“Then you joined the turned army,” I pointed out.
She looked up again and scowled at me. “Not by choice. Born vampires have always treated me with kindness. The rogue coven I lived with for a century was my family. When the turned found us, they slew my friends and expected me to be grateful. I wasn’t going to be their happy soldier, but I let them believe I was if only to discover how to bring them down. I met Cameron at the center of the turned army, and we worked together to get the sunlight formula for your kind. They have to pay for what they did to my friends. I never knew I’d find you here, Jason. I’m glad we finally found each other. Maybe we can spend some time together. Alone.”
I admired her loyalty, but I could’ve done without her attitude. Knight put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Now I’m with this filly,” he said. “And yeah, she’s made mistakes, but I forgave her. I can’t make you forgive her too, but if you choose to hold a grudge for something that doesn’t involve you, I can’t promise I won’t think less of you. That said, I’m glad you’re here. I wish I’d known a long time ago that you were still alive.”
“If she hurts you, I’ll kill her,” Merrick stated blankly, shrugging.
“You’ll have to go through me, half-pint,” Knight retorted angrily. “You’re my sister and I love you, but Lisbeth is my mate. She’d protect you without a thought because you’re family. I’d expect the same from you.” Merrick glanced at me briefly and looked away, pouting.
“Merrick,” I said quietly, drawing her eyes back at me again. “I’m sorry your friends were killed.” My words didn’t make her stop glaring at me. “I thought he was dead. That’s why I did what I did, why my child is here today. They told me he was dead.”
She considered me for a few seconds. “An emotion I am familiar with.” Her finger tapped against her arm. “Fine. I won’t stay mad at you. But…” She pointed at me.
“If I hurt him, you’ll kill me?” I said with a smile.
She smiled back and shook her head. “Maybe not kill. Maim. Break some fingers. Cut your hair. I’m creative.”
“Isn’t she terrifying?” Cameron said with a dreamy smile that she reciprocated.
“That’s fucking perfect. I get my sister back, and she’s moony-eyed over my mate’s friend. We’re having a chat later,” he warned Cameron.
“If I hurt her, blah blah blah,” Cameron said, rolling his eyes.
“How about we stop hurting and start cleaning. The smell in here…” Merrick held a hand to her nose.
It was time to get to work. We all needed to feed. Some only had scrapes, some had lost limbs. Our companions only numbered about one-hundred-fifty now, little more than half our number. We’d lost more vampires than I cared to admit in the fight, but not enough that the ratio evened out. Even if everyone fed from the humans once, the companion would be out twice as much blood, and we needed more than one dose to fix our wounds. We had enough bagged blood to go around so that fixed one problem. A band-aid on the bigger issue, but the solution would have to wait.
Secondly, the castle was trashed. We could’ve filmed a horror movie inside it, easily. I considered the prospect, if only to ease my tension. We could film, ‘evil mindless zombies set to destroy the world with our zombie wolf companions, and the only one who could save us was the tiny hybrid baby that we couldn’t feed from.’ We wouldn’t even need makeup since we were all covered in blood and ick, half from the battle and half from cleaning it all up.
Kitty was in her bouncy seat watching my musings with a happy smile. Knelt over the tile floor, I scrubbed at the blood stains with a bleach solution. I felt like vampire Cinderella, cleaning up after her stupid vampire step-sisters who couldn’t keep their feeding contained. Knight was across the floor running a mop up and down the wall in the higher spaces of the room where the rest of us couldn’t reach. Our sense of smell alerted us to even the tiniest of specks of blood. We wouldn’t miss a single drop. Merrick and Cameron were further down the hallway, far enough away that I couldn’t hear them. Arthur was somewhere else doing damage control.
I knelt back on my heels and wiped at my forehead. Knight looked over at me with a smirk on his face. “You got a little something.” He motioned to several spots on my face. Knowing him, he was teasing me, but I could smell the blood so I knew I had some on me. I’d put on an old black jumper with long sleeves, perfect for wiping my cheeks off. He gave me a thumbs up when I finished, winked, and went back to work.
