Vampire Innocent | Book 12 | Ancient Vampire Death Cults & Other Annoyances

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Anyway, bad stuff is happening, so it’s time for a party.

  Tonight’s soiree didn’t come out of nowhere on an hour’s notice. I had a whole day’s warning. Or night’s warning to be technical. Starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with me since it doesn’t bother me anymore to get all dressed up in period costume. Aurélie always gives me this mildly disapproving look whenever I think of her clothing as ‘period costumes’ even though I’m not making fun of them. Are we presently in the 1600s? No, then they’re period costumes.

  I suppose these elaborate gowns are a lot more comfortable when breathing is an option, not a requirement.

  Aurélie’s limo brings us to the usual hotel. It’s not her limo per se. She hires a car service whenever she needs to go somewhere publicly, which isn’t often. Riding in a car this big makes me feel like we’re on the way to a funeral or a wedding. Makes no sense to me why anyone would want to do this all the time. She thinks of it like the modern equivalent of a fancy six-horse carriage. It boggles my mind because it’s not like she can go out into the world and soak up fame. The big car driving a couple blocks across the city before dropping us off in front of a hotel isn’t playing to any crowd or media, merely a handful of vampires who might be close enough to see us.

  Dressing up and getting a limo is a lot of effort for only a small audience, but it’s kinda fun. Coming to these gatherings isn’t too nerve-wracking for me anymore. Sure, being in a room with elders is going to put any vampire on edge, but at least the two elders who used to want me destroyed have relaxed from contempt to distrust. It’s not so much they don’t trust me. They think I’m being reckless and risking all of vampiredom to exposure by living at home with my family. Little do they know the existence of undead is only one of many secrets we need to keep.

  We exit the limo in front of the hotel. The strangest feeling someone’s staring at me makes me look behind us, across the roof of the car. No one stands out as suspicious. No humans anyway. I spot an impressively large blackbird perched on a streetlamp across from the hotel. This is either a hallucination caused by all the research I did into Edgar Allen Poe for my class project recently, or that crow is seriously lost. Something about it feels a touch off. Hmm. Beast vampires can supposedly see through animals as well as talk to them. Haven’t witnessed it happen yet, though I suspect Garret Adler spied on me via Sam’s pet frogs when we’d been camping by the caverns he lived in. Before I can ask Aurélie what she thinks of the bird, it flies off.

  Hmm. Strange but hardly panic-worthy. Just because I’m a vampire, one of my sisters can use magic, my brother collects demons, and we have a hellhound in the backyard doesn’t mean everything is supernatural or after me. Sometimes a large raven is simply a large raven.

  Aurélie heads up the stairs, so I follow her into the hotel, across the lobby, and down a hall toward the convention room where the soiree is happening. Two dozen or so younger vampires hang out in clusters littered around from the entrance to the double doors at the end. When I say ‘younger,’ I mean younger than the usual attendees. They’re all much older than me vampire wise and don’t usually show up at every gathering. The number of vampires in the Seattle area younger than me are countable on one hand. Probably one finger—Brady. Must be something serious going on if they’ve emailed everyone to show up.

  The two of us are the only ones who look like we’re chronologically challenged. Aurélie’s big on the whole ‘fashionably late’ thing. I’m sporting a crushed green velvet dress with a decadently low neckline and puffy sleeves. Mind you, I’m talking 1600s decadent. I’ve got the tiniest hint of cleavage visible. The yellow gown from last month made me look like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Tonight, I feel like I should be fanning myself and fretting over someone named James being killed on the battlefield before he can return to me. Modern women complain—rightly so—about the discomfort of mammograms. These women have never worn an authentic bone corset. I’ve never been so happy before to have my father’s genes. Can’t imagine a girl like Bree Swanson trying to squeeze her chest into this thing. The dress would push them up into her face. She’d look like a Honda Civic with both front airbags deployed.

  So, yeah. Vampires who don’t usually attend these gatherings give us WTF looks. Everyone else is used to our unusual fashion statements. Aurélie heads into the convention hall and proceeds to do the required rounds. Like a dutiful little protégé, I follow and exchange pleasantries. It’s a weird dance of old-timey customs, high-society, and the modern world. Doesn’t truly feel genuine nor does it feel like we’re putting on a theater play.

