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

by Elizabeth Dunlap

  The one and only thought that comforted me was Arthur. Arthur would keep them all safe. I would’ve too, if I could only find them. I wasn’t the insecure teenager I used to be. If anyone messed with me, they met the wrong end of Artemis, and she could blow a hole through anything.

  All of that ran through my head as I stared at the fuck faced bleeder behind the bar and took another shot after asking about my mother.

  “Looking for a drinker, is it?” he asked with a smug grin.

  “Mutt, actually.”

  He reached under the bar, I stilled and laid one hand on Artemis just in case he pulled something out that shot bullets, but he produced a very dirty notebook that could’ve used some serious wet wipes. He ran a hand over it, but it just made the dirt smears worse. Another shot, just to wash the taste of dirt from my tongue. It didn’t work. The bartender opened the notebook and started flipping through pages that had plastic protectors on them, probably to keep the dust out. It wasn’t called the ‘Dust Bowl’ for nothing. “Mutts. Here we are. Name?”

  “Knight. Like in shining armor.” I wasn’t sure which name my mother would be going by, since she tended to flip back and forth between ‘Lisbeth,’ ‘Erzsébet,’ and ‘Elisabeth’ depending on who she was talking to. No matter what name she had, she would never be without Knight. Unless he was dead.

  The bleeder licked a finger —gross— and flipped more pages. “Nope, no mutts with that name. Anyone else?”

  “Arthur. Drinker.” Assuming Arthur was still with her. She’d lose him before Knight, but if Knight was gone, Arthur would never leave her side. Not even to take a piss.

  More flips, more gross finger licks. Was he trying to attract me with his tongue? I’d rather fuck a shark. “Arthur. Here’s one. He passed this way… hmm. Fuck.” He bent close to the paper and then lifted it up for the other bleeder to look at. “Slim, that a six or an eight?”

  Slim. Fuck, how cliché could this crowd be?

  Slim bent over the bar and squinted at the slightly smudged numbers. “That’s a five. Learn to read, dumb ass.” Slim got a smack on the head with the notebook before it was stowed back under the counter.

  “Your friend came through here fifteen years ago.” I raised my eyebrows at him. They’d kept records for that long? “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful, girlie.”

  “Call me that again and I’ll be leaving here with your entire stash as you bleed out on the fucking floor.”

  “No need to be touchy, girlie.”

  Well. I did warn him.

  A few bullets later, I had his stash, his money, and I grabbed a full bottle of tequila on my way out as I stepped over their worthless corpses.

  Guess this place was a ghost town after all.

  2. A familiar face

  Kitty

  With the dust outside to greet me, I stepped back over the broken glass and up to my motorcycle. Pulling my goggles back down and my bandana up, I stashed my haul into my backpack. Though I didn’t do it often, I’d left it on the cycle because I knew there wasn’t anyone around to mess with it. Plus, if things had gone south in the saloon —well, more south to be precise— I didn’t want to risk my supplies. I lifted one boot and straddled my ride before slinging the backpack over my shoulders and clipping it in front to stay put.

  A push on the pedal to start the roaring engine, and I left the town and the fresh corpses in the damn dust where they belonged.

  As I picked up speed, the wind whisked at the parts of my face that were still uncovered. My hair in its long braid was tempted to come undone despite it being tied fast like Thalia taught me. The mere memory of her was enough to sober me, but I stayed focused on the road and ignored the slight fog on my goggles.

  Focus, Kitty. The information from the bleeders wasn’t what I’d hoped. My plans had basically gone to shit now, and I was back to square one. I’d been following a lead to my parents for three years straight only for it to end like this. From one back water hell hole to the next, buying drugs and information in exchange for my blood. I never gave more than that, and if anyone expected more, they met Artemis. The world didn’t need more villains in it, and I happily played the anti-hero. Robbing from the assholes and giving to myself. Robin Hood with no morals. Kitty Hood.

  Before the damn apocalypse, I hadn’t needed to kill anyone. Alistair had taken that from me. From everyone. I was already a monster, and I slipped into the role with ease. First with the misfits I’d left home with, and then on my own.