“Feels like we’re in that video game where you’re cleaning up after someone’s gone through and killed all the NPC’s. ‘Viscera Cleanup Detail.’ Hope I don’t knock my bucket over.” He laughed to himself and stretched to reach a really high spot. His shirt rode up and exposed his lower stomach, capturing all my attention. I was still drooling over that brown valley when he set his mop down and caught me staring. “Enjoying the view?” he teased. “Hoo my, it’s so hot in here.” He pulled his shirt off and flexed for me.
I’d somehow forgotten how to speak.
He walked over, held out my hand, and pulled me into his arms. Bliss. My baby at my feet, my mate in my arms. There was nothing better than this. The setting could be cleaner, though.
“So,” I segued. “Should I call you Jason now?”
He groaned. “Going to kill her for revealing my secret.”
“Mmm,” I said, kissing him tenderly. “I’m not calling you that. It’s not sexy.”
“Thank heaven. I hate my old name.” I wanted to ask why, but he answered for me. “I’m not him anymore. Jason was selfish and unloving. Also, as you said, it’s not sexy. And I am totally,” he pulled my hips closer, “sexy…” His kiss took my breath away, and I never wanted to get it back.
“I do hate to interrupt,” someone said.
“Wow. Looks like a zombie barfed in here. Smells like it too,” someone else complained.
Standing in the doorway that was now one door hanging off its hinges and the other ripped clean off was my second pair of visitors: Balthazar and a woman with honeyed skin that looked gorgeous enough to stop a truck. She had gorgeous copper hair hanging in ‘I don’t care’ waves, and her eyes were twin pools of gold.
I had to admit, she was completely fuckable.
As I turned to greet them, Balthazar cringed and hid behind the sexy lady. “Don’t let her kill me,” he whined.
She looked like a babysitter that wasn’t getting paid enough. “Balthazar, be mature. Hi, I’m—”
“Irene,” Knight finished.
Oh, you are shitting me. Not one, but two pretty women appear that know him? This one had better be his mother. Or an aunt. A really attractive aunt. No, she wasn’t attractive. How dare she be attractive where Knight could see her? Fuck her!
Irene squinted at him in thought, and her eyes grew wide with recognition. “I remember you.” Her heels clicked on the tile until she was in front of my mate. She brought a hand up, her claws growing, and she gently traced Knight’s five scars with them. “You’re one of mine.” Her smile spoke of sinful things, like being naked and having his cock inside her. Would it be in bad taste to punch a guest in the face? Maybe I should google it.
She was a succubus. There was a glow surrounding her, her succubus aura. I was familiar with the glow Balthazar had, but he contained his at least. Irene did not.
Surrounded by a glow that would turn any man to her charms, Knight looked away from Irene like she was a bag of old lumpy turnips and fixed his stare on me. “We did not fuck. It did not happen. Please don’t kill her.”
“What the fuck! Why does everyone assume I’m going to murder people?” I complained. Family ties aside, mind you. In answer, he raised a knowing eyebrow at me. “I pinky swear not to kill her. Happy?”
Her deep golden eyes glazed over me in an ‘I’m judging your shoes’ manner. “And you must be Balthazar’s little pet. I’m Toni.”
“I thought your name was Irene?” Knight asked her.
“Darling, I
go by many names, and none of them are real.” She pat his cheek like his naivety was cute.
Arthur turned the corner from where my office was and stopped in his tracks. His brow tightened when he saw Toni, an extreme reaction coming from him. “Persephone,” he ground out, his fists tightening. “Why is she here? I want her gone.”
She giggled, giggled, at Arthur, and that was literally the dumbest thing I’d ever seen someone do ever. This was a woman who made men her playthings. Women like that couldn’t be trusted.
“Lisbeth, my love,” Balthazar said as he slowly approached me. I let him kiss my cheek and grabbed his tie before he could escape, pressing his nose to mine angrily.
