Marked For Service by Kristen Painter

Posted October 25, 2012 by Karen in Authors, Guest Post / 1 Comment

The comarré are a specially bred human hybrid whose sole purpose is to provide blood and graceful companionship to the vampire nobility. Think of them as blood geishas, if you like. Male (comars) and female all look very similar – blonde hair, blue eyes and carmine lips. Their appearance is designed to recall some of the things vampires gave up – sunlight and blue sky – and to remind them of what they desire most – blood. To a vampire, the comarré have a glow about them much like sunlight. They are drawn to it like moths to the proverbial flame. And the perfume that surrounds the comarré is sweet and seductive and utterly intoxicating.

But most noticeable about the comarré is the scrollwork of signum that cover their bodies. These gold tattoos aren’t ink, they’re patterns made by having sacred, liquid gold stitched into the comarré’s skin. And they don’t just mark the individual as comarré, but also serve to purify the blood further. Only through ritualistic preparations and deep, trancelike mediation are the comarré able to handle the intense pain of the signumist’s needle.

There are sets of signum, some the same for male and female, some specifically for each. The individual signumist, the comarré equivalent of a tattoo artist, interprets the sets in their own way and renders them with their own flare. Despite the sets, only one signum is required – the phoebus or sun signum – and it always goes on the same place on the body, the back of the neck. Other than that, the amount of signum each comarré bears is up to them, but the more signum, the purer their blood and the greater their worth.

Chrysabelle, my heroine, has an extraordinary amount of signum, but like other comarré she kept getting them even after her blood rights were purchased for one simple reason. The time required to heal meant time alone. Time away from her patron, time away from the requirements of a life lived for someone else’s pleasure.

Comarré live by many rules. No alcohol, no drugs (even painkillers, hence the need for deep mediation when getting their signum) and the utmost respect for their patrons. Likewise, their patrons are expected to treat them in a similar fashion. The taking of blood occurs through a bite on the wrist, never the neck, which is seen as too intimate. In exchange, the comarré receive the input of vampire saliva and the power that comes with it – enhanced senses, greater strength, relative immortality. But unlike the vampires they serve, these attributes only last as long as the bites continue. Lose your patron, lose your power. This is the life of the comarré.

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