Page 14 of House of Royals

“A stake through the heart,” I say, recalling what Ian had done last night.

Rath nods. “Cyrus’ son was dead, but the damage was done. There were seven more Born vampires with the ability to create more offspring.”

“What about the female Born?” I ask.

Rath shakes his head. “Once resurrected, a female Born can not reproduce.”

“So a Born can only be created with a human mother and a vampire father?” I ask to clarify.

“You got it,” Ian confirms.

“Cyrus is still alive,” Rath says, moving things along. “And he rules as King over all vampires.”

“The vampires have a king?” I repeat, raising one eyebrow. This all just keeps getting layered deeper and deeper in the crazy.

“King Cyrus is ancient and thorough. To this day, he and his attendants keep tabs on all the royal male lines.”

“Why?” I ask.

“That is a story for another day,” Rath says. And suddenly he seems exhausted. It’s a heavy tale to tell and one I think has been weighing him down for a long time.

Is Rath a Born vampire?

Or an all too well informed human?

“Wow,” I say, feeling overwhelmed and a bit like everything I’ve just learned is going to fuzz my brain out. “Okay. There’s complicated history in the vampire world. And I know there’s some deep history to this house. But, Rath, I have to ask. How did my father really die?”

“I think we’d all like to know the answer to that question.” Ian finally sits upright, leaning forward, elbows on the table, fingers tightly locked together.

Rath’s eyes grow distant and dark. There’s anger there. Hate. Regret.

“It was just as the sun was coming up,” he begins. “Your father was preparing to go to sleep. I was just waking, still in the workers house.” He stops talking for a while. Takes a few slow breaths. “Someone broke in. Got past the security systems. They staked your father and drug his body out into the sun as he lay dying. I arrived at the scene as he took his last breath.”

Rath holds a fork in his hands, and he’s now bent it completely in half.

“I should have chased the attacker down, ended them. But I was…not in my right mind, after I found Henry. They got away.”

“Who was it?” Ian asks. His voice is low and serious. “Someone from the House?”

Rath shakes his head. “I did not recognize the attacker. The fact that they were able to take Henry down so easily says a great deal, though.”

He suddenly slaps the destroyed fork on the table, and I jump violently.

The message is clear. We are done talking about my father’s death.

“Okay,” I say, because it is obviously time to move onto something new. “Um…what about the turning into a bat thing?”

“Rumor,” Ian tells me with a slight roll of his eyes. He too seems to understand that the previous conversation is finished. “A seriously stupid one.”

“Okay,” I say with a nod of my head. “You said the stake through the heart is true. The beheading thing has to be, as well.”

Ian nods in confirmation.

“What about the sun?” I ask. “Do they really burn up in the sun?” I try not to think about how the attacker dragged my father out into the sunlight and what must have happened to him.

“Not like you’d think,” Rath says with a bit of a sigh. “The vampires have an extreme aversion to the sun because when they turn, their eyes change. We do not understand the science behind what the King put in his concoction that created the species, but it is a mix of predator DNA. They take good and bad traits from many different hunters. Vampires do love the night particularly because their eyes stay almost completely dilated. You could compare them much to a bat, I suppose. They can see almost perfectly at night. But because of the dilation, their eyes can not stand much sun.”

“They can go out during the day,” Ian says. “But not without some serious shades and a killer headache.”

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