~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I sighed. I was bored. I had been cooped up with Anne for six weeks, ever since she went and killed her last plaything. Ryder and Daemon were upset with her, but her sexual predelictions made for short span playmates. Not that I missed Deron, but he was a decent vintage. It had been so long since I've had a pure AB negative, but Anne rarely shared her playthings.
My name once upon a time was Drusilla of Mauretania. I was a Princess born of Cleopatra Selene and King Juba II in the land of Nubia. I was brought into this darkness by Ryder, an errant guardsmen of my fathers house. He was changed by a demon one night, and he awoke with an unnatural thirst for blood. I was the first person he had seen. Of course in those days, he had another name, though I don't remember it now. He attacked me and drained me, his remorse was such, that he slit his wrists to die by my side. It was unknown to him that his blood would regenerate me and he himself though weak wouldn't die.
When he found himself still alive, and me changing before his eyes, he took me and fled. We went into the deserts of my mothers homelands of Egypt and hid in what was my mother's crypt, coming out at night to prey on nomadic peoples wandering the desert. We lived like this for many years. Learning how to control the unnatural craving for blood. We soon found that blood was not the only craving we were slave to. Cravings for pleasures of the flesh were riding hard, but in those times, women didn't admit to such things, nor indulge in them. As much changed as I was, Ryder still deferred to me as Princess, and as such he couldn't touch me.
He would go out into the world and find his sins of the flesh, while I remained entombed with my ancestors in a valley in Egypt. After a while, I left there too. Ryder had been gone for many years at this point, centuries perhaps. Time is meaningless to us, so I don't mark its passage. As I wandered Egypt, I heard tales of my Mother and Father, long dead. Dead so long as they'd become only legends, much as Kleopatra herself. I was called The Lost Princess of Nubia by some. There were tales that I'd eloped with a palace guard-these were close to the truth, as I had run away with one, but we'd never had sex. Ryder would never touch me.
I found I was able to walk in sunlight, which made travel less conspicuous in those days, since many cities and towns closed their gates from sundown to sunup. I had discovered this by accident, as Ryder told me the sun hurt his skin, a pain worse than one thousand lashings. I feared the sun, but learned to deal with the slight unpleasant burn from it.
But this story isn't about me or my wanderings. It's about Ryder and L'Oublié. They have been the guardians of Sang saint for the past two millenia. Ryder had turned a number of Templar Knights in order to ensure the protection of Sang Saint throughout time. When there is a male member of Sang Saint, L'Oublié bring him to Lac Du Rouge to one of the Queens, and she would breed from him. Ryder was obsessed with the continuation of the Magdeline bloodline. He even claimed he was the reason for Jesus ressurection, and that Jesus still roamed this earth from time to time.
I've never had to breed from the Sang Saint, being a mere Princess of a Heretic Queen. Only Christian Queens were bred to Sang Saint, so I was thankful for small favors. Anne was quite adament when she was bred, she wanted to keep the children. They were usually given to another Sang Saint family. I was given to Anne, to be a companion and keeper.
~
Daemon stalked through the halls of Lac Du Rouge looking for Anne. She was becoming more and more insulent as the years pass. In her time, she was an old woman, thirty one years old, in this modern time, she was still considered young, and she was determined to act like a teenager. Daemon had been the keeper of Drusilla and Anne for four hundred years. Just as Drusilla had been in charge of Anne since Anne had been saved from the gallows and turned.
He followed Ryder as Ryder was the only one older than himself that he'd ever met. He suspected he and Ryder shared a maker, but there was no real way to be sure about that. DeMarrias vanished from the cold country almost as soon as Daemon was turned. Daemon was determined to find and kill his maker for granting him this living torment. As the world shrunk, Daemon and Ryder determined that they wouldn't drink their fill, so they were constantly hungry.
Daemon lived on "the little drink" taking some from here and some from there at night clubs where women were too drunk to protest his coming into close contact with them. Princess Drusilla sometimes sated his thirst with her own royal blood, which was an exotic flavor all its own. Ryder was ever her champion and still her loyal servant, though he was her Master under the laws that governed their race.
They'd been known as vampires for a little over one hundred years now. A nickname he still wasn't used to. But then, for some as old as Drusilla, Ryder and himself, one hundred years was only a couple days in their conception of time. He walked with a heavy tread, even though he could be light as air if he wanted. Anne-Her Grace-as she styled herself, preferred to hear the footfalls of company. A throwback to her time. He'd seen it many times, it was the downfall of older vampires, a failure to adapt to modern customs as they come.
