by Amy Mah
“His name is Max. He looks about 17, and err… a bit cute but in a weird way. I think he wants to be a dentist; we met in a public area, and he asked if I had ever seen the sun rise in the garden. I said no, so he took me up.”
“He insisted we introduce ourselves to each other. I gave him my real name, but he converted it, and now I am Lady Amelia, Mistress of the Night Mare from the family of the Pinkbat. He gave me the disc and told the gate meat his name and my new name, and that I was his cousin, his real name is very long and starts as Maxamillion. We only talked about oral hygiene, and he asked to see my fangs, but that was all I showed him. So nothing went on, honestly. I was very careful not to get dirty. I did not think the sun could hurt me, but he insisted on wrapping me in a blanket so I did not get burned. He says he is a first lord, which I guess is fancy talk for being an alpha.”
“His sisters are planning a picnic in the gardens next full moon, and I am invited. But I didn’t say I would go; only that I would think about it and I would have to have permission, so I may not turn up. He then said that if I didn’t attend, to tell you he will be really err, p-ed off. But I expect that was all male boasting as he is nothing that special.”
Amy finished off her monologue. Crap! I am monologue-ing now! And I’ve only just stopped my uncle doing it! She took an extra breath, closed her eyes and braced herself. When nothing happened, she opened them again. Something was wrong; her aunt had now gone silent: far too silent for normal.
Amy hadn’t been completely nude; she still had that fancy disc currently hanging between her boobs. Except it was now in her aunt’s hands, which explained the sparks and the smell of burning flesh as the aunt examined the disc. Max had said that no one could remove it, but then, he did not know of my aunt’s feelings on such things as vampire toys.
Only when her fingers began to smoke did she hand it back, and that was more of a surprise than her ability to take it off. Amy had expected her to throw it down the toilet for daring to burn her.
“After you have dressed, we will discuss what you are going to wear to the picnic and how you should act in the company of the upper level families without showing yourself or our family up. The full moon is only three nights away, so we don’t have long to get you suitable for polite company.”
“Aunt?”
“Yes?”
“How come he could call me a cousin? We are not related, are we?”
“It’s your fangs, my dear: just another oddity about you. Your uncle and I pointed this out to you when you first arrived; either your father or your birth mother must have been of high rank. You have an extremely old bloodline, which you should not let people know of for political reasons, but you are still compatible with our nest or you would have been killed. And no, you are not related as far as I know, but that still does not give you permission to raise your tail to him.”
“AUNT!! He’s not that cute! Yuck!!!”
Family meeting
Phabian placed his hands behind his head as he lay back on his sister’s Roman-style couch. He did it partly because it helped him think but mostly because he knew it pissed his sister off big time.
“And you are sure it is the Maxamillian and not some other, over-sexed kid with the same name?”
Nyx paced until she could take it no longer and went over to knock his feet off the furniture.
“Yes I am sure, and take your shoes off if you want to drape yourself there like a lumpy werewolf throw rug.”
She sighed. “I am sure you are picking up far more bad habits from her than is decent for a male of your age, and just look at the invite!”
Slapping a card hard down on his lap (very low down on his lap), she turned away, ignoring the grunt of pain he let out. She started pacing again.
“Well, at least the first lord can not blame this on us. It has been a miracle that we have been able to hide her for so long. She is still not ready, but we must let things take their course. Maxamillion sensed she is special by just getting near her for a few minutes, but even he thinks she is no more than an alpha female.”
“I give her a little freedom, and what happens? She attempts to leave the nest, meets the youngest of the top lords and within moments she is drinking his blood and kissing him! Luckily, it stopped at that, but you know what young females are like at her age when they have got a taste for boys. We will not be able to stop her from coming into heat for more than a few more years without council permission, as they will be expecting her to breed. Placing her in that stupid turnling’s class at school did not help; all that moron has noticed is that she will make excellent breeding stock.”
Phabian kicked off his shoes and lifted his legs back onto the couch.
“Nyx, my dear, she is a very capable killer and would make any male proud to have her for a mate. She is as cunning as any female in this nest, and I expect young Maxamillion will not get very far unless he offers her more than just a taste of his blood. You have done an excellent job in bringing her up and training her to be an outstanding asset for our family. You forget I have seen her fight. If our little Hell Cat wants him as a mate, then he will have very little to say about it; the connection to such a high ranking family will be good for us all.”
“We picked the mouse as her teacher partly because of him being a turnling, so all full-bloods are the same to him, but also because he is the best military teacher we have in the nest. Our little girl is learning how to put her latent skills to their full potential as they develop. And with her bloodline, develop they will. I have seen what she can do when she lets herself go, and the enforced boredom we have given her over the past few years will make her keen to stretch her abilities and help awake that which she calls her inner vamp.”
“My dear sister, you have tasted how special she is. We can only guess she is on the same level as Max’s abomination of a younger sister. And once his illustrious family knows of her blood lineage, they would be stupid to gainsay anything. As her parents, we will ascend with her.”
