by Aya DeAniege
Books By Aya DeAniege
Contracted
Contract Taken
Contract Broken
Contract Renewed
Daughters of the Alphas
Masked Intentions
Coffee And Blood
At Death’s Door
Cheating Death
Death Mask
Being Written:
Seed
Contract Signed
His Grace
Fragments*
Prototype*
Copyright 2017 Aya DeAniege
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission except in the case of small quotes for reviews, articles, or essays.
A week as a fledgling vampire, and then I had to turn the tablet back on. As much as a part of me desperately wants to share those seven days with the world, there is a sort of cathartic freedom in keeping it off record.
Quin, my Maker, used me as a Maker would a Progeny. That’s as far as that topic can go. Afterwards, the tablet was turned on once more, to finish the story.
Of course, we never expected the night to unfold the way it did.
Sometimes I miss my quiet city life, with the run down apartment, two cats, and nothing to keep me company but my books. At least then a lot less could go wrong on any given night.
I knew what to expect of my little fracture of the world. It hadn’t been good, my life hadn’t had direction, but I had been in control. Not because I could elicit control over my environment, but because I knew, at any given time, what was going to happen because it had become predictable.
Still, I miss it sometimes. Even with the cockroaches and bedbugs, with Erin screaming about sex through the thin walls. The addicts and the dust that never seemed to go away.
For the time in question, all I can really say is what is before you here. It happened, this did happen. For all the oddities, all the things.
It happened.
This night’s players are much the same.
Quin, my Maker, still in his position as Wraith and Younger Council. Outwardly not much has changed, but there was a shifting within him. It’s hard to put my finger on just how or where, but it’s there, as strange as it might be.
Balor and Troy, the pair were touching as much as they are fighting. I’m disturbingly curious about the pair of them. I can’t tell if it’s the vampire in me, or some curiosity that I hadn’t sated while mortal.
Or maybe it’s just because I had never been around a couple of men who had that much public affection.
Lucrecia, of course.
Then there are the other supernaturals.
They are varied, they are many more than they had been before. Even over the span of a week, my view of the world broadened and I became significantly smaller.
Our world is populated by many intelligent races. Some can interbreed with humans, but not all. Some like humans, some dislike them, and a few, like vampires, eat them.
So, just a word of warning: the supernatural races of the world are still hidden. Whatever you might have learned about other races is best kept to yourself. Don’t go looking for these creatures.
We are immortal, we can hunt what goes bump in the night. A mortal body against such a magic, however, would not last long.
Then again, we barely survived ourselves.
We sat in a diner on the outskirts of one of the many little towns that spot Southern Ontario. Having arrived the night before, we took to a hotel where I slept the day away and Quin had done work before joining me sometime around noon.
As it turned out, the interviewers retained none of the rights to our work. We were paid a flat fee and then quietly shuffled off to wherever we had come from in the first place. I really shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. It wasn’t like we—the ones actually conducting the interviews—had been provided with a lawyer to help us understand the contract we had signed when we took the job. I had made an attempt to read my contract, but I was a student, not a lawyer, damn it.
Maybe if you want normal people to sign a contract, you should use clear terms that anyone can understand rather than riddling it with legal jargon. Because short of keeping a lawyer on retainer for each program you install, or each contract you sign while broke, there’s hardly a body that can understand that nonsense.
Erin wouldn’t let me borrow her laptop to look up the words I had been confused by, either. So I was super frustrated about the whole thing.
When we filed the report for the damaged tablet, we discovered the issue. The Council had had a closed door meeting with those in charge of the interviews, to which I was not privy. All I know is that it ended in a shouting match, threats to sue, and threats to eat the stupid mortals.
I’m guessing Quin was the one who threaten to eat stupid mortals.
In the end, they had come to an agreement. I would retain rights, per what the Council had promised, and the interviewer group would take a percentage of the royalties. As long as I added one last portion, considering all else that happened.
They had provided a new tablet, which was around my neck, and Quin had gotten me a new phone. I was really hoping this one would survive our last night of adventure.
“Helen?” Quin asked.
“Mm?” I responded. “Oh, I know, but can I set the scene, at least? The only time I seem to do it is at the start.”
“A lot was happening last time, but go ahead,” he said.
The diner was a little rundown. Older but clean, it was time for a remodel, but the customers and waitress were nice enough. They kept to their own tables and didn’t question why I had a glass of water in front of me, but no food.
Before Quin was coffee in a bright white mug. The cup was new, suggesting that the needed changes in the diner were just around the corner. All the cutlery and dishes were new as well.
He also had a cheeseburger and poutine. I had asked for a glass of water and pushed that towards him as well.
