Free Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (The Order Saga Book 1) by Brian McKinley Page A

Caroline’s bios of the Hegemons had piqued my interest.
    How many chances do you get to meet a real live evil despot?
    We stood in the entrance hall and waited for over half an hour before the first one arrived. Even then, it turned out to be a serious bore-a-palooza. We’re talking four hours of Senate coverage on C-Span here.
    The only interesting arrival was the Shen representative of Asia. There have been and are other species of vampire in the world besides Vampyrs. Most were simply wiped out when encountered by The Order. Now, Shen is an interesting term for them to choose, since it can mean everything from spirit to ghost to god when translated to English. The Shen are the only vampire race to defend their territory against the encroachment of The Order and, in 1901, were permitted to join as equals and take a seat on the ruling council. Part of their ability to stave off invasion had to be their perfect comfort with sunlight. They can also eat food and, in most cases, are impossible to tell apart from humans.
    Remember my first date science-fest with Caroline? Our best theory was that some kind of non-corporeal entity (the “demon” of folklore) existed and was able to enter bodies on the verge of death. This entity then absorbed the host’s personality as its own and was able to hold the body in a fixed state as long as it received supplemental energy through feeding. Caroline wasn’t satisfied with this theory, because it left more questions unanswered than answered, but it was the only thing we had that fit the handful of facts she’d been able to collect on these mysterious vampires.
    The Guaiwu , on the other hand, are the basis of many of those Chinese vampire legends and stories I’ve read. In mythology, they’re called Ch’iang-shich, Gongshi, Jiangshi, and Kuangshi depending on the translation used, but the term means “stiff-corpse” and generally refers to those hopping vampires you see in Hong Kong vampire movies. The real guaiwu are savage creatures with white hair covering their bodies, solid red eyes, talons at the ends of their fingers and a mouth full of fangs. The Shen use them as a slave race. We have no good explanation for them except that they are distantly related to Draco’s revenants.
    The Hegemon of Asia, a Shen, calls herself Jade Tiger. That’s not a real Chinese name, for those of you unfamiliar with Chinese naming customs, it’s a total pseudonym. I think it’s a precaution against being able to use their name to cast spells against them.
    She brought a dozen servants! The others brought one or two, four at the most. They all came marching into the entrance hall in this grand procession with incense, gongs and cymbals, separated into columns that matched the ones we stood in and then in came her four Abominable Snowmen bodyguards carrying her on a fucking litter! The litter, of course, could have been a prop from Curse of the Golden Flower : gold and jewels and silk pillows covered with ornately sculpted Chinese dragons and tigers. Lying on it, she wore a modern red silk dress.
    According to Caroline, it was one of her more restrained entrances.
    Jade Tiger looks like a Chinese woman in her early twenties with a flawless complexion, delicate facial bones, full lips and a pearl-white smile full of even teeth. Her eyes are deep, sparkling black opals that seek yours out with a ravenous sexual hunger no matter what she’s saying. Her hair is a shimmering waterfall of black silk that flows all the way down to the small of her back and, I swear, it looks so soft and inviting that you almost have to fight to keep from burying your face in it. As for the rest of her attributes, well, suffice it to say that everything she has is in perfect proportion (maybe a little larger in the chest than most Asian women) and she knows how to show all of it to her best advantage.
    I hate admitting this but when Jade Tiger strolled up to Sebastian, I felt a desire that was almost painful. That