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“I did.”
“How old were you?”
“I was twelve when I met him, fifteen when he took me, and seventeen when turned. I now know he was waiting for me to mature more, and to learn more from my grandmother. I was to participate in a ritual that would’ve taken my virginity on the first full moon after I was fifteen, and he wanted me while I was still a virgin, so he took me a few nights before the ritual.”
This didn’t synch up with what I knew, at all, but I’d wait until she finished her story before bringing that up. I wanted to hear the whole thing before I stopped her.
“Did you ask to be turned?”
“I did not.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. There were countless decades I’d have taken my own life if my Master hadn’t ordered me not to in a way I couldn’t circumvent.”
“Do you know why he turned you?”
“He said I was fearless. I intrigued him.”
I could easily see it being so. “Did you know what he was, when you came upon him in the woods?”
“He had three werewolves at his side, in wolf form, but otherwise, he wore traditional clothes for the time. I had a sense he wasn’t mortal, though of course, vampires aren’t immortal so I was wrong about that, but I suppose I had the right idea.”
“But you weren’t afraid?”
“I wasn’t afraid to die, and I’ve never been afraid of pain, so I don’t suppose I was. We talked, and he told me the wolves were trained and were his, but I knew he was lying. He found me in the forest other times, and he’d ask me what I was gathering, and why. On the night he took me, he went into my head and paralyzed me so I couldn’t move or make a sound, and then flew through the air, carrying me up to the huge castle on top of a mountain I’d only seen in the distance, and I didn’t leave those castle walls for more than a century. By the time I was allowed to leave, everyone I’d known while human was dead.”
The other sounds in the house were gone, and I asked, “You’ve put a sound dampener around us?”
“My history is no one else’s business.”
“I’m glad you trust me with it.” I believed her. She spoke truth, but I needed to ask about the story in her file. “Our files have another history for you. Completely different.”
She rolled her eyes. “The princess who killed the royal family, so the priest brother could be king? Total fabrication. The catholic church killed the royal family when they decided to follow one of the earliest protestant branches, long before Martin Luther finally made one of them stick. The church needed the income from the kingdom, so they killed enough of the family their guy would be crowned king, and then made up the story about the princess becoming a vampire. They were working hard to vilify vampires at the time, so — two birds, one stone.”
Again, she spoke truth, and I was floored that she was being so honest. All I could think to say was, “Thank you for trusting me with your story.”
* * * *
Etta
Trust? Yes, I suppose that was accurate, but if he proved unworthy of the trust and used it against me, I could always kill him. Rather than point that out, I told him, “I don’t know what we’re doing, Ryan, but I meant what I said in the garage. If you force me to kill you, I’ll never forgive you.”
He gave me a gentle smile. “The feeling is very mutual.”
Was he saying it would be hard for him to kill me if I went off the deep end and killed humans? Upon reflection, it seemed so. “There are only a handful of people on this continent who might actually pull that off, and you’re one of them. It occurred to me that the Fabulosa Trio, working together, might manage as well. I wasn’t aware of the level of training the military gives their special operators.”
“Spec Ops, and yes, some of them are trained well enough even the humans can take out a supernatural, should they understand what they are fighting and know how to do so. Speaking of which, are you sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me about your time with the bikers tonight?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know about everyone’s reaction when I avoided the paintballs, at least not until I figured it out, so I told him, “They organized a paintball game, and I looked through the memories of other such matches and saw they often have a dozen or more on a team, but they only picked five. I assume because there weren’t as many women capable of going head-to-head with vampires, and they split teams by gender, probably so it didn’t come down to shifters against vampires?”
“Brain handles most of the political decisions for the club, and I can see him splitting the teams up that way for exactly that reason. Did you not sense me close, during the game?”
I stared at him. “No way you got in and none of us…” I rolled my eyes. “Of course you did.” I took a breath so I could get what needed to be said out without taking another. “Well then, were my actions that unusual? Is there a way for me to test my abilities against actual bullets?”
“I’ve seen two vampires avoid actual bullets, but it is an unusual talent. Paintballs travel at around 300 feet per second, while a sniper bullet travels between 2500 and 3000 feet per second. Could you have avoided them if they’d been coming at you ten times as fast?”
“You know how fast projectiles travel off the top of your head?”
