The Fertile Vampire

by Ranney, Karen

I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling. “Am I going to start sparkling any time soon?”

  “Pardon?”

  I waved my hand in the air, erasing the question.

  “Do you do a ceremony with werewolves, too?” I asked. “You know, the one about asking me about God and that stuff?”

  “The trial? That is handled by their packs. I only preside over newly made Kindred.”

  “You’re a Master,” I said, remembering what someone at dinner had said. “Why are you mentoring me?”

  This time, he was going to answer me.

  He shook his head, still standing in front of me. I pointed to a chair and he raised one eyebrow. Evidently, one did not point to Il Duce. Still, he sat.

  “I asked for you.”

  Well, that was a surprise.

  “Why?”

  I wondered if I truly wanted to know. There were so many revelations I could take in one night and I’d about reached my limit.

  “Do you wish to know about the other Brethren?”

  I took another swig of wine, wishing I could get snockered. Alas, Poor Yorick, thou art doomed to sobriety.

  “Brethren?” I finally said.

  He crossed one leg over the other and sat back in my chair, managing to dominate my living room.

  “You didn’t think vampires and werewolves were the only ones?”

  Well, hell, yeah.

  I pointed my finger at him, drew tight circles in the air, then pushed through them. Take that.

  Maybe I was feeling the wine a tiny bit.

  “There are more supernatural creatures in the world, Marcie, than mortals. We outnumber them.”

  “Insects.”

  “Pardon?”

  “There are millions more insects than there are human beings. So, you’ve just described insects. Tiny little vampires with transparent wings. Werewolf cockroaches. Bees. What would bees be?”

  He stood, coming to sit beside me on the couch. Gently, he took the empty wineglass from me, setting it where I couldn’t reach it.

  “Why does it upset you so?”

  I sighed. “I was getting used to the idea of being a vampire. I mean, I knew there were vampires. My stepfather was one. My boyfriend…” I snorted. Doug was never my boyfriend. He was a hookup, pure and simple, and I never thought I’d treat myself with such disregard. But the sex had been mind blowing. Surely I was allowed a little fun?

  “I don’t know,” I said, giving up trying to explain. “It’s just that the world I knew isn’t the world I knew.”

  He took one of my hands in his. Unlike Ophelia, his hands were toasty warm. So, too, his eyes, the color of a Hershey bar. A melted Hershey bar.

  I was suddenly ravenously hungry for chocolate.

  Slowly, I pulled my hand back and looked away. I was not going to be mesmerized by Il Duce.

  Before I knew it, I would be kissing him, and begging him for more, addicted to the sex.

  No, I was going to be a good little vampire.

  I had to find a better name.

  “So, are vampires and werewolves deadly enemies?” I asked, remembering the fiction I’d read.

  “No.” He held out his hand, rocked it back and forth. “Maybe in isolated cases. We don’t normally travel in the same circles. You won’t find a vampire attending a werewolf social function, for example. Not out of an abundance of caution but simply because we have nothing in common. Shapeshifters are different. They obey no laws. Nor do they have a common and unifying governing force. We do not mingle with them because they are the vermin of our world.”

  “You should have told me all this in the beginning.”

  “Exactly when was this? Oh, Marcie, you need to go to Orientation and, by the way, there are werewolves and shapeshifters afoot.”

  “Are there?” I asked, startled.

  He smiled at me.

  “How do I know if someone’s a werewolf?”

  “How do you know if someone’s a vampire?” he countered.

  “I used to be able to smell you,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed slightly, a sign I’d surprised him.

  “My step-father smelled like popcorn. Doug smelled like cloves and, sometimes, like chocolate.” I was not about to tell him when Doug had smelled like chocolate. There were some things not meant to be shared between mentor and mentee.

  “What do I smell like?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve lost the ability to smell you. Becoming a vampire did something.”

  “That’s why you’re going to Orientation,” he said, standing. “To learn how to recognize the Kindred.”

  “In order to be a good little vampire.”

  He studied me and I got the impression he stopped himself from commenting. I met his gaze and for one long uncomfortable moment it seemed to connect us in some way.

  “Would you have killed me if I’d said I wanted to die?” I asked.

  A hint of smile appeared on his face. “No, I would have taken you into another room and attempted to convince you otherwise.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of persuasion he would have used.

  My internal temperature rose a few degrees. No doubt due to the wine.

  “Are you really a duke?” I asked.

  The glitter of his eyes indicated he knew I wasn’t feeling comfy in his presence. I didn’t feel unsafe. I was aware, in the same way I’d been aware of Doug or any handsome man who attracted me physically.

  Even in my semi-tipsy state, I knew getting involved with Il Duce would not be a good idea.

  “I am. Prince Almonte, Duke of Arosta,” he said, making a small bow.

  “A prince, too?” Somehow, I was not surprised.

  “It is a courtesy title. The duchy of Arosta was my family lineage.”

  He smiled at me, his eyes twinkling and I was once again struck by how handsome he was. And how sexy. And how troubling. Not to mention dangerous.

  “Why can I eat food and nobody else can?” I asked.

