The Sweetest Blood

Chapter 8

 Five points if you can finish the saying Damien mentions in the first few paragraphs!  I updated twice, so make sure you've read chapter 7.

Chapter 8 (Damien)

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How many licks does it take?

Was that how that saying went?  I think it had to do with lolly pops or something.  How many licks does it take to get to the center of a…

I can’t really remember.  Besides,the original saying doesn't matter.

It’s the many ways it can be applied.  For instance, when dealing in lycan blood the main question was, how many bites does it take?

How man bites before the werewolf’s body shut down in a reaction to vampire venom?

I’ll give you the answer: for the average off-the street werewolf, ten. 

That’s it.  Ten little nibbles—ten inductions of venom—was all a dog could withstand before its body reacted violently and shut down.  Lycans faired a little better, but the average maximum was only twenty. 

Tops. 

Maybe it was because I wasn’t hooked on the stuff.   Or maybe I was just that much of a selfish bastard, but it didn’t make sense to me why Marcus, and his dealer pals, risked so much for so little. 

Was life in vampiric prison—or worse, pissing off an entire pack of pure blooded lycans—worth a few pathetic, measly drops of blood?

Apparently it was, because Marcus wasted no time in making sure that I headed straight to the dealers as soon as I had some off time.  He paid me extra of course, but it made no difference.

I had no choice but to follow the prince’s orders until my mission was complete—however long that took.  Besides, doing something dangerous gave me that prickling rush of excitement I’d been missing after months spent in the cushy nest of vampiric civilization.       

I had never been the ‘civilized sort’ and there was nothing like the prospect of smuggling fresh, full-blooded lycans from their sheltered territories to get a man’s cold, dead heart pumping.  

Not everyone’s cup of tea, but to each his own. 

Besides, the gritty trade helped drill in just how fragile life could be…even for immortals.

I was forced to realize that even more as I slipped between the dark alleys of the city in the direction of the den where I knew the smugglers hang.  They were a pretty predictable sort…and let’s just say that before my cushy position with the Royals, I had done my fair share of illegal activity to get by. 

I had friends in places so low they were practically underground.

Mingling with princes was a fairly new crowd for me—I was a street rat at heart. 

Once and for all.   And, like a good rat, I knew how to seek out my own kind. 

It doesn’t take long to find them, the dog blood dealers.

They were camped out front of a shabby old warehouse near the town’s edge.  Which was just plain stupidity in action.  Even in vampiric city, like this one—where mysterious folk lurking on the corners was sort of the norm—I was still shocked to find the dealers standing so boldly out in the open.