“RISE AND SHINE, PRINCESS.”
My eyes fly open to a face just inches from mine. My instincts wake before my brain and my fist flies to clip the edge of a jaw. A crushing hand wraps around my fist, though, and holds it stationary.
“Nice reflexes,” Ian Ward says as he lets go of my hand and takes half a step away from my bed. “Maybe you have half a chance of surviving the week.”
“What are you doing in my room?” I hiss, swinging my legs out of the bed and taking an aggressive step toward him. It’s when his eyes drop down that I remember that I only pulled on one of Henry’s t-shirts before collapsing into bed after a shower last night.
Too late for modesty. Ian’s seen me in all my glory.
“Rath was going to let you sleep all day, but we’ve got stuff to talk about. Training to start,” Ian says as his eyes linger on my exposed legs for just a moment longer. When his eyes come back to mine, I notice how beautiful they are for the first time. They’re hazel, but bright and dark at the same time. And bear no shame in staring.
“Training,” I repeat. “What are you, some kind of sensei?”
“I won’t object to it if you want to call me that,” he says with a lopsided little smile.
“In your dreams,” I say with a raised eyebrow. He’s staring at me and I’m staring at him, thinking how unbelievable he is considering he wanted to kill me last night. I take a step around him and head for the massive closet. The housekeeper hung my clothes up next to Henry’s. She had asked if I wanted them put away, and I told her no. I didn’t have a reason for leaving them, but I didn’t want them to disappear, too, just like Henry did.
I pull on a pair of sweat shorts, feeling Ian’s eyes on me the entire time.
“How old are you?” Ian asks as I turn back to face him and lean in the doorway.
“I turned twenty-two on New Year’s Day.”
“So everyone parties the same day you do,” Ian says, crossing his arms over his chest with a small smile again.
I shrug. “And how old are you, master vampire slayer?”
“Twenty-four,” he answers.
Someone knocks on the already open door, and we both turn to see the cook. “Breakfast is ready, if you’re hungry.” She doesn’t meet either of our eyes when she says it.
“Great, I’m starved and the day’s already half gone.” Ian walks out the door without a second glance.
The stairs creak just slightly as we both descend them. For the past ten days I’ve been here, I’ve insisted on eating my meals in the informal dining room adjacent to the kitchen. But helpers walk in and out of the formal dining room.
“Pretty swanky place you inherited,” Ian says as we both slip in behind them. Rath is already seated at the table, a cup of coffee and a newspaper before him.
“What, you don’t live in a mansion, too?” I ask Ian sarcastically as I slide into a chair, one leg bent up. My manners are shocking here in the South.
Ian gives an awkward chuckle and his eyes drop away as he sits, as well. “Not exactly.”
And for some reason I feel embarrassed for my response. There’s something about Ian that brings out a sharp edge I didn’t know I had to me.
“I hope you got some rest,” Rath says as he folds his paper and sets it on the table. He looks up at me as he takes a sip of his coffee.
“Eventually, yeah,” I say as I reach for a scoop of fresh fruit and a biscuit. “Pretty sure I had some crazy dreams last night, though.” All of last night felt completely insane.
“Understandable,” Rath says with a little nod of his head.
“Enough with the formalities,” Ian breaks in. His table manners aren’t any better than mine. He’s got one leg swung over the arm of the ornate dining chair, his dirty boot hanging in the air for all to see. “Can we get down to business?”
“For being from the South, your manners are atrocious,” Rath tells him through clenched teeth. “Most would find it inappropriate to discuss the intricacies of the vampire world over breakfast.”
“Breakfast seems as good a time as any to talk insanity,” I say before I take a huge bite out of the biscuit. I then see the gravy that was supposed to go over the top of it.
I have so much to learn about my new world—and not just about vampires.
“See, she gets it,” Ian says. And he freaking winks at me.
“Very well,” Rath says, wiping his already spotlessly clean hands on a napkin. “I suppose we’ll start from the very beginning.”
