at my phone, I realized that confirmation was just a call away. My hands shook as I pulled up the list of contacts. At the very top of my favorites, there it was:
“<3 Clarissa.”
I couldn’t guess why she’d added her number. A joke? A kind of winking reference to her role in getting my phone back? When I’d first seen her entry, I couldn’t imagine a situation in which I’d choose to dial her up. Clarissa might look young enough to fit in with my friends, but what kind of casual chat could I have with a creature who was probably five times as old as my Gramma and killed humans like me for their blood?
Or at least, humans like I used to be....
Now I gave a silent thanks for whatever whim had caused her to add herself to my phone, and I punched through the menu to call her.
For just a moment, I thought about what a ludicrous scene I presented—a college student, her backpack over one shoulder, standing on the sidewalk and dialing the number of a monster out of myth.
But a lot of things about my life had been ludicrous recently. This didn’t even make the top ten.
The phone rang—once, twice, three times. My heart had begun to sink when Clarissa’s musical voice suddenly answered, suppressed laughter in it.
“Cora! I didn’t think you’d really call. Do you feel like doing something outrageously girly? How about a spa day? I haven’t had one of those in an age, but we’d have to skip the tanning bed, if that used to be your thing.”
Yeah, it was Clarissa, all right. I thought out how to approach her so that she wouldn’t instantly call up Dorian and tell him what I was up to. She liked to give the impression of being flighty, but I was pretty sure that she was whip-smart underneath all the show. I needed her to confirm Cosimo’s story without raising any suspicions. And if what Cosimo told me was true, that would be tricky because it meant that Dorian had been deliberately hiding information about the bond that tied me to him.
“Sorry, Clarissa. I’m going to meet my boyfriend this afternoon,” I said. Geoff and I had never actually made it to a formal relationship, but I’d promised that we would if the leukemia treatment worked. Since I was now cancer-free, I figured it was close enough to true.
“Oh,” the vampire—the agnate—said, abruptly serious. “That’s really not a good idea.”
“Well, Dorian did say that he wasn’t going to force me to give up my old life,” I pressed on. “And my boyfriend’s part of that. On the other hand, Dorian did make rather...specific claims about my person.”
That I was his, forever, body, blood, and soul.
“I think a boyfriend is definitely out of the question now,” Clarissa said, unusually serious. “You really don’t want to be even thinking about that.”
But she still hadn’t said why. Why did she have to clam up now, of all times?
“Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt Dorian’s feelings or anything, but you know, I saw an agnate at the party two nights ago who had two cognates, so I figured it might be okay.”
“It’s one thing for an agnate to have two cognates. But a cognate simply can’t have another relationship.” Clarissa’s voice betrayed her alarm.
“I understand if it’s just not been done before, but I figured that Dorian wouldn’t be such a prude,” I babbled, pressing onward.
“Doesn’t have anything to do with being a prude or not,” Clarissa said. “A cognate who has slept with another human wouldn’t be a cognate anymore.”
I rocked on my feet, a burst of something—elation? terror?—going through me.
It was true, it was true, it was true....
I had a choice. I could be free.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying not to give anything away in my voice.
Clarissa’s horror came clearly through the phone. “Look, you only get one shot at being a cognate. Once you’re converted, that’s it. You’re bound to that agnate and none other. If another agnate comes and tries to drink from you, you’ll both die. And if you sleep with another human man, you’ll stop being a cognate. You’ll start aging again, and you can get sick, and eventually, you’ll die. And there’s no going back because then you’d be poison to every agnate. Even Dorian.”
