One of the humans apparently hadn’t been paying attention, because why the fuck would he, and he brought his hand up to ask a question. “Why is it in the basement?” the human male asked.
Othello smiled at the human like he was struggling to be patient. Listen here, bitch. “Once you join the turned, the sun will burn your skin and turn you to ash.” As if on cue, the humans looked at the enormous window behind me. The warmth of the sun was pouring through the paned glass onto my arms and back. Damn, it felt nice, like a soft comfy blanket. “This is your last chance to feel the sunlight,” Othello warned them. “You will never walk outside in the sun again.” We waited, but none of the humans walked over to the window to soak in the sun. They’d already accepted their new life.
That made my job easier, thank god.
Olivier picked up the enormous ice chest filled with bagged blood and followed me to the basement door. The humans started a line behind us, and we all started walking down the darkened hallway that led downstairs.
“Hey,” one of the humans whispered, trying to catch up with me. I kept walking but turned my head to look at him. He was an older man and had a kind face. “What’s in the ice chest?”
Olivier made a frustrated noise and grumbled in a pitch only I could hear, “Don’t fucking humans ever pay the fuck attention?” A mystery for all the ages.
Still, I smiled at the man, channeling all the patience I knew I had. “It’s blood. All part of the process.”
We reached the doors to the basement staircase and the human male stood very close to me as the group stopped. Back that ass up, son. “I thought we’d be given a feeder.”
This bitch.
“Companion,” I corrected with a twinge of annoyance. Calling our companions feeders was extremely rude. A feeder was a hit and run drink, like a one-night stand, and we didn’t treat humans that way. Making them our companions gave them anything they needed in return for their service. It was only polite. “You won’t be given a companion for the first month, not until you’ve learned to control your thirst.” I glanced at Olivier, and with a nod, I opened the doors and let the humans in.
At the bottom of the stairs was the enormous turned dormitory. There were rows of coffins, each with a small nightstand and dresser next to it. The coffins weren’t necessary, it was just a bit of vampire humor, like Olivier’s wardrobe. You couldn’t say we didn’t have a sense of humor.
There was no electricity in this room, and dozens of candles lit our way across the stone floor to the rest of my Order, all Born vampires. They stood in a circle in the center of the chamber, waiting for us to reach them. The younger vampires would turn at least one human. The older vampires, myself included, would turn however many we needed to. I glanced at my clipboard and called out all the humans’ names and which vampire was to turn them. Olivier and I had three humans, and Othello had four.
Then it began.
The room started to stink of fear. No matter how much preparation the humans had had, seeing us drop our fangs brought out their primal fear, and it wasn’t surprising. They were our prey and had been for thousands of years. Only within the last few centuries had we become a civilized species. Well, most of us. Some of us still liked to fuck shit up, but we dealt with them accordingly.
The younger Born drank from their assigned human, just a pint or so. My three humans stood nearby, one of them the human male that had spoken to me. Their faces paled in fear when I dropped my fangs and leaned into the first human’s neck. The woman’s blood filled my mouth, and my entire body seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Fuck, I hadn’t noticed my hunger until I was already drinking. I was careful to not drink too much from them, not to spare them the effects of blood loss, but so I didn’t over drink. I took only a mouthful from each one.
When every human had been fed from, we tore into our wrists and pressed it to their mouths. The humans were disgusted at the taste of our blood. That would soon change.
As soon as our blood hit their stomachs, the process began. They screamed in white-hot agony and fell to the ground, their bodies no longer willing to support their weight. We backed away as they writhed on the floor, wracked with pain. The vampire blood worked its way through their systems quickly, but Olivier still had enough time to distribute a bag of blood to every Born vampire. I balanced three of the bags in my arms, and we all waited for the writhing and screaming to stop.
The humans soon grew still. They were now technically dead, for the moment. Their bodies had changed. All imperfections were gone. Those that had been old were now young. The overweight had shed every extra pound, and their once pink skin was now pale. They were beautiful in death.
Collectively, they all came back to life, gasping in a breath, and opened their eyes.
They were no longer humans.
They had become the turned.
2. Powdered confections
As soon as the turned opened their eyes, their thirst stirred in a blinding flash. I handed my three their bags of blood, and they tore into the plastic with their new fangs. Blood spilled, half in their mouths and half on their clothes. One bag was enough to keep them from becoming drones, the mindless servants we can create but are forbidden to. A disappointing rule, because everyone wants fucking servants, amirite? Kidding.
Now the next stage began: the turned would be denied blood until they could control themselves. We overpowered them and locked one in each of the coffins in the room.
Then the real screams began.
The screams during the turning were bad enough, but the screams during this process were maddening. Imagine the sound of someone seeing their family murdered in front of them while being burned with acid and having their hair pulled out. Not only were the screams ones of physical pain, they were filled with emotional agony. It was fucking disconcerting on every level, and I wanted to turn my goddamn ears off. We all had the same look. We were used to this. We did it every year. But the screams. The shouting, ranting, and clawing. God, I could never get used to them. It would be days before the turned had learned control. The screaming would continue until tomorrow, at the earliest, and only if we were lucky.
