The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition)

by Elizabeth Dunlap

  She shuddered as if she could actually be cold and her aura shifted to a blank color. She was good at hiding herself. “The things that I hate is that…” She swallowed. “I never told him how much I loved him. And now maybe… maybe I’ll never get the chance.”

  “He knew, mother. Both of them know how much you love them. When you’re with dad, you’re the brightest yellow and pink I’ve ever seen in my life, second only to father’s, if it could ever be brighter. Which I doubt.”

  Her eyes found mine when she turned her head. “What were my colors like with your father?”

  I smiled and recalled the last day we’d seen him. A day of sadness and regret. My smile fell, but I searched through and found her color, that last moment when she met his eyes before he was taken away. “Your second brightest pink. Only a twinge dimmer than the first.”

  Mother leaned back on her hands and stared up at my ceiling with the glow in the dark stars dad had stuck on when I was little. “Of all the powers my kids could get, yours had to be reading auras. You’ll never understand how weird it was to have a two-year-old pointing at me yelling, ‘Pink! Pink!’” We giggled at the memory we both had.

  “You’re almost always pink,” I reminded her. “When you’re not blue.”

  Her smile fell again and she sat up to stand. “Seems I’m blue most of the time now. A perfect fixture on my aura.” It was true, but I didn’t want her to know it for certain.

  “He’ll come back,” I said again firmly.

  Her eyebrows curled in thought and she looked back at me. “They’ll kill him if he does.” Blue gained ground and surrounded her, a blue so deep I feared I would be sucked into it. I shivered this time and watched her leave, shutting my door behind her.

  6. The Prisoner

  Kitty

  Being shot was all sorts of fun. Being grossly outnumbered, not so much. By the time I’d finished with those bleeders, I was riddled with holes in my perfect skin. Fucking bitch bleeders had vampire bullets. That was playing dirty. Puss had taken the hint and ran out the door behind where Morpheus lay on the floor, his body dripping blood from several places. He was no longer drawing enough breath to call me girlie.

  “Puss?” I called into the open doorway as I sheathed Artemis in my belt. My palm left a bloodied handprint on the door when I pushed on it and stuck my head into the second hallway. The black cat was halfway down it, stopped at something. He looked back where I stood and meowed at me. “What? Is it catnip?”

  Meow.

  “Fine. Better not be catnip, just telling you that now.” I entered the hallway and clomped down to where the cat sat next to an open door and immediately recoiled in shock. Inside the room was a passed out Lycan, and by the looks of him, he was in bad shape.

  “Those fucking cunt faced asswiping mother fuckers,” I ground out with enough venom I had to spit onto the floor. Fuck my mother’s opinion, I felt no shame about ridding the earth of those cunts, now that I knew what they’d been hiding.

  Pushing my senses out, I smelled no other bodies here, though I did smell vampire blood in the room beside this one. Carefully, I walked inside to where the Lycan lay on the carpet. He had bruises on bruises, and caked on blood in so many places, I wasn’t sure what color his skin was. His dark hair had been shorn off with small patches here and there where they’d missed spots. A chain led to a collar around his neck, one with spikes that were designed to kill him if he shifted into a wolf.

  “Those…” I ground my teeth together until the grinding shook my skull. There weren’t enough words in the English language to express my hatred and rage. I wished I’d killed the bleeders slowly, and with enough pain that they begged for mercy.

  Puss came in and rubbed past my boots to the Lycan where he stopped and simply stared on. Was he concerned? Fuck. Of course he wasn’t. He was a cat.

  Wiping tears from my cheeks, I straightened my spine. “Stay with him. I’ll be back.” I left them there to find where Morpheus had kept his records and his stash. There was a safe in a small room down the hall, and of course, I easily tore the door off. Inside was what I needed, and I put it inside my backpack before coming back to the Lycan. I ripped the collar off him and threw it at the room’s only window so hard, it broke the glass and sailed outside. “Heads up,” I cautioned to no one, and picked up the Lycan carefully.

