Superstition

by Veronica Blake

  Dawn threw her hands over her face and groaned out loud. She knew Chloe wasn’t exaggerating, because she had never experienced anything even as remotely erotic as what had just taken place between her and Mateo Two Moons with no more than their brief encounter, and in a crowded public place, no less. Well, except for her recent wet dreams, but she didn’t want to go there again. Look at what happened when her thoughts wandered there earlier?

  Still, her rebellious mind began to recall the arousing details of how the dangerous long-haired stranger in her dreams touched her mind and body as intimately as Mateo had done to her tonight with nothing more than his mere presence. Only with her crazy dreams, she almost convinced herself she had been sleep walking and hallucinating because she was ill, or bitten by a rare poisonous spider, or even that she was just losing her mind. But what happened tonight had taken place in front of Chloe and the entire patronage at the pizza place. This one wouldn’t be so easy to explain to herself or anyone else.

  “I don’t know—that was just so—” Dawn still couldn’t find the words to explain what had just taken place. She shook her head and shrugged in defeat. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me.” But there was no denying the way her body and mind were still clinging to the mad sexual attraction she had for Mateo Two Moons. Life-changing might be a better way to describe how meeting him affected her.

  Chloe chuckled, and tossed a long strand of hair back over her shoulder. She focused her gaze on Dawn and asked in an innocent tone of voice, “Um, so was it like lust at first sight? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that happen before, either. And I’m a little pissed it happened to you and not me, especially since there were two spare Apache sex gods who could have easily had their way with me.”

  Another shrug lifted Dawn’s shoulders as she chuckled and tried to appear nonchalant even though there was nothing calm about her raging emotions. She stared back at her friend wishing she could confide in her about all the outlandish things that had been happening to her in the past week since they went to the Superstitions to hunt for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine. But there was no rational explanation for any of it, including the way she was feeling about meeting Mateo Two Moons tonight.

  “Geez, I think I might be too embarrassed to come back here tomorrow night.”

  “But you will.”

  “Oh, hell yes,” Dawn said without an instant of hesitation. Twenty-four hours from now she would be here or anywhere else Mateo Two Moons wanted her to be. But tomorrow seemed like forever right now.

  ****

  “She is already under your spell,” Anton Two Moons said to his youngest brother. “This silly game you are playing is all a waste of time. First, you make us go out to meet her and her friend at their campsite on the mountain so you can look at her from afar,” he swept his hand through the air in a theatrical gesture. “And now, you talk us into pretending to be a bunch of yuppies carousing around town. And for what? What more do you need to know about her besides the fact she is your mate?”

  Mateo retorted in an indignant tone. “How is it you consider this wasting time when time is all we have?”

  A snide chortle escaped from Anton. “Guess you got me there, little brother. We do have a lot of time, as in forever.”

  “Well, it’s still her destiny to be your mate. No amount of time can change that,” Rafael added. “Why prolong it? It’s great to have a mate to look after all your needs and well, you know, all that other stuff.” Rafael chuckled when Anton punched him playfully in the arm.

  Mateo shook his head and cut in, “It’s not about some game or about that other stuff.” He rolled his eyes. He heard both his brothers make exasperated noises. “I don’t even know how to begin to explain why it’s so important to me to be down here in Dawn’s world with her, even if just for a little while before I take her up to the mountain. It just is.”

  He didn’t grasp any of it yet, so how could he make his brothers understand? He had no doubt Dawn was partially under his vampire spell already—this was proven when she had come to the mountain in the middle of the night after he telepathically summoned her to him. As far as he knew, no one in his clan ever attempted to use their vampire power to beckon a real one to come to them, and he still had a hard time believing it worked. But it was then he realized how powerful and unbreakable their connection truly was, and how there was no changing their ultimate fate.

  He didn’t want to alter the fact she would become his mate and bear his children, he just wanted to discover all there was to know about her as she was now—just a woman—and he desperately wanted to love her in the way a man is meant to love a woman. There would be so much more between them than there had been with all the other clan males and their human mates. He was determined he and Dawn would have a real love story first and he would do everything in his power to make that happen.

  He found it hard to believe no one in his clan or any members of other Blood Clans in different locations ever questioned if it was possible for their kind to expand beyond their current limitations and outdated beliefs. They knew nothing of how the old traditions had come to be and if there could be a safer or easier way for the clans to survive in the modern world around them.

  The males did not even know how their mates were chosen. Anton’s woman, Nita, came from the Navajo tribe in Southern Utah. She had been a student at the University of Phoenix when she made her trek up to the Superstition Mountains to fulfill her destiny. Anton had been waiting for her and without hesitation he drank the blood from her neck, wrist, and lastly and most importantly, from the large artery in her thigh...the final phase of the mating process before he led her from her previous life as a twenty-year old college student to a life of obscurity with her immortal mate.