Unable to take it anymore, I excused myself, along with a few others who had things to do. Olivier walked beside me until I reached the kitchen cafeteria room. The door opened to the clean white walls and stainless steel appliances, the only room of our home that was completely upgraded and up to date. Cameron stood in the cooking section, eating an orange. He smiled tentatively at me when we approached. The screams still floated up to us, muffled, but there. He couldn’t hear them as well as we could, but the look on his face said he could hear them well enough.
“What was it like?” he asked. We both froze and stared at him. He’d never asked that before, not in the ten years he’d been here.
“You want to know about the turning?” I asked him in disbelief, leaning against the polished metal door of one of the fridges.
He waved his hand at me in dismissal. “No, not that. I mean before there was bagged blood. Before you had rules about turning.”
Olivier quirked an eyebrow at him. “Son, you really don’t want to know our history.”
He bit into his orange and stared at her, more serious than I’d ever seen him. “I asked,” he said firmly. “I want to know.”
Olivier leaned one hip against the dark countertops. “You know how they say history is written by the victors? Well, our phrase is: history is written by the humans. And humans can be…persuaded…to forget what really happened.”
“Shit. You are NOT talking mind control.” He looked over at me. “Is she talking mind control? Like, I’d rather not pay my tab tonight thank you, or you will give me your ticket to see Bob Marley?”
I scrunched up my mouth, not wanting to answer. Everyone has their illicit topics. “It’s technically forbidden now. But yes, we can do it.” Cameron’s mouth popped open in shock. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or being serious. “It’s only possible if you fe
ed multiple times a day, and even then, you have to be a few hundred years old to boot.”
“Give me an example,” he said, turning his body so he could see both of us. “Something in history that was fucked with.”
Olivier pulled herself onto the black marble countertop and inspected her long nails. “You’ve heard of the Black Plague? The sweating sickness?” He nodded, so she grinned widely, showing her fangs. “Vampires.”
Cameron’s mouth popped back open. “You’re fucking joking.”
I shook my head and picked up an apple from the fruit basket on the expensive marble countertop that Olivier shouldn’t be sitting on. “Almost every plague was an altered event that involved vampires. Maybe there was an actual sickness that had spread. It was never to the degree of a plague though. The death tolls rose because of us.”
“That’s what happens when you let turned ass loose before they’ve learned control,” said Olivier in a reproaching tone. “And even though we’re born with control, the Born have been known to break the rules now and then. There was one Born vampire that changed hundreds of humans in an instant. His ass bit hundreds across a city over several months and dropped his blood in their water supply. Then they turned, without any supervision or training. It was a goddamn massacre waiting to happen.” I scraped at my apple’s peel and studied the floor. The past had its ghosts, that much was certain.
Cameron clicked his tongue, making me look up. “You act so damned repulsed by murder. You can’t tell me neither of you has ever killed before.” I opened my mouth, then closed it, and continued running my nails against the apple in my hand. I felt some peel come off.
“There’s a difference between killing to feed and killing just to kill,” I said quietly.
Olivier didn’t feel as bad as I did about that part of our past. “We did what we had to. To protect the masses, and to survive. Don’t fault us for that.”
“That’s just it,” he said, looking down. “I’m not sure I do, to tell you the truth. I guess that’s what bothers me.” He tossed his orange peel into the trash bin and left the room.
Olivier watched him go then glanced back at me. “What was all that shit about? He’s never been interested in us before.” I shrugged. In the past decade, he’d never asked me about my life before him beyond the occasional crack at our decor. He’d always given me the impression he would be gone as soon as his time was up. There was a first time for everything, I suppose.
A bloodcurdling scream came from the basement, startling me.
“Shit,” I swore under my breath. Several of the turned were now wailing at the top of their lungs, and it was only going to get worse. I couldn’t handle this crap today. I needed to get out.
After a quick trip upstairs to grab my purse, I trekked down to the turned dormitory and walked past the screaming coffins. Not that I wanted to go that way, but it’s the only route, unfortunately. Whoever designed this castle should be shot, seriously. The underground garage was through a side door between two coffins. I had the status to hire a driver and be driven wherever I wanted to go, but I preferred to drive myself. My car was pretty and black and got all the stares in town. I suspected it was expensive, but I had no idea. A car junkie I was not.
Our large castle was a few minutes outside of the nearest town and it didn’t take me long to drive there. I parked in front of one of the bookstores I frequented and went inside. The smell of books hit me like a relaxing wave and I sighed in relief. Getting lost in the shelves would calm me down enough to face more screaming. Just as I’d found a section to peruse, I felt a breeze and smelled lilac.
Balthazar.
I turned to see my oldest friend, an Incubus. He was wearing a handsome dark blue suit, and his lengthy black hair hung in slight waves. He leaned on his cane and gave me the grin I’d seen from birth. The grin that made human women melt into puddles and beg to be seduced by him.
Gods above, he was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
“Hello, Balthy,” I said with a smile, trying to calm my slowly heating body. “You can stop giving me the Incubus smolder. It’s not appropriate to turn your friends on in public.”