  When was the last time I’d had a real fucking conversation with someone worth talking to? My perfect memory told me the real number, but I pretended not to know because it had been so fucking long.

  Sometimes I had conversations in my head. With family. With friends. With imaginary people. I knew I was bat shit insane, just a little. But really, who wasn’t these days? Insanity ran in the Bathory line, so I had to carry on that legacy somehow.

  I burned rubber for hours until the sun began to set. My cycle ran on solar power, but it also wasn’t safe to be around after dark. At night, the sharks were heightened. Darkness was their hunting ground. I pushed my senses out and found a spot that was far away from any shark clusters. As long as I didn’t spill any blood and left within a few hours, they would leave me alone. Hopefully.

  Deep in a dense forest, I propped my cycle up against a tree and reached inside the engine for a very small component that I added to the chain around my neck. The vehicle wouldn’t work without it, and if anyone saw the part around my neck, they would think it was just a simple charm. It had saved my cycle from being stolen many times over the years. Bleeders tended to not steal something that didn’t work. Folks had to be on the move these days so they couldn’t lug around a scrap of metal hoping it would come in handy, and anyone who was smart enough to know what parts to steal never lived long enough to grab their wrenches.

  With my cycle safe, I pulled out my little pop up tent from my backpack and it sprang up as soon as I’d taken it out of its bag. After one quick check with my senses just to be sure I was alone, I laid out my blanket on the vinyl fabric floor before zipping up the tent behind me. After cleaning my face off and removing my vest, I grabbed the bleeder’s stash before closing my backpack and placing it at the head of my blanket for a pillow. The front pocket held one of my few luxuries, a second blanket. Since I never got cold, its sole purpose was to keep the backpack from being too lumpy under my head. Without that scrap of fleece, my bag was lumpy in all the wrong places and I never got a lick of sleep.

  Plushness under my head, I leaned up on one elbow and opened the large Ziplock baggie of Night Shadow and pulled out two red-purple colored pills. Seeing them in my fingers was unsettling enough to make me feel sick to my stomach, but I did this for a reason. Before I could change my mind, I popped the first pill in my mouth and dry swallowed it with a sigh.

  The effect took a minute as I was not the intended species they were made for. It hit like a slam against the wall and the tent was spinning and shiny and I wasn’t sad anymore. Not sad about Jason, or my mom, or both of my dads, or Thalia. Everything was as happy and peaceful as it had been before, when I was a moody little girl in her stupid black hoodie.

  As the spinning slowed and the shiny grew, a tear ran down my cheek despite the false endorphins I was feeling, and they felt amazing, I will say. Being on Night Shadow was like my nights with Thalia. Bright and explosive with pleasure.

  My sweet Thalia.

  Coughing, I sat up and the high disappeared. Damn genetics. I could never enjoy the high for more than… I checked my watch. An hour had passed. It felt like thirty seconds.

  In the bitter aftertaste, I saw a face in my mind: the vampire whose blood had made that particular Night Shadow pill. I never saw the Lycan’s face even though both blood types were needed to make the drug.

  The vampire’s face was unknown to me, like all the rest had been for all the years I’d been a drugged-out loser in a stupid attempt to find my mother.

>   Fucking hell.

  Angrily, I tossed the baggie of pills somewhere by my feet and popped the second one in my mouth, biting into it with one of my fangs. The sweet liquid was like heavenly acid and I swallowed it down, waiting for the high to wash away my feelings.

  Shiny, shiny tent. Make a mirage of someone. Anyone. You can do it, tent.

  “Kitty?” a voice called.

  Oh great. Now you do what I want when I’m too tweaked out to open my eyes. Fuck you, tent. The high was going away and the face that came to me made me shoot up from my bed.

  Mother.

  3. Memories of then

  Kitty

  As soon as the sun came up, I was off on my cycle going back to the ghost town to check the bleeder’s records. If he had a record of every vamp, Lycan, or bleeder’s presence over the past umpteenth years, he was sure to have a record of where he got his product or who had donated blood.