I pop a few grapes in my mouth and angle myself toward him.
“Some several thousand years ago, a man named Cyrus was a bit of a scientist, you could say. Not many details have survived the millennia, but somehow he found a way to make himself the ultimate predator—and immortal. The very first vampire. He was stronger, faster, better than everyone around him. At first he thought himself the pinnacle of human perfection. But he also craved blood, from his own past kind. Ignoring the horror of the last fact, he desired that his wife become like him.”
I take a drink of my orange juice, but it doesn’t taste right. I swear I taste a hint of copper and rust. I look down in my cup to make sure it hadn’t changed to blood.
“His wife, however, was afraid of what her husband had become. While he was strong, healthy, and incredible, a more enhanced version of his previous self, but he was also brutal, a more enhanced version of his previous self. He’d attacked people, killed them as he drained them of blood.” Rath’s eyes have drawn inward, as if seeing the story he’s painting. “She loved him, despite his flaws. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to be like him.”
Rath takes another draw of his coffee. “In the end, Cyrus changed her anyway through the same process. What he did not know, though, was that she was with child.”
Something cold snakes its way up my spine. Something dreadful and so very wrong.
“Sevan conceived as a human and gave birth as a vampire.”
“What was the baby?” I ask. I didn’t realize until now that I’m sitting forward, nearly on the edge of my seat. “The baby was born a vampire?”
Rath shakes his head. “The child was born seemingly human. Ate, lived, looked exactly as every other human out there. Two unique, genesis vampire parents with a human baby. Everything seemed right and natural. Until the child died just after his eighteenth birthday.”
My brows furrow and the room is so silent, I hear it when Ian scratches at his jawline.
“They buried their son. Mourned over him. But then, just four days later, he rose from the grave.”
I swear under my breath. Ian looks over at me, but he doesn’t have that mischievous smile on his lips like what I’m learning is so common for him. He’s as dead serious as that son should have been.
“The son resurrected as a vampire. Exactly the same as his parents.”
“That’s why you called me a Born, isn’t it?” I ask as I look back at Ian.
He nods. “Only a Born could recover from a bite like you did. Anyone else would have turned.”
“The son resurrected as himself,” Rath continues the story. “And after a few years, they all realized he was not aging. He, too, was immortal. Realizing what he was and what he had defied, he became obsessed with creating others like himself. He took many women for himself. Horrifically, some of them conceived. Not all, but enough. Children were born. And once each of them reached their prime age, he killed them all.”
“That’s awful,” I say in shock. This man, father and murderer in the same breath. The thought is terrifying.
Both Rath and Ian are looking at me with a weight I don’t quite understand.
“The Born were not the only new creature to walk the earth, though,” Rath continues. “Those that Cyrus had bitten and nearly killed turned into something new. Different than Cyrus and his family. They still aged. They craved blood more than the Born. Without it, they withered and died. They were the Bitten. They had never died, but they would. Their lifespans were the same as if they’d lived as a normal human.”
We’ve been in this room for quite some time now, and I just now realize that not a single attendant has re-entered the room since Rath began his story.
I’m starting to understand now why they look at me with fear in their eyes.
“The son had created seven sons of his own and eight daughters. But still he wanted more. He wished for an army to dominate those around him. He was cruel and reckless. Seeing what his son had become and the threat he posed to his reigh, Cyrus killed him.”
“But I thought the Born were immortal?” I ask leaning forward, my forearms on the table. “How did he kill his son?”
“A few of the stories you hear about vampires are true,” Ian says, resting his forearm over the edge of the arm of the chair.
“A stake through the heart,” I say, recalling what Ian had done last night.
Rath nods. “Cyrus’ son was dead, but the damage was done. There were seven more Born vampires with the ability to create more offspring.”
“What about the female Born?” I ask.
Rath shakes his head. “Once resurrected, a female Born can not reproduce.”
“So a Born can only be created with a human mother and a vampire father?” I ask to clarify.
“You got it,” Ian confirms.
