Fangs

by Anna Katmore

  FANGS

  ANNA KATMORE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  FANGS

  Nightshadow, book 1

  Copyright © 2018 by Anna Katmore

  Edited by Chelle Olson, Literally Addicted to Detail

  Cover design © 2018 by Anna Katmore

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Playlist

  Chapter 1

  Pocket lighters are there for a reason

  Quentin

  “Ugh, get the pot out of your system, Cynthia. You taste like shit.” I lick the thin trail of blood that slipped past my mouth and down our servant girl’s usually tasty neck. Then I give the double punctures from my fangs a last lash with my tongue so the wounds start to heal.

  “You can smoke it, you can eat it,” Cynthia growls and squirms away from my lap, releasing the handful of long, brown hair she was holding up to give me better access to the spring of life. “If my blood isn’t good enough for you anymore, go eat the cook next time.”

  “Ooh, somebody’s crabby tonight,” I tease, then pull her back next to me on the white leather couch and drape my arm casually over her shoulders. “You know you would be jealous as hell if I nibbled on the cook instead of you.”

  Cynthia cuts me a loathing glare that is all fake. After working for my great-great-granduncle for several years, she’s used to me feeding from her. And from the soft moans she gives whenever I sink my teeth into her skin, she enjoys every single minute of it. There’s no need to even wipe her memory afterward because her mind is already altered to where she won’t say a word about vampires in public. Besides, if she did, my uncle would kill her.

  Not that I would actually know how to wipe or even control a human mind. With all the partying, there just hasn’t been enough time to learn it over the past two decades.

  Ronin, my uncle’s new gardener, hands Cynthia the joint he was taking a drag from while I drank from her, but I snatch it out of her hand before she can smoke that shit again. “I mean it. No more dope for you. It spoils your flavor.”

  Ignoring her pout, I salute Ronin on the couch opposite the coffee table with a smirk and fill up my lungs with the gift he brought tonight. It’s been a while since I last smoked weed, but the heady feeling it gives me is more than welcome.

  When you’re stuck in the body of a nineteen-year-old and nothing can ever kill you—well, nothing but a pencil stabbed through your heart maybe—you stop caring about things like healthy living and caution. At some point, you’ll do just about anything to give your non-aging self a little purpose, and your endless life some meaning. So if tonight said meaning comes gift-wrapped as a joint or a bottle of vodka, fine by me.

  “Good stuff, eh?” Ronin says, shaking off the red wisp of hair that permanently falls into his eyes. His hair needs a cut as badly as mine, but as long as the blond strands don’t yet cover my eyes, I’m good. I might ask my aunt’s personal assistant to trim it next week—and steal a sip of her afterward.

  Feet stacked on the coffee table, I lean back and take another pull. Just as the smoke infiltrates every vessel of my lungs, the double-wing doors to my room burst open and crash against the walls. One inch short of panic, I jump to my feet, toss the joint out the open French doors behind me, and turn to face my furious uncle, mouth clamped tight.

  “What are all of you doing in here?” he bellows with this thick Romanian accent, something he hasn’t lost in over five hundred years. His shoulder-length, black hair frames a face that looks paler than usual tonight.

  The term inflamed with rage takes on a whole new meaning when the seam of his shirt goes up in flames. Somebody should tell him that he’s about to incinerate himself, but I’m still trying to hold the smoke inside my lungs and can’t open my mouth. You don’t want to blow pot smoke into the great Dracula’s face. You just don’t.

  He smells the burning fabric soon enough and dabs at it until the flames go out. Needless to say that ruining his shirt doesn’t exactly improve his mood.

  Ronin rushes off and jumps after the joint—from my second-floor balcony—totally abandoning ship. That might cost him his job, but I guess his immortal life means more to him right now.

  Cynthia isn’t immortal. She wouldn’t survive a forty-foot drop from this luxurious villa, yet she looks entirely ready to follow Ronin over the banister just to evade my uncle’s temper. “Forgive me, master! The boys begged me for a meal,” she murmurs and flitters out of my room.

  Bitch!

  Uncle Vlad’s combustible gaze is still settled squarely on me so I can’t release the smoke, and I start to feel really sick. Lips pressed together, my chest convulses as I try to cough through my nose. My eyes glaze over, too. There’s a strange, watery thickness to my vision now.

  “Oh, for goodness sake, let it out already!” Vlad shouts at me and throws his hands into the air.

  Shifting my mouth to one side, I blow out a stream of smoke that rises like a column in the spotlight above. Then I draw in a deep, settling breath, never breaking eye contact with the man in front of me.

  “So now it’s drugs, is it?” His voice thunders not only through my cavernous room but also through the three-story, seven-hundred-square-meter mansion. “When will you grow up, Quentin?”

  I’m not entirely sure this is just a rhetorical question. Am I supposed to answer? My mind is a little hazy right now, so all I can offer is a helpless shrug. I’m just about to grow out of my childhood. No need to rush.

