Bleeding Love (4 page)

Xavier was the
one who explained. “They're vampires, who instead of drinking blood, feed on
the negative energy of vampires and humans alike.”

Carter Stahl
smiled. “I see you've been listening during History class,” he then said, proud
of the fact that one of his students was very much aware of his kind's history.

“So I don't need
to drink blood?” asked the birthday girl, whose smile was as luminescent as her
sparkling sequined mini-dress. She couldn't help but grin. She didn't need to
drink blood! She wasn't a carnivore, and most especially, she wasn't a monster.
Feeding off negative energy didn’t sound as bad as sucking blood.

“Vampires aren't
monsters, kiddo.” Carter Stahl chuckled, and in return, her daughter gaped at
him.

Adrienne had to
remind herself that mind-reading was another ability of vampires, and
apparently, her father had that special gift. “Please don't tell me you can
read my thoughts too?” she asked, turning to face Xavier.

Xavier was still
dealing with the fact that Adrienne was such a special kind of vampire, the
type that all vampires dreamed of being. He shook his head. He couldn't read
her mind, and that was the truth. “I can only read the minds of humans,” was his
somewhat morose reply.

“But how come my
father can read mine?”

Xavier smiled, and
then winced. All of a sudden he felt dead tired. He felt his limbs go numb, and
right then and there, all he wanted to go was leave. He needed to feed. He
needed time alone to rethink things—things about Adrienne. He sighed. “I told
you a while ago that you were a princess. You are,” Xavier said. “Your father's
a Vampire Regent, head of one of the five realms of the Vampire Kingdom.”

She only took
World History, not Vampire History or Politics, so to say the least; she still
didn't get whatever point Xavier was trying to get across. “What exactly are
you trying to say?”

Xavier exhaled.
He was too tired to explain to her what she needed to know, and besides, it was
her fault he was currently feeling weak. She had drained his energy, but he
couldn't just leave Carter Stahl's office. He needed to settle a few things
with the Regent.

“Vampire Regents
are in effect, the kings of vampire kingdoms. As rulers their abilities surpass
the skill levels of all their subjects, combined. Your father's extra-sensory
perceptions are much greater than that of normal vampires, or even those of the
noble class.”

Adrienne nodded
her head slowly in understanding. She kind of got the gist of what he was
trying to say. It boiled down to one thing. “So basically, he's powerful?”

Adrienne eyed her
father. He didn't look like a monarch, or powerful for that matter, but that
was probably because he looked like her father always did. He may be an
influential creature to the vampire kind, but to Adrienne, he was just her
father.

“
Very
 powerful.
He can do things only a handful of vampires can do.”

Adrienne let out
a sharp gust of breath. This—everything—was definitely too much for her to process
in a single night. It was stressing her to have to deal with her new reality. “Why
are you telling me these things now? Why not before, like years before. Why
wait until the middle of my eighteenth birthday party?”

“It's the curse
your mother put on you,” Her father's voice was steady and slow. “That's why
you've been living like a human for the past eighteen years.”

“Curse?” Adrienne
asked, and suddenly she wanted to cry. “Mom never loved me?” One delicate tear
rolled down her cheeks.

Since Carter and
Xavier were vampires, they very clearly saw the tear that rolled down one
cheek. To them it was as if that single drop had been magnified and projected onto
a screen. “She had to curse me?”

“The curse she
put on you was for your protection. She did it to protect you,” her father
admonished.

“Protect me from
what?”

Before Carter
could answer his daughter's question, Brianna stepped in and asked if she could
leave the room. “Everyone's probably looking for Adie, so I have to go, and,
you know, make up excuses.”

“Very well then,”
said Adrienne's father, dismissing Adrienne's best friend. “And as I've told
you countless times before, Brianna, thank you for all your help.”

She saluted him. “Anytime,
sir,” she replied, her voice respectful. She opened the door and left the room.

“Do I have to go
too?” Xavier asked, with his hands in the pockets of his dark-washed jeans.
He’d propped himself against the wall, he needed the contact to keep upright.

“Definitely not.
You have to stay.” Adrienne's father replied.

Xavier nodded at
him before he walked to the side of the room opposite Adrienne. He didn't want
to do anything anymore to irritate her further. Based on what he’d learned from
his History classes, if one provoked a psychic vampire to do their worst, he or
she could drain a person's or a vampire's energy until there was no feelings
left, and this could result in death. He'd been living for only a few centuries.
He was too young to die.

Adrienne had been
silent, ignoring the two men while she thought about things she’d learned
tonight. Suddenly she spoke out, “Did Mom really kill herself?”

Adrienne’s father
and Xavier went still and quiet. She went very still, waiting, hoping that some
of the questions that she’d had all her life would finally be answered.

“She didn't kill
herself, Adrienne,” Carter said, saying her daughter's name instead of 'kiddo'
which was rare. It brought a small smile to her face. “The story is rather long
and involved, but for tonight, I’ll give you a shorter version.

“I'm all ears.”

“So am I,” said
Xavier, scooting down the wall, collapsing on the carpeted floor.

Carter Stahl took
a deep breath. He looked at the two teenagers that sat across from him, Xavier
on the floor, Adrienne sitting on a chair. Their faces were so serious. All had
been done to ensure the future of these two, the future of their race.

“You two
certainly know what happened on June 7, 1494, right?”

Adrienne shook
her head, her mouth in a pout. “You know I have no idea of Vampire History, dad.”

Xavier laughed
silently before saying, “You don't need to know our kind's past to know about
the Treaty of Tordesillas, Adie.” His deep voice thrilled through her.

