Page 10 of Dhampira

Ice slid down my spine. “Who told you about me?” Pushing out the words took effort. Maybe because I didn’t want to know. I’d spent my life helping my mother tend to Derryton’s sick. Just last year, we’d delivered the blacksmith’s wife of triplets. And one of my neighbors had betrayed me.

Cyprio’s golden eyes gleamed like old coins. “You must have rejected Mistress Bagley’s boy one too many times, Miss Trevil.”

My throat went dry. “She couldn’t…” I shook my head as I ran through all of my interactions with the Bagleys in my mind. I’d been so careful. So polite. “She doesn’t know what I am.”

“No,” he said. “I suspect not. But as I said, I trade in all sorts of goods. And she informed me that Derryton was home to a beautiful healer with an even more beautiful daughter.”

Bile burned my throat. My resolve to keep my taunts to myself flew out the window and onto Sausberg’s streets. “So you’re not a peddler. You’re a pimp.”

He shrugged. “I’m a purveyor of luxury items. Difficult-to-get items.”

“I’m not an item—”

“You’re not a human, either, and the nobles of Sausberg pay top coin for pets who heal fast and tire slowly.” Footsteps approached, but he continued speaking, a satisfied-looking smile curving his lips. “With the gold I fetch for you, Miss Trevil, I might purchase a title myself. Retire to the countryside and become a fat squire.”

“You’re already fat,” a man said as he ducked through the doorway. He was one of the tallest men I’d ever seen, with a long face that matched his lanky build. Hair the color of mouse fur brushed his shoulders. His eyes were dark and cold. But it was the thick length of silver chain wrapped around his hand that made my heart beat faster. He shook it loose as he stopped next to Cyprio.

Cyprio shot him an irritated look. “Nothing wrong with having a little meat on your bones, Fark. Better than being a beanpole.” He leaned backward and lowered his eyes to the other man’s backside. “You don’t have enough ass to hold up your britches.”

The man kept his gaze on me. “They’re ready upstairs.”

“How many?” Cyprio asked.

“Full house. I wasn’t sure I’d get the word out in time, but the runners did their job.” Fark, whose mother apparently hated him, stepped closer to me. His gaze slid down my hair, which streamed over my shoulders and fell to my waist. “Are you certain she’s”—Fark’s throat bobbed as he swallowed—“one of them?”

Cyprio grasped Fark’s jaw and forcibly turned it toward the window. “If she were a full-blooded bloodsucker, she’d be a pile of ash right now.”

Fark jerked his face from Cyprio’s grip, and a sullen expression crept over his features. “Fine. But we should check for fangs.” His gaze moved to my chest, and he swallowed hard. “We should check for blemishes, too.”

I tugged at my wrists—or tried to. The ache pulsed like a beating heart, every throb sapping my strength. All I could do was sit and seethe under Fark’s lecherous stare. As Cyprio had noted, his pants drooped low, making it impossible to gauge the location of the soft parts between his legs.

Cyprio grunted as he pulled the washing sponge from the bucket. “We should get her upstairs as soon as possible, which is what we’re going to do.” He moved forward and held the dripping sponge before my mouth. When I only glared at him, he shook it a little, sending droplets raining onto my lap. “Come now. You’ve had nothing since the forest. You must be thirsty.”

Rage was a fire in my chest. “I would rather—”

He thrust the sponge into my mouth. Water coursed down my throat, giving me a choice between choking or swallowing. I swallowed.

Fark leaned forward, his dark gaze rapt. “Think she’ll suck a cock half as well?”

Cyprio withdrew the sponge.

I came off the wall hissing, anger and outrage punching my fangs through my gums. Something brought me up short, wrenching back my shoulders in a burst of agony. Cyprio had chained my manacles to the wall.

Fark stumbled backward, his chest heaving. The end of the chain in his hand scraped over the flagstones.

Cyprio chuckled as he tossed the sponge into the bucket. “Sure, if you don’t mind having your dick bitten off.” He gave Fark an expectant look. “Does that answer your question about the fangs?”

“Yeah,” Fark rasped. He hitched his pants higher on his hips.

Cyprio retrieved the potato sack from the ground. As he moved toward me, he addressed Fark. “Put the first chain around her legs.”

My stomach lurched. “Don’t!” I yelled, struggling against my bonds. Fark tossed the chains. The links landed heavily on my thighs. Dizziness swept me.

Then nothing.

The chatter of a crowd dragged me out of unconsciousness. As Cyprio yanked the sack from my head, I debated telling him that sustained exposure to silver made me vomit. But as the sea of blobs before me formed into faces, speech deserted me.

I stood in the center of a wooden platform, my back against what felt like a wooden post, although it might have been silver.