  Nita gifted him with three sons and three daughters in the past fifteen years. Their oldest son, Chaz, was fourteen, and he would be the next dhampyre—half-human, half-vampire—in their Blood Clan to claim his mate when he reached maturity at one hundred years of age.

  Lydia, Rafael’s mate, had come from much farther away—from the Algonquian Indian tribe in Canada. The delicate beauty had shown up on the mountain eleven years ago. On a camping vacation with friends, she disappeared on the first night and was never seen or heard from again. As was usually the case, it was assumed she wandered out into the rugged terrain and fallen into some hidden cavern or abyss where there was no chance of finding her. But she had been spirited away to her destiny on the highest peaks of the Superstition Mountains to live out what remained of her human life at the side of her vampire mate.

  Their first born dhampyre children had been twin daughters, then eight more years passed before she had given birth to a male. He was a handsome three-year-old who would someday follow in his father’s footsteps among the ancient clan. Lydia was soon due to give birth again to their fourth child and already special ceremonies were being conducted in their village with the hopes she would produce another male dhampyre.

  It was during this process when real ones, the term used to describe humans since the beginning of their time, were in the most danger from the clan, because more blood was needed than usual for the primeval rituals held before an impending birth.

  Now, at last, it was Mateo’s time to fulfill his destiny with the woman who had been preordained to spend eternity at his side. His mate, Dawn—Udaya—was so drastically different from the other eternal mates in his clan...she was older and not of Native American descent. Although he couldn’t explain it, he believed she was also the beginning of a new way of life for his clan.

  He knew he didn’t need to drink the blood from her thigh to make her his...nothing could have stopped their fates from entwining once she had been drawn to the mountain. But meeting her in the restaurant in Apache Junction tonight only proved to Mateo they belonged together in both of their worlds.

  Maybe his brothers and the rest of his clan did feel it was foolish to waste time with mere human traditions. But they did
have forever to live their immortal lives hidden in the shadows and caves of the Superstitions, and for now, Mateo loved being here with her in her world. What would a few days or even a few weeks matter?

  Chapter Six

  Mateo clearly remembered the day his grandfather, Drago, told him what was known about the history of their clan. Mateo had been only fifteen years old—over eighty-five years ago. He could recall every word, and there had not been a day since when he had not contemplated the many unknown facets of his ancient breed. Their past, however, seemed to hold very few clues to what could be done to improve their future.

  “This is the story of how our people came to be and it has been passed down through the generations. It is a fact, my grandson, that since the beginning of mankind, there have been mysterious societies and hidden tribes living in total seclusion; some because their secrets are too terrifying, and too unbelievable to reveal to the mere mortals who would prefer to never know of their existence. For this reason, and for our own survival, the Blood Clan chose to dwell in the most secluded places around the world, where we can live in peace and total isolation.

  It is believed that centuries and centuries ago, somewhere in a European country, a relatively young male vampire—only a hundred years old—bit a human woman in the neck. This was a normal thing for his breed to do. But for some unknown reason he didn’t drain her of all her blood and kill her as is the usual process when a vampire drinks the blood of any human. Instead, he drank only a small of amount of blood from her neck, then another small amount from her wrist, and finally more blood from the large vein in her thigh. He forced himself to stop after drinking these three small amounts of blood from these different parts of her body. No one knows why he did this, but this process induced a trance-like state that put the woman completely under the vampire’s control.

  He took her to the top of the mountain where he dwelled in the deep caverns since he had been turned into an undead being by another vampire who had bitten him back in the beginning.

  The human woman was cared for by the vampire, and in return, she was completely devoted to him in every way. When he awoke from his daytime slumber, he would descend from the mountain to quench his thirst for human blood so he would not be tempted to drink more of his mate’s and possibly kill her. But he did give her droplets of his own blood to drink occasionally, because he hoped his immortal blood would keep her strong and healthy so he could enjoy her human companionship for as long as possible.

  Every morning at dawn, before he went back into the cave to sleep during the daylight hours, he would make love to her. Although it seemed impossible for a vampire to sire a child, she became pregnant, and nine months later she gave birth to a female child that seemed human in all ways. A year later, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. As their vampire father slept in the dark cave on the top of the mountain during the day, their human mother cared for these miracle children in the hidden encampment they called home.

  At night, while their immortal father hunted for the blood of humans below the mountain, they slept beside their mother peacefully unaware they lived an unusual life unlike any other children in the world. They existed on the meat of wildlife they killed, and berries or roots when available and created the most basic type of life from the land they lived upon.

  Three other sons and five more daughters were born over the ensuing years and as the brood of dhampyre—half-vampire, half-human—children grew into young adulthood, it seemed none of them inherited any of their father’s vampire traits. The girls became women, maturing into their twenties and beyond in a natural human way.

