Lavos Read online

  He rubbed her back. “My brave Jadee. It sounds as if you got lucky and hit his neck just right. They have stronger bones than humans but they weaken if he hasn’t fed for a while.”

  “Then his nest came after me. They must have seen what happened and somehow followed me home. A bunch of them surrounded my place. They couldn’t get in since I had started living in the RV, but at dawn I got the hell out of there. I didn’t know if more of them would come after me. They knew my name. I’m fucked, aren’t I?”

  He picked her up. She tensed in his arms but didn’t struggle. He carried her to the bed and eased her back onto her feet. “Sit.” He let her go. It was difficult. He liked holding her.

  She sat on the edge of his bed and he crouched in front of her, bracing her knees between his spread ones. It put them at face level. “It depends. Were they rogues?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Did the one you kill smell bad, as if he hadn’t bathed in a while?”

  She shook her head. “He was a well-dressed perv.”

  “Rogues tend to be a little nuts and they don’t live the way humans do. The organized Vamps pretend they’re human. They keep homes and take care of their appearances to avoid drawing attention.”

  “These Vampires seemed organized. The two women and five guys were dressed almost in uniform, in all-black clothes.”

  He sighed. “It means they’re members of a nest, and probably associated with the Vampire Council if they weren’t rogues.”

  “They have a council?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means they can tell other nests about me, right? What about your Werewolf packs? Will they be sending out alerts about me to them too? Can you check to see if you’ve gotten one yet?”

  He hated to see the fear in her eyes. The Vampire Council would spread the word to other nests if one of them reported Jadee. “Do they know you’re immune to their eyes?”

  “Yes.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t blow the perv, and another one demanded I unlock my car door to let him in at a red light after I left work. I took off like a bat out of hell and left rubber on the streets in my wake. Then those other ones showed up at my place. Did I mention they know my name?”

  He let that sink in. It was bad. Vampire nests would be looking for her. She’d killed one of them. That was enough to stir their wrath. A human killing a Vampire tended to be a crime they wanted punished. The fact that she was immune to them controlling her mind and erasing her memories would make them fear her.

  “You probably think I should have just given the pervert a blow job, right?”

  “No.” The desire to rip apart the Vamp who had come after Jadee surged but he was already dead. “You had every right to defend yourself. I’m just glad you were able to. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I won’t be for long if more Vampires find me. Is anywhere safe for me to go? I was thinking about avoiding big cities but then I realized they could send your kind after me too. Is that how it works? I needed to know so I came to you for answers. Will I be safe if I just lock down at night and only go out during the day?”

  “I need to tell you something, Jadee.”

  “It’s bad, isn’t it? I’m toast, aren’t I? Spit it out. Can you put in a good word for me with these packs so they don’t come after me? Tell them I’m dog friendly or something?”

  “I’m not a Werewolf.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re not a Vamp. We were just outside. The sun burns them.”

  “I’m something else.”

  “But I saw you. You were a big…dog.”

  “I’m both.”

  She frowned.

  “I’m a VampLycan. Long story short, Vampires and Lycans once held alliances but it turned out bad. The male Vampires figured out they could get the female Lycans pregnant. They attacked the women, willing or not. I’m a result of both races.”

  She chewed on her bottom lip.

  “I can’t tell packs to leave you alone. We’re not in control of them, and we don’t have sway with the Vampire Council. They hate and fear us. We avoid them too so they don’t think we’re trying to start another war. Vampires can be paranoid about that shit.”

  Jadee leaned back a few inches, staring at his mouth with a little trepidation. “You drink blood? I hope you’re not hungry.”

  She wasn’t screaming or trying to get away. Her mild reaction amused him. “Your neck is safe.” He glanced down at the towel. Her body was another matter. He swallowed, attempting to ignore how easy it would be to strip her. “We get the ability to control minds from Vampires. We shift forms thanks to our Lycan blood. It pretty much means we got the better qualities of the two, and far fewer weaknesses.”

  “Do you have a council?”

  “No. We have four clans, with a leader for each one.”

  “Will they get notified about me and start trying to take me out?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “I’m starting to feel like a unicorn.”

  He laughed, her response totally unanticipated. “Why is that?”

  “It seems it’s pretty rare to be immune to your eyes. I must be unique if this many people want to kill me.”

  “The Vampires will fear that you’ll start hunting and taking out their nests. There are other humans like you who are immune, and in the past they became Vampire hunters. The council used to actively track and take them out in the old days. It’s probably why there aren’t as many of your kind as there used to be. They’d slaughter entire families so their children couldn’t continue the tradition of becoming hunters. They believed it could be a hereditary trait.”

  “I just want to live and let live. I have no intention of becoming a Vampire slayer. I wouldn’t have used an axe on that jerk except he came after me. I was just taking out the trash at work, not asking for him to flash me his goods and order me to blow him.”

  “I understand, but you have to remember that a lot of these masters are hundreds of years old, if not thousands. They run the council, and therefore, they rarely change the way they think.”

  “Thousands?”

  He nodded. “Some are. My Vampire ancestor was over two thousand years old. I never met him but I heard the stories. He was one of the few ancients who came to America once it was discovered. Most stayed in Europe, since travel was highly dangerous for day sleepers. They’d starve or be discovered by humans during the long journeys by ship if they fed from passengers.”

  “They didn’t have redeye flights.”

  He chuckled. “No, they didn’t.”

  “Where is this antique Vampire ancestor of yours?”

  “It’s uncertain. He may have been killed during the war.”

  “The civil war?”

  “The war between Vampires and Lycans.”

  “I missed reading about that one in my history books.”

  Jadee amused him; he enjoyed her sense of humor. “Humans who did know wished they hadn’t. Most didn’t survive. They were food for Vampires.”

  “Who won?”

  “We did, obviously, considering we’re not under the control of Vampires. They wanted to use Lycan women as breeders to create an army of children like what I am. They believed they could control them the way they do their nests.”

  “How is that?”

  “A master rules everyone in his nest to an almost slave-like degree. They planned to use the children to protect them during the day, and Vampires can also survive off Lycan blood.”

  “Dual purpose. It sounds great for the Vampires but not so much for the kids. Slave labor and blood donors.”

  “Exactly. The Lycan women weren’t too thrilled either. Vampires didn’t care if they were willing to become breeders or even if they were already mated. They just attacked them once they realized they could get them pregnant under certain conditions. The Lycan men defended their women. That started the war. The Lycans fought while the women of breeding age ran away. Then the children were born…and the