  The room fills as the clock nears midnight, many more in attendance tonight than I’d ever seen before. Still no sign of Dalton or my Lost One friends. Aurélie generally ignores anyone who isn’t a regular attendee, so it only takes us about forty minutes to make a show of social politeness before she installs herself in a conversation cluster with Wolent, Vanessa Prentice, Jennifer Ruiz, Henry Arnold, Ashton James, Stefano, and Paolo.

  As catty as Jennifer, Vanessa, and Aurélie can get, they do seem to enjoy hanging out together. Huh. Maybe it’s all show and they really don’t care as much about who’s the prettiest as they want people to think.

  Weird thing is, other vampires are no longer content to ignore me. Not sure if it’s from going official, proving myself by blowing up the crypt in Astoria, or simply being around long enough for everyone to stop assuming me to be Aurélie’s toy she’ll bore of in a month. A handful of relatively young (undead for less than four decades) vampires drift over to start up a conversation with me. My days of standing around like a piece of room decoration are, apparently, over. They’re mostly curious about the ‘living at home’ situation. No need to share the lengths to which my family’s personal weirdness has extended, but other than leaving out Sophia’s magic and Sam’s otherworldly friends, I’m more or less honest with them. I couldn’t hide giving Sierra some blood to improve the odds of her remaining alive, so she is ‘officially’ my thrall for the time being. There’s no small bit of disdain at the idea of enthralling a twelve-year-old, but it’s tempered by the extremity of the situation. Not like it happened for my personal amusement or being irresponsible when Sierra asked simply to mess around and play super hero. They all relax when I explain my intention to let the thralldom lapse.

  One of the vamps who decided to talk to me tonight, Chantal Emerson, a twentyish blonde with a runway model body and giant French waif eyes, starts going on about her time as a thrall. One of Stefano’s associates, Devon Lachlan, found her at a—wow surprise—fashion show and ‘claimed’ her. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Some fashion models use cocaine or other drugs to stay skinny. Chantal took vampire blood instead. Started at seventeen, got the Transference at twenty-one, but she still looks seventeen. A mature seventeen, but according to her, she stopped aging as soon as she tasted vampire blood. Back to the not creepy part. Her former patron and later sire ‘collected’ her like Aurélie collects porcelain dolls. He thought her beautiful and wanted to preserve her as is. Yeah, okay, that is creepy, but it wasn’t an older guy lusting after a young girl situation. He neither touched her nor treated her like property. According to her, he enjoyed long conversations and was quite a bit lonely.

  It’s a common Hollywoodism to wrap vampires up in sexiness. And while many are dripping with lust and many more still enjoy sex, there’s a surprising number who don’t. You know, being dead and all. Her sire is one such vampire who lost all carnal interest when his heart stopped beating.

  Anyway, Chantal cautions me to wean Sierra off the blood as soon as I can. In her case, after four years, she began fiending for it ‘worse than a heroin addict’ as she puts it. It hadn’t been Devon’s intent to give her the Transference at all, since thralldom can go on for centuries. She tells us he planned to ‘let her go’ if she ever bored of their arrangement and asked to leave. However, to spare her from the maddening addiction, he brought her fully into undeath.

&
nbsp; This tells me two things. One, Devon didn’t expect her to become addicted to the blood, and two, she did. Sounds like it’s possible but based on the individual—a psychological addiction more than chemical. My read on her is she’d been a motivated rising star in the media world willing to do whatever it took to stay young, beautiful, and successful. Such a personality certainly had an effect. Sierra is about as opposite as is possible to be. She’d happily spend the rest of her life in our living room playing video games, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about fashion, and couldn’t care less what anyone thought of her looks.

  I still don’t want to run the risk of her becoming addicted, going insane, or suffering some other supernatural calamity. Maybe I should take comfort in her not asking me for more blood yet. The connection we had immediately upon her drinking from me has faded to almost gone. I’m sure it means she’s back to normal, as in, no supernatural strength or speed.