  Once again, it looked like he didn’t want to answer me.

  I sat up and reached for my glass. Clutching the glass, in case he thought to take it from me again, I waited for an answer. I was prepared to wait until hell froze over.

  He folded his arms, his eyes growing cooler. This was probably the Master persona, the man who could command anything he damn well wanted.

  Except for me, of course.

  He’d become my mentor. Why? It wasn’t my big blue eyes, even though they were my best feature. After the fortune in capping my front teeth, I also had a damn good smile. I doubted he was interested in those, either.

  “You were interesting,” he said. Like I was going to take that for an answer. “In the VRC, you did not require a transfusion in order to survive.”

  From the beginning I’d been different. Why?

  “It was an oversight. The night had been a busy one. By the time the nurse realized a few hours had passed, everyone thought you were dead. As you should have been.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “No,” he said softly, “you weren’t.”

  “Maybe that’s why I don’t like blood now,” I said, nearly desperate to find a reason why I wasn’t a normal vampire - which was an oxymoron if I ever heard one. I had the feeling the odder I was, the more danger I was in.

  “No,” he said, glancing toward the hall where the styrofoam case of blood bottles sat. “You should have died. Fledglings require constant feedings. You do not.”

  “I do,” I said. “I’m eating like I’m pregnant with quintuplets.”

  He only smiled at that.

  “Also, I heard you,” he added.

  “Heard me?”

  He nodded. “When you woke, I heard you. You were in pain and anxious. I heard your panic. The ability to compel is very rare, Marcie, especially to one of my age, but it seems you have the ability to compel me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you think of me, I must respon
d.”

  I didn’t have an explanation for that. But I did haul out my phone and showed it to him.

  “Amazing invention, the phone,” I said. “You call it compulsion. I call it technology.”

  “You didn’t call me tonight,” he said.

  I had called him, but his office had been closed. My stomach clenched.

  “When you were afraid, I heard.”

  What the hell did that mean? Were we connected by something else other than being vampires? Was he implying we were soul mates?

  My danger alarms were all ringing merrily. I was feeling clammy and my pulse was racing.

  I wasn’t sure I liked being a vampire yet. I certainly didn’t want to be linked, even psychically, to another one.

  He fixed a smile on me, one filled with compassion, understanding, and too much charm for me to be entirely comfortable.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A rose by any other name

  “You are upset,” he said. “But you should not be. The Frater Cruentus are the better part of mankind, the exalted, the special.”

  “What’s the…” I stumbled in the pronunciation.

  “The Frater Cruentus is an old term. Loosely translated, it means those of us linked by blood.”

  “Bugs again? They’re ants, we’re not? Are you saying every human born with talent or skill was a vampire?”

  “If they were born with talent or skill we turned them,” he said.

  As I stared at him, he shrugged. “We recognize those with promise and go to them with an offer. Most accept. The minor irritations of our condition are outweighed by the major benefits: an increased lifespan, the ability to communicate with others of a similar intellectual nature.”

  He smiled. “You would be surprised how many of your favorite authors are writing under different names while bemoaning the copyright laws. Since it’s been much longer than their lifetimes plus seventy years, they can no longer benefit from their works. Or mathematicians who continue to labor on the same problems they encountered two hundred years ago. Or those whose interest in the solar system have found their minds expanded by recent developments in telescopes.”

  “What about the ones who are turned without prior permission? What if they’re not born with talent or skill?”

  “All those who are turned without permission are considered aberrations. However, if it is deemed they have some discernible talent, they are allowed to live.”

  I stared at him, feeling my lips go numb.

  “Don’t the police have something to say about that?”

  “Once they are turned, they are out of mortal control,” he said, his voice never altering in timbre, sounding warm and relaxed and sexy. “As vampires, they are under the Council’s jurisdiction.”

  I was thirty-three years old. In those thirty-three years I’d felt threatened and in danger. The time I had to have an emergency appendectomy, for example. When I left Bill and was trying to get on my feet financially was another. Through it all, in every scenario, I’d never been viscerally afraid. I knew medical science would heal me, that I would eventually come out of the money pit I’d dug for myself.

  Now?

  Now my world had been turned on its axis effortlessly by the vampire sitting in my living room. Now I was clammy with fear and nauseous with it, recognizing my existence was a brief, flickering candle and he could blow it out on a whim.

  Evidently, the VRC was not only used to help newly turned vampires, but to snuff out the lives of those who weren’t deemed worthy.

  Meng had been turned without permission, but he was a software engineer. Kenisha was a cop. What did I have? The ability to negotiate? Tenacity when working a case? A fierce desire to see justice done? An affinity for stupid movies and reading two hundred books a year?

  “Why did you allow me to live?” I asked, surprised my voice sounded so calm. “I don’t have any talents.”

  I straightened, put the wineglass down on the nearby table.

  “Unless my oddity is my talent. The fact I can call you and live without blood. What else can I do?”

  “There are two types of Kindred,” he said. “One is blood based. The other feeds from spirit. The first is much more common than the second. The Pranic do not occur very often.”

  If he thought that was enough of an explanation, he was wrong. I hadn’t fed from anyone’s spirit. Or, if I had, I was certainly not aware of it.