“You’re dead,” I ground out. He gulped under my glare. “I’m glad you’re back. Now kiss your daughter, jackass.”
Excited, he bent and picked Kitty up from the bouncy seat. “She’s grown,” he cooed with a smile. He held her against his chest and kissed her soft head. “I missed you, little one.” He spoke to her in a language I’d never heard before, and that was saying something. Toni seemed to understand his words because she added to the conversation a few times, mostly to be snarky, judging by her tone. He switched back to English before I could ask about it. “Daddy was gone, but I’m back, and I’m never leaving my darling again.” He rested his forehead against hers and breathed deeply. As angry as I was at him for leaving both of us, anyone could see he had truly missed her. His face glowing like a candle, he looked up at me. “What is she called? Something good, I trust? Not Maude. Please, not that.”
I laughed and came close to kiss Kitty on the cheek. “Katherine. Kitty for short.”
“Perfect,” he declared. “Just like her. Take her, I have something to show you.” He handed her back and reached inside his pocket, pulling out a yellowed sheet he’d folded into a little square. It took him several moments to get it straight again, then he showed me what was written on it, foreign symbols I’d never seen before.
“I can’t read that,” I told him with a sigh.
He glanced at it in confusion and laughed to himself. “Oh! Of course. My mistake. This is the language of my people. It says, ‘There are some who speak tales of a strange creature. A child of the Incubus who only drinks from that which it came.’ Child of the Incubus is how my people refer to vampires,” he explained. “It goes on, ‘They are known as the Vipyres.’ This is why I left. I poured over every single book in my homeland to find information about the little one.”
“Kitty.”
“Kitty,” he corrected. “She is a vipyre.”
That was way better than bi-pire. I’d even switched to hybrid just to avoid saying it.
“And that’s all you found?” He nodded, folding the paper back up and putting it into his jacket pocket. It said nothing about her future or what she would become, but I suppose that was a good thing. If vipyres were dangerous, surely the writer of this page would’ve said so? There were only two types of stories: wonderment and fear. This seemed more like the former. A fascination with the idea that such a creature could exist.
“We tried for decades,” Toni complained, inspecting her perfect nails. “I was very disappointed we didn’t find more after all that work.”
“Decades?” The shock and horror was overwhelming, knowing he’d been away from us for so long. Balthazar had told me, while I was in labor mind you, that time moved differently in his homeland. I’d thought he was just exaggerating so I wouldn’t stab him. As an answer, Balthazar reached out for Kitty again and held her close against his neck. He cooed again in his language, rocking her gently.
“I will never leave you again,” he promised to her curly head. “I started calling her Diana in my head after a few years. I’m glad I know her name now.”
I shrugged and tickled her ear, Balthazar’s arm coming around to hold us both in his arms, and I couldn’t deny how good it felt having him back. “She could have a middle name. Katherine Diana.”
“I still protest Persephone being here,” Arthur shouted to burst our bubble.
“Toni,” I addressed her. “Are you staying here?”
“If you will allow me. They banished us from our homeland.” The glow around her faded for a brief second.
“Why would they banish you?”
“Because we love,” Balthazar answered. He was completely enthralled with our baby, bouncing and tickling her. “The Bicus do not love. Ever. I’d rather not be around them either way, so it works out.” Toni loves? That was a hard pill to swallow.
“Toni, you can stay as long as you like.” Arthur glared at me in silent protest. I had to admit, I was wildly curious what Toni had done to make Arthur hate her so much. First chance I got, I was going to ask her, because I knew he wouldn’t tell me.
What if it was unpaid parking tickets?
Nah.
19. The Bicus return
Bridget, Cleopatra, Valhalla, Andromeda, Minerva, Juliette, and Chardonnay. All names I’d heard people call Toni in the past hour. She sat by the fireplace in my office with Kitty, waving a rattle at her and speaking in the Bicus language.