  But as each of the male children approached their quarter-century age, noticeable changes began to occur with them. Sunlight began to burn their eyes and skin. During the day they slept beside their father in the secluded cave. Their throats burned with an intensity no amount of water could quench. Under the cover of night their father would take them to the villages below the mountain so they could satisfy their unnatural cravings for human blood without harming their human mother and female siblings. Like their father, they never appeared to look any older than men in their mid-twenties.

  As the years passed, the human mother grew too old to bear more children; she eventually became elderly and frail. Her vampire mate couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, so he bit her in the neck again. This time, he drained enough of her blood so she would become an immortal and they could spend eternity together. She grew young and beautiful again. Her need for human blood was minimal, so her vampire mate would bring her small vessels of blood from his hunts in the human village below the mountain.

  Those first females born to the original vampire and his human mate remained at the hidden encampment their entire lives. They continued to grow older in typical human ways. Worried they would die the father bit the oldest of the girls in the neck and drained her blood like he did their mother. But instead of growing young and beautiful, she died. He attempted to save another daughter, and she died after he bit her, too. Then, he killed a third daughter by biting her neck and draining her blood.

  The sire vampire realized only his mate and sons were destined to live for eternity. The remaining three daughters lived for many years until they died of what appeared to be natural causes associated with old age. The male offspring continued to age in years, but not in appearance.

  As each of those four sons born into this original clan turned one hundred years old, another strange phenomenon occurred. For each of them, a human woman traveled to the mountain, draw by some unknown compulsion to seek her vampire mate. These women would submit willingly to the dangerous immortal men who came to them while they were in a dream-like state.

  The vampire would bite them first on their neck, then on their wrist, and finally on the large vein at the top of their thigh just as their vampire father had done to his human mate when he first started their unique clan.

  Afterward, the women would accompany their vampire mate to the top of the mountain where they would be completely devoted to their mate, give birth to his dhampyre children, and live out their human lives until they were no longer fertile. Like that very first human woman of the Blood Clan, each of the women were bitten in the neck one last time, and drained of nearly all their blood by their vampire mates until the instant their hearts would stop beating. They, too, would now become immortal—returning to the youthful state they had been when they were first drawn to the mountain—becoming forever, and in every sense of the meaning, an ‘eternal mate’ to the vampire who claimed them decades earlier.

  The first clan grew in numbers, and as the village filled with children and the human women who mated with the male vampires, it became apparent they needed more from the villages of the real ones than just blood for the male vampires. They also needed food, blankets, clothing, and other necessities for the real ones who lived among them.

  The original vampire traveled down to the settlement at the base of the mountain and chose five men he felt were trustworthy. He placed them under his vampire spell, compelling them to bring necessary provisions to the mountaintop village for the growing brood of dhampyre children and their human mothers. These men were called the Clan Society and it was considered an honor to be a member of this ultra-secret group. The elite membership was passed down through the generations and none of them ever betrayed the Blood Clans they served.

  In time, male vampire descendants began to take their mates and offspring to other parts of the world to start their own clans. Now, many Blood Clans exist around the world…hidden in their secluded mountaintop villages, concealed encampments, or secret jungle compounds; living much the same as they have since the very beginning when the original vampire first began his clan.”

  Mateo knew the time for change was imminent. He was prepared to be the trailblazer for the new life he envisioned for his kind if he could only convince his grandfather.

  “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Drago said in an aggrava
ted tone. “She is your eternal mate. Nothing else matters except that she is here, and she is fertile and will bear you many sons.” He stared at his youngest grandson, disbelief on his face.

  “I realize we are destined to be together forever, and I would never think of not fulfilling my obligations to my clan. But, Grandfather, times are so much different now than they were when you left your original clan in Mexico over two hundred years ago to come here.”

  Mateo summoned more courage as he spoke in their native Apache language to his elder relative, the noble chief of their secret vampire clan, and a man he never wanted to anger or disappoint in any way. This speech had been rehearsed over and over in his mind for the last few days. He had to get it right the first time, because he knew his grandfather’s decision would be final and uncompromising.

  “Back then, there was no other way of life for our kind other than living here on the mountain in complete seclusion. But now,” he continued, sounding much more confident than he felt, “We have learned to walk among the real ones without being detected during the nighttime.”

  Mateo met the unwavering ebony gaze of his grandfather. Although Drago was over two centuries older than Mateo, the two men looked as if they could be twenty-five-year old twins. “I feel there are many changes coming for our kind,” Mateo added. “And if we are open to accept them, our clan can only grow stronger. Because of the Clan Society from the reservation who provides us with learning tools from the real ones, we are well-educated and can speak several languages. Although our book knowledge is vast, we know little of the world beyond these mountains. But I know there is more than just existing in the caves and shadows in the darkness of night. I just need to find a way to prove it.”