My Vampire System novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Null
At the Academy's Resonance test the stone reads Ingrid as zero, Venn sends her to the Annex, and Major Sebastian Rook claims her as his ward.
The stone was black, waist high, and it hummed when the cadet in front of me touched it.
It glowed red under his palm.
The whole Great Hall of Ravenhurst Military Academy clapped, because red meant a strong resonance and a strong resonance meant rank.
I was eighteen years old, and I had been in the building for forty minutes.
My grandfather had died in June.
His will had included one envelope, and the envelope held my acceptance letter.
I had read it so many times the folds had gone soft.
"Next," the instructor said. "Solheim, Ingrid."
I walked up the aisle in my gray cadet uniform with my braid pulled so tight my scalp hurt.
Two hundred first-years watched me.
On the dais sat the Council's inspector, a silver-haired vampire in a long black coat.
He had a gentle smile, and he had not stopped smiling since I came in.
I put my hand on the stone.
It was cold.
I waited.
The room waited with me.
Nothing glowed, nothing hummed, and the stone sat under my palm.
Somebody in the back laughed.
"Null," the instructor read from his tablet. "Resonance zero."
The laugh spread.
"Cadet Solheim," the inspector said, and his voice was warm as tea. "I am Alaric Venn, Councilor of the Blood Council."
"Sir."
"The Accord is clear on Nulls. You cannot hold a bond, and you cannot be a ward."
"I have an acceptance letter."
"You have a mistake," he said kindly. "The Annex needs hands. You will scrub, you will cook, and in two years you will be discharged with a small stipend."
The Annex was the service wing behind the kitchens.
Everybody knew what it was.
Two guards stepped off the wall and started down the aisle toward me.
I should have kept my head down.
My grandfather would have told me to keep my head down.
"No," I said.
The hall went quiet in a new way.
"I'm enrolled," I said. "I'm staying in the program."
Venn tilted his head.
That was when the gold appeared.
It opened in the air in front of my face, a thin window of light with letters that burned in my eyes.
LEDGER OF BONDS.
HEIR CONFIRMED: INGRID SOLHEIM.
LEVEL 1.
I looked left and right.
Nobody else was looking at it.
Nobody else could see it.
Under the letters a line of text blinked.
INHERITANCE ACCEPTED. A SIRE IS REQUIRED.
The guards reached me, and one of them took my elbow.
"Stop."
The voice came from the side wall, low and flat, and the guard let go before he had decided to.
A man stepped out of the line of officers.
He wore dress grey with a major's bars, and he had cropped silver-fair hair and a scar that cut through his left eyebrow.
He looked about thirty.
He moved like someone who had been walking into rooms for a hundred years and had never once asked permission.
"Major Rook," Venn said. "This does not concern Fourth Company."
"It does if I say it does." The major did not look at him. He looked at me. "Fourth Company has a free bond seat."
"She is a Null."
"The Accord says any officer with an open seat may bind any enrolled cadet." He walked down the dais steps. "It does not say the cadet must glow."
My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
He stopped in front of me, close enough that I smelled cold air and wool.
Up close his eyes were the grey of wet slate.
"Give me your wrist, Cadet."
I held it out.
He didn't take it the way you take a wrist.
He laid two fingers along the inside of it and pressed, the way a medic does, and then his thumb slid up and rested on my pulse.
The whole hall watched his thumb.
"Fast," he said quietly.
"Yes, sir."
"Afraid?"
"No."
His mouth moved at one corner.
"Liar," he said. "Good. You're going to need that."
He let go of me.
My wrist burned where his thumb had been, a heat that went up my arm and sat low in my stomach.
"Councilor," he said, turning. "Cadet Solheim is bound to my company as of this hour. I'll file the papers."
Venn's smile did not change.
"Of course, Major." He steepled his long fingers. "For now."
The two words landed on the back of my neck.
Then the major was walking out, and I was supposed to follow, so I did.
We were halfway down the stone corridor before he spoke again.
"Don't thank me."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
The gold window opened in front of me again, and I almost walked into the wall.
BOND QUEST 1: BE FED UPON.
REWARD: LEVEL 2. PULSE +3.
TIME LIMIT: TONIGHT.
I read it twice.
The major stopped at the end of the corridor with his back to me.
He could not have seen it.
He could not have known.
"My quarters," he said. "Twenty-two hundred."
He didn't turn around.
"Wear your uniform, Cadet Solheim, because I will be the one taking it off."
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