Thrall (Supernaturals of Las Vegas Book 1)

  THRALL

  By Carina Cook

  Thrall

  Copyright © 2018 by Carina Cook

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  ASIN: XXXXXXXX

  Proofreading by R. Hawkins

  Cover Design by Steven Novak

  Find Carina on the web!

  http://carinacook.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 1

  Liss Lorensson fastened a length of pearls around her neck and tried not to think about biting. It would happen right there, at the sensitive juncture where the shoulder met the neck, just under the slightly uneven orbs that distinguished real pearls from fake baubles made in factories. She was resigned to getting bitten—it was part of her new job, after all—but after all of the time she’d spent preparing for this night, it had gotten built up in her mind. Anyone who knew her would say that Liss Lorensson was never nervous or underprepared for anything. She’d practically sprung from the womb with a to-do list, according to her mother. But now, she felt both of those things, and she didn’t quite know how to deal with it.

  She settled the pearls into place, eyeing her reflection, ignoring the minute tremor of her hand. No one who saw her would guess at her agitation. Her face was a perfect, pale oval with the kind of complexion that usually only comes with Photoshop. Makeup accentuated the cold intensity of her icy blue eyes. Her long blonde hair was twisted back into a chignon, not a strand out of place. A shimmery silk dress gave her an air of understated yet virginal elegance, topped off with a pair of silver, strappy heels. She usually skipped heels, since at 5’10” they often made her taller than her dates, and most men didn’t like that sort of thing. But Gregor was tall, so she’d been practicing with these particular shoes for weeks now. She could do anything in them now without stumbling—walk, dance, sneak into locked rooms, or engage in hand to hand combat.

  Even so, all the preparation felt insufficient. Only a few days earlier, she’d graduated from her small private college with a dual degree in finance and political science, summa cum laude. She’d moved out of her dormitory the next day, ignoring the protests of casual friends who didn’t know anything about the world she came from. Today was her 21st birthday, and they’d begged her to stay so they could take her out on the town. A small part of her was curious to know what that would be like, to drink until her head swam, to pick up some boy she didn’t care about and do as she liked with him. She’d never done anything like that. There had never been time. She’d been taking a huge load of classes in order to graduate early and return home for her presentation tonight.

  Her eyes fell on the stack of textbooks on the divan. She’d moved back to her family’s penthouse in a hurry, and her normally immaculate bedroom was still in disarray. The marble floor was dotted with half unpacked suitcases and boxes of dorm essentials she’d need to donate or move to storage. Normally, she was on top of that kind of thing, but there hadn’t been time for that either. She hadn’t even had time to process the fact that she was no longer a college student. As of tonight, she’d take her place with her family, thralls to Gregor Valdemar, prince of the vampire kingdom of Las Vegas. Each vampire was allowed four thralls, who protected their masters during the day and served them at night. She’d help her father run the Renaissance Casino and Hotel, one of the biggest resorts on the Strip. No one knew it was owned by the undead. One vampire in particular—Gregor. Her new master, as of tonight.

  She’d seen him a few times from a distance, but vampires weren’t allowed to associate with thrall minors, so they’d never spoken in person. But she had pictures, of course, and plenty of stories about him from her parents and her older brother Tait. He seemed to be a good boss and patron from what she could gather. At least she wasn’t stuck with one of those anachronistic morons who couldn’t or wouldn’t change with the times, the kind that made their thralls dress up in white powdered wigs and corsets just because it reminded them of the good old days. In order to be successful, one needed to stay current, and Gregor seemed like he managed that. He’d financed her college education, for starters, and had sent her a note of admiration when she’d won a particularly exclusive finance and economics prize. She’d kept the note, reading it over and over again in the hopes of getting a glimpse at the mind behind it. But it simply said, “Congratulations on winning the Stepford Prize. I hear it is particularly competitive. Gregor.” It was handwritten in neat, small print. There was nothing to be gleaned from that except for the notability of him sending it at all. For him to take a few moments to celebrate her accomplishments before she’d even reached the age of maturity seemed to bode well for their working relationship.

  Who was she kidding? She grimaced at herself in the mirror. She wanted him to like her. She wanted to like him. They’d be working together for the rest of her life. What if they hated each other? The whole thing had her nervous and obsessing instead of preparing as she ought to. She could be reading over the court protocol one last time. She could be limbering up her cold muscles, just in case some external threat came knocking at the door. Vampire hunters were few and far between, but if one happened to show up, Gregor couldn’t fight in public. To do so risked discovery, and so the thralls were tasked with security detail.