As he lay back with his arms behind his head, his sister worried that it was all happening too fast. The 10 years they had had her was not long enough to bring her up to adult, and her brother was wrong; no matter what he thought, it would still be at least another 10 years before she would be mature enough to breed. No marriage could ever take place before then, so the most Maxamillion’s family could expect would be a long engagement. But even before that, she would still have to be presented for a status upgrade.
“Very well, brother. If we plan to let this continue, we will need to request the council to test her. She is a natural alpha, but the rules need to be followed, and I shall see to it that the request comes from her teacher with our consent. That way, it will not look like we are pushing her forward.”
Picnic
Somehow, things were working out as Amy stood in front of a mirror and looked at her image. Reflections and mirrors are another human mistake about vampires, she thought. Her aunt had been strangely nice over the past few days, and now she stood next to her in a little changing room close by the garden entrance near the pet guard post.
Her aunt did not wear any fancy modesty disk to show her rank, but no guard had done anything but bow and slowly back away whenever they went near them, proving that even stupid human pet guards had a very strong survival instinct. If they were very lucky, she would not even notice them, and that looked to be just what they were praying for when she had arrived at this checkpoint to the gardens.
She looked good, and it was a shock. Her aunt had ordered her new clothes especially for the picnic, and Amy had dreaded what she would receive: a pink cardigan over a pink dress with a large bow at the back was what she had been expecting. Instead, she thought that she looked really cool.
The first shock was the new black underwear, including a bra! At long last, she had a bra, and it had been so long that she had almost forgotten how to get it on. It was a sexy, going-out-on-a-date-black color. Okay, so both parts of her undies sti
ll had little pink bats on them, but no one would see them. And black undies was such a change from her normal bright white ones with small pink bats (or the vivid, almost day glo pink panties with a large black bat on each side looking like a misshapen fig leaf or at first glance a bat trying to have sex with her), and her aunt had invested in 100 pairs of those horrid things to make sure she would get years and years and frigging years of wear out of them.
There were also black ankle boots, a short black skirt with a belt that had a pink bat logo on the buckle, and a black blouse with blood red piping, Amy realized that she would have all the right things to wear if she ever had to attend a funeral, but this was soooo perfectly what a vampire should wear no matter what the current fashion was in the human world. Black was always the new black in fashion for a vampire.
She did not complain too much about the black hair band with pink bats on it. She liked black; it was normal for a teenage girl who had been a teenager for far too long. She had in the past asked if she could paint her bedroom black, which went down like a lead bat with her aunt (who said that the stalactites looked very nice in pink and so they would stay that color). And just to make the point clear that her room’s color was not her decision, Amy’s aunt had hung some large pink stuffed bats from the ceiling for extra emphasis.
ICE
Ice did not think her brother was stupid; she knew he was. Well, all males are stupid; it was a natural fact and had something to do with owning a dick. Maxy, as she called him, was not as dumb as others of his gender, but that dick must be causing his brain cells to shrink or something as his bright idea of a family picnic minus the family was crass to say the least.
Max’s sister ICE
All because he wanted to take a girl out, he arranged a picnic. Any normal guy would take a girl out for a meal or a romantic walk and not get his sister involved.
So there she sat facing her, as he had either gone to take a pee in the bushes or he was trying to leave them alone to bond (as if girls bonded at first sight!). Claw each other to death, yes, but bond, no. And she smelled odd. Okay, so not bad like most females did, but odd like she was a walking chunk of herbal bath salt. All girls smelled yucky, but this Amy smelled more like something you could wash with.
And she was staring at her!
“Okay, while he is out of the way, let’s get this over with. Maxy fixed up this stupid picnic just so he could invite you, and being the youngest, I was forced to come. My sisters got out of it by having something extremely important to do (like washing their hair). Having to be here playing gooseberry while he pretends to be cool and debonair and at the same time tries to slip his hand up your skirt as I pretend not to notice is not my idea of a fun day out. And yes, it is normal for me to look like this. Unless you have fallen head-over-heels in love with me at first sight, you can stop staring at me, as I find it is rude.”
Amy thought, not albino, as the eyes are not pink, but instead an almost rippling and burning royal blue. Then she wondered why the sudden silence, as Ice was now coldly staring back at her and looking like it was her turn to say something (which was causing a deadly silence as she had not heard a word the wonderful apparition had said).
“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to stare; please forgive me, but you are so outstandingly beautiful, like a real fairytale snow princess. You smell of spearmint, and I so love that smell. I used to have it as a treat when I was a child. Sorry; you must be sick of people telling you how lovely you look, but I can’t help it. Please, can we be friends?”
Ice was rarely (if ever) short of something to say, but right now was one of those rare occasions as she looked hard at this Oriental-looking girl to try and read any slight facial movement to give away a lie. She was good at seeing lies; she was good at lots of things, such as picking up a change in scent when the words did not match the meanings. But this odd creature her brother had picked up on his escapades was telling the truth; well, at least she believed what she was saying herself.