  After two pills of Night Shadow, I was feeling a bit hung over, but only just. I needed blood. Without a steady supply of regular food or water, blood was my only daily requirement. I’d have drunk the bleeders dry, except as a Vipyre, the only Incubus and Vampire hybrid in existence, I drank vampire blood. Sharks were becoming my only food supply now, but they didn’t really sate my hunger the way vampires did. I was always thirsty.

  Soon I was back where my journey ended. I’d been stupid enough to leave the bodies inside the saloon, having not intended to return, so a cluster of sharks had arrived to pick at the corpses.

  Fuck me twice.

  The dust storm was long passed, and the cracked, weed ridden street stood between me and the sharks. They’d already cleaned the bodies out, but they were still standing in the doorway and around the porch like mannequins. The monsters were pretty stupid. Unlike real sharks, they didn’t just leave after the kill. They stuck around because there was only air between their ears. Air and fangs. Fangs that were in my way, and I didn’t take to anything that stood in my way.

  I counted about twenty of them, a small group if I ever saw one. I’d been amongst hundreds before. That solemn memory slowed my hand on Artemis, and I pointed my chin up to wipe the sadness away. Tucking my bottom lip under my top teeth, I let out a shrill whistle, the one I’d learned from an old friend.

  The sharks enraged at the sound mixed with the smell of fresh blood. They charged at me, but I was ready for them. As the first came close, I put a hand up to flip over its back and put a shot off with Artemis in the shark’s stomach. That would slow it down for now. The second came at me and tried to wrestle me into its grip. I stuck my barrel up its chin and fired, then turned a sharp left to stop the blood and bits from getting on me. His body fell and the third shark used it as a step up to jump on me, so I tore into the shark’s neck with my fangs and drank deep of his blood to sate my hunger. After a few long pulls, I ripped out a piece of his neck with my teeth and spat it to the ground before shoving him away.

  They all rushed me like a swarm of bees and I laid them to waste, by either Artemis or my fangs. I’d need to burn the bodies to make sure more sharks wouldn’t come, just in case I had to come back. Later, though. I had other things to do first.

  With Artemis cocked in my hand, I filled her with more bullets from my belt as I approached the saloon. The doors were wide open but I didn’t spot any shark stragglers from the horde. The two bleeder bodies I’d left looked like they’d been attacked by vultures. Only the skeletons and their clothes were left.

  Gross. Sharks were fucking nasty creatures.

  I stepped around the bones and hopped up onto the counter, poured myself a shot of whatever was out, and landed with a click of my boots on the other side of the bar. Downing another shot, I found the notebook the bartender had shown me, as well as a few other equally dirty ones. I should’ve brought them with me in the first place. I supposed the utter disappointment had clouded my brain. Normally I was on point with my actions. I needed to get back to that level of smart, and fast. At least I didn’t need to take Night Shadow anymore, but I’d still keep the stash for trading fodder. It would get me miles more in trades than my blood could, seeing as how not everyone knew how to make the drug, but most everyone wanted it.

  With the notebooks in my backpack, and a few odds and ends I found in the saloon, I piled all the sharks into a stinking pyre and set it up in flames before leaving the way I’d come.

  A few hours of road, several shots of the strongest liquor I could find, and a new camp set up in a dilapidated high riser, I finally had the time to look at the bleeder’s records. I propped myself up against a wall that was once where hundreds of workers came to their worthless jobs every day before the sharks came and fucked everything up. The air no longer held the metallic scent of blood, but I was certain carnage had happened on the very floor I sat.

  Another shot of the liquor I’d brought with me, and I opened the notebook to look for clues. The bleeder’s last shipment of Night Shadow had been three weeks before, and the supplier was… anonymous. What the fuck was an anonymous supplier? Were we in the days of law enforcement when drugs were outlawed? Hardly.

  “Fucking perfect,” I swore loudly, my voice echoing through the dilapidated building. I sighed and slammed the book down to run my fingers through my long black curls.

  My eyes immediately went to my backpack where the baggie of Night Shadow sat. I didn’t need it. I didn’t. Except… I enjoyed being taken away from my life, from this utter fucking hell I spent all of my waking hours in. The hell where my family is probably lost forever, where Thalia is dead, and I’m alone. Just alone. Always fucking alone. Choking back a sob, I grab my bag and put two Night Shadows in my mouth, crushing them with my teeth and feeling the drug take hold like the temptuous bite of a snake.