  It would be an easy job. Part of the benefit of being a thrall came in the form of yearly drinks. In Las Vegas, the thralls made a tradition of it, raising cognac glasses of their master’s blood at midnight and toasting the New Year. Liss didn’t particularly care for the taste, but if you gulped it down fast enough, it went down easily enough. And the benefits of drinking far outweighed the flavor. Her yearly sips of vampire blood made her strong, fast, and quick witted. Her complexion was perfect. She could eat plates of cheese fries without losing her toned figure, although after she’d tried it for a month after arriving at college and then went back to her usual healthy habits because it seemed unwise to tempt fate. She couldn’t do her job if she was out of shape, and thralldom was what she’d been born for. Quite literally.

  A quiet knock at her door pulled her out of her reverie, and she took a moment to pull herself together before answering.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The door opened to admit her mother. Dagmar Lorensson wasn’t nearly as tall as her daughter, but she carried herself like a giant. She’d cut her hair while Liss was at school, and now the ashy blonde strands grazed her wiry shoulders. She moved with the spare elegance of an expert martial artist, which she was. Dagmar was one of the most famous thralls that ever lived. But she’d never failed to show up at Liss’s boarding school performances, or to teach
her new moves in the dojo during break, or go swimming with her during vacations. They’d made the most of their time. That would be one good thing about moving home again; she’d get to see her mother more often.

  But right now, Dagmar had that tight look around her eyes, the one that meant she was worried but working hard not to show it. She gave Liss a hug and then held her out at arm’s length to take a good look at her.

  “You look lovely. Are you ready?” her mother asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

  Her mother looked uncomfortable, and Liss’s heart leaped into her throat. Usually, when Dagmar Lorensson looked uncomfortable, it was because something drastic had happened. Bone-sticking-out levels of drastic. But Liss didn’t see any bone. Just a plastic shopping bag clutched in her mother’s hand.

  “What is it?” asked Liss, concerned.

  Her mother took a deep breath. “Let’s sit down, shall we?”

  “Okay…?” Liss drew the word out into a question, but it was obvious that Dagmar wasn’t going to say anything until she was good and ready. So she moved the books off the divan, and the two of them sat. Dagmar’s hands wrung the plastic into nervous crumples. The sight of it made Liss’s heart skip a beat. She didn’t like seeing her mother so upset. It worried her.

  “Mom, what is it?”

  It was an affectionate term, only used when they were alone, and it made Dagmar’s lips curl into the slightest of smiles. Liss felt herself relax just a bit. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought.

  “Well…” Dagmar took a deep breath as if to steel herself. “At some point tonight, Gregor will likely bite you.”

  All of the tension escaped from Liss’s body in a wave of relief.

  “Is that all? You scared me half to death. Of course he’s going to bite me. That is kind of the point, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Well, yes, but…” Dagmar launched into an explanation of all of the things Liss already knew. How the thrall system worked. How she’d be expected to feed Gregor as well as work for him, and how those feedings often happened at court functions. Liss had begun learning all of this when she was six, but she didn’t interrupt. Mother was clearly worried about her, and this was her way of showing it. So this wasn’t about Dagmar thinking she was stupid or wanting to treat her like a child. She just wanted Liss to have a good first night at court. It was kind of sweet when you thought about it that way.

  Even so, she couldn’t keep her mind—or her eyes—from wandering. She looked down at the pile of books on the floor and almost picked them up to reshelve them before she realized that it would be terribly rude. Then, she realized to her horror that one book had fallen off the pile. A book she was not supposed to have. One that Dagmar didn’t know was there. A book that could, under a specific set of circumstances, get her quite literally killed.

  She took a deep breath, drawing on all of the lessons Dagmar had given her over the years. How to distract, how to keep your face from showing what you’re really thinking. How to direct the eye of the person you’re talking to. Liss had been good at it, good enough to manipulate the people at school for sure. They’d always been full of questions about her family and the casino, always angling for an invitation to visit her home and the imagined opulence there. But it was one thing to manipulate a bunch of 20-something coeds. It was something else entirely to try it on the woman who had taught her everything she knew.

  But she had to. If Dagmar found the book, she’d be in a horrible situation. Liss didn’t want to make her mother choose between loyalty to Gregor and loyalty to her daughter. It would break her.

  Determination gripped her, and she met her mother’s eyes with an appreciative look. Dagmar was just wrapping up the story of her own presentation at court, a story that Liss had heard quite a few times before. As the story drew to a close, she touched her mother’s arm.

  “You don’t have to worry, Mom. I’ll be fine,” she said.

  “I’m that transparent, am I?” asked Dagmar. “Come, give your mother a hug.”

  That was just the opening that Liss had been hoping for. As she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Dagmar, she shifted her weight, casually nudging the book under the divan with her toe. As they pulled back, she quickly changed the subject before Dagmar could launch into another story.

  “So what’s in the bag?” she asked.