She had of course checked her out as soon as her brother told her, and the Oriental camouflage meant nothing, as she know of vampires that could change their racial characteristics like changing socks. She had discovered she was a good killer and had been running feral until adopted into the Pinkbat family. She was still very young, and not just because she looked about 16. Ice knew that she herself looked about 15 and was possibly about 20 years older than the girl sitting in front of her.
WTF! She had only said the falling-in-love bit as a joke, but this female must have taken it as a come on and told her she was beautiful. No female would declare such a thing unless,,, And to admit to liking another girl’s scent! It was the same as saying she would like to sleep with her. Ice sat back; this was not how things should go when a brother brings home a new girlfriend.
Ice leaned forward, and when the girl did not make any defensive moves, she gave her a fast lick to her cheek and sat back again to see her reaction to the move. This kind of bi stuff was common in the nest amongst bored females, but she was an abomination: a freak that no normal female would wish to be in the same room with without wanting to kill her for her obvious differences. She may have been the outcome of generations of special breeding to create her, but to a normal female, she would just pollute the gene pool. If Ice had not been so capable of looking after herself, she would have been accidentally killed years ago.
“Err, thank you. and you smell of, err… soap, which reminds me of hot baths.”
All vampires are cursed with a good sense of smell, and the reason they think of it more as a curse than a blessing is the fact that they normally hate the smell of the same sex, as it means competition: be it for food or mates. And as a girl, unless you were a lesbian, all females smelled sickly sweet and made one’s teeth itch, but this creature mostly smelled of soap and a hint of lavender, which came as a shock as without the normal repellent smell of a female, she could not control an odd feeling (against all her better judgement) of liking her. And if she was having such a reaction, it was no wonder that her brother, being only male, was besotted with her.
“Okay, let’s see what being friends is like first. I do not want Maxy hurt, but if you do become Max’s mate, then as sisters all things are possible to someone that likes spearmint.”
Amy was so happy that Ice had said that they would be friends that she threw her arms around her and hugged Max’s little sister.
“That would be so nice to have you as a friend, and even if I skip out on the mating stuff with your brother, I would still like to think of you as a sister.”
Ice tried not to stiffen as this girl now started hugging her as if they were already lovers. She hoped Maxy would not find them so compromised, when after all it was his date that was making a play for her. At the same time, she hoped that he would return soon before things went any further. If she wanted to have some female bonding, then perhaps they should be alone, or if not alone then certainly not as a threesome with one’s brother!
“Look, let’s go shopping tomorrow; bring your maid and meet me at gate B, the alpha arena, at the 3rd strike, okay?”
Just then, Max returned and suggested he show Amy about while Ice tided up. Her brother winked at her as he pulled the strange-smelling female to her feet. As they left, Ice knew that tonight she would take a look at her father’s council files on nest members and find out more of this oddity; she had not been 15 for so many long years without learning her way though her father’s security systems, if only to amend her clothing allowance files, which was something that he should have done himself years ago. It was nothing to feel guilty about, and besides; he did so like his daughter to look nice in public.
Tournament
Amy was nervous coming to the tournament part of the nest, as it was for alphas only. Even with the modesty disk around her neck, she felt more like an omega. It did not help that she had brought Bambi along as her handmaid, which was normal for alpha girls out shopping, but Bambi was also nervous and made Amy feel like
they were a couple of girls sneaking out of school rather than an alpha and her maid.
As she walked towards the entrance, she could feel eyes on her from a group of three girls who were standing and talking. They must have recently been training because the smell of them was making her want to throw up. It was always the same; vampires hated other vampires, and even with the calming smell of the nest, she had an uneasy feeling.
Her uneasy feeling changed to one of surprise as Bambi leapt into the air, catching a throwing knife that had been aimed at her. The surprise was more at the speed at which Bambi was able to move in protecting her than it was at the fact that someone was currently trying to kill her.
Bambi dropped to all fours in front of Amy with extended fangs and claws, ready to defend her mistress with her life.
The middle one of the three girls moved slightly forward and made a snorting kind of noise when she looked at both Amy and Bambi with obvious contempt.
“If your maid continues to look at us like that, I will have the guards defang her and pin her out in the sunlight.”
Amy was sure it was a nasty bluff, but nest rules were many, and she knew a maid would be punished if she showed disrespect to a full-blood, let alone showed her fangs to full-blooded alpha females. If it was a bluff, she could bluff as well and be just as nasty herself.
She signalled to Bambi to get behind her with a flick of her hand. If they were going to cause problems, then Amy would make sure Bambi was not involved.
Bambi
“How dare you throw a blade at my property! You are very lucky that your aim is so useless; it almost reached me by mistake. If you had damaged her, it would have been very inconvenient to be without her to carry the shopping, but you look strong, so I could always insist you take her place as my shopping carrier for the rest of the day.”
