Page 74 of Blood Bound (Blood Mafia 3)

I nod. “Evelyn found a man and she fell in love. Little did she know this man was a vampire. Back then, vampires occupied some of the most noble titles. You know her now, so you can only imagine how excited she was to find a well-to-do man who actually wanted to talk to her. Most simply wanted to sleep with her and didn’t care to hear her opinions.”

I glance out the window, staring at the bright city lights. “Evelyn is incredibly smart, she always was. This man began courting her, wooing her in every way until finally he asked my parents for her hand. They accepted of course, how could they deny my sister her happiness?”

When I check to see if she’s listening, I find her sitting forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped together. I have her attention. That’s good.

“There are things I can’t tell you, because I swore to Evelyn I wouldn’t, but let’s say what Sisco did to Alissa is considered kind in comparison to what Abraham did to my sister.”

I look away again, remembering everything from that year with picture perfect detail. “When I went to surprise Evelyn only to be turned away by Abraham, I assumed they were still in their honeymoon phase. I went three more times before I realized something was wrong. The next time I arrived, he pointed a gun in my face and told me if I came back again, he’d kill me.”

“For weeks on end, I’d stalk the house, waiting for him to leave but he never did. Frustrated and tired, I went to a tavern. That’s where I met Nix. She encouraged me to drink, pried the story of my sister from me with alcohol and concerned touches. With the promise of a good time, I followed her to an inn.”

Demi’s face goes blank. She’s trying to conceal her reaction.

“We didn’t sleep together. Nix had planned to kill me, but decided she had a better idea. She wanted to help me get Evelyn back. I didn’t know then that Abraham had sired her. Nix needed my help to kill the man who’d tortured her.”

“How did Nix escape him?” Demi asks.

“After so many years of torture, I guess Abraham got bored with Nix. That’s when he started courting Evelyn.”

“So he let Nix go? Why?”

I shrug. “Because she wasn’t strong back then. She’d already lost the initial strength that comes with being a new vampire, and he didn’t give her enough blood to grow strong. She didn’t know how to fight. What did he have to lose?”

Demi rubs her hands together. “So she turns you and you go to save your sister… how does this relate to killing my father?”

“Nix helped me rescue Evelyn. Together we saved her from that monster and killed him. We were so close for hundreds of years. A strange little family. Nix turned a man and child when she found them almost dead, turned them and took them in as her own. She left for a while, taking them far away to help them adjust to their new nature. When she returned to visit a few years later, your father, along with other hunters, came to punish Nix for turning them.”

“Why would they want to punish her? Didn’t she save them?”

“Do you remember Van Helsing’s book, and the tenets?”

She nods. “Don’t kill humans… but they were already dying.”

“True, but she still broke the rules. Regardless of how we may feel about it, they came and killed the new vampires while Nix and I were out on a job. We found them the next morning, dismembered and truly dead. I’d never seen her in so much pain. We’d lost people over the years, but never someone she deeply cared about. Never someone she sired to become part of her family.”

“So Nix wanted revenge.”

I dip my head and lean forward, staring at her over the coffee table. “As did I. There was hunter blood in the house, your father’s, and she swore to hunt down and kill the men who took her family. I agreed to help because they were family.”

Demi tips her head to the side. “If there was blood there, why did you kill so many others?”

“Finding your father wasn’t easy. Nix didn’t care if they helped him or not, neither did I. In my mind, the hunters went too far that night.”

“And my father?” she asks, her throat bobbing.

Sadness floods through the bond.

“We hunted him for a long time… eventually we all grew tired of killing.”

She lifts an eyebrow as if to saysure you did.

“It’s true. Especially when we were killing those who didn’t participate. Anyway, Nix started going alone. I’d follow her and try to talk her out of it, convince her she’d taken enough blood, but she disagreed. I was there, trying to talk her out of killing again, when your father walked out of the bar smelling like cinnamon and cardamom. The same blood we smelled in Nix’s house.”

Demi shifts and glances away.

“I wasn’t going to help her, but she wasn’t thinking straight and was going to get herself killed. So I intervened before it could come to that. I shot your father, giving Nix the advantage to take his heart.”

I flash to my room, grabbing the necklace Nix shoved into my hand as a souvenir all those years ago from the back of my sock drawer where I stashed it. Demi’s standing and holding a knife at the ready when I return. I stop and raise my hands to placate her.

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