Daemon generally liked the castle Lac Du Rouge set on the shores of a small lake in an isolated part of Northern California. Drusilla walked from one of the rooms of the inner chambers of the castle and greeted him.
"Daemon. I expected you earlier. But of course L'Oublié would keep you busy." She greeted. Daemon smiled and showed a bit of fang. "The Forgotten, how mean spirited you are my Princess." Drusilla laughed then and bowed her head. She was a gorgeous woman, people would notice her. Tall, with hair thick and long and black as night. She went to a museum once to see an exhibit on Cleopatra, and people remarked that she looked strikingly similar to busts of her grandmother. Drusilla then got plastic surgery to make her appearance more modern and less handsome. But to him, she was beautiful, no matter how she changed her face.
"I assume you are here to speak to Madame about that unfortunate incident involving Deron?" Drusilla asked coyly. "Unfortunate incident? You are still a polititian Princess. She killed her lover and threw him from her rooms via the window. She's become unstable." Daemon groaned. Drusilla shrugged. "Anne will see nobody. She's barricaded in her rooms. I've tried sending playboys to her to entice her to eat, but she won't. She wants him Daemon. She wants Ryder and will have no other." Drusilla told him.
Daemon sighed. Damn Ryder for turning this unstable Queen. "She wants Bam. She gets more and more irrational as her wants are not met. But Ryder doesn't want her. Never wanted her like that...she's bore him three Sang Saint children and lost them to Sang Saint families." Drusilla said. Daemon smiled. "I'm starting to wonder if it was you who released rumors of Sang Saint." He said. Ryder was disturbed when The Da Vinci Code came out. Most people knew Ryder as Bam, he'd made a name for himself doing stunts and whatnot.
"You haven't fed. I can feel your hunger beating at me." She told him. At Lac Du Rouge there were founts for drinking. They signed legal documents absolving L'Oublié of liability. "I'd rather not drink from one of Anne's boytoys." Daemon told her. Drusilla laughed and motioned him forward to the inner chambers.
~
"Me suivre." I told Daemon, leading him into my own chambers, not the public chambers that Anne had insisted upon when we met with the builders two hundred years ago. "Ryder will not like you taking me to your chambers Princess." Daemon warned. I merely laughed. Unless Daemon told Ryder what I did, there was no way he'd know, any way, Daemon was hungry, and I was bored.
My chambers are very Victorian. I have a deep abiding love of what is now called antiques. When I was a child, we slept on slim couches, ate with our fingers whilst sitting on the floor on pillows at a table that was barely waist high. I loved medieval England and it's odd mishmash of customs from old Rome and Gaul. I enjoyed Daemon's company, he was just as strange to me as English customs. He was from a far North land, where it was always cold. He was taller than even my father Juba and while as milk-though that could be the vampiric blood. He had hair the color of sunlight and eyes as cold as his homeland. He was absolutely gorgeous.
I reached up to my shoulders and unpinned my Chiton. I still dressed as an Egyptian, even in this modern time, I preferred linen chitons to horrible cotton clothes. Anne also preferred to dress in the style of her times, often covering her head with a french veil. In this part of California, we were believed to be descendants from the original ladies who owned this house. "Princess, I must protest..." he started as I walked towards him, naked to the waist. "Why?" I asked him. "Who will tell Ryder? Anne? He won't speak to Anne, he never does anymore. Her obsession with men is dangerous, I'd just as soon drain her as live with her any longer." I told him.
His arms wrapped around me, and I smiled. I had drank my fill from numerous donors that day. I felt his breath on my throat as he brought his face down. "Thank you Sot Flicka." He whispered before he sank his fangs into my throat.
~
Her blood flooded my mouth thicker and hotter than any I've ever tasted. Royalty of an ancient line. Her breathy moans and fingers knotted in my hair made me lose control of myself. Drusilla always made me lose control. Try as I might, I could not refuse her. I knew once more I would submit to the pleasures of her bed.
I had come here to deal with the errant Queen Anne. Ryder had decided it was time she took her rightful place in the grave at Westminster Abbey. She was useless to him now. Only royal by marraige. Ryder far preferred Elizabeth, once called The Virgin Queen, and Anne's daughter. Ryder had made her immortal on her twentieth birthday, before she took the crown. Daemon himself didn't find any beauty in the English Queens. The British women were too much social climbers, always looking for a rich husband with a lofty title. And he found them immensely plain.
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