I think it held a necklace for me. A necklace that I’d have to shed
blood for. Camila unhooked the weaving of metal and rubies from
around her waist and placed it gently in a wooden box lined with
black silk.
“You may sit if you like.” Without looking at me, she nodded
toward the bed. My stomach clenched at the sound of her voice. The
bed seemed like a bad place to sit and I’d have to walk past her to
get to the chairs.
“I’m fine.”
She opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of black lace
underwear and a black tank top. It was a shame to cover any of
that perfect golden skin. As she pulled on the underwear, she turned
toward me a little bit. She was completely bare between her legs.
The skin of her slit glistened. For a split second, I wanted to know
what exactly had made her wet.
“Kinda overdoing it with the black, huh?” I blurted nervously.
She pulled the tank top over her head. Her hard nipples
puckered through the fabric.
“I have to offset Natasha. Her room is all neons. It’s hideous.
Besides, don’t you think it’s fitting?” She turned around and leaned
against her dresser, folding her arms across her chest. “For a vampire.”
“Is that what you are?”
“It’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.” I took a deep breath and stood up
straight. It was time to leave. “You guys seem pretty stocked up on
food now. What do you want with me?”
“Tonight, I was hoping you would feed me. And then I was
planning on fucking you to sleep.” Heat surged across my chest and
face. No one had ever said anything like that to me—ever. I had no
idea what to say back. That didn’t stop my body from reacting to
• 47 •
reBekah WeatherspOOn
her even more. My nipples started to tingle and my feet shuffled, my
thighs pressing together.
“But we have some things to discuss before that.” Her fangs
had retracted for the most part, but the light still caught their sharp
tips when she talked. She caught me looking at them before she
licked her plump bottom lip and glanced at the floor. The red lipstick
didn’t budge at all. I shifted my weight more to my left foot.
“Wha—” My voice cracked so I coughed and tried again. “What
things?” Camila pushed off the dresser and turned to rummage
through another jewelry box. I wanted to back away as she came
back toward me. Instead, I watched helplessly, my eyes glued to
the long needle she carried. She picked up my hand and pricked
my index finger, then pinched it so the blood came rushing to the
surface. I gasped as she took my fingertip in her mouth. Her warm
tongue swirled over my skin. She looked up at me, still sucking on
my finger, and my pussy gushed.
“I figured,” Camila said. She straightened and let go of my
hand. “You saw me that night, didn’t you?”
“When?” I glanced at my finger. Every trace of the pinprick
was gone. “The night of the open house?” She nodded. “Yeah. You
were talking to Barb.”
“Did you see any of the other sister-queens?” I scanned my
memory. There had been so many people in the past week. Something
clicked, though.
“Yeah, Faeth? The tall one with the brown hair.” Camila nodded
again, pursing her lips. “Yeah, I saw her last night when we came
over. She was standing by the window for a little while.”
“Cleo tells me you were adopted.”
“I was. What does that have to do with you or Faeth?”
“What happened to your birth mother?”
“She died.” I shook my head with a humorless chuckle, wanting
to move away from the painful truths of my past. “She died twice
actually. She used to joke that women had nine lives, like cats.”
“What do you mean twice?”
“She was found clinically dead when she was about five months
pregnant with me. A mugger or something. The doctors saved her.”
• 48 •
Better Off red
“Ah, okay.”
“What?” My relationship with my real mother had been short
and painful, but I didn’t appreciate anyone being so casual about her
death. “Why are you asking about her?”
“Because I am not sure a doctor saved your mother or even
you, for that matter. You have vampire blood in your system. Unless
someone tried to turn you—and you’d remember that—I’m fairly
sure your mother fed from one of my kind while she was pregnant
with you.”
I stared at her, completely confused. “How can you know that?”
“You shouldn’t have seen me or Faeth. It’s not much, but the
blood of my kind is in you. I can taste it and it’s the only way you
could have seen through the cloak. We only used it to mask ourselves
against humans.”
My mother had been a stripper who sold the rest of her body
on the side. The idea that she’d known a vampire, considering they
were now very real in my universe, didn’t seem all that impossible.
That didn’t make the idea that I had vampire blood in my veins any
easier to process.
It took me years to feel comfortable enough to call the
Carmichaels Mom and Dad. There were still days where I was
shocked my new family hadn’t picked up and left me in the middle
of the night. They had helped me become the person I was now, a
person I was happy and comfortable with. I didn’t need a know-it-
all vampire I’d just met telling me that I didn’t know myself at all.
