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“I don’t turn kids,” Daud said, matter-of-fact and annoyed, like he’d heard Billie’s request too often. Blood still stained the corner of his mouth. She’d watched from a stairwell as Daud slit two men’s throats and sunk his teeth into the third before the bodies fell to the pavement.
Billie scowled. Before she had seen Daud, vampires were only the province of nightmares and myths. But if she could rip someone’s throat out with her teeth, she wouldn’t have to give a fuck about her bad luck.
“If you’re interested, though, there is a less…permanent way to share this power.”
She had always been weak. Fast and quiet, too; but she had to be, because there was always someone stronger than little Lurk. Daud’s blood in her veins changed that. So did the blade he taught her to use. Billie bragged, though it made her no friends. No one else was worth that much of his time.
“He doesn’t turn anyone,” Rufus said after target practice. “Heard the last one he did gave him that scar.”
That wasn’t what he told her, and she won’t be a kid forever. Billie nodded and poked at the tip of one too-sharp canine.
She was twenty when he bit her for the first time, burns from overseer flares painted black across his face.
“Just do it.” Billie tugged at her collar, frowned, and added, “unless it’d kill me.” She didn’t owe him that much.
Daud wasn’t a martyr, either. His hands trembled as he pushed aside the edge of her mask. She could get used to seeing him weak like this, she thought, and then his fangs sank into her skin.
After, Daud swiped his glove across mouth and didn’t meet her eyes. “You should drink something. Not alcohol.”
“You’re welcome,” Billie said.
Daud turned her a week before Dunwall Tower. “You’ll have time to adjust,” he said calmly, like he hadn’t paced a hole in his office floor.
Looking back, Billie remembered little about dying. She drank a lot of Daud’s blood, and his blade felt like a sharp pinch as it slid up between her ribs. So that’s what it’s like, she thought, before she had to claw her way out of her grave.
Daud eyed Billie as if expecting her to start attacking everything in sight.
“Wanna get something to drink?” she asked, and shook the dirt from her hair.
The morning after they docked in Serkonos, Emily Kaldwin emerged too pale from her cabin and her hands left dents in the door handles. Meagan couldn’t hear her heartbeat. She wondered how long it would take Emily to realize the same.
Before they left for the shore Meagan dug up a spare bone charm from her desk. If Emily was turned directly by the Outsider, the sun wouldn’t bother her much; still, more protection couldn’t hurt. “Raw meat helps too.”
“How do you—” Emily began, looked at Meagan’s injuries, and stopped. “Thank you,” she said finally. “Father never…thanks.”