Page 36 of Secret of the Vampire
Tucking her into the corner, I brushed a stray curl from her face.
She swallowed visibly. “Alex.” There was an admonishment in her tone, and I smiled.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I told her. “I just couldn’t stand you being so far away and looking at me the way you were.”
“Looking at you in what way?”
“Like I’m some sort of monster,” I told her softly.
Her expression softened. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” I forced myself to back off and leaned against the tomb beside her. “I want to kiss you,” I told her. “I won’t if you don’t want me to, but I just wanted you to know what’s going through my head right now.”
“What else is going through your head?” she asked softly.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
I stared out at the cemetery. All of those dead souls. The bodies decaying until they were nothing but ash, ready to be brushed aside when the time came to make room for the mortal body of the next family member. “Tell me about your life,” I said. “Before you were a vampire.”
She turned her head to look at me. It wasn’t what she’d expected me to ask. But if she was going to shut me down, I couldn’t keep talking about all of the things I wanted to do to her. What I wanted her to do to me. Not if I wanted to retain any kind of self-control.
“Um, what do you want to know?”
I turned toward her, crossing my arms over my chest and propping my shoulder against the tomb. “Everything,” I told her. “Tell me everything. What’s your full name? When were you born?”
“Darce,” she said after a pause. “My last name is Darce.”
“And when were you born Kenya Darce?”
“Sometime in the 1960s. I’m not sure exactly. I was given up by my birthparents.”
“Mmm…not as old as I thought.”
“Are you saying I look old?” she demanded. But then she smiled. It was a ridiculous question and she knew it, as vampires didn’t physically age past the year they were when they were turned.
She dazzled me. It was the only way to describe it. “So, you were adopted by a family?” I asked when I could speak again.
She looked down at her hands, twisted together nervously in front of her. “No. I went into the foster system. I never knew what family was until Killian found me.”
In those few simple sentences about her past, she had just explained so much to me. I could also tell it pained her to speak of it. “I’d heard that Killian never turned anyone who wasn’t already dying. Is that true?”
She visibly relaxed, and I could tell she was relieved to be off the subject of her upbringing. Someday, I would ask her to tell me more. But not tonight. “Yes. And even then, he asked all of us if it was what we wanted first. Well,” she pushed her glasses up on her nose, “all except Jamal. He was the first vampire Killian turned.”
I could tell by the way she frowned and glanced away this was another sensitive subject, so I didn’t pry anymore.
“How are you doing?” she asked. “Since finding out.”
There was no need for her to elaborate, I knew exactly what she was talking about. “I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Part of me is relieved to know why I’ve always felt different than the rest of my family. And part of me is absolutely horrified and scared to death I might accidentally hurt someone I love.”
“Alex—”
I cut her off. “I can feel it growing within me, Kenya. Like it was just lying there dormant until that night at the swamp house. Strange, don’t you think?” I glanced up at her, but I couldn’t take the look of sympathy on her face, so looked away again. “Hell, I’m in my thirties. Why is that side of me just now making itself known?” I shoved my hand through my short hair.
Kenya was quiet for a long time. “Is he still around? The djinn?”
“Yes. I can still feel him.” Like a storm cloud hovering over the city. “But it’s okay. It’s safe for us to be here right now. He’s nowhere close.”