“What does that
have to do with mom?” She turned to look at her father.

“I'm getting
there, kiddo,” said Carter, chuckling at his daughter's impatience. “The Treaty
basically divided the known civilized world into two parts, the East and the
West. The lands in the East belonged to Portugal, and those in the West were
owned by Spain. In the vampire realm the East fell under the ownership of the
Kristofferson Dynasty.”

“Sexy name,” Adrienne
suddenly blurted out, unaware that her mouth was acting faster than her mind. “That
would be a totally hot last name.”

“I'm glad you
think so,” Xavier interjected, smiling.

Adrienne frowned
at the tone in his voice, suddenly suspicious, she asked, “So, your name is
Xavier. What is your last name?”

Xavier's grin spread
across his face. “I'm Xavier Kristofferson.”

“Hell, no!”
Adrienne gasped, covering her mouth with her hands in embarrassment.

“Hell, yes,” was the
other's teasing reply.

“Can I continue
now?” That was Adrienne's father. Even though he was amused with his daughter's
and Xavier's biting and entertaining interaction with each other, Carter Stahl
needed to finish the story as soon as possible. While vampires didn’t need to
sleep, they did get tired, and he was tired. And his daughter had a party to
finish.

“Did you just say
the Kristofferson Dynasty used to own half of the world?” Adrienne asked.

Her father nodded
in response. “They ruled half of the 
vampire
 world and the
other half belonged to our dynasty, the Stahl dynasty. Many believed there was
too much power in the hands of two monarchies, so some nobles and a lot of
lower-class vampires decided to revolt, and a number of them teamed up with
Vampire Hunters.”

Xavier had heard
this story a million times before, but he enjoyed hearing the elder Stahl recite
their family history. “Before your mother and I knew it, every single person
who was against the two monarchies, had begun searching for you and for Xavier.
The thought was that if they killed the only heirs to both thrones, there would
no longer be a monarchy in place. Xavier’s parents, your mother, and I hid you,
and did everything we could to keep you safe.”

“What? Wait…wait,
this was 1492 and you said that people were searching for Xavier and I? Dad, I
just turned 18!”

“This was a
couple hundred years after 1492. The treaty was signed, the divisions in power
made, and it took several centuries for the revolution to grow in strength and
numbers. But the curse or spell that your mother put on you did a couple
things. You were made to appear human, in fact in many ways you are human, not
vampire. But you age much slower than a human, and your memories have been
taken from you, time and time again so that what you know is remember is just
that last few years. Kiddo, you may look and feel 18 in human years, but in
vampire years you are several centuries old.”

“So in order to
protect me, the curse made me seem human? I’m several centuries old but I can’t
remember anything from before. What about Xavier? Has he had his memories taken
away too?” She was really struggling to understand, but it was so much to take
in all at once.

Adrienne's father
shook his head. “We made you human, or near human, and over the years I’ve
altered your memories. But Xavier has lived the life of a vampire throughout
this time, and been carefully watched over.”

“But why were we
treated differently?”

“Because Xavier
is a male of our species. He must be able to protect himself, and now to help
protect you. He has been trained to fight, and has explored all his powers and
abilities, learning to use them to the fullest. Xavier has spent all the centuries
he has lived, training to be the one of the greatest vampire warriors of all
time. He has also learned almost all there is to know about vampire history and
politics.”

Adrienne studied
the vampire sprawled on the floor. Even she could see that he was completely
wiped out from her psychic draining. He didn’t look like one of the greatest vampire
warriors of all time to her. She looked at her dad who was grinning at her and
she remembered he could read her mind. Not something she wanted to think about
right now. Eventually she was going to have to come up with a list of all the
times she’d lied to him, or tried to sneak out, or…shit!

Carter struggled
not to laugh; he didn’t want to get off track. “So. During all this time that
Xavier was becoming a warrior, I raised you as close to human as possible. I
kept you hidden, and we moved every decade or so. Your mother died in order to
provide the paranormal shield that gave you human attributes and kept you from
aging. She didn’t kill herself; she offered her life, for yours. Do you
understand the difference, Adrienne?”

He waited for his
daughter’s nod before he continued, “The spell your mother died to give you
started to slowly slip away, and in the year 1990, you started to age again,
and I knew the time had come to make a stand. To find us a place where you
could grow to maturity and where when the time came, that others that we trust,
other’s like Xavier, could be near to help protect you as you take your
rightful place among our people.”

The missing
puzzle pieces were slowly starting to come together. She’d always thought she
had a really active imagination, always picturing herself at different times,
in different places. Places she had never visited were so clear in her mind.
Well, maybe she had been there. Maybe these were memory flashes, things that
had really occurred as part of her past, and not just an overactive
imagination. She felt as if there was a veil over her memories, and that veil
was slowly being lifted away. Now Adrienne could understand why her mother had
put a spell on her, and that she had died to protect her. What she really
wanted was even a single memory of her mother.

“The only way to
keep you safe from all harm that could come your way, your mother gave up her
life. At this time she was considered the strongest living vampire. That legacy
passes to you. When she died, the two vampire empires collapsed and evolved
into the five we have today. Those empires include the American realm, which we
rule, the European realm, which Xavier's family heads, the Asian realm, the
African realm, and the Russian realm.”

“So why am I only
finding out about this now?” she asked.

“As a human
child, in a state of stasis or I don’t know…I think a better description is a
state of non-growth, you didn’t need to know anything. To keep you safe, you
had to stay human. But as your body matured to what in human physiology is the
age of eighteen, your body and mind have transitioned from adolescence to
adulthood.”