  “You’re my only heir, and it pains me on so many levels to see how you’re wasting your time, your life—and my money!”

  Okay, that’s not fair. I buy one Maserati, the only one in this goddamn decade, and get told off by the man who stores sixteen of the most exclusive cars in the world in his underground garage? Really. Not. Fair!

  “I work hard for the money I get from you!” I counter when I find my voice again and can speak despite the furry feeling on my tongue.

  “Really? What do you do?”

  “I do…things.” Now that’s a stutter I recognize. Arguing with the infamous Count Vladimir Andrei Dracula, my great-great-granduncle and coven leader of two-thousand Californian vampires, always turns me into an edgy little boy. Ugh, how I hate that.

  He folds his burly arms over his chest, his sinewy muscles twitching under the rolled-up sleeves of his black dress
shirt. “Things?” Uh-oh, his voice is dangerously low.

  Don’t tap your foot, Uncle. If he starts doing that, the light bulbs will burst over our heads next, and I really like the daylight ambience I created in my room. It’s cozy.

  Right, the light! That’s it! “For one, I made your place a little homier.” Nonchalantly, I shove my hands into the pockets of my blue jeans that hang loosely on my hips. “It was a freaking tomb when I moved in, all morbid and cold. Now, you live in faux day all night, and the color therapy does a hell of good for your temper.”

  Holy shit. Wrong thing to say.

  The slow breath Uncle V inhales seems to be long enough to suck all the air out of the room. And then there’s the foreboding twitch of the blue vein in his neck. I may have talked myself into an early grave.

  Slowly backing behind the couch, I never let him out of my sight. In a mood like this, he’s likely to start breathing fire—or sweat it, considering the new glow to his shirt.

  But then he totally surprises me when he cools down and rakes a hand through his black strands. “I’m at a loss with you, Quentin,” he says in this resigned voice that he only ever pulls off when his wife is near. And, sure enough, Eleanora walks up behind him and gently rubs his upper arms. I’ve never seen anybody affect him like she does. If ever a dragon fell in love with a doe, it’s my great-great-granduncle Vladimir and the woman he saved from the clutches of a ruthless viscount back in seventeen-hundred and something.

  “What has he done this time?” Eleanora asks quietly.

  Uncle V tilts his head back and rubs his temples. “Weed, darling. He’s smoking weed in our house. And he’s still feeding on the staff. How often do I have to tell him—?”

  “Quentin,” Eleanora softly cuts him off and looks at me from over his shoulder with big, brown eyes. “You shouldn’t upset your uncle so. You know how much he struggles to rest after one of his fits.”

  Startled, my uncle turns his head to her and silently questions her with an arched eyebrow.

  Great. She can say all these things and gets away with a simple head tilt? I snort. If I ever take a wife, she certainly won’t control me like this. No freaking way. But for now, I’m just glad my aunt is here.

  She smooths out her white summer dress and steps around her husband. With her hands on his forearms, she moves him back toward the door. “Come, darling. When you’ve calmed down, we’ll talk to him.”

  Two more steps and I’ll be free again. A breath of relief is waiting in my lungs to be released. But it’s not going to happen.

  “Talk?” Uncle Vlad bursts out and stops on the threshold. “I have talked to this kid for two decades, but nothing ever gets through his skull!” Uncle Vlad moves Eleanora out of his way and storms forward again, but she’s at his side in an instant, shoving her honey-colored hair nervously over her shoulder.

  I rake a shaky hand through my own hair. Maybe the pot was one step too many in the wrong direction, but Vlad can’t complain about me eating the staff. They freely offer their necks.

  “I know you love the boy like a son, Ellie,” my uncle growls. Thankfully, his temper is fading again. “But, one day, he’ll be the leader of our coven, and he has learned nothing as yet. Lily and Tristan would turn over in their graves if they knew what has become of their child!”

  “Yes, I love him like a son,” Ellie barks back, unafraid. “And so do you. Don’t try to tell me otherwise, Vladimir.”

  Ha! I know she loves me. But my uncle? I wouldn’t bet my immortal soul on it.

  “And as for Lily,” Eleanora continues, “your great-grandniece would be happy to know that her son didn’t have to share her fate in the car crash and got to live.”

  There are actually a lot more greats in front of grandniece, but I know that Vladimir Dracula wouldn’t have saved me from my inescapable death as a human if we weren’t blood-related. After his sister Cecilia died as a human woman, Uncle V kept a close watch on her descendants. They were the only family he had left. Sadly for him, his line will abruptly come to an end with my death. Vampires don’t breed.

  “Ellie, I’m the one who changed him.” My uncle narrows his eyes at her. “He should have inherited all my powers, but I doubt he can even light a candle with his will. How will he ever protect an entire coven? And what’s with the feeding? He’s eating nothing but the parlor maid, the butler’s granddaughter and, for all we know, your assistant. If he doesn’t learn to bite and control strangers soon, he’ll be a dead man outside our house.”

