by V. Vaughn
Called by the Vampire - Part 8
V. Vaughn
Sugarloaf Press
Copyright © 2017 by V. Vaughn
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Natasha Snow
Editing by Jodi Henley, Red Adept Publishing and Angie Ramey
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Contents
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
About the Author
About This Book
With Robert’s help, Maggie tames her bloodlust easily, but his gift comes with a price. Maggie is forced to keep his involvement in her training a secret. Unfortunately, Lyndsey has a harder time learning to feed responsibly and discovers she has a flaw that would be fatal to anyone but royalty. When King Daniel hears about Maggie’s instant success, he employs her to train Lyndsey.
Alexander confirms Maggie is his soul mate, but her feelings have faded and she’s not so sure. Maggie puts her love life on hold as she is forced to decide between revealing a secret that would endanger the Hart brothers or risking her own existence when she fails.
Chapter 1
Maggie
My stomach heaves and I gag as I struggle to keep from vomiting all over the limo. Adly and I are in one of the Harts’s Town Cars on the side of the road after he found me jogging toward the mansion from downtown Port Porpoise. The locks click, and I shove the door open just in time to get out. Vomit splatters on the ground as my stomach turns itself inside out. “No,” I moan as what I see confirms my worst fear. Red blood in its various states is all over the pavement.
“Maggie?” asks Adly, who has appeared by my side. He glances around before he asks, “Are you done?”
I answer by spewing more blood in a violent fashion that sends it splashing across the sidewalk. Relief relaxes my body, and I sink to my knees as I say, “Now I am.”
Adly takes me by the shoulders and pulls me away from the mess. He dabs at my mouth with a napkin. “Nice aim.” I know he’s trying to make light of the situation for my sake, but his face is clouded with concern. “What did you do?”
The memory of a woman in my arms as I fed on her flashes in my mind, but that’s all I’ve got. “I’m not sure. The last thing I remember before I found myself wandering in town is—” I recall trying to suck the blood out of a bird and grimace. I swallow hard as if a nasty flavor is still in my mouth. “I was on the beach, trying to feed on a seagull.”
“That’s too much blood for a seagull.”
Now the memory of a man’s scent fills my mind, and I remember the taste of him too. Oh god. I fed on two people. I’m sure of it. Which means I had to have killed them. “Adly—” Panic grips my heart, and I grab his arm tightly.
“It’s okay, Maggie. Get back in the car.”
I wonder what happened to the bodies of the people I killed. What will the police think? Will they investigate and— I dig my fingers deeper into Adly’s arm. “The bodies.”
“Get in the car,” he says in a stern tone.
I let him guide me into the limo, and I stare out the window without seeing a thing. Once Adly is behind the wheel, he turns my head and wipes my mouth again. His face is calm as if what I’ve done happens every day. “I’ll take care of it.”
“But—”
“Maggie, you aren’t the first vampire to lose control. We have ways to take care of it.”
“What ways? Adly, I don’t even know where I was when I fed.” I grab his shirt. “Or in what condition I left the woman. Or the man.” A button pops off Adly’s shirt as I clutch a chunk of the fabric. “You can’t just leave them there. What if a child—”
“I know. Hold on.” Adly pries my hand from his chest and pulls out his cell phone. I stare in amazement as he scrolls through his contacts and makes a call. He doesn’t bother with small talk and says, “Cape Porpoise Beach. Number of bodies unknown.” He then hangs up.
I frown in confusion. “Is there a hotline for this kind of thing?”
“Something like that.”
He’s so calm about what I’ve done. “Adly?” He raises his eyebrows at me. My voice gets small as I ask, “You aren’t horrified that I killed people today?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think there is a vampire walking this earth who hasn’t. I’m still young enough that being human is a strong memory, and I get why it’s upsetting you, but it’s the unfortunate reality of bloodlust. Until we learn to control it, and sometimes even after, it’s easy to go too far and take a life.” He lifts my chin up and gazes intently into my eyes as if I’m a child and he’s explaining there isn’t a monster under the bed. “You’re going to have to find a way to forgive yourself.”
“I can’t.” I turn to glance out the window. “I shouldn’t.”
Adly touches my arm, but I can’t look him in the eye. “I’m not saying you should forget. You’ll never forget, but you can’t change what happened. So you find a way to live with it and do your best not to let it happen again.”
I notice the cloud of white fog that cloaks the ocean and wrap my arms around myself. Hot tears roll down my cheeks as I whisper, “Sebastian’s going to be so ashamed of me.”
The car starts moving, and Adly says, “Sebastian’s mad you ran away and worried about you because he was afraid this would happen.” He sighs. “Look. I get it. The man pushes all your buttons, and all you want to do is rebel. But he’s your creator and only wants what is best for you. You have to start trusting him, Maggie.”
My creator. “Is he really mad?”
“He was. You tricked us, and Sebastian doesn’t like to be the fool.”
