The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition)

by Elizabeth Dunlap

  “Want one too? Make it even?” I reached out for him and puckered my lips. He gagged in response, because he didn’t know how awesome my kisses were.

  “Dad, play nice,” Lisbeth chided, coming up and embracing me from the side. “We still need to get some stuff for Cameron and Merrick. I’m thinking more Pokémon stuffed animals.”

  A scream in the crowd drew our attention. It wasn’t a, ‘whee this ride is awesome!’ scream. Or even a, ‘ermahgerd I love carnivals!’ scream. It was of the, ‘please help I’m being attacked by a face-hugging alien!’ variety. We sprang into motion towards the noise as more screams filled the air. The sounds led us to the one place in the carnival we hadn’t explored yet.

  Herman’s House of Horrors.

  A little tent shanty sat on the edge of the carnival, resembling a sad, little remnant of the circus in Dumbo, like after his mom had wrecked everything and it all went to shit. I was half tempted to sniff test some of the stains on the tent fabric, just to be sure I didn’t need to use a blacklight before entering.

  Just as we arrived, a group of humans came out, probably the source of the screams. Some of the women were clutching their hands to their breasts in shock, and the men looked equally green. I recalled humans having a similar response when I’d first seen a moving picture. They were silly creatures.

  “Smell anything?” Lisbeth asked me in a whisper. I shook my head and took her slender hand in mine. There were too many smells there for me to single anything out. Too many bodies. She wrinkled her nose, under the same predicament.

  “Herman,” Lucas commented, looking up at the sign. “What kind of mystical name is Herman?”

  I snorted out a laugh. “Nice point, dad.” Lucas huffed at me calling him dad, which is exactly why I said it.

  “Let’s go inside,” Clara suggested with a smile as if she hadn’t seen the terrified humans around us.

  The screams had drawn in other humans to see what all the fuss was about, and we all piled into the dilapidated tent. Three rows of low wooden benches sat in front of a stage that had a tall box in the center, covered with a red drape. Jason led us to a bench near the middle and we all sat down.

  “I feel like I’m at a cultish religious gathering,” Lisbeth complained, crossing her legs. “If they bring out a little boy and say he has healing powers, I’m out.” Kitty brought the hermit crabs up to her face to inspect up close. Or maybe she was trying to block out everything as the tent filled up. Once every seat was occupied, a flamboyantly dressed man appeared from behind the stage.

  “Welcome all to—” He swished his silky cape around, trying to look mysterious. “—Herman’s House of Horrors!” Herman bowed and his hat fell off onto the ground. Everyone snickered, watching him fumble to pick it back up.

  “Humph,” Lucas said in front of me. “This is where the screams came from? Were they screaming at his bad breath?”

  The man onstage hadn’t heard the complaint and went back into his dramatic pose. “This is no ordinary house of horrors, I guarantee you. We have something truly…” He paused for effect and smiled to reveal fake vampire fangs. “…terrifying.”

  A few humans actually had the nerve to gasp, and we all glared in their direction. Fake fangs were scary? Wait until they saw real ones, they’d all piss themselves.

  “I need a volunteer from the audience,” Herman said, flicking his hand towards us. Lisbeth popped up literally faster than any of the humans could raise their hands, and walked up to the stage without prompting. “Ahh, an eager beaver, I see!” Herman chided in a teasing tone. “What is your name, my dear?”

  Lisbeth’s purple eyes found me, and I felt a wave of fear from the look on her face. What was she sensing that I wasn’t? Hackles raised, I edged forward on my bench, as close as I could get to her without standing up.

  “Erzsébet,” she answered loudly, enough where everyone in the tent could hear her.

  “Ahh, a strange name. Are you foreign?” She nodded, internally rolling her eyes over his small talk. “Well, Erzbet.”

  “Erzsébet,” she corrected with a sniff.

  “My apologies. Erzsébet.” Herman walked closer to her, intending to put a hand on her arm. My wife didn’t allow anyone except family to touch her, but she graciously let the human take her arm and walked a few steps over to the covered box. “What do you think is in this cage here?” She leaned in for a delicate sniff, earning a chuckle from Herman, and immediately recoiled so fast, she practically disappeared. Herman laughed and tried to pull her back to him. “Now, now, my dear. Nothing to be afraid of. There’s no way what’s under there can harm you.”