It was Quin’s first solid food in four hundred years. The salt content of that meal would have had me drinking bottles and bottles of water, and I was used to salty food. When I had pushed the glass towards him, he had arched an eyebrow but said nothing about it.
I miss the beard.
In the week since I had been turned, Quin had pared down and then completely shaven the beard off. His jaw was strong, nothing to hide at all, but I missed being able to run my fingers through his beard and the disgruntled look he gave me for playing with his facial hair.
“I’m not a poodle,” he muttered from across the table.
“What?” I asked, startled because I had been writing that, not narrating.
“You’ve got that annoyed look you had when you realized I had shaved,” he said.
“Well, it is a part of the scene,” I muttered.
His words from a week before had come to mind the moment I had seen his jaw.
Lu always made him go bare.
We all mourn in our own ways. Even a victim might mourn an abuser, especially when the abuser held such a large part of our hearts. So I hadn’t commented on the missing beard besides to say that I would miss playing with it.
And he hadn’t offered a reason for that. Or for anything else. It seemed that, as a baby vampire, my only purpose in life was to serve his whims and to look pretty. I didn’t need to know how he ran his businesses or stock beyond what I already knew from the interview.
That night was to be the last time we reached out. Then we would return to Maker and Progeny. During the previous week, yes,
he used me as he pleased and I found myself experiencing a perverse pleasure in serving him. Even when he caused me pain, because yes, that had happened.
He had started small, though, and only at that time right before I went to bed. An open handed slap, a strike with a closed fist. We talked about it before and after. My training wouldn’t always be like that, I would not get a warning in real life and so he wouldn’t always warn me.
But for now, so new to that world, Quin insisted we speak about it.
We also talked about how, one day, I’d do something stupid and be punished for it. The idea of discipline turned my stomach. Vampiric discipline sounded more like torture than actual punishment.
I set the phone in my lap, having been permitted to write more during the night but still required to participate in everything else.
“How far away are your parents?” he asked.
I shrugged, then recalled that I had to speak ‘like a civilized person,’ and cleared my throat with a shake of my head.
“Not far, maybe ten minutes,” I said.
The conditions on which I was able to keep my rights to my work on the tablet had started with my going to visit my parents with Quin and to tell them what had happened. Not all of it, but, you know, that one little important bit.
Then, of course, was that the interview be included in its entirety besides changing names of mortals. Those vampires involved had known going in that parts of their lives would be caught on the tablet and so had consented by speaking around me.
If they had a problem with it post-publishing they could suck on something sour, or direct all questions to Quin. My Maker would, one way or another, settle the matter.
“Is there anything I should know about your family?” he asked.
This time my reaction was just to shrug. Quin frowned at me but didn’t push.
I didn’t want to talk about my family and didn’t feel particularly happy about the trip. The interview was supposed to be about Quin, not me. And while they had insisted on the format, that didn’t mean that I had to give them fodder and dredge up memories.
“We had this for the past five days,” I said, motioning to the tablet. “Why are we only going now? Should have just ripped it off like a bandage.”
“Can you still tell mortals what to do?” he asked.
“I can, but they no longer obey. You tested it before we left yesterday.”
“I’m sure Kevin is grateful that he didn’t go streaking again,” Quin murmured with just the barest of smiles.
He had so much more facial expression without the beard. That much I did enjoy about it. His lips gave away what he was thinking a lot of the time. With the beard, it had been hidden.
“But why did we have to wait?” I asked.
“Again, can you read minds? Pluck memories out of people’s heads? Make people like you?”
“No,” I said, understanding where he was going with the conversation.
“How about killing people with your mind?” he asked.
“Do you want the sarcastic answer or the one you are actually looking for?” I asked.
“Now I’m interested in what the sarcastic answer would be,” he said with another of those little smiles.
“My mind tells my body what to do, so clearly, yes, I can still kill people with my mind,” I said.
He chuckled and picked up the burger.
“Wait,” I said. “Are you sure you won’t... you know, throw up?”
“It’s the first meal I’ve eaten, not the first food,” he said. “I tested it while you were sleeping. I wouldn’t want to subject you to that. I’m told that I’m very whiny when sick.”
My phone chimed, and I sighed, picking it up.
“Is he sure that’s how he wants to end the second part?” I read off to Quin.
“What’s wrong with how it ended?” Quin asked.
I lowered the phone and met his brown eyes. There was a boiling anger there. He knew what they meant, but he still wanted me to say it. Perhaps to judge my reaction to it, or to take the opportunity to tell me what I should feel about it.
“The culture hasn’t ever really allowed for men to cry,” I said. “It’s a sign of weakness. Now, I’m not saying I agree with them, but they’re probably worried about losing readers because you cried like you had a heart and soul and had reached the end of a long trial.”