“Hmm… remember what I said I’d do if you called me Balthy again….” He wiggled his eyebrows and reached a hand out to me to extract his punishment.
My smile fell and I gave him a stern glare. “Don’t make me slap you.” He laughed and used his hand to bring me closer for a peck on the cheek.
Balthazar had appeared for the first time when I was a young child. He said he was a friend of my mother’s, a woman I had never known, and he was going to watch over me. His presence in my life was unheard of. The Bicus, Incubi and Succubi, never had anything to do with vampires and Lycans beyond creating us, which was now banned for an unknown reason. Everyone knew about Balthazar, but it was bizarre to the other Born that he liked to visit me. He’d always been around, popping in every so often, and he usually seemed genuinely interested in me and what I was doing. Though sometimes he would get distracted by a human female, and then it was like I didn’t exist.
Like right then, for instance.
He’d been smiling at me, studying my face, when he glanced behind me and suddenly saw prey. I could see the world melt away around him, and all that mattered was the human female he’d spotted. I turned to look at her. She was a little mousy thing, clearly quite pretty under her oversized glasses, but she had no confidence and dressed badly. Underneath the droopy skirt she was wearing, her ass was nice and round. Her golden hair was in a tight bun, the kind men fantasized about pulling the pins out of to see how soft it was as they push her body against the bookshelves. And her lips were so soft and full, you could only guess what kind of sounds would come out of them if you fucked her in the bookstore bathroom. I bet she’d moan like a bitch in heat if you touched her in the right places.
She was an Incubus’s wet dream. She was any man’s wet dream. Hell, even I was fantasizing about her. I hadn’t had a lover in many years, man or woman. A tryst in the shadows didn’t sound like a bad idea, especially with her.
Beside me, Balthazar was also fantasizing about the woman it seemed, and fingernails had started to grow into long claws, the Bicus equivalent of an erection. Rest assured, he had one of those too.
I punched his arm.
He yelped, and his fingernails retracted as he reached up to rub where I’d hit him. I held my fist out, ready to smack his arm again, but the girl picked up a romance novel with a barely dressed sensual couple on the front, and left. He sighed and looked back at me while adjusting his tie and slicking back his hair.
“Thanks for that. I was two seconds away from breaking the rules and tearing her clothes off right here to fuck her against the stacks.”
“I was two seconds away from fighting you for that right, but I know I’d lose.” I was a sex goddess, for certain, but he was sex itself. I’d never get chicks with him here. “On the subject, why is banging humans and creating more children forbidden now? You guys have been doing that for thousands of years, and then a few hundred years ago, suddenly, no more sex. Thoughts?”
He shrugged, being his evasive self. Not that I hadn’t been asking for four hundred years. I’m very persistent. “Lisbeth, my sweet. What shall we do today? I’m up for… anything.” He fluttered his eyelashes at me. Fuuck. I hated it when he did that. I could only be so turned on.
“Do I have to hit you again?”
He clicked his tongue and poked me with his cane. “Come. I require sustenance in the form of powdered doughnuts. Only confections can remove thoughts of sex.”
I picked up a few books I thought looked interesting, including a copy of the sexy book Miss Plump Lips had bought. I paid for them and we left the store. It was unclear to me if Balthazar even needed food, but he usually ate with me whenever he came to visit. As he said, it was the only thing that made him stop focusing on sex. The human women that passed us felt his presence like a sex beacon, each one doing a double take or stopping
in their tracks to stare. The smell of their arousal started to fill the air from his aura. It took focus for me to not be affected by him. Maybe one day I wouldn’t care, and I’d let that aura swallow me whole.
Every woman might’ve been gaping at him, but he continued walking beside me as if he didn’t notice. When it was clear he wasn’t going to talk to them, the humans started glaring at me, so I pulled a book out of my bag and pretended to be absorbed in it. Ohh. A sex scene.
“Great. Just what I need, to be more turned on.” I started putting it back into my bag and Balthazar took it from me.
“What in God’s name are you reading?” I showed him, and he grabbed the book from me. He started to chuckle as he flipped through the pages. “They call this making love? Pssh. I’m much better.” I rolled my eyes.
We arrived at the tea café and walked inside. I took in the beautiful British design the café had as we waited to be seated. The air smelled like strawberry jam and cream with a hint of mint tea leaves. It was the main reason I liked the place. We were led to a table and Balthazar sat down across from me, still reading. The waiter walked up, a handsome male, who obviously preferred the company of men, judging by the once-over he was giving Balthazar. Balthazar was holding the book very close to his face so I couldn’t tell if he noticed the waiter checking him out or not. I ordered doughnuts with raspberry tea and the waiter left.
Balthazar peeked out from the paperback. “Is he gone?” I nodded, so he exhaled and set the book down. “I don’t have a problem with an attractive man, I just can’t impregnate one, so what’s the point.” I stifled a laugh in my hand because he said it so matter of fact-ly. Balthazar took my other hand when he noticed the waiter coming back with our tea. He left again, taking the hint with a slight pout.
I took my hand back and poured us tea from the flowery china teapot. “Just be glad he’s not a woman. Do you seriously not notice what happens when you’re around humans?”
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 2
