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“BREAKFAST!” Sara shouted in a sing-song tone. I got up from Knight's lap and he fell backward onto the comforter. When I opened the door, Sara had a cute look on her face like we'd been up to something during the night and she knew all about it.
She was pushing a cart with a large tray full of food, enough food to feed a Lycan and a vampire, and then some. “Morning guests!” She pushed past me with the cart and rolled it over to the round table by my bed. The tray looked heavy, but she did her best to try and lift it until I had to go help her.
She'd literally cooked every kind of breakfast food there was, including the custard croissants I loved, and a few dishes I didn't recognize.
I smelled curry.
“There's plenty for both of you,” she said with a cheerful smile. “He needs to keep up his strength. I mean both of you do. Silly me. Ta ta!” She waltzed out of the room, pushing the cart and humming something off-key.
“Well, she’s cheerful today,” Knight said with a chuckle.
“Get over here or I'm eating everything,” I told him.
We ate. Well, I ate. He inhaled. He let me get my own food first, and after I filled my plate, he gobbled up everything else, including whatever smelled like curry. I felt slightly bad because I'd drunk so much from him. Though, I'd seen him eat this much before when he still had all of his blood. He caught me staring at him.
“Do you feel weird?” he inquired. I shook my head. If anything, I just felt more alert. Everything smelled crisper. I could hear better without pushing my senses out. I’d easily drunk three times more blood than I usually had every morning. “You can drink again before lunch. But you'll tell me if you start to feel different, right?” He was trying to help, but he was being a bit bossy.
“Okay, dad.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I am not nearly old enough to be your dad, missy.” I chuckled and took another bite of the hash brown I'd been working on. “Speaking of which,” he started. “Who are your parents? Aren't they going crazy with worry?”
“I don't know who they are,” I said simply, my fork hovering in front of me. “Balthazar knows who my mother is, not that he'll ever tell me her name. My father is a nameless mystery. I don't even think about it.”
Knight stared at me for a minute before putting some egg in his mouth. “Yes. I can see that you don't,” he said around his food. “That's not normal, by the way.”
“Normal-schmormal. I'm a Born vampire. I don't have to be normal.”
He snorted and blew a few pieces of egg onto the table. “Well,” he continued after chewing and swallowing. “You're right about that.” He sipped his second glass of orange juice. “Things like that tend to fade after a while, don't they?”
“It's not like I don't want to know who my father is,” I admitted, though I’d never said that out loud to anyone. I never talked about my parents. Not even to Olivier. “It's just something I'll never get an answer for.” He nodded like he understood. “Are other Lycans like you?” I regretted asking such a question, but I'd been wondering.
He looked hesitant. “You mean freaky with the moon or really, really old?”
“Immortal.”
He almost didn't want to answer. I could see it on his face. “No. They aren't. Because I'm not like them. I was born human.”
I almost didn't believe my ears. “You were what?”
“I wasn't born this way,” he repeated, looking a little shy. Judging by what he'd told me that meant he was changed after the Bicus were banned from doing so.
“The scratch marks,” I said absently as I remembered. “The ones on your chest. They're from the Succubus who changed you.” I knew that was how werewolves were made, I’d just never put the facts together. Call it unfamiliar territory.
“Yeah. They've never gone away. I spent time with a Lycan pack at first, just to learn about being one of them, until it was clear I wasn't one of them. I've been on my own ever since. I've never...seen another man like me. Not ever.”
“It's because the Bicus are banned from changing or impregnating humans,” I told him. “No one knows why, or those that do don't talk about it. If there were others like you, they'd be very old. Older than me.”
This upset him greatly, though he tried to not show it. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have not a single soul that knew what it felt like to be what I am. I didn't like that mental image. And Knight was a pack animal. He'd never have a pack. Like an ant without a colony. A bee without a beehive.
“A bee without a beehive.”
“I am not a bee,” he said firmly. “You said that out loud.”
My cheeks reddened so I went back to my food.
I WENT TO MY USUAL feeding at James’s mansion. He didn’t mention his proposal, probably trying to respect that I hadn’t made up my mind yet. I drank from the human he provided, the extra blood only helping my cause. He wanted to talk about the merits of Napoleon, so I sat through that for over an hour.
He finally let me go before lunch. Drake took me home, and I fed from Knight again before Sara served us stewed duck. As I breathed in the smell of the food, I noticed everything smelled better. The colors of the 1950’s kitchen were brighter, like someone had turned up the graphics setting. I could hear every part of the hotel without having to focus my ears.
The next day came. I drank from Knight before breakfast. I drank at James’s house. When I came back, I had a lovely craving to take a walk. Knight's presence wasn't sitting well with the local populous, which was why we had been spending most of our time in the hotel before now. The humans had either never seen a Lycan, or had and didn't enjoy the memory. The vampires were no better.
“If they keