Page 16 of 12 Months of Mayhem

“Mako?” Mako was like maybe my age or Dalton’s. He would’ve been a kid. “How?”

“He’s a vampire.” Once he spoke those words, he watched me.

I blinked several times. Then I looked at Mako, then back to my uncle. Hysterical laughter burst from me. Tears ran down my face after a bit because I couldn’t stop laughing.

Mako held out a glass of golden liquid. My laughter stopped. He’d been across the room. “How? You were… now… where did you get that?” I was stammering and not making sense, but honest to God, my brain was on the verge of exploding.

“Drink it,” he gently encouraged.

I reached out, took the glass from him, and chugged it. Then I coughed and gagged because in what fucking world did I chug whiskey? Evidently one where people told me vampires existed.

“Little gator,” my uncle softly said as he crouched in front of me. “He turned me to save me. I was going to die. I’m a vampire too. So are some of the others. We also have some other… creatures in our club.”

My gaze flew to Dallas. He gave me a sheepish grin. I thought I was going to pass out. I must’ve slid down in the chair because my uncle and Mako each grabbed me and sat me back up.

“Does Mom know?” I asked him.

He nodded.

My jaw dropped. “How did she take that?” I squeaked.

“About like you,” he wryly replied.

“But you… you go outside. You aren’t sparkly or melting.” I slapped my hands on either side of his cheeks. “You aren’t cold or pale.”

Mako snorted.

My uncle rolled his eyes. “Christ. Don’t believe everything you read. Look, we can get into all that later, but first I need to know that we can trust you with this. You have to understand the danger you could be in, as well as the shit it would bring down on us if this got out. Not that we couldn’t handle it, but it’s better if we stay under the radar.”

“Okay,” I whispered. Unsure if it was shock, the alcohol, or both that were keeping me calm, I swallowed hard. Then I thought about my son and his premonitions or whatever they were. Dalton had always had what he called “strange dreams” too. “Wait… Dalton?” I croaked.

“We don’t know exactly, but we have an idea.” My uncle motioned for Dallas to finish whatever he’d started to tell me—before the world I thought I’d known fell out from under my feet.

“After going through this box, I spoke to my father,” Dallas began. “He admitted something to me when I confronted him. Our mother was what supernatural beings call an Amplifier.”

“What the hell is that?” I asked as I looked at him, wondering how much more my brain could take before it exploded.

“Basically, they are magnets for supernatural beings. No one knows what it is that causes it, but something in their DNA makes them powerful breeders. If a supernatural being breeds with them, they produce offspring that are amplified versions of themselves. They are rare, and when one is discovered, they often are… well, they are captured and kept.” Dallas reached up and rubbed the back of his neck as he dropped his gaze in obvious discomfort.

“You mean… like they are abducted?” My heart began to hammer because the dots were starting to connect in my head.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“But Dalton didn’t have any superpowers,” I argued with a disbelieving laugh, as if maybe this was a joke or a bad dream that I’d wake up from.

Dallas pulled out a folded piece of paper and smoothed it on the table. On it was a drawing of a familiar design. It was a disk with symbols that followed the edges, framed in raised circles. In the center was a shiny, round, black stone with a triangle around it. Each point touched the inner circle. “He wears this amulet on a silver necklace. I know you’ve seen it.”

My brow pinched in the center as I stared at it, then looked up at Dallas. “Yeah. It was his father’s.”

“No. It wasn’t. I mean, his father probably had it made for him. It’s a masking or protection amulet. It’s used to bind a being’s powers. Its strength weakens when the wearer, uh… copulates… with their mate, but it still mutes their true abilities.” Dallas’s cheeks were bright red. I didn’t take him for a blusher or shy. Then I looked at my uncle and saw his glare. Ohhh. Poor Dallas was afraid of my uncle tripping out if he said Dalton and I had fucked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. It wasn’t just me because everyone turned their heads to watch the shadows of the room pull from the corners and crevices. I blinked and shook my head, but the shadows were still gathering. They came together in the center of the room, where they swirled and rose into the air—almost like a column of black smoke.

Slowly, they began to dissipate. As they did, they revealed a man in a black suit. His jet-black hair was styled perfectly, as if he hadn’t been in the vortex of a storm of shadows mere moments before. He was devastatingly attractive—unnaturally so. It was like he’d stepped from an artist’s rendition of the perfect man.

“‘Bout time, Séamus,” Boom muttered as he approached. The president of the club reached out and shook Séamus’s hand in a firm grip, then stepped back to face us. “Ryian, this is Séamus. He’s… an old friend.”

Séamus snorted, then stared at me. “Where is the child?”

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