  I’m back home. Jason is sitting at the kitchen table next to me playing something on his holographic game console. Balthazar is kissing Toni on the cheek and he gives me a blue-eyed wink when I catch his eye. Dad. I want to reach out to him and hold him close but he’s not really here. Before the spell can be broken, I look to my left and see Mom leaning in to kiss Knight on the lips as she sets down a plate of fried chicken for dinner. She sees me staring and chuckles before planting a comforting kiss on my head.

  “What’s the matter, Kitty?”

  I almost knock my chair over in my haste to stand and throw myself into her arms. She smells so damn good, like flowers and bread. “I don’t know. I just missed you.” Letting her go, I wipe my cheeks and surrender as the fantasy takes over.

  “Dweeb,” Jason murmurs, kicking me slightly with his foot when I sit back down. He’s such an adorable jerk. I steal a piece of chicken from his plate and sink my fangs into it triumphantly before sticking my tongue out and showing him my partly chewed food. Without missing a beat, he steals from my plate too and repeats my see-food display with a giggle.

  “They’re so mine,” Knight says happily from across the table. Closing my mouth, I look back at him and relish the sight of his face.

  “I love you, dad,” I say to him, and I feel my lips say the words outside of my fantasy where the real world lies. Knight flaps his hand over Mom’s arm excitedly.

  “She called me dad!” he squeaks. “Imma cry!” I hand him some of my chicken, just because, even though he has a full plate. “Up top, kiddo!” He holds out his hand and as I reach up to slap it, the fantasy snaps closed and I’m back in the real world, standing in one of the open windows with my hand out ready to high five the empty air.

  No, come back. Come back to me. A tear rolled down my cheek and I closed my hand before letting it fall to my side. I could still smell Mom’s scent like she was standing beside me, could still feel the softness of Jason’s hair, still see everyone’s face with aching clarity.

  My heart was aching, my body was tired, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could fucking stand this.

  Meow.

  Artemis flashed out and I turned to see a cluster of cats in the room with me. They were unimpresse
d by my gun. Several had made a bed on my stuff and I spotted a crowd inside my tent. First a horde of sharks, and now a horde of fluffy kitties.

  I stuffed Artemis back into her holster. “Hi, kitties. I’m Kitty.” The room smelled like warm cat. One of them came up and rubbed against my legs so I crouched to scratch under its chin, but it ran from me before I could touch it. “Guess you guys have never seen a person before. Don’t let me fool you. Not all the creatures out there are as nice as me.”

  They didn’t seem to care. I went to my bed after moving the cats out of the way and fell asleep to the sound of purrs.

  4. Don’t call me girlie

  Kitty

  The next morning, I woke to a pair of yellow eyes in my face. A black cat sat staring at me like he had nothing better to do. His long black tail swished back and forth, no doubt his brain’s way of deciding whether to pounce on me or not. The horde of felines was probably descended from house cats and had made this tower their home. They had birds, water, rats. I bet they’d never been outside of the structure.

  “Morning,” I said out loud to the observing cat, saluting it with my fingers to my forehead. Slowly, I reached a hand out to pet him and he let me for a few moments. So damn soft and warm. The first real body I’d touched in years. After a few strokes on his head, he’d had enough, and he scurried away from sight. “I just wanted to pet you, you little bitch!” I turned and came face to face with a white cat lounging on my hip.

  Forget shark invasion, this was a cat invasion!

  Amid protests, I shoved the cats away and stood up to stretch. Okay. I needed a plan. Plans were all I had, and I wasn’t about to give up and become a crazy cat lady. The cats hadn’t managed to gobble up my food yet, so I settled down on the floor with the last bits of my dried fruit in one hand and the ledger in the other. Since the latest shipment was a bust, I just had to make my way backwards. There were about ten other suppliers with only one mentioned several times. The bleeder might’ve been greasy looking, but he kept detailed records. He even had a location for all the suppliers on the back page. It made sense since phones no longer worked.