Page 33 of Life Blood
“So you were babies? I don’t understand. You definitely don’t look like you’re a couple hundred years old—speaking of which, gross!”
He laughed, “Gross, huh?”
“I’ll admit I’m attracted to you, but you’re not exactly the twenty-year-old you look like right now, are you?”
“No,” he smiled, “More like twenty-one. We stop aging exactly twenty-one years after our birth. We’ve seen a lot, been on this earth longer than any rotting human corpse, but as a vampire, we age differently. So if you’re getting the creep factor that I’m older than dirt and want to kiss your gorgeous twenty-year-old face, you can relax a little.” His eyes were stunning as he played out this explanation, “An immortal is bound by one thing—their death if they are hunted, defeated, and removed from walking the plains of earth.”
“Removed?”
“Yes, in the immortal realm,” he said in a mocking, spooky voice, “An immortalvampirecan be destroyed.” He smirked at me, “And thank God for that because some immortals have no souls—like Enzo and our parents. At least there’s comfort in knowing they can someday be reunited with their souls that await them in hell.”
“Your parents?” I asked, curious about their history.
“Yes,” he let out a breath, “The year before we turned twenty-one we learned our parents had sold out to Enzo. We couldn’t leave our coven and join Enzo’s until we met our age of immortality.”
“When you stopped aging at twenty-one,” I said.
“There you go, you’re catching on quick! Yes, at twenty-one we could join Enzo’s coven. Adealwas made,” his face grew distant as he recalled his memory, “We watched all of our parents and older siblings meet with a heinous-looking creature from hell, and I’m referring to actual hell. They let that sick, diabolic beast literally consume their souls, and we watched them change when he disappeared. They got stronger, and their eyes looked vacant at that moment.” He clasped his hands together, “It was enticing. The sensation of giving him our soul was overwhelming. We practically craved it. Craved the strength, craved the darkness, and craved the new lifestyle of thedamned immortals. It took living in the coven with them and watching their new methods to snap us out of the desire to follow Enzo. We watched them take innocent lives, turn people into immortally damned vampires, or just drain their blood for the sport and dispose of their bodies. They hunted the Life Bloods, they still do.”
“What changed? I mean, why aren’t you one of them and instead…” I scrunched my face, not knowing how to ask what they really were.
“Instead, why are we one of the good guys?” His eyebrows rose up in humor. “Yes” I answered.
“Well, one day, not more than a few weeks before our twenty-first birthday, my cousins and I watched as they took an average human family—a mom, dad, and three little girls—and brutally attacked them. The pure evil of it all…we knew we needed to stop them. Somehow and in some way that I can’t explain, we overpowered them—we fucking killed all of them. We’ve been bonded together ever since. I can’t explain why or how.”
“You killed your family?” I was trying my hardest to hang on to his story. I could sense the pain he suffered while he told it.
“They weren’t our family anymore,” he said flatly. “They were tricked by Enzo because they were greedy pieces of shit. They wanted more from their immortality, they thought they were getting more by turning their souls over to Enzo’s demon god or whatever the fuck that thing was. But they were just selling their souls to do Enzo’s bidding and become the epitome of evil itself.”
“Why?”
“Why, what?” he asked with disgust, obviously still lost in the memory that haunted him.
“Why would they want more power? Why are you bonded with the others?”
“I wish I could answer either of those questions. Like I said, we have no idea how it all changed for us.” He stood and leaned against the railing, “Fortunately for the immortals who haven’t sold out to Enzo and still have their souls, a new bond was forged. It’s made us the strongest vampires alive—well, the strongest ones with a soul, that is.” He laughed as he looked down at a few vampires who were on the manicured lawn below, “Something changed us. We looked for answers for a long time, but we never got any. We just made it our mission to kill the soulless vampires and help the innocents we thought Enzo would go after next. The great exodus from Enzo and the desolation of covens happened after that.” He rubbed his forehead, “We tried to save them all.” He shook his head, “Fuck! We tried to save them, but the four of us could only do so much.”
“How many did you save?”
“We think over half of the covens. Enzo still hunts them, but after hundreds of years of fighting these battles, my cousins and I decided to take a break and re-strategize. We decided to build our own army, knowing we couldn’t continue to fight this war on our own. The ones you see here now are our firsts. Our leaders. They recruit and train the vampires with souls to fight off Enzo’s dark call. With the help of a few witches and warlocks who we trust, we have been successful.”
“That’s good news,” I said dumbly. I didn’t exactly know how to comfort a vampire.
“One day we will end him, but all of this leads me back to you.” He turned and eyed me. “Somehow, the four of us are bonded to you. We now know that we didn’t come here to sit out the next conquering of vampire souls. Something brought us to you.”
“I have no idea how to help you on that. I’m still trying to come to grips that vampires can have kids and lose souls. Are all of youbornor can you turn humans into vampires? Is it a bad thing for humans?”
“Depends on who turned the human into a vampire,” he simply stated.
“Let’s sayyoudid it.”
He pursed his lips, “Why would I want to turn a human into a vampire?”
“Because you’re building an army to fight Enzo?” I shrugged my shoulders in a guess.
“What the fuck?” I heard a deeper voice come from the door to the balcony.
Braden.