I recall how I snuck out of the house to run off and kill myself because I was in the suicidal cycle of my change. But just before I was about to sizzle my body in the sun like a piece of bacon, I moved out of the phase and back to bloodlust. The memory of a man’s sweaty musk flashes in my mind again, and I remember more about feeding on him. My chest tightens with regret as I look up at the ceiling of the car. I wish I’d died.
Adly asks, “You really don’t remember what happened?”
“Only brief glimpses,” I say. “I fed on a woman and a man.”
“Is it like the time at the gas station?”
He’s referring to when Robert Kearns controlled my mind and I lost a chunk of time. “Kind of.”
Neither of us says anything for a moment, then Adly speaks. “I know I gave you the impression we wouldn’t tell Sebastian what you’ve done, but now that I know you were probably mind-controlled by Robert again, I think we have to.”
I nod, but the fear that has my stomach in knots isn’t about Sebastian finding out what I did. It’s not even what Robert may have done either. It’s the fact I’m a killer. The kind of person who should be on death row for recklessly taking multiple lives. That is, if I— I gasp as my throat tightens. If I were a person. I start sobbing.
As we approach the Hart mansion, I think about the day I first arrived here. I thought the house on top of the rocky cliff was regal, and when I got closer, I found it a bit creepy. I had no idea the danger that lurked inside was more than my imagination. Or that I would become par
t of that danger.
I also had no idea I was going to find my soul mate, and my heart aches as I think about Alexander and how much I miss him. My sobs get louder. He’s going to be disappointed in me too when he finds out what I’ve done.
And Mom. The last time I saw her, she was being dragged away from me. They wouldn’t let us talk to each other when I was cycling, for good reason since I doubt Alexander told her what that entailed. I swipe my arm across my face to wipe away tears and control my crying. Later, he did explain what happened when Sebastian made me drink his blood, and Alexander says Mom’s doing okay with me begin a vampire. The fact she knows about us means she can never return to her old life. I shudder when I try to imagine how okay she’d be if she knew I am a killer.
We pull into the driveway, and the garage door groans open. Adly drives in, and when he turns off the car, he says, “I’m going to be with you the whole time. You’ll get through this. I promise.”
“Yeah.” I’ve managed to stop my tears, and I sniff as the magnitude of what I’ve done weighs heavily on me. Every part of me aches as I force myself to climb out of the car.
I glance over at my Alfa Romeo, and I wish I could get in it and drive far away from here. Far away from what my life has become. When Adly notices I’m not moving, he says, “C’mon. Let’s go talk to Sebastian before he has a coronary wondering what happened to you.”
New anger for the vampire who changed me instead of letting me die a natural death surges in my veins. And with each step I take through the underground passageway to the mansion, I get more worked up. So much so that when we get inside the house and to Sebastian’s study, I’m ready to give him a piece of my mind.
My vampire rises, and I know my eyes are flashing when I greet him with a snarl. “Sebastian.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again, I see anguish. “Margaret, I know I shouldn’t, but I’m begging your forgiveness.”
I frown because he’s supposed to be mad. “What?”
“I can only imagine the guilt and despair you’re feeling right now over killing innocent human beings.”
I blink as I try to process what he’s saying. Talk about taking the wind out of my sails. How can I yell at a man who is apologizing? “How did you know?”
Adly sighs. “That call I made about body retrieval. I forgot that Sebastian would be alerted to the incident.”
Sebastian steps forward and holds his hands out to me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My emotions need to come out in some form, so tears fill my eyes again, and I shake my head. I’m still trying to process the hell my life has become, and since I can’t yell and scream at Sebastian when he’s being so kind to me, I resort to crying. I ask, “Would it be okay if I just went upstairs to my old room? You can lock me in.”
“Of course,” says Sebastian. “Would you like some tea?”
I’m a complete mess because now I’m sobbing softly like a child, and I whimper, “And cookies.” I burst into loud crying when I realize I can’t eat food any longer.
I sink to the floor as if I can curl into a ball and escape it all. Adly says, “I’ve got her.” He picks me up and cradles me in his arms. “Shhh, Maggie. It’s okay.” He climbs the stairs to my suite, and when he gets to my bed, he lays me down softly.
I clutch at the plush comforter as I wrap myself up in a cocoon of downy feathers and turn away from Adly. It makes me think of the seagull I tried to eat, and now my crying becomes a wail. Adly says, “That’s it. Let it all out.”
I turn to look up at him and scream. “Get out! Get out!” My voice becomes a screech. “Get! Out!”
Chapter 2
Maggie
I stay in my room for days. All I want to do is sleep, but I keep having nightmares. I dream about feeding on my mom and my childhood best friend to the point that I kill them. I usually wake up screaming, and Adly or Sebastian will come and sit with me until I fall asleep again. When I’m awake, the vague memories of the woman and man I fed on haunt me. So much so that I struggle to drink blood because the taste reminds me that I killed someone.
A knock sounds on my door, and I call out from my bed, “Come in!”