  Our group was on edge now from Lisbeth’s behavior. Jason leaned over to me, fear coming off him in waves. “Dad, what’s wrong? What’s up there?”

  Every inch of my skin crawled, and being so far apart from Lisbeth when she could be in danger was pulling against everything inside me.

  “Here, let me show you,” Herman said, at the same moment when I heard Lisbeth in my head.

  ‘Get Arthur here now. Protect the children.’

  I shot up from my seat, Jason yelled for me, and Herman yanked the cover away from the box, effectively destroying with one action any semblance of normalcy we’d had for decades.

  What was in the box, you ask?

  Standing inside, amidst thick metal bars, restrained with heavy chains on its decaying skin, was a vampire drone.

  A drone. In our city.

  A white hot pulse of fear went through me, laced with drone related PTSD, stronger than anything I’d felt in the minutes leading up to that moment. We’d fought off drones before, many years ago, and it almost destroyed Lycans and vampires both. I pushed through the anxiety and started moving towards the stage. The humans had screamed that screech again, the ‘please save me from the killer zombies’ kind, and most had stood up from their seats, blocking my way to Lisbeth.

  Like a stupid, naïve human, Herman was chuckling again and waving his hands to calm the crowd down. His laughs weren’t kind. They were almost jeering, like he thought our reactions were fucking adorable. “I want to remind everyone that there is nothing to fear.”

  “Dad, what is that?” Jason said from beside me, grabbing at my arm.

  I could feel fear lifting off him and reached a hand back on his shoulder to steady him. “I left my holo-phone at home, text Arthur.” He flipped his wrist to bring up his holo-phone and I saw him text Arthur ‘SOS at carnival. Weird zombie thing with the humans.’ My wife’s right hand would be here faster than Barry Allen if she was in danger.

  Lucas held Clara to him, his fragile human bride. “How did he restrain it?”

  On the stage, Lisbeth pulled on Herman this time, her face pinched with worry. “You should get out of here. It’s not safe.”

  He waved a hand with a chuckle, ignoring Lisbeth’s wise attempts to move him away. “My dear, I know what I’m doing. The creature has been properly restrained.”

  Human brains were funny. If not presented with proper proof, they easily replaced fact with a truth that was easier to accept. The crowd was doing just that, and calming down enough for us to move to the front of the stage.

  Lisbeth met my eyes and shook her head as I tried to climb the stairs to get to her. She’d want me to stay with the children, just in case something went wrong.

  “How did you make it?” a woman asked.

  “Special effects, right? Boring!” a man countered.

  “Controlling it with a remote, I bet,” another said.

  Herman was offended by the doubt. “This is not a robot. This is a real creature.” He stepped closer to the cage, Lisbeth reaching out to stop him as Jason tripped beside me and Kitty knelt to help him up. “He’s restrained, he can’t hurt anyone. You’ll see.”

  “Jason, you okay?” I asked, and my nostrils flared with the fresh scent of blood. Jason had cut himself on the edge of one of the wooden benches, and I wasn’t the only one in the tent smelling the vampiric-like scent
his blood had.

  Distracted from Jason’s injury, Lisbeth didn’t have time to stop Herman from unlocking the cage. The drone roared and immediately backhanded Herman away from the stage. He landed with a squishy snap at the edge of the tent. The humans could no longer pretend this wasn’t real, and they ran from the tent as fast as they could, not caring who they knocked over or stepped on. In the confusion, the drone leaped from the stage and landed on Jason, fangs out and ready to drink him dry like a fucking Capris Sun.

  Letting out a battle cry at the sight of her baby being threatened, Lisbeth dove, expertly landing on top of the drone. I went for its legs and we wrestled to get it off of Jason. The drone drew his head back, slamming into her nose, cracking bone and making her blood flow. She swore and rolled off the drone to tend to her nose. Lucas swooped in to take her place.

  “You okay?” I asked her. She gave me a thumbs up while Kitty and Clara inspected her bleeding nose.

  The drone tried to kick me off his legs and unseated me long enough to get the jump on Jason. He sank his fangs into Jason’s arm like a tick. Forgetting her injury, Lisbeth roared in a terrifying screech at the sight of her child being bitten, and grabbed the drone by the throat in a death grip.