“Which is what it was,” he growled. “You didn’t give them the entire thing, did you?”
“No, I cut it down to where you wanted it cut to,” I responded. “No one needs to know that you forgot to shut it off and it recorded until the phone began to die and automatically shut down apps.”
In doing so, I had to cut out a conversation between Quin and Lucrecia. I regretted that because it was difficult to express what happened in a few paragraphs.
Suffice to say, it was a heartbreaking close to yet another chapter in Quin’s life. He would, over the course of the next century, assume the title of Patriarch.
His own family, something he hadn’t had in forever.
“They want to end it when I put you to bed,” he said. “Like a manly man.”
“If I receive a text, I have to read it out to you,” I said desperately.
Because he was getting angry fast and it wasn’t anything I had said or done. If the interviewers had a problem with it, they should have contacted Quin, not me. It was his chapter, after all.
“Tell them no.”
“Tell them no, or tell them not to touch it?”
“The second one,” he growled, then bit into his burger.
I sent off his words as he moaned. Startled, I looked up as he ever so slowly chewed the burger and closed his eyes.
“You people have no idea how blessed you are,” he said as he swallowed. The burger received a shake. “This thing is as good as Maker’s Blood.”
I eyed the burger, desperately wanting one myself. The smell of it alone was enough to make me salivate, but I had to swallow and keep myself clean of all real food.
Unless I wanted to vomit black sludge again.
The very thought of that made me shudder in disgust and refocus on Quin.
“Try the poutine,” I said. “Get it all in one bite. Gravy, cheese curd, fry. Just all together.”
He set down the burger, picked up his fork and did just that. Again he moaned.
“Salt,” he said with a little bite to his lip.
How I wanted to maul him over that lip bite.
Maul? There has got to be a better way to say that.
“Food has come a long way,” I said.
“I have a whole list of things I want to try,” he said. “But I need to pace myself. Otherwise I’ll be sick or put on weight.”
“You are familiar with the whole bowel movement situation, right?” I asked.
Because since turning it had happened one time, and that had, apparently, been my body ridding itself of the remains of my mortal life.
Okay, so maybe I was happy that we waited until I was completely immortal and had gone through certain rights of passage before taking the trip. It would have been really awkward asking my mother for a tampon in the same breath that I told her I was a vampire.
“Your body never forgets,” Quin said. “And I’ve never had a problem figuring out what it was that I needed. Oh, on that note, about once a year.”
“How did you know I was going to ask?”
“You ask about everything. You asked if you could swallow this morning.”
“It was a valid question,” I said.
“Ask before, not during,” he grumbled.
“Who knew anything from a Maker could be swallowed?” I asked with a shrug.
“I did, and could have told you before you interrupted what was otherwise an average blowjob to ask.”
“Well, I haven’t had centuries of practice,” I snapped back at him.
“Don’t use that tone with me. I’m your Maker, not your boyfriend.”
“Tha
t’s abundantly clear. Boyfriends reciprocate for that sort of thing.”
“Since when?” he demanded.
“Since women realized they could bite and straight out refuse to do it,” I said. “If we were dating and you didn’t return the favour, you bet your ass, that’d be the only subpar blow job you received from me. Ever.”
“Anna says there are classes women take now,” he said.
Anna was Sasha’s friend. She had been in contact with Quin since the first night after I had been turned and she had the strangest conversations with Quin. They talked about everything, on the phone no less.
I had overheard them talking about the best way to hide a body in the modern day, to them reminiscing about starting an orgy in a convent.
“As soon as I get paid for this work, I’ll take the class.”
“No, I’ll pay for it.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I said.
“I’m sorry, I’ve not had attention like that for centuries, and certainly not often. I now have an opportunity to do so and with someone who is a fast learner when she puts her mind to it. So, yes, I will pay for the class, you will take the class, and stop looking at me like I consider you a blow up doll.”
“It’s not fair.”
“It’s not supposed to be fair. I’m your Maker.”
“Just because you made me, doesn’t mean you get free use of my body.”
Quin frowned at me. “Does this have to do with us, or with the fact that you are meeting up with your family tonight?”
“If you hadn’t turned me, would you reciprocate?”
He took another bite of his burger and considered me for a long moment. His response finally was a shrug before he reached for his water.
“I was still a part of Lucrecia’s family then,” he said quietly before sipping his water.
“Then the question is, are you exploring your sexuality after fifteen hundred years, or are you just that guy?”
Quin ate a little in silence as he considered. I was learning that sometimes he didn’t answer straight away and that I shouldn’t take offence to that. I just had to give him the time.
My phone went off again. I picked it up and stared at the image that the interviewers had attached.