It’s Adly, and he smiles at me as he holds a glass of blood out toward me. “Rise and shine. It’s a beautiful night to be a vampire, and I’m taking you outside to enjoy it.”
I let out a groan and yank the covers over my head. The sour smell of my body, which hasn’t seen a shower in a few days, wafts up my nose, but I ignore it. “Go away,” I say.
My drink thuds on the bedside table, and the mattress sinks as Adly sits on it. “No can do. You’ve wallowed enough in self-pity. It’s time to woman up.” He yanks the comforter down, and he grimaces. “You could really use a bath, Maggie. C’mon. Up. Up. Up.”
I scowl at him, and he rolls his eyes at me as he lets out a sigh. “Don’t make me force you to get out of bed and toss you in the shower.”
I glare at him. “I said no.”
“Fine.” Adly gets up, and in a flash, he’s got me in his arms. He waggles his eyebrows at me. “Showering together saves water.”
“So does not showering at all.”
“Cute, Maggie,” he says as he sets me on my feet in the bathroom. Water rushes when he turns it on, and he kicks off his shoes.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
I notice muscles ripple in his chest as he tugs his shirt over his head. “No need to get my clothes wet when I wash you.” He tosses the T-shirt over to the small bench as he grins. “Unless, of course, you think you can manage all by yourself.”
I let out a big sigh. I know Adly well enough to know that he would follow through with this charade, so I say, “Okay. I’ll shower.” I wave my hand at him in a shooing motion. “Now get out of here and give me some privacy.”
“Good girl,” he says as he moves toward the door. “I’d better smell soap when you’re done.”
I grab his shirt and shoes and toss them after him as my reply. Adly chuckles before I slam the door.
Once I strip out of my clothes, I step under the hot spray and relax in the warmth. It does feel good. I think about how for much of my childhood, I lived with the fear of dying. My life was a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows, but I always managed to rise above and believe in hope. Mostly because my mother wouldn’t have stood for anything less. I hear her favorite saying in my head. “Maggie, we were put on earth for a reason, so let’s keep living until we find out what it is.”
She wouldn’t be impressed with me right now. I grab the shampoo and squirt some into my hand to lather up my hair. Even in my current situation, I’m sure Mom would have some positive statement to help steamroll me out of a funk. But she’s not here right now, and I think once I’ve made Adly happy, I’ll climb back into bed.
When I finish and walk out of the bathroom, I notice a pile of sheets on the floor by Adly’s feet, and my bed is freshly made. I sigh because Adly’s been such an amazing friend through all of this, and I’ve done nothing for him. “Adly. You’ve got to stop being so good to me. I don’t deserve it.”
“I have no doubt you’ll pay it forward one day,” he says as he scoops up the dirty linens. “Now.” His grin gets mischievous. “Put on something sexy.”
I frown at him. “I thought we were going cliff hopping or something like—” Oh god. Is he going to take me out on a date?
Adly laughs. “Oh, Maggie. Lift your jaw up from the floor. I’m not trying to get in your pants.”
Heat rises to my cheeks. “That’s not what I thought.”
“Uh-huh.” Adly walks over to my closet, and hangers scrape on the metal bar as he flips through the clothes. “Where’s that slinky green blouse?” He turns to me. “The one that comes in tight at your waist and makes your breasts look bigger.”
“What’s going on?” I glance down at my vampire-enhanced bustline. Not that I did too badly in that department when I was human. “Are you pimping me out?
”
He shakes his head. “Sebastian has a surprise for you. Just trust me. You’ll be glad you look hot for it.”
A thought hits me, and I whisper out my hope. “Alexander?”
Adly holds up a finger to his lips and darts his gaze at the bed.
I shake my head at him. “So that’s why you changed the sheets.” My flush of embarrassment returns. “You are so bad.” More than my face gets warm now. My entire insides come alive because I’m finally going to see Alexander. As a vampire. The last time we saw each other I had just been turned, and I was clawing at Sebastian, screaming for him to let me feed on my mother.
My heart flutters as if it’s coming alive again. I’ve told myself that Alexander and I are soul mates for so long because I wanted us to be But what if all this time, it’s been a lie? When he rejected me before, I believed it was because he knew Sebastian wanted me for his own. Then I learned it was because Alexander knew we couldn’t realize the soul-mate bond because I was still human. But because my real heart isn’t in my body, I have no idea if our soul-mate attraction still exists. My stomach clenches as if I’ve eaten something bad, and I clutch my towel tighter around my body.
“Maggie?” Adly steps toward me and touches my arm. “What’s wrong?”
I gaze into my friend’s concerned face. It would be so easy to pour out my fears to him, but Adly’s done too much for me as it is, and he doesn’t need to deal with my love-life worries too. Besides, he’s friends with Alexander. I force a smile. “Nothing. I guess I’m just nervous.”
He frowns. “Wait. You two have done it before. Right?”
“Adly!” I slap at his chest. “Get out of here so I can get dressed.”