“Cyrus is still alive,” Rath says, moving things along. “And he rules as King over all vampires.”
“The vampires have a king?” I repeat, raising one eyebrow. This all just keeps getting layered deeper and deeper in the crazy.
“King Cyrus is ancient and thorough. To this day, he and his attendants keep tabs on all the royal male lines.”
“Why?” I ask.
“That is a story for another day,” Rath says. And suddenly he seems exhausted. It’s a heavy tale to tell and one I think has been weighing him down for a long time.
Is Rath a Born vampire?
Or an all too well informed human?
“Wow,” I say, feeling overwhelmed and a bit like everything I’ve just learned is going to fuzz my brain out. “Okay. There’s complicated history in the vampire world. And I know there’s some deep history to this house. But, Rath, I have to ask. How did my father really die?”
“I think we’d all like to know the answer to that question.” Ian finally sits upright, leaning forward, elbows on the table, fingers tightly locked together.
Rath’s eyes grow distant and dark. There’s anger there. Hate. Regret.
“It was just as the sun was coming up,” he begins. “Your father was preparing to go to sleep. I was just waking, still in the workers house.” He stops talking for a while. Takes a few slow breaths. “Someone broke in. Got past the security systems. They staked your father and drug his body out into the sun as he lay dying. I arrived at the scene as he took his last breath.”
Rath holds a fork in his hands, and he’s now bent it completely in half.
“I should have chased the attacker down, ended them. But I was…not in my right mind, after I found Henry. They got away.”
“Who was it?” Ian asks. His voice is low and serious. “Someone from the House?”
Rath shakes his head. “I did not recognize the attacker. The fact that they were able to take Henry down so easily says a great deal, though.”
He suddenly slaps the destroyed fork on the table, and I jump violently.
The message is clear. We are done talking about my father’s death.
“Okay,” I say, because it is obviously time to move onto something new. “Um…what about the turning into a bat thing?”
“Rumor,” Ian tells me with a slight roll of his eyes. He too seems to understand that the previous conversation is finished. “A seriously stupid one.”
“Okay,” I say with a nod of my head. “You said the stake through the heart is true. The beheading thing has to be, as well.”
Ian nods in confirmation.
“What about the sun?” I ask. “Do they really burn up in the sun?” I try not to think about how the attacker dragged my father out into the sunlight and what must have happened to him.
“Not like you’d think,” Rath says with a bit of a sigh. “The vampires have an extreme aversion to the sun because when they turn, their eyes change. We do not understand the science behind what the King put in his concoction that created the species, but it is a mix of predator DNA. They take good and bad traits from many different hunters. Vampires do love the night particularly because their eyes stay almost completely dilated. You could compare them much to a bat, I suppose. They can see almost perfectly at night. But because of the dilation, their eyes can not stand much sun.”
“They can go out during the day,” Ian says. “But not without some serious shades and a killer headache.”
“But no burning skin?” I ask.
“No burning, flaming bodies,” he says, that mischievous smile returning as he shakes his head. “They’re fast, strong like a bear, tough as a rhino, and quiet as cats. They really are the evolution of the perfect predator.”
I nod, feeling like I’m starting to get a small grasp on this whole thing. “Okay, so the Born are immortal, the Bitten age as normal. Both can be killed with a stake to the heart or a quick beheading. There’s a King who sounds pretty badass. My father was a Born vampire, my mother was a human, which means when I die…” My words slow as all the puzzle pieces start falling into their right order. “I’m not really going to die…”
I say this last part slowly because it’s only now that I’m starting to realize the impact of what I just said.
“I’m going to be a vampire someday,” I breathe.
“I’m afraid so,” Rath says quietly.
But it’s Ian who surprises me when I look up. His eyes are intense and dark and conflicted.
There’s so much to him that I don’t understand.
“Alright,” I say with a deep breath. “Anything I’m missing?”
This brings the smile back to Ian’s face. “Oh, baby doll, we’ve barely scratched the surface.”