I sat on the bed. Camila sat next to me. The bed barely shifted
under her weight. I got the feeling she wanted to touch me, but she
kept her hands to herself.
“You think I’m not human?”
“You are. You blood simply isn’t pure. What happened the
second time, to your mother?” she asked.
“She…um. She killed herself. Slit her wrists while I was at
school.” I couldn’t say anymore—about how I’d found her. I didn’t
want to think about the envelope of cash or the note she’d left for
the neighbors, asking them to keep me. And I didn’t think Camila
wanted to hear anything about the year I spent in the system.
• 49 •
reBekah WeatherspOOn
“Do you know anything about your father?”
“No. She never mentioned him.” I looked into her eyes. “Do
you think he was like you—a vampire, I mean?”
“No. We can’t breed. Drinking from one of us is the only way
to get our blood into your system.”
“Well, he must have been a redhead. My mom was a brunette.”
I looked back at my hands. I usually traced patterns in my freckles
while I thought, but they had suddenly blurred together.
“We haven’t had a redhead in a while. That’s part of the reason
why I wanted to keep you.” I could hear a hint of pleasure in her
voice. Then I knew I’d let my guard down. She was trying to gain
my trust and it made me sick.
“What’s the other reason?” I stood and backed away from her.
> “Don’t you have enough food?”
“Ginger, this isn’t about food.”
“Then let me go.”
“You can leave right now. I’ll even lend you some sweats so
you can walk back to the dorm. But I’d like to explain first.” I looked
down at the see-through dress. There was no way I was walking
across campus in that thing.
“Fine. But I’m not feeding you.”
“Fine,” Camila said. “Will you come sit down, please?”
“Why?”
Her eyes started to glow a bit as she gazed over my body. I took
another step back.
“Because I like the way you smell. And I feel rude making a
guest stand.”
“No. I’m fine, really.”
“Okay.” She shrugged dismissively.
“So, what? You guys use the sorority to lure unsuspecting girls
to your lair?”
“It’s not that simple,” she said. I closed my eyes and leaned my
head against the wall.
“The others are hearing the truth for themselves right now.
Please. Just let me tell you.”
• 50 •
Better Off red
“I already know too much, don’t I?” I could just see Camila and
her sister-friends letting me get five hundred yards before hunting
me down and ripping out my throat. I wasn’t in the mood for that
kind of silencing.
“Well, yes, but we can always strip your memory. It’s your
choice.” Camila was trying not to chuckle.
“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?”
“A little bit. Yes. How about you ask the questions?” She
nodded toward the spot next to her on the bed.
I walked past her and sank in one of the big chairs. I was actually
surprised by how comfortable it was. I tucked my legs under me and
tried to relax. If she was telling the truth about my mixed vampire
blood, I at least had to hear her out before making my escape.
I thought for a moment. There was a lot I wanted to know, but
I couldn’t decide what was the most important bit of information.
Apparently, I was taking too long.
“Why don’t I just start from the beginning and then you can ask
me to fill in the blanks?” Camila said.
I nodded, wrapping my arms around myself.
“The first of my kind were the children of demons.” Camila
laughed again as my eyes darted to the door. “Just listen.”
“What? I’m listening.”
“Let me ask you this? You are familiar with the idea of fallen
angels?”
“Yeah.” I kept the duh to myself.
“Well, the first of our kind were essentially…enlightened
demons.”
“You’re saying some demons grew a conscience and wanted
out of Hell.”
“It’s not exactly your idea of Hell, but something like that.
Several of them escaped, but they could only make it as far as this
plane.”
“And these were blood drinking demons?” I said. Warm-
blooded, soft-skinned, beautiful demons.
“Yes. We are here as guests, you could say. Our master has an
arrangement with whom you would call God.”
• 51 •
reBekah WeatherspOOn
“What do you call him?”
“The Divine has no name.”
“Okay. So God and your master struck what kind of an
arrangement?”
“My master’s children, my sisters, and I are permitted to feed
as long as we do not interfere with God’s plans.”
I still didn’t see the upshot of this conversation. It had been a
while since I’d been to Mass, but I was raised Catholic. If memory
served me right demons weren’t something you were supposed to
mess with or bind yourself to even for the sake the time honored
traditions of a sorority. Still I listened, trying to wrap my mind
around what I knew she believed to be the truth.
“So why all this?” I motioned around the room. “I thought
vampires were supposed to be all powerful. Why go through all this
to play nice with your food? There’s like eight billion people in the
world. Why not pick some randoms off the street?” I flinched as she
stood. She grabbed a blanket off the bed and brought it over to me.
