He waves me away as he speaks into the phone.When Dad is done with a conversation, he’s done.
Icy needles prick the skin on the back of my neck as I walk out the door.
2
My stomach tumbles, and not from the unusual amount of turbulence on the airplane.Dad sprang for a first class seat, and I nurse a vodka tonic to sooth my nerves.
My father wasn’t born to be the vampire king.It was all kind of happenstance, really.Like I said, most vamps are naturally bisexual, but my dad is pretty much homosexual.His youth was a veritable man-fest.About forty years ago, he found “religion,” as he calls it.Don’t ask me what that means.Anyway, he tried to turn his back on all that was his life.
Enter my mother.
My father was living as a human when he met my mother at a church service.After a whirlwind courtship, they married and had first me, and then two years later, my sister, Larissa.I truly believe my father loved my mother, but his taste for men did not wane, and he cheated on her throughout their union.
Though I was born with a pale complexion and have always been particularly sensitive to sunlight, I wasn’t aware of my true genealogy until five years ago.My parents’ marriage fell apart years earlier and my mother remarried.Her new husband was the world’s biggest asshole.I’d just received my biology degree when my father summoned me.I use the word “summon” because that’s exactly what it was.He didn’t ask to see me, and though he and I have never been close, something inside me beckoned me to go to him.
He didn’t sugarcoat anything.“I’m a vampire,” he said, “and I’m now your king.”
The vamp royal family, including many of its offshoots, had been poisoned by a group of renegade weres.My father was a third cousin once removed of the assassinated king.He escaped assassination—as did my sister and I—because he was living as a human.Once the brotherhood eliminated the renegade weres, they set out to find a new king.
They found my father, still living as a human, in a commune in San Francisco.The brotherhood had its new king.
It’s not a true monarchy.Just like the weres, we don’t have a political system in place.Because humans outnumber vamps and weres by a thousand to one, we have no choice but to coexist peacefully.We follow the laws of humankind, but in our own circle we are bound to our king, just as the were populace is bound to their council and high alpha.
Not a perfect system, but it works.
Usually.
Unfortunately, even though I’m only half vamp, I inherited the gene that requires obedience to the blood monarch and the ingestion of blood.My sister escaped this gene and continues to live as a human, blissfully unaware of her true lineage.She can live in sunlight too.Another gene she escaped.I’ve learned not to resent it.
I’m working on it, anyway.
I half-hear the captain announce that we’ll be landing in Las Vegas shortly.I fidget with my now empty glass.I don’t drink much alcohol these days.What I really want right now is blood.Blood is elixir to vamps.It’s in our make-up to crave it.During my youth, I experimented with alcohol, drugs, and sex—all in an attempt to ease a need I didn’t understand.
Once my father told me the truth, it hit me.Blood is what I crave.It satisfies the hunger I can’t explain.Still, I fought the need as long as I could until one day my gums started to itch, sting, and then erupt in sharp pain as my canine teeth elongated for the first time.Need rose within me, more intense than ever before.I sated myself from the hospital blood bank.
I’ve never fed from a living being.Fresh blood becomes addictive to some vamps.After my obsession with drugs and sex when I was younger, I don’t want to go there.
The plane touches down with a thud.I set my empty glass in the pocket in front of me and grab my purse and laptop from underneath the seat.
My heart thumps.
This is it.
I’m in Vegas, and I can’t leave until I’ve seduced a werewolf.Not just any werewolf—Victor Rogan, an alpha whose photograph alone warms my blood.An alpha who’s most likely the brains behind a string of vampire murders.
I exhale audibly as I stand to exit the plane.
I’m so screwed.
3
Now this is the life!
Nothing like a gorgeous suite in a five-star Vegas hotel to make a girl smile.I’m not the frivolous type, but I find myself running a bubble bath in what can only be described as a “sex bathtub.”Huge, jetted, and amply supplied with exotic soaps and oils, it sits mounted around silvery marble in a luxurious bathroom that’s bigger than my bedroom at home.
Dadreallywants me to seduce this were.Funny how most fathers try to protect their daughters’ cherries.Then again, Dad and I have never had the normal father-daughter relationship.He favored my blond sister when we were children.I could get over that—really I could—if only I hadn’t inherited the damned blood obedience gene.Now I’m bound to a king and father I don’t want.
I step into the tub, wincing at the heat.I love baths, and I haven’t had one in over a month due to a new tattoo—a Celtic band around my left upper arm.My only other ink is a wolf howling at the moon on my lower back.No, I’m not kidding.I got the tattoo while I was in college, before I knew what I truly was.