  “You bite my son, I fucking rip you apart,” she informed the mindless monster. With her bare hands, she tore the drone’s fangs out by the root, and not going to lie, it was a huge turn on. She was so strong and powerful. Nothing stood in her way.

  And cue Arthur! He pushed into the tent with one of those neck restraints people use on dogs. Lisbeth lifted the drone up for Arthur to put the loop around the bleeding monstrosity’s neck and tighten it.

  “Everyone okay?” he asked as he pulled the drone up by the neck. I didn’t miss the look he gave Lisbeth where she couldn’t see, one of concern for her wellbeing and longing to be near her.

  Lisbeth and I zeroed in on Jason’s arm and the bruising bite mark on it. He had vampire blood, so he would probably be okay. Probably. If not, I shuddered to think of what Lisbeth would do to whoever created this drone. I doubted Herman was involved with it. My eyes went over to his still form on the ground, and I knew by his scent that he wasn’t going to come back up.

  “Jason, I’m so sorry,” Lisbeth sobbed, bringing him in for a kiss on his curly head. “Does it hurt? Do you feel strange?”

  Being a teenage boy, he pushed his mom away and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Mom, stop! I’m fine.” He pulled the sleeve of his shirt down over the bite.

  “He’ll be fine,” Arthur assured, because we totally asked him. Lisbeth scowled in his direction. “I’ve been bitten by a drone before. Not like it can make you a vampire when you’re already a vampire.”

  “Vaewolf,” I reminded Arthur. “He’s a vaewolf.” He waved a hand at me in dismissal. Ass.

  Arriving after her commander, Olivier appeared in the tent opening. “I’m here, what’s… Oh.” She saw the drone struggling to grab onto anything from where it sat on the ground, held by the tool in Arthur’s hand. Its mouth dripped blood from Lisbeth taking its teeth. “That. Is fuckin’ gross. Okay, you guys get back to the village. We’ll fix the humans. Meet you there in an hour.”

  2. Musings in Pig Latin

  It takes a village, as the saying goes. A village to rebuild the two supernatural races we’d all come to love after the turned of mass destruction happened thirty-five years before. Where once stood a castle that vampires hid behind to protect their outdated society, there was now a meeting hall where both vampires and Lycans were equally represented. The members of the new ruling committee were elected, and while their term was literally for life, it was in the rules that they could be unseated if their people thought they were being misrepresented.

  The werewolf seat was held by me, after a unanimous vote, and I was doing a fabulous job, if I do say so myself.

  “The Itty Bitty City Committee will come to order,” I said with a thump of my hand on the wooden half circle desk we sat at.

  The Lycan member, Jamie, sunk his face into his hand to rub his temple in irritation at my opening line. “EVERY FUCKING TIME.”

  The turned vampire member, Hades, was equally broody, with his Dracula type outfit and a pale, gaunt complexion to match. Fitting, considering his name was Hades. I had a suspicion he’d named himself that, because what self-respecting mother would call her son Hades, for Christ’s sake? “It’s been thirty-five years and you refuse to stop using that name. I propose we create another werewolf.”

  “Denied,” Balthazar countered smoothly. He had his feet up on the desk in front of his seat on the committee. He represented the Bicus interests and had arrived back from his trip just in time for the meeting.

  “Knight, must you goad everyone?” Clara whispered next to me. She represented the human interests. Having humans represented on the committee brought all kinds of controversy since we remained hidden from their world, but Lisbeth was quick to point out that while we were not part of the human world, our world did not exist without them, and therefore their interests should be protected. Humans could be so lucky to be protected by her.

  “Let’s focus, please.” My wife pat my hand from her spot on my other side. I resisted the urge to suck her fingers into my mouth. That sweet, sweet anniversary sex hadn’t happened yet. My entire body was on edge with anticipation. Oblivious to my arousal, Lisbeth was all business. “We have a very big issue to discuss.” A flick of her fingers and Arthur opened the side door to drag in the vampire drone. Muzzled and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, it still made everyone in the room flinch at the sight of it.

