Page 53 of First Bite
Chapter Twenty
As Cole and I entered the living room, I saw four blonde-haired vampires across the room. Two females were sitting on one of the sofas, and two males stood behind them. They watched curiously as Braden, Logan, and Zac rushed to me, and I embraced the cousins one by one, elated they were home. Since the bond had been completed, the feeling of oneness between all of us was unexplainable.
“I would personally like to thank you for completing the bond finally, Cole. It took you long enough. This feeling—” Logan said before Cole cut him off.
“At the risk of sounding like more of an asshole than I already am, would you mind telling to me why thefuckfour strange vampires are sitting in our house—the house that we decided to bring our girl to keep her away from unknown vampires?” Cole seethed at his cousins. “Are you three out of your goddamn minds? What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Hey, asshole,” Zac interrupted, “they can hear you, you know.”
“You think I give a fuck?” Cole snapped. “Someone better start explaining what is going on right now.”
“First of all,” Braden started, “let me introduce ourguests.”He pointed at the guy standing on the left and worked his way counter-clockwise to introduce the others. “This is Cal, Jessa, Jordan, and Ben. They are here because they are the only immortal vamps we could find in New Orleans who knew shit about anything. You wouldn’t believe how many turned vamps there are in that city now. The whole damn town is infested. They’re like cockroaches there. It’s worse than Rio, no joke.”
“The turned-vampire population density in tourist destinations is not of interest to me right now, Brade,” Cole said impatiently. “We didn’t drag Elle across the ocean to our private hideaway just to bring visitors.Whyare they here?”
“Calm down, Cole,” Logan chimed in casually. “Everything that could’ve gone wrong in NOLA went wrong. We couldn’t stay. The voodoo in that fucking town has intensified if you can believe that. If we would’ve stayed any longer, Enzo’s collectors would’ve shown up. We had to get these guys out so we could find out more.”
“So you’re telling me that instead of taking these random vampires to—I don’t know—Alabama or Colorado orfuckingNorth Dakota so you can get information from them, you decided to bring them seven-thousandfuckingmiles across the ocean to the onefuckingplace we are hiding our most precious asset all because you were afraid of some badfuckingjuju and somefuckingcollectors? Is that the reason that you have all lost your fucking minds?” Cole shouted.
His tirade was enough to make me want to burst out laughing, but the anger on his face and in his voice was downright frightening.
“Jesus Christ, Cole,” Zac said. “Can you just shut up and stop acting so goddamn sanctimonious. If you were there, you’d realize we did what we had to.”
“Seriously,” Braden added, “we don’t need your shit the second we walk in the door. Now, you can scream and shout and cuss at us all you want, but that isn’t going to give us any answers, is it? Why don’t you shut up and listen to what they have to say?”
“Someone here had better have a goddamn revelation to unload to warrant you all doing this,” Cole said as he relaxed his shoulders.
I didn’t expect Cole’s reaction, but what seemed more interesting to me was the other cousins’ reactions. They were so blasé about the situation, which puzzled me a bit. They were all so insistent on bringing me here to a place where no one—not even Lucas or Roman—knew where I was. Cole was right. Why go to all the trouble to hide me only to bring home strangers. Certainly, they could’ve spoken to these guys anywhere else but across the world.
“We’re very sorry for any disturbance we may have caused,” Jordan spoke as she sat rigidly upright. “You must believe your cousins when they say there was no way of sharing any information in New Orleans. There were far too many ears.”
“It is apparent you would have preferred us to handle this elsewhere, but we had to see the girl,” Cal said as he stared at me with curiosity. “To see Kelly Simms’ daughter, well, I must say this is quite remarkable.”
The others eyed me with the same odd expression, and I began to understand how animals must have felt at the zoo.
“How do you know my mother?” I asked as the questions started to stack up in my mind.
“We crossed paths with the Grishon coven many years ago, and it is an experience we’ve never forgotten,” Jessa said.
“Would any of you care to get straight to the point?” Cole interjected. “I’m not in the mood for an all-night Q and A session.”
“Certainly,” Cal said, holding up a hand to stop Ben from snapping a response to Cole’s snarky comment. “As Jessa said, we ran into them years ago. It was an odd encounter, to say the least.
“We had never come across a Life Blood before, so meeting Kelly Simms was an extraordinary experience. We expected they would dote on her, but what we didn’t expect was for one of them—a vampire by the name of Emile—to be exceedingly possessive and protective of her.”
“He hovered over her the way mated immortals do when their partner is expecting a child,” Ben said. “It made no sense to us.”
“I thought you said there was a warlock in that group too,” I said, trying to sort out my thoughts. “I’m obviously not the vampire expert here, but doesn’t it make more sense that my mom could’ve gotten pregnant by someone who wasn’t immortal? I mean, if you think that I’m half immortal vampire, you are sorely mistaken. I can’t even stand the sight of blood.”
“Elle is right,” Cole said. “What of the warlock that was in that coven? Assuming her father is an immortal vampire was always the last, impossible scenario. We all know immortals can’t procreate with humans.”
“But wedon’tknow whether or not they can procreate with Life Bloods, now do we?” Ben responded.
“Something bizarre was happening in that coven,” Jordan added. “I always got the feeling the warlock who was with them had cast some sort of spell over them all. Things just weren’t right. The way Emile was so overprotective of her was way too similar to the way we immortals protect our expecting partners.”
Cole closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. I could feel the feeling of panic that surged through him, thanks to our newly completed bond, and I saw the cousins react to his emotions as well.
“What is it, Cole?” Zac asked with a look of concern.