  Hmm. She did seem a bit twitchy, but it could have come from ordinary nervousness. If she knew she’d gone back to being a normal kid, she might be on edge, worrying about another vampire attack or something along those lines. I take some comfort knowing if she’d become addicted, she’d be begging me already for another ‘hit.’

  Despite being part of Stefano’s crowd, Chantal doesn’t sound particularly concerned about me living at home. The group gathered around me chuckles at my description of how the ’rents have coped with everything. For example, Mom yelling at me over compelling people to buy Girl Scout Cookies like I’d forgotten to take out the trash.

  I’m in the midst of stressing how my whole family is committed to maintaining secrecy when Wolent clears his throat. Aurélie lets off a pulse of charm to draw everyone’s attention to herself. She happens to be standing right next to Wolent, which results in all the vampires in attendance at the soiree looking at him.

  The din of people talking fades to silence—except for one of the ‘snacks’ singing Chili Peppers’ ‘Under the Bridge’ off key. Dude is baked. Another mortal here for refreshment purposes is so drunk he can’t even stand. Yeah, this is the vampire society version of putting out pot brownies and beer for the guests.

  A thirtyish vampire in a sharp black suit hurries over and silences the vocalist. Using mental command; he didn’t kill the stoner.

  “I don’t mean to cast a pall over the pleasantries tonight…” Wolent looks over the sea of faces watching him. “There is, however, a situation as of late with the potential to make life difficult on all of us. Some of you may already be aware, but for those who are not, at least half a dozen new vampires have cropped up over the past two weeks.”

  Most vampires in the room emit a collective gasp. The ones who don’t scowl as if they already knew about it.

  Wolent, clearly annoyed, continues glancing around while doing this weird ‘I just bit a lemon’ grimace like he’s trying to pull off an impression of Robert DeNiro playing Arthur Wolent. The men don’t look or sound anything alike, but he’s got the body language and speech cadence down.

  No one’s sat me down and given me ‘the talk’ yet. Well, Dad did, but I’m not referring to that talk. I mean the vampire version. It’s still kind of a birds and bees thing to be fair. Neither Dalton nor Aurélie thus far thought it necessary to warn me against making baby vampires. Admittedly, my existence caught some of them off guard. Vampires don’t have to get permission or anything to make another vampire. Maybe in some super hardcore areas of Europe where they have a legitimate political structure and the ruler’s a control freak, but generally, not. However, I get the feeling from Wolent’s tone he’s not fond of the newbies.

  “I do not believe anyone in this room is the responsible party.” Wolent turns in place, scanning everyone around him. “Someone is risking us all by creating too many too fast without proper mentoring. We managed to keep a rather flagrant sighting off the local news, but it’s only a matter of time before some random person with a cell phone sends video to the internet.”

  Oh, I see. He’s not upset about new vampires in general, merely careless idiots not hiding themselves.

  “You worry too much, Arthur,” says Eleanor St. Ives in her best unconcerned scientist voice. “This concern will burn itself out soon enough.”

  Wolent side-eyes her. “Possibly, but none of us should be willing to gamble it does so before the wrong kind of evidence ends up on the national news. Everyone in this room should look for the source of these new progeny.”

  “You’re giving an order then?” asks Paolo Cabrini in a bored tone, swirling blood around a martini glass.

  “Don’t think of it as an order.” Wolent clears the distance to him in three steps and pats him on the arm. “If we are all in a wood boat and someone’s kid starts playing with matches, it’s in everyone’s best interest to take the damned matches away from the brat.”

  I’d sigh, but this corset isn’t letting much air in. Dammit. We just got over one crisis, now this? Though, an idiot is much less scary than an entire group of vampires trying to take over Seattle by force.

  “That is all. If no one else has anything to say we all need to hear…” Wolent nods once, then waves in a ‘resume’ gesture.

  Everyone goes back to talking and socializing.