  Both kitties walked down the hall, past the worthless corpses, and back outside to where I’d left my motorcycle. Using some rope I carried with me, I tied the Lycan to me, chest to chest, so he wouldn’t go flying off my ride when he woke up. Despite his protests, I stuffed Puss into my backpack.

  With both passengers secured, I pumped the throttle, my bike roared to life, and I sped off down the empty street, leaving the cunt corpses to become shark bait.

  With the extra weight of the Lycan, I didn’t want to travel very far. I found an old supermarket that hadn’t been entirely picked clean of food and brought us all inside, bike included, before barricading the door. The store’s florescent lights barely functioned after so long, but a few still worked, probably from solar panels on the roof. After finding the employee break room couch still intact, I placed the Lycan on top of it. Puss took the opportunity to lay right across the Lycan’s collarbone.

  “Shoo,” I said to him, though I had a feeling he would ignore me.

  He did.

  I sighed and rolled my eyes, wondering why I’d allowed this flea bag to come along with me.

  Finally slowing down after the fact, the pain of the bullets inside me was starting to twinge. I’d have to remove all of them and then feed on a few sharks to recover. They’d come for the feast I just left them, it just depended on how far away they were, and I had a feeling those bleeders kept their city clean of the beasts. If I played my cards right, I’d get a full belly of shark blood before the week was over.

  I’d just removed my jacket when the Lycan burst awake, shouting and throwing Puss from him, causing a very loud cat roar when he hit the carpet feet down. I held up a bloodied hand to the Lycan, which wasn’t the best method to calm him down.

  “You’re safe, you’re safe,” I repeated several times as he jumped up from the couch, frantic in his haste to get away from me. He found a corner and backed into it with his hands up to protect his face.

  “You stay there, drinker!” he shouted at me. His deep, brown eyes spotted my gun and his pulse shot up even more. “I’ll fucking kill you if you try to drink my blood!”

  “Wasn’t gonna,” I assured him, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the thought of his blood in my mouth. “I only drink vampire blood.”

  That threw him, and he lowered his hands, his pulse slowing. “What kind of vampire only drinks vampire blood?”

  Slowly, I lifted Artemis from my holster and tossed her onto the couch, further reducing his heart rate. “The special kind. The kind that saves your life and kills all the twat bleeders that held you captive. Mind you, I didn’t know you were there when I killed them. But I would’ve just the same if I had.” The Lycan’s eyes moved to where Artemis lay and I saw his brain turning, wondering if he could get to it before I could. Unlikely, but then again, a bleeder had disarmed me not an hour earlier. “I’m Kitty. That’s my name, I’m not talking about the cat. He doesn’t have a name.”

  With his heart almost at a normal rhythm, he stopped eyeing the gun in panic and looked me over, studying the woman who’d saved him from the bleeders. Was I someone he could trust? He seemed to decide I was because his pinched mouth relaxed. “I’m Cody. And I’m pretty sure only psychopaths don’t name their pets.”

  “Hey,” I complained loudly. “That is an insult to all the psychopaths out there. Besides, I named my gun. Does that count?”

  “No.”

  Fuck you, wolf boy.

  “How long did they have you?” He shrugged and looked away, everything they’d done still too fresh in his mind. “There’s some food downstairs. Let’s go grab some. I think we both need a snack.” I chomped
my teeth together in mock warning and he didn’t find it as amusing as I did. Giving me a wide berth, he followed me downstairs and we left Artemis on the couch.

  While Cody searched through the food I’d smelled, I found a bottle of motor oil in an aisle that had the fresh odor of rat piss and brought it over to my cycle by the barricaded doors. I was tipping it into the oil chamber when Cody came over with two cans. One was baked beans and the other alphabet soup.

  “There’s a can opener in my bag.” I motioned with my chin towards it and tossed the motor oil bottle when it was empty, screwing the oil cap back on.

  “That’s a sweet ass ride,” Cody complimented as he sat down and opened the cans. “Solar powered?” I nodded, cautiously closing the distance between us to sit in front of him. Puss came and sat beside me, completing the circle. Cody handed me one of the cans, the alphabet soup one, and I scooped out a bit to put on the floor for the cat. He dug in with gusto and I started on the rest of it. It wasn’t gourmet, but it filled my stomach, and that was nice considering I rarely ate full meals. I hadn’t even had a chance to finish the steak Morpheus gave me before shooting them all up and ruining it.

  “Your folks nearby?” I asked him. I knew I was hitting a nerve when he looked away, but he swallowed and took a scoop of baked beans to his mouth.

  “They’re a ways. Doesn’t make much sense to live near drug dealers. They’ll take your trade and then steal your kids.” He looked down, his mind miles away.

  “Hey,” I said, bringing him out of it for a moment. “We’re not talking about that. I just want to know where I can take you where you’ll be safe.”

  “The path is marked. I can find home again.”

  I got up and felt the tug of my torn skin under the bullets. They needed to come out. “Gonna clean up. I suggest you do the same.” He nodded, and I disappeared into the women’s bathroom. Thankfully one of the lights in there was working with very few flickers.

  I removed my jacket, shirt, and pants before accessing my injuries, and not having Artemis made me feel more naked than I currently was. The bullets on my person numbered nine, a much lower number than I expected given how much pain I was feeling. I reached two fingers into the first hole and pain sliced through me as I grabbed hold of the bullet and yanked it out, tossing it into the porcelain sink. The rest followed, and I grabbed a rag from my backpack to wet under the faucet before running it over my skin to catch all the red.

  So much red. And this time, all of it mine. Well. Most.

  Finished cleaning myself, I ran my hair under the faucet as much as I could and shook out the curls as they rained droplets over the floor. The bullet holes were still there since I was so low on blood, mottled dots on my skin. I dressed again and left, following Cody’s scent to the break room. He had cleaned up as much as he could considering most of the color dotting his dark skin was pure bruise. He’d even taken a razor to his hair and now it was all one length. Artemis was still on the couch where I’d left her with Puss curled up on top of her barrel. I retrieved the gun and took it with me to a second more lumpy couch in the room where I fell asleep almost instantly.

  7. Icy blues

  Kitty

  The next morning, I found out just what ‘marked’ meant.

  Dog piss.

  After being captured by the bleeders, Cody had marked a trail whenever he could, gross, and his keen senses could still pick it up. He’d only been with them for a few weeks and rain had been scarce, so it hadn’t been washed away. Lucky for us.

  Still. Following a trail of piss was a level of disgusting I never wanted to reach. And yet, here we were, Cody with his nose very close to a tree, Puss zipped up in my jacket, and me waiting atop my cycle. Satisfied, Cody came back and mounted behind me, slipping his hands around my middle as I kicked off and started the engine.

  We sped off away from the trees and out to the plains. The land stretched out before us like a blanket and I felt Cody tapping on my shoulder to get my attention. Beside us was a herd of elephants, eating grass and bathing themselves in a small water tank. They watched us drive by, but thankfully they stayed put and didn’t charge. One of the babies swung his trunk at us and roared a tiny roar.

  “They’re beautiful!” Cody hooted into my ear. Even I could find a smile for the creatures. Past them, we stopped again to find the trail and kept going down the road. It was late afternoon when Cody came back from sniffing with a smile on his face. “We’re close,” he pronounced before hopping up behind me. The knowledge sent me faster through the fields until Cody started directing me down some hidden paths and the plains turned into a forest.

  Deep inside it, past countless trees and enough piss odor to make my nose curl, we came upon a small encampment. Trailers, vans, a school bus, all parked in a semi-circle around a brick and mortar campfire. I smelled Lycans and humans. And maybe… a hint of vampires? It was hard to tell. The dog smell hid our scent well. Overpowering as well was the scent of cooking meat, and my stomach growled in response.

  As soon as the campers saw us, they all brought out their guns in warning, and almost as quickly dropped them when they saw Cody behind me. Several of them shouted his name, and he started running towards them as soon as I stopped my bike, grabbing several of his kin in his arms. The tallest Lycan there, the Alpha, still had his gun in his hand as he regarded me and stepped closer. His head twisted to the side in thought and he looked at me like he’d seen a ghost. I almost echoed the look because his scent was familiar to me.

  “Lisbeth?” Of course they knew her. She was a household name amongst vampires and Lycans after the turned war.

  I stepped off my bike and put the kick stand up. “Close. I’m her daughter. Kitty.”

  “You look just like her. Except for the—”

  “—eyes,” I finished for him with a knowing grin. It was what everyone said. “I’m surprised you remember her. Were you part of our village?” His face was equally familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Maybe my memories were slow because of how hungry I was for blood.

  “I’m Simon, I don’t know if you remember me,” he answered just as Cody came to hug him. “Thank you for returning my son.”

  “Fucking dragon bogies,” I whispered under my breath. Simon, the little kid my mom had saved was all grown up. And now I’d just saved his kid. Talk about a full circle. “You’re so big! And you have kids!”

  He laughed and brought me in for a hug. “You’re big too, squirt! You were just a baby last time I saw you! How did you even remember me?”

  I tapped a finger to my head and grinned. “Vamp memory. I remember everything. Everything.”

  His face fell when he saw the unhealed bullet holes on my neck. “Cody, go find the vampires. They’re hunting to the south. Shouldn’t be far.” Cody ran off and I watched him with the fading protective instinct I’d gained after merely one day together. “Where’d you find him?” Simon asked, studying me carefully with his brown eyes.

  I unzipped my jacket and let Puss out. He hopped down and ran to the fire pit to find out where the meat smell was coming from. “Drug den. They were using him to make Night Shadow.”

  Simon’s jaw tensed and his hands formed fists at his sides, his wolf straining to come out. “They dead?”

  Nodding, I put a hand to Artemis and pat her in a comforting gesture. “They met an untimely end, for sure. I saw to that.”

  Simon let out a dry chuckle at me. “You’re so like her. It’s unreal.”

  Hope bubbled up inside me and I looked around, sniffing the scents for any I recognized. The hope burst when I couldn’t find her smell but I kept my face blank. “Is my mom here?”

  “No, no. She’s not here. I was referring to someone else.”

  Before I could ask what he meant, Cody shouted as he came back into view amongst the tree trunks. He waved and motioned to the two men beside him, carrying a buck between them.

  “No way,” I swore under my breath.

  One of the men was unknown to
me, but the other restored my optimism. When he saw my face, I knew he thought I was her, if only for a brief moment, because he looked as if all the sunlight in the world was finally back over the horizon. His features fell when he realized who I was, and he was back to that stoic iciness that I knew. As he reached me, I tossed my hair back and nodded to him.

  “Hello, Arthur.”

  8. No really, he’ll come back

  Dreya

  It was hard to sleep after seeing mother so upset, especially knowing I’d caused some of it.

  I knew, I knew my father would come back. I knew it with as much certainty as I knew the sun would rise in the morning and set in the evening. Even so, I wished my clarity had given me some insight as to what had happened to my siblings. Jason and Kitty were still missing after twenty long years, my entire life. It weighed on both my parents, even father before he’d been sent away. I felt the weight of the loss as well, despite having never met the rest of my family. I knew all about every single one of them, so much so I liked to believe that when the day came that they stood before me, I’d know instantly that it was them.

  Kitty. Jason. Balthazar. Grandmother Anastasia.

  I fell asleep with them all in my head and wished I could dream a dream that led them back to us.

  The next morning, I entered the large living room across the hall from my room to see my dad making breakfast on our little stove, wearing mother’s apron with his long hair up in a man bun. He turned and an unruly shank of his black locks fell out of the bun and into his eyes. He was all pink this morning. Dad was good at blocking out bad emotions and making only the good ones shine through.

  “Hey, kiddo! Sleep well? Darius keeping his hands to himself?” I glared at him jokingly as I sat at the small table between the sofa and the fridge. If I leaned my chair back just right, it caught on the sofa, giving me a perfect lounge angle. I did so and folded my hands over my flat belly as I smelled the blueberry pancakes he was making.