Courts and Cabals 2 G.S. D'Moore (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📖

stream of slow-moving blood finally reached Jack but nothing happened. Judging by how slow things were moving, it would take twice as long to get the blood back in the old man’s veins.

“It’s up to him now,” Evelyn declared as she stepped back from the circle. The threads connecting the vamps vanished, but the circle still glowed a dull red to my eyes.

The vamps started to filter out to an adjoining room where a small feast was waiting. Lilith said the turning could take anywhere from an hour to a full day. Caroline stayed with Jack, but everyone else was ushered out. I found myself walking with Marcella.

“So, you’re Cameron Dupree?” she smiled and gave me the once over. “Do you mind if we talk?” she asked, pointing down a hallway away from where everyone else was heading.

“Um . . .” I hesitated, and looked for Lilith. She’d been beside me a second ago, but was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ve cleared it with your succubus,” she stated, like I didn’t have a choice. After seeing the power she’d wielded during the turning ceremony, I wasn’t sure I did.

“Okay,” I didn’t know what was going on, but if she said it was all good, then I’d talk with the vamp.

***

Marcella led me down the hallway to a carbon copy of the suite I’d showered in earlier. She opened the door and gestured me inside. The blueprint might be the same, but this suite was homier, and had a lived-in feel to it. That made me gulp. This wasn’t some space to have a quick word in. This was Marcella’s room.

“Relax,” she felt my tension as my shoulders stiffened. “I don’t bite . . . unless you want me to.”

“Ha ha,” I replied dryly. “I bet you say that all the time.”

She shrugged, walked to a dresser on the far wall, and started to take off her top. I spun away and put my back to her. It felt wrong on so many levels to turn my back on a vamp, but I’d already been busted once for kind-of-but-not-really peeping. I was still a guest here, and needed to act like it.

I heard her chuckle, and the rustle of fabric as she put on something new. “I’m decent,” her tone was flirty, and that didn’t help the situation.

She was decent . . . barely. Marcella was a beautiful woman, as most preternatural creatures tended to be. Her fire-red hair cascaded down her back in waves. She was tall and athletic; with the confidence I guess came standard in elder vampires. Her new shirt did nothing to hide a pair of curves that were nearly as voluptuous as Lilith’s. I could tell because she wasn’t wearing a bra. Two perfectly proportioned nipples stabbed into the shirt like knives trying to cut through the fabric. We might be in the desert, but it got cold here during the night, and even the best insulation in the world couldn’t keep out a chill when it dropped close to zero.

She left on the tight yoga pants she’d worn during the ceremony; which could double as classy, but came with an invisible sign that said “insert penis back here please” to every guy on earth. I gulped as she looked at me like a predator surveying her next meal, and my brain churned for some way to change the topic.

“Do you do this often?” was my brilliant answer to the awkwardness.

“Invite strange men back to my bedroom, or turnings?” she quirked an eyebrow.

“Okay, I walked into that one,” I admitted.

“Turnings,” I answered with conviction.

“This is my third, but we do a dozen or so every year. There is a pretty strict vetting process,” she shrugged like it was all in a day’s work.

“Vetting?” I kept the conversation going, and away from the way her tits stretched the fabric of her shirt to the limit.

“Oh yeah,” she nodded. “There’s a lot of red tape you have to cut through if you want to be turned into a vampire; both with the human government and the elders,” the way she said “elders” made me think she was new to the rank. She didn’t think of herself as a member of the vamp ruling class.

“Vampires are picky about who they bring into eternal life. After all, a maker is responsible for the people they turn. If you turn someone who isn’t worthy, or ready for this life, then you’re putting your own existence on the line. The elders don’t fuck around when it comes to blood junkies, and a maker will either lose their head or have to kill the vamp they turned. It’s not pretty.”

I could agree to that, but with that line of questioning out of the way, she was staring at me like a rare steak again.

“What was Caroline saying about children?” I latched onto the final statement the other vamp said about her and Jack before they moved on to the actual turning. “Vamps and humans can have children, right?” that much I thought I knew.

“But those children are always human,” Marcella stated. “If you were a parent, would you want to watch your kids grow old and die?”

“No,” I shook my head. “That would suck balls.”

“Exactly, and you wouldn’t want to just turn them. It’s much better for them to be born.” The way she said it told me the classism Makaylah told me about within the vamp species was still alive and well.

“Is there any difference between born and turned?” I asked flippantly, like it didn’t matter.

From the look on her face, Marcella was one of those purists Caroline had been talking about. “Turned are weaker, slower, and can’t work magic. Only born have what it takes to be elders, and even then, only a handful of us can work the magic that was much