  I spend the next almost-hour listening to the small group around me discuss various topics from investments to the bar they live under to clothes and such. Every so often, one of them will ask me about the nest in Astoria or want to clarify some weird rumor they heard about me. No, I really am nineteen. I’m not some thousand-year-old spy sent from Europe who looks like a teenager. No, I didn’t turn my entire family into vampires. No, I am not Aurélie’s lover, and so on. They tease me a bit for going to college but it comes off as good-natured rather than mean—and leads into this guy Jacob telling us how he spent the first two years post-Transference clinging to his job as a car dealer. His boss kept wanting to fire him for being late every day—gee, wonder why—but everyone he spoke with always bought the car—again, gee, wonder why—so they let him stay. He only disappeared when his suspiciously perfect sales attracted a police investigation.

  Me getting people to buy some cookies doesn’t seem so bad in comparison.

  Eventually, the soiree is over and I’m back in the car beside Aurélie. She’s thrilled to see me in high spirits and having been ‘part of’ the goings on rather than a bit of furniture taking up space until it ended. You know how they have those commentary shows after some sports games where a bunch of guys sit around dissecting every little thing about how the players sportsballed the sportsball? Yeah, we kinda do the same thing in regard to the social event. Gawd. When did I become a gossiping hen? Is it a side effect of wearing such old timey clothes? Makes me think there’s no such thing as electricity or television and the only entertainment is talking about other people? Or, am I still ‘in character?’

  My relationship with Aurélie is really strange. I don’t know how to explain it. When we get back to her place, our conversation continues even as I change out of the elaborate gown into my normal shirt and jeans. I don’t bat an eyelash at being momentarily naked in front of her, having a conversation as casual as anything. She does, after all, insist on me wearing entirely period-accurate garments. No modern undies allowed. The strange part is, I’d feel super awkward changing in front of my actual mother, or anyone else except Hunter. For the longest time, I never understood how fashion models could all change out in the open, naked in front of each other like no big deal.

  Granted, I wondered this before being stranded outside sans clothing for a full day.

  Still, though. It has to be like some kind of ‘professional’ thing. There’s nothing even close to a romantic mood between us. She’s kinda maternal, kinda sisterly, kinda bossy. I don’t mean ‘bossy’ the way men refer to a woman who isn’t subservient. I mean she feels like my employer, my boss, in a way. We’re just some bizarre combination of family, friends, siblings, co-workers, and conspiring members of a secret s
ociety who can talk to each other about anything we can’t share anywhere else. In short, she’s my faerie deathmother.

  Once I’m back in my clothes, we head to the living room to relax.

  “Wolent seemed pretty upset about new vampires. Is that normal? For him to be upset over newbies?”

  Aurélie tilts her hand in a so-so gesture. “’E is most concerned at someone creating many new vampires so quickly and not teaching them the basics. They do not keep themselves secret. Also, it is against tradition to pass the gift to so many so fast. The Transference is meant to be a matter of deep consideration.”

  “Or an act of desperation?” I smile cheesily.

  “True.” She winks. “While there are some among us who frown on any new vampire who ’as not been groomed for the change, your circumstances are not the same as some reckless fool turning everyone ’e or she feeds from and leaving them to their own devices.”

  I tap a foot on air. “I’d wonder if it might be unintentional, but it’s pretty difficult to accidentally cut yourself and make sure the person drinks your blood while wanting to pass it along.”

  She gasps into a giggle as if Klepto just did something adorable on the sofa beside me.

  Yeah, it’s really impossible to accidentally produce a full vampire. Scraps are another matter. Those sometimes happen accidentally during a kill feeding. Even if this idiot vampire rolls a critical fumble and bites his tongue off while trying to feed, he or she would still have to desire to pass vampirism on. Merely leaking blood into the mortal you’re feeding from won’t do it.

  Unless, as my father sometimes says, ‘something entirely unexpected and f’d up happened.’

  “Arthur is right to be concerned.” Aurélie examines her nails, muttering to herself in French for a few seconds before looking back at me. “It is true they will cause problems. Feeding issues, risk of detection. Bad business for all of us. I fear it may be even a more serious problem as none of the new progeny ’ave any memory of what ’appened to them.”