AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you. ”
“Secret, the reason Eilidh is concerned about your involvement in this search is because you and the vampire in question have something…unique in common. ”
“Oh? Who is it?”
“The vampire we’re looking for is named Sutherland Halliston. ”
He didn’t need to say anything else. No elaborate explanations or fun flip charts would be necessary for me to figure out why they were worried.
I’d never met Sutherland Halliston, but I knew exactly who he was.
The AWOL vampire they wanted me to find was my father.
Chapter Twelve
Keep your cool, keep your cool.
I wanted nothing more than to freak the fuck out, but this was neither the time nor the place. The fact Sutherland was the vampire they wanted me to look for, and Sig had obviously known that before sending me here, brought up so many issues I didn’t have time to deal with.
Namely…Sig’s vampire blood was running through my veins.
Sig was my…I didn’t even know. He wasn’t my grandfather, but he was my vampire grandsire—my great-grandpire—or something. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Biologically we weren’t related, but physiologically I couldn’t exist without his blood.
So we were something.
I stared at Galen and tried to keep my breathing deep and even as I attempted to bury the dark and twisty web of thoughts brewing in my head. I couldn’t think about it now, lest I fall apart completely.
“So?” I chose the shortest question I could think of in order to keep my voice from breaking.
“So?” Arturo parroted, without any malicious tone to his voice. “Does the name mean nothing to you?”
“Sutherland Halliston is my biological father. ”
“Yes, and your vampire sire. ”
“He’s my father two different ways. What of it?” I had to give myself props for sounding disinterested in the topic while inside everything I thought I knew about the world was unraveling.
“You know a sire can compel their offspring, don’t you?” Arturo asked.
“I think that rule is more for…traditional sire-offspring relationships. My father didn’t turn me. His blood was fed to me in utero. I was born like this. ”
“A born vampire?” Eilidh sat upright, suddenly far more interested in what I was saying. “That’s impossible. ”
“It’s not a perfect science, as you guys can tell. ” I was referring to my apparent heartbeat. “I don’t owe him my un-life, and he has never had my blood. The rules don’t apply. You can’t control a vampire whose blood you’ve never had. ”
As far as any of us knew, anyway. Like Eilidh said, there was no precedent for my situation. There weren’t a lot of half-vampires running around, certainly not those born with the affliction. I couldn’t be so bold as to say no other halflings existed, since the word dhampir existed solely to describe them, but I’d never met one and no one else I knew had either.
There was a word for unicorn and chupacabra too, but it didn’t make them real. Cryptozoology existed to name things that weren’t real, and a dhampir might be real or it might be a cryptid. I was inclined to be skeptical, except for the fact I was half-vampire.
“Very interesting,” Eilidh said.
“How can you be certain?” Galen asked.
“Because Sig thinks I’m the perfect person to find him. And if Sig believes it, so should you. ”
That much I could convince myself of.
“And what do you think?” Arturo shifted forward in his seat, hands clasped together and wearing an intrigued expression.