The rest of the room was the Council members, the Alphas, Arthur, James for some reason, Olivier, and my family. Merrick included. I sat on the edge of my desk where I could see everyone, Knight on one side and Arthur on the other. The Council had taken most of the seating, leaving the Alphas without chairs, but luckily they preferred to stand. Every few minutes, Glenda the Roomba whirred by their feet.
With everyone together, it was time for brass tacks. Decisions. Hard ones.
Half of the packs we sent envoys to had signed the alliance papers, making our numbers upwards of eight hundred. It wasn’t enough. We were too few against thousands of turned vampires that wanted us dead. And they were making drones now, which was the terrifying truth.
We were absurdly outnumbered, and no amount of recruitment would change that. We needed to hit them hard, right where it hurt, and reduce their numbers. Cameron adamantly assured us that after he and Merrick were discovered as traitors, the turned would move their base somewhere else.
“I suggest I take the rest of the Hunters with Cameron to where the base was. We can try and pick up their trail and see where they’ve gone,” Arthur suggested.
“And then what? Going to shake hands with them and have a cup of tea?” James berated. Yes, he was still here. No, I wasn’t fine with it.
“Why is he here?” Arthur hissed at me, leaning in close. I elbowed him to tell him to shut up.
“James is right,” I conceded. “You find them and then what? They could move again before you get back here. We need to make explosives. Ultraviolet won’t hurt them now since they’re immune to the sunlight, but we can still set them on fire.”
“Molotov,” Knight joked.
“Bless you,” James offered kindly.
“No, I mean.” Knight rolled his eyes. “Bombs with alcohol.”
James looked like Knight had just tossed a kitten out of the window. “Why would you waste perfectly good alcohol like that? Lisbeth, your mate is fucking horrifying. You are banned from the wine cellar, sir.”
“Can we focus?” Olivier complained. “Explosions sounds good. We can mix something up.”
“I’m a chemist,” Toni said from the fireplace. We all twisted to look at her. “I can make the explosives. And that little sunlight potion. Easy.” She wiggled Kitty’s rattle for her, not looking up even though she was speaking to us. Glenda zoomed past her with a buzz.
I stepped off my desk, an idea forming in my head. “You can make the antidote?” She ignored me, but Arthur knew where I was going with that.
“We can make more vampires,” he said to me, an almost excited look on his face. I held out my hand for a high five, and he refused to high five me as he always did. I did catch his mouth curving up, just a little, and Knight high fived me instead.
“We can make more vampires to help the Hunters attack the turned army,” Castilla volunteered.
&
nbsp; “We will go with the Hunters to help,” Alexander added from the floor. “We’ll need him.” He nodded in Knight’s direction. My heart jerked. No.
“I’ll go,” Knight told Alexander without looking at me, his hand gliding down my arm to rested on top of my fingers.
They talked about raiding hospitals for blood, recruiting people to be turned before evacuating the city so the humans couldn’t be used against us. It was do or die time. Preferably not die. Everyone had their tasks and left my office, Arthur being the last one who closed the doors for us. I spun to reprimand Knight, but he was ready for me and pulled me in for a long luxurious kiss, one that left me without higher brain function.
“You can’t go,” I got out between kisses. He didn’t answer, just layered more kisses on my lips. Finally, he drew away and kissed my forehead.
“I have to,” he insisted gently. He sighed and tugged me by my hand to where Kitty lay in her bassinet by the fire. “Look at her,” he told me, and I stared down at her pale smiling face and little wiggling legs. She cooed at me, her tiny hand reaching out. “I have to protect her, and the only way I can do that is by protecting you so you can protect her. The only way I can protect you is by slaying your enemies, and I can’t do that if I stay here sitting around looking ridiculously sexy.” I picked Kitty up and held her close. “I’m going with the Hunters to plan this out. You’re staying here with princess face, and you two are going to bond while you recruit hapless humans and turn them into creepy monsters. Aren’t you?” he finished in a baby voice, wiggling his finger at Kitty.
“Nothing says mommy baby time like screaming and gore,” I said cutely.
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 50
