A Covenant of Justice Read Online Free PDF

bowl with his bare talons and plopping them happily into his gaping mouth. They looked like dead mice dipped in pond scum: soft, shapeless, and generally unpalatable. They also made terrible, disconcerting croaking noises. The Dragon Lord didn’t seem to mind. He enjoyed eating them live. Sawyer almost felt sorry for the maissel-fish; then he reminded himself that these fish had very likely come directly from the Old City detainment 4 and he decided that they deserved what they got.
    Sawyer turned back to the Lady. Her personal attendants had now begun feeding her some kind of squirming thing from a bowl of squirming things. He didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t look away.
    â€œYes, Mr. Markham?” she asked.
    â€œI—uh, hope you won’t think me bad-mannered—”
    â€œI would never do that,” the Lady interjected sweetly.
    â€œâ€”But if I might presume to ask a favor of you. As you know, my brother suffers from a condition resembling tertiary blood-burn . . .”
    Lady Zillabar’s laughter froze the words in Sawyer’s throat.
    â€œOh, you poor dear. You have my profoundest apology. Of course, I should have explained this to you earlier. Kernel d’Vashti lied to you both. No antidote exists at all for your brother’s condition.” To the rest of her guests, the Lady explained, “Once again, you see the problem we have with humans; they accept the wildest tales unfailingly. They always believe what they want to believe instead of seeing what actually lies before their eyes.”
    Before Sawyer could push his chair back and leap to his feet, Finn’s hand came down on his arm and even though Finn no longer had the strength to hold him in his chair, Sawyer got the message and restrained himself.
    As if she hadn’t seen this exchange between the Markham brothers, Lady Zillabar turned her attention back to Sawyer, “Besides, my dear, even if such an antidote existed, I wouldn’t dream of offering it to your brother. It would spoil the taste.” She added something in her own language, a command to her servants. Immediately, one of the attendants next to Finn bent to the intravenous tap on his arm and opened it. His dark red blood began sliding down the tube and into a silver goblet.
    The brothers watched in fascinated horror as the servant closed off the tap and brought the goblet around to where the Lady Zillabar sat. The young Vampire held the cup to the Lady’s lips and she drank from it eagerly. When she had finished, she licked her lips appreciatively, until finally, another servant approached and delicately touched a silken cloth to each of the corners of her mouth.
    The Lady Zillabar sighed. “Ahhh. I enjoyed that.” She looked at Sawyer and at Finn. “Finn, thank you so much. Truly, a delicious experience. I intend to have you share all of your meals with me. Oh, do have some more wine. I would like to get wonderfully drunk tonight.” She turned to the rest of her guests. “Would anyone else like a taste?”

Dinner Thoughts
    The Lady’s guests began to laugh then at the delicate irony of her words—indeed, the whole nasty situation had a certain baroque charm. Only a Vampire could appreciate all the nuances of pain in the situation; only a Vampire would want to.
    The Lady knew that the young Vampire males would whisper among themselves for months, spreading the tales of this evening’s merriment. They would talk of the blood-red shroud that left the Lady helpless and vulnerable and they would stimulate themselves to frenzies of lust as each of them imagined what grotesqueries they might perform if they could have her in such a helpless circumstance.
    They would repeat her every word among themselves. They would laugh at her jokes and allow themselves to experience delicious thrills of envy and desire. And yes, of course, all of them would hunger for an invitation to her table. All of them