  “It’s…well…”

  Dagmar blushed. In and of itself, a fairly common physical phenomenon, but it took Liss aback. This was Dagmar Lorensson. She wasn’t just legendary within the thrall community; she commanded respect from the vampires themselves, and that was unheard of. Her exploits were the stuff of legend. She’d hunted down an entire coterie of vampires who had given up on thralls and started feeding on—and killing—normal humans. During the Christmas revolt against King Viktor a few years ago, she’d corralled Liss and all of the other underage thralls into their penthouse and held the doors against a small flock of vampires. She’d even shot one of them with a crossbow. Normally, thralls who sent vampires to the final death were executed, but she’d gotten a medal and a chance to sit on the court dais with the king.

  “What is it?” Liss asked, trying for calm.

  “I’m sorry.” Dagmar chuckled a little, but it sounded forced. “I’m scaring you. I don’t mean to, but if there’s one thing I’m not the best at, it’s the gushy stuff.”

  Liss was fairly sure she meant romance. Because they’d dissected a body together, and neither of them had had a problem with that type of gushy stuff.

  “What exactly do you mean, gushy stuff? Look, just show me what’s in the bag,” said Liss.

  Dagmar seemed about to say something, but instead she opened the bag and pulled out a flesh colored Spanx bodysuit.

  Liss couldn’t resist the smart comment that rose to her lips. “I thought Spanx were supposed to hold in the gushy stuff,” she said.

  “The bodysuit has nothing to do with your figure. I suggest it because…” Dagmar took a deep breath and launched in, speaking with nervous speed. “I’ve told you that vampires have narcotic saliva, but I failed to mention that it also has aphrodisiac qualities, and this is a line of defense to keep you from doing something you might regret later.”

  “I…wait. What?”

  “You’re telling me that you’re worried I’m going to get a taste of his spit,” Liss practically gagged at the thought, “and get so horny that I’m going to rip off my clothes?”

  “Exactly. If he kisses or bites you, I want you to be prepared for the result. And this is very difficult to remove. It will give you time to recover control. Please don’t get me wrong; Gregor wouldn’t take advantage. Our family is a valuable asset to him, and he knows that mistreating you will compromise that relationship. But it would be very awkward for you to throw yourself at him on what’s essentially the first date, yes?”

  This brought up a very uncomfortable line of thought, because it seemed to Liss that the most logical way for Dagmar to know this was to have experienced it herself. And what about her dad or her brother? The point of having four thralls—no more, no less—was to spread around the feeding so no one got too anemic. She wondered if Tait wanted to rip his clothes off when Gregor fed on him, but the thought was too disturbing.

  “I don’t want to know any more. Hand over the uncomfortable undergarments,” she said.

  Vampire society had been built on restraint. Even showing a dot of blood on your clothing served as grounds for dismissal from high society. Propriety wasn’t just polite, but essential to fitting into human society. With that in mind, the private lobby leading to court wasn’t much to look at, not by Vegas standards. Nothing blinked or spouted water in time to a soundtrack or dripped diamonds. It was just a little room dominated by a set of wood paneled double doors. The fancy silk wallpaper was dotted with paintings from an obscure Italian artist whose name Liss couldn’t remember. Her father had told her once, during a daytime tour of the facility du
ring one school holiday or another.

  A pair of untitled vampires flanked the closed double doors, hands clasped behind their backs and fangs sheathed. Still, their pallor gave them away, to Liss’s eye. Up here, they didn’t bother with makeup or special lighting designed to minimize their strange appearance as they did down in the public areas of the casino. A curly wired earpiece led under the lapel of their identical black suits, contributing to their impressive air.

  Liss stepped off the elevator. Her skirt got caught on the door, and her brother Tait had to free it quickly before the doors shut on it.

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling.

  Tait was tall and rakish. He wore his blond hair a little longer than their father liked, and spent hours artfully sculpting it with gel every morning until it didn’t look styled at all. But under the bad boy grin and the swagger in his step was a keen mind for the politics of business. He was good at getting people to not only agree with what he’d wanted, but to think it was their idea in the first place. He’d already begun to make his mark in the boardrooms of the vampire community, and he was a shoe-in to take their father’s place running the Renaissance for the House of Valdemar when the time came.

  He winked before turning to the antechamber door guards, hands clasped behind his back, the bright metal of his fancy watch glittering at his wrist.

  “Who are you?” asked the guard on the left, eyeing Liss with suspicion.

  “My name is Anneliese Dagmar Lorensson.”

  She held out her wrist, the inside of which was marked with the crest of the Valdemar line, a sword crossed with a coin on a field of red. The brand marked her as their property, untouchable by anyone or anything else in the supernatural community. It was inked with Gregor’s blood, and the guard vamp’s nostrils flared as he ran his nose over the tattoo. She felt his tongue flick out to taste her skin, and her hand jerked involuntarily. This wasn’t part of protocol, not at all. He tightened his grip, forcing her to remain still while he completed his inspection. She could feel her mother’s questioning eyes on her back but forced herself to remain still, cheeks blazing. She didn’t want to make a scene, not right before her presentation to Gregor. But she would remember, later.