I was freezing. I hadn’t even noticed. She tucked the thick fleece
around my shoulders then reclined in the other chair across from
me. “Have you ever been hunting?” she asked.
“No. I don’t like guns.”
“Neither do I. Well, you eat meat, right? Imagine if you had to
chase the cows. You don’t have a gun, so you have to use your fists
and you can only chase those cows at night.” I coughed to cover my
laughter. The idea of trying to fistfight a cow to death at night was
pretty ridiculous. “Wouldn’t it be easier if the cow showed up at
your door and let you take all you needed?”
“So you do view us as food?” I frowned.
“We used to. We need a lot of blood to live. We eat regular food
just like you, but we’d die without what humans give us.”
“You mean what you take?”
“Part of me wants to tell you to shut the fuck up, but you’re kind
of cute like this.” I wanted to tell her to fuck off, but I couldn’t deny
how being around her made me feel. The flirting was not helping me
formulate an escape plan.
• 52 •
Better Off red
“I meant what I said. We live off what humans give us. Humans
were beginning to suspect our existence. When we are starving, our
kind can drain a human in a matter of minutes. That sort of feeding
leaves bodies, and they began to hunt us. A few vampires realized if
they could just find humans to volunteer to feed them on a regular
basis, no humans would have to die and there would be no trace of a
monster to hunt. Our master finally settled on this sorority as a guise
and many of us have become accustomed to finding our feeders this
way. It’s about convenience, comfort, and routine.”
“Oh, I see. So you rounded up thirty-six, well, thirty-seven
girls, to feed you and your friends. In exchange, we get a kiss and
a ruby necklace and the bragging rights that come with being an
ABO?”
“You insist on making this sound much worse than it truly is.”
“Please tell me the good part. Tell me why I shouldn’t grab
Amy and leave right now. Why use Cleo and Danni to trick us? Why
the mind and body control back there—if it’s all our choice?” I was
getting pretty riled up, but I didn’t care.
“So you did feel my influence?”
“Of course I did. I was scared out of my mind, but I couldn’t
move.”
“You prove my point. The other girls weren’t aware they were
losing control. You were able to feel it—”
“Because of the blood. Right, right. So tell me what makes this
any better? They weren’t scared. So what? You didn’t give them
much of a choice. What’s in it for us?”
Camila’s fang bit into her bottom lip as she tried to hide another
snicker at my expense, and that just made me even more upset. For
all I knew, my roommate was taking her
last breath and I had the
queen of the vampires thinking about how cute I am when I get mad.
If I didn’t love the way the light was catching her eyes or the way her
lips looked when she smiled, I would have stormed out of the room
and found my way back to the dorm barefoot and nearly naked.
“They were given a choice, Ginger. The control was to stave
off the fear and release honesty. They will be pleased with their
decision to stay. The humans who feed us are very well taken care
• 53 •
reBekah WeatherspOOn
of. We sent Cleo and the others out to find other girls they believe
deserve to be treated like queens.” I wasn’t following and she could
tell. “There are vampires all over the world. Some live on their own,
hiding in the dark and hunting their prey at their own risk. Hell-
banishment is the cost of exposure, so most demons who live this
way are careful, but our lives are safer if we serve my master.”
“Benny’s dad?”
“Her step-father. He is the most powerful vampire in this part
of the world. Now he works with your government to ensure our
survival. In return for their cooperation, he takes care of the humans
who feed us.”
“Why?” I asked. Camila wasn’t making any sense. Who’d ever
heard of a vampire trying to be a diplomat and a humanitarian?
“Because we need you to live. Why is this so hard for you to
believe?”
“So you’re saying if I feed you, you’ll take care of me financially
for the rest of my life?”
“I’m saying that if you feed me, I will take care of you in any
way you’ll let me until you graduate.”
“And then what?”
“You’ll go out in the world and my master will find another
vampire for you to feed and they will take care of you for the rest of
your life. Or if my master grants you permission, you may become
a vampire yourself, but—” She stood. “That doesn’t apply to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you wanted to leave.” Camila walked over to a large
closet. She pulled out a black tracksuit and laid it on the bed. “Amy
is probably having the best orgasm of her life right now. I’d hate
to interrupt that, but I promise to send her back in the morning.
Unharmed.”
“Wait. They’re having…sex?” I wanted to smack myself as
soon as I said it. I sounded like a twelve-year-old.
“If my sister-queens are feeding, then yes, it typically leads
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