  “So you think I’m a Pranic vampire?”

  He shrugged a little, a curiously Gallic gesture that said: pay no attention to what I say, am I not foolish? Both the gesture and the smile annoyed me.

  “Why would I be a Pranic and not a regular vampire?” Was there such a thing as a “regular” vampire?

  “There is some disagreement about how a Pranic vampire occurs. I cannot answer your question.”

  “And you think I’m one of those,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Does a Pranic vampire eat Mexican food?” I asked, pointing to the crumpled bag that had held my cookies.

  “They do not eat food in the way you do, no.”

  “Who does?”

  He didn’t answer, merely regarded me steadily. Was he trying to compel me to stop asking questions? If so, it wasn’t working.

  “Then I don’t have to suck anyone’s blood, right?”

  His mouth quirked a little. “No.”

  “And I don’t sparkle.”

  His perfect brow creased. “What is this sparkle you speak of?”

  “Never mind,” I said, unwilling to explain. “Can I read minds? Levitate objects?”

  He shook his head.

  “Let me recap, then,” I said. “I’m a vampire, but I don’t have any superhuman powers. In the meantime, I’m eating everything that isn’t nailed down and I’m hot, really hot, all the time. Am I supposed to go through vampire menopause for the rest of my life?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “So what’s the big deal about being a vampire?”

  “The big deal, as you say, Marcie, is that you stave off age and death itself.”

  His eyes were burning with an intensity he’d shown only once before, at my trial.

  “What if you had two hundred years to create a vaccine against polio instead of a mere fifty? What if the atom bomb was the result of a hundred fifty years of testing? How do you think men made it to the moon? A decade’s worth of trial and error?”

  I grabbed my arms tightly with my hands. “Are you trying to tell me every scientific achievement was made by vampires?”

  “Why do you find that so difficult to believe?”

  “It’s a little self-serving and grandiose, isn’t it?”

  This vampire thing - I had to come up with another name - was running rings around me. Just when I thought I had it figured out - wham! - I was broadsided again.

  I grabbed the bottle of wine and sat back, perching it on my knee. I really did want to get snockered. If I did, would I have a hangover? Questions, questions, nothing but questions.

  I didn’t want the wine. I wanted a loving, supportive family. I wanted the stuffed bear I had when I was eight. Theodosa, Dosa, for short, had been my constant companion until she’d been left behind at some relative’s house. Nobody understood my anguish over her loss. When she was found three years later, tucked into my cousin’s toy box - a fate I was certain was maliciously planned - I pretended a disinterest, walking away from my beloved Dosa with my nose in the air. After all, I was too old for teddy bears.

  Somehow, I’d regressed in the past five minutes. Dosa would find a welcome in my arms right now.

  “So, what am I supposed to do?” I asked. “I’m an insurance adjuster. I doubt the world is pining for a hundred year old insurance adjuster.” I glanced at him. “I’ve got no scientific talent. I’m not talented in anything. What am I going to do with all this time I have?”

  “You’ll find your way.”

  I smiled. “In the meantime, someone is trying to kill me.”

&n
bsp; He looked surprised, which only made me roll my eyes.

  “Opie, Ophelia, was wearing my sweater. Someone thought she was me.”

  “You realized this,” he said.

  Now I did roll my eyes.

  “Someone wants me dead. I mean, really dead.”

  Finding out there were werewolves was feeling a bit anticlimactic. I mean, what could they do to me that someone hadn’t already tried to do? Well, I guess they could gnaw on me a little.

  “The problem is,” I said, “is there are too many suspects. My family, who might want me gone, less of an embarrassment for them. A former friend or two who’s horrified I’m a vampire. After all, to them I’m dead. What’s a little murder when your victim is deceased?”

  I looked at him. “Is there a punishment for killing a vampire?”

  He studied the coffee table, which was an answer. Goodie, open season on me.

  “I could even see Doug doing it, except it would have been an accident. Doug is the worst driver I’ve ever seen.”

  A wisp of a smile curved his lips. So glad he found this amusing.

  “You, because you’re tired of being a mentor and I am giving every sign of being a pain in the ass.”

  He nodded, which made me want to toss the wine at him, but I’d drunk it all.

  I stood, moving in front of the living room window. On second thought, my silhouette could probably be seen through the curtains. I stepped back, seeing imaginary snipers perched on the rooftop.

  Granted, I wasn’t happy at the moment. However, being a vampire beat the hell out of dying, giving up the mortal coil, kicking the bucket, etc. I’d wanted to live and I was, in a way. Nobody guaranteed a human anything when they were born. Maybe I should think of being a vampire like that. I wasn’t promised anything, so I would make a life for myself.

  First of all, I was going to get rid of the label: vampire. I didn’t like it. Calling myself Pranic was better than being a vampire. Hi, I’m Marcie and I’m Pranic. No, maybe not.

  I turned to face him.

  “What other surprises are in store?”

  He smiled, a genuinely amused expression, one making him even more handsome. After Doug, I was learning. I glanced away, rather than be caught up in his appearance.