  Slowly, Eleanora turns to me. Her eyes go lethal first, followed by her voice. “You’re drinking from Cassandra?”

  Thank you, Uncle V! Pit my favorite member of this family against me, why don’t you?

  My gaze averted, I mumble, “Only a little. Sometimes. Not often, I swear.” I knew Eleanora wouldn’t like it if she found out that her assistant was a donor. That’s why Cassie promised to keep it a secret. She’s like a daughter to Ellie, and my aunt would protect her with her immortal life. Unfortunately, that also includes keeping vampires away from Cassie’s sweet little neck.

  “Quentin Constantine Etheridge! This house is not an all-you-can-eat buffet!” my aunt roars. “You will stop sucking my P.A., do you understand?”

  I scrape my toe on the parquet and lower my head. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Fine. Now go…clean your room or something!”

  “That’s it? Clean your room?” Uncle Vlad questions her incredulously. I might have done the same, but I know this is as angry as she ever gets. You cannot turn a doe into a dinosaur just by changing her into a vampire. Unfortunately, you can do so with a dragon. Very well…

  “See, that’s exactly the problem,” my uncle rages. “The kid gets away with everything. But not this time!” With only a blink of his eyes, he sends the couch—which stood like a wall of protection between us—out of the way, and it crashes into my queen-size bed. “We’ve pampered you for over twenty years, but not a day longer! Herewith, I ban you from this house.”

  “What?” Eleanora and I blurt simultaneously.

  “I’m going to send you to Europe. Tonight. There, you will learn what it takes to be a vampire. And you will learn fast.”

  “Europe? What the hell is in Europe?” I’m quite sure vampire academies don’t exist in real life.

  “My old home. Poenari Castle. In Romania.”

  “You mean Castle…Dracula?” I swallow.

  At the same time, my aunt pales. “Darling,” she whispers. She sounds terrified. “We don’t have any friends in Wallachia. He’ll have no servants to aid him during daylight.”

  “He will find servants, just like I did. If he’s a true descendant of my bloodline, he’ll make his way on his own.” His furious gaze returns to me. “An informant told me that a wolf apparently went berserk in the forests of Transylvania.”

  “A werewolf?”

  “Exactly. It seems to have fallen into bloodlust.”

  Why in the hell would my uncle send me to deal with a man-eating animal? Sure, vampires are superior to those beasts in many ways, but a werewolf bite is still deadly to a vampire. And painful, I hear.

  “Our law forbids all night creatures from drawing attention to our existence. This is a good way for you to prove yourself worthy as my rightful heir. Show me that you have what it takes to become leader of our coven, and you can return. But not before you find and kill the incensed wolf.” Vlad crosses his arms and narrows his eyes dangerously. “Do I make myself clear, boy?”

  “But I—I can’t go! I have friends here. And…and this is my home.” I sweep my arms around the combined living and bedroom area and then leave them pointing at Vlad and Ellie. “You’re the only family I have.”

  “That is true. And you need to learn to protect your family and your friends. But, most of all, you have to learn how to fend for yourself. Your aunt and I may not live forever, and we cannot care for you for all eternity.”

  “But— But, Uncle—” Dammit, what can I say to
change his mind? California is my home. I don’t want to go to fucking Siberia or wherever that abandoned castle is located.

  “Don’t you ‘but, Uncle’ me! The decision is made! Now, go pack everything you need for the next few weeks and get ready for the journey. I will have Reginald prepare your coffin.”

  My chin smacks my chest. “You want to stuff me into a fricking casket?”

  “How else will you travel to Europe? Sit in the cabin of an airplane with two-hundred people watching you combust in the sunlight?”

  I guess there’s no chance of catching a night flight to Castle Dracula then. “At least let me go by ship. I can hide during the day.”

  “No. Reginald will travel with you. I cannot afford for him to be gone for weeks. He’ll take you to the castle and return immediately.”

  “Leaving me all to myself in a creepy ruin? How am I supposed to survive without any help?”

  “That is for you to figure out, Nephew.”

  So the great Dracula has spoken. I roll my eyes and slump down on the cushion of the couch that Ronin so hastily abandoned earlier. “If you hate me so much, why didn’t you just let me die in the wrecked car? It would have saved you a damn lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?”

  Uncle Vlad stares at me with something that might be sympathy, but I can’t be sure with his burning, dark eyes. “This is for your best.”

  “My best?” Ha! “What would you do if you wanted my worst? I’d love to know.”

  “I would bury you alive to suffer from insatiable hunger for all eternity. But that’s not the point.” He waves his hand and comes over. The part of the couch that crashed into my bed earlier returns as if pulled by invisible strings, and Vlad lowers gracefully onto it as if nothing were amiss.

  Eleanora sits down beside him, still clinging to his arm. “Darling, don’t be so hard on him. He doesn’t deserve this sort of punishment.”

  “You really think he can become a capable leader in a house where everyone treats him like a toddler?”