Chapter 1: Tainted Blood
A blood moon hung in the sky.
Candles flickered in the underground assembly hall of St. Paul’s Cathedral. High-ranking vampires draped in velvet cloaks, crystal goblets filled with blood in hand, chatted and laughed in small groups. The air was thick with the mingled scent of expensive musk and fresh blood—the fragrance of the upper class.
And I was curled up behind the stone pillar in the last row.
I wore a tattered hoodie that hadn’t been changed in three days, the hood pulled low as I tried my best to shrink into the shadow of the pillar. My skin had an unnatural greyish-white pallor in the candlelight, like a rotting corpse freshly dug from the ground. It couldn’t be helped—it was the trademark look of tainted bloods: perpetually malnourished and wretched.
“Well, well, look who decided to show up.”
A shrill voice pierced through the noise, and my heart seized sharply.
The clicking of high heels against the stone floor grew closer. I stared fixedly at the ground until a pair of blood-red stilettos with crushed diamonds embedded in the uppers appeared in my line of sight, refracting blinding flashes of light in the candle flames.
Victoria Ashworth. Pureblood nobility. The blood of seventh-generation vampires ran through her veins, making her one of the most powerful women in this sacred city. The attendants behind her were like a pack of hyenas, grinning in anticipation of watching their prey get torn apart.
“Cain Lockwood,” she sang out my name like an aria, as if pronouncing a death sentence. “Am I seeing things? A tainted blood, afraid even of sunlight, daring to come to the assembly?”
I lifted my head slowly.
She looked down at me from above, her crimson lips curving into a cruel arc. Her pale blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders. She was breathtakingly beautiful, but her gaze looked at me as if I were nothing more than garbage.
“I’m just here to pick up my monthly blood ration,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Ration?” Victoria raised an eyebrow and glanced back at her attendants, who immediately burst into knowing laughter. “A tainted blood thinks he deserves a ration?”
She extended a foot.
The blood-red toe of her shoe pressed precisely against my chest—then shoved violently.
I flew backward like a piece of ragged cloth, my spine slamming against the stone steps with a dull crack. My body tumbled uncontrollably down the stairs. Six steps. I fell down every single one, my forehead striking a stone edge, warm liquid streaming down my brow.
It was blood. My blood. Dark red, thin, carrying a rusty iron tang. They called it “filthy blood.”
“How pitiful,” Victoria said from the top of the steps, her voice dripping with condescending pity. “Turned by some stray vampire into this… thing. Where’s your sire now? Oh, that’s right—the Templars burned him to ashes. Why won’t this defective piece of trash just die already?”
Defective piece of trash.
The words hit my heart like a red-hot branding iron.
Three years ago, on a rainy night, I was seventeen when a blood-soaked stray vampire sank his teeth into my neck in an alley in the old district. He looked like he was dying, the light fading from his eyes, but as he bit me, he kept mumbling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t want to die.”
I didn’t get a choice. With his last strength, he completed the embrace, then died in my arms.
Three years. For three years, I survived on the monthly ration of low-grade blood bags this sacred city gave out. I had seen countless mocking looks. I learned to lower my head and clench my fists whenever everyone looked down on me.
But today, Victoria’s kick had knocked all the pent-up humiliation right out of me.
I slowly picked myself up from the ground and wiped the blood from my forehead. The assembly hall went quiet for a moment. Everyone was looking at me—eyes filled with mockery, disgust, and the gleeful thrill of watching a train wreck.
A tall man stepped out from Victoria’s entourage. He pulled a grimy grey-white rag from his pocket and tossed it carelessly onto my face.
The rough fabric scraped against my wound. The sharp pain made me suck in a cold breath.
“Cover that face of yours,” the man said. “Stop embarrassing the vampire kind.”
I stared at the rag. The flickering candlelight reflected in my pupils.
I didn’t bend down to pick it up.
I turned around and limped step by step toward the exit.
Victoria’s laughter echoed behind me: “Run along, tainted blood. Crawl back into your rat hole and never come out again.”