  “Were there more?” Hades asked, his eyes betraying his fear, the fear we all felt. He pulled at a strand of his lanky, red hair to quell his emotions.

  Lisbeth held out a comforting hand so he wouldn’t yank his hair out. “So far, no. It’s the only one we’ve found. Thank god. We have dispatched Olivier and Renard to search for more in the area.” She reached for a glass of water with a shaky hand. I put my hand on her knee and rubbed it to calm her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I thought, pushing my thoughts through.

  I heard a response, her voice echoing in my mind. ‘The last time one of them was on these grounds, we almost lost everything.’

  Pretty neat trick, right? Years of focusing on her connection to me meant we could talk telepathically. Go ahead. Be impressed.

  It goes without saying that almost everyone had drone-related PTSD. Time could never erase the war. Kitty, sitting on the far end of the table, was one of two who didn’t react with utter terror. Kitty had only been a baby when the turned war happened, and while she understood what everyone else was feeling, she couldn’t relate the same way. The second of us showing no reaction was Arthur, because duh. Dude was a brick wall. He could be peeing his pants over his worst nightmare and you’d never see it on his face. The only time that icy structure cracked was when he looked at my wife.

  “Where’d the thing come from?” Kitty asked. She also had her feet on the table to match her biological father’s pose, and she was making it clear she didn’t care about anyone with her hood pulled over her head. Teenagers.

  “We haven’t I.D.’d him yet. Someone had the good sense to burn his fingerprints off,” Arthur told her, running a hand through his short, blonde hair, trying to look all cool and handsome. Pssh. “His DNA is useless since he’s part vampire, and his face is rotting off so we can’t use facial recognition.” Arthur was right, this drone was literally decaying in front of us, and fuck it was gross.

  “I don’t remember the other drones decomposing like this one,” I noted grimly. Fuck, the smell coming from that thing was enough to turn even my stomach, and I’d eaten my fair share of questionable refrigerator leftovers.

  “It could be age,” Jamie reasoned. He brushed his long black braid against the table in thought. “Mayhap this is what happens if a drone is allowed to live for a long time. Unless I’m incorrect.”

  Lisbeth shrugge
d, tapping her fingertip against her kissable lips. “No idea. I could ask my father. He might know.”

  Clara drummed her thumb against the table, as agitated as I’d ever seen her. “We still need to find out who created him.”

  Lisbeth tensed beside me, making me tense in response. “I can read him if no one objects.” With extra blood, she’d be able to read the creature’s thoughts and see who its master was. No one objected, so she took my offered arm and sunk her fangs into my skin. It was equal parts pain and pleasure. Not like a drug high, more like a release of pressure with the sting of her teeth. After so long I associated it with the pleasure she brought me, and yeah, my blood rushed straight to my groin. Finished, she stood and planted a kiss to my head on her way around the table to the drone. Arthur held it up for her to put her hands on its sickly face. A wrinkle formed on her forehead and she closed her eyes to focus. Almost instantly, she recoiled and moved away like the monster was a viper about to attack her.

  “Alistair,” she said under her breath.

  Fuck.

  Chili cheese dog pizza. That was about the only thing that could’ve taken my mind off our situation, and my wife knew how to play me like a fiddle. She waltzed into our yellow house like a delivery goddess and placed the takeout pizza boxes onto the kitchen island.

  Dinner was the one time of the day where we put away our holo-phones, told our lovers to wait until bedtime, and spent time together as a family. Equally important was when once a month our little community had a block party cookout, and we all spent time with our brothers and sisters. That wasn’t happening for a few days, so it was time for pizza.

  With a kiss to her cheek, I helped my wife bring plates and drinks to our large dining table as our family trickled in. Jason poked a finger in Kitty’s ear and she responded with several well-placed slaps. Cameron kissed Merrick on the forehead, their conversation in Japanese not stopping for one second. Clara delicately placed a napkin on her lap and handed one to Lucas. He stared at it like it was a grenade, but allowed her to lay it over his legs. Balthazar had Toni on his knee, looking like a sexy photo shoot with their effortless perfection as they both sipped drinks in martini glasses and spoke together in a language none of us knew, their special Bicus language. Lisbeth sat down next to me, sliding a hand up my knee, and we all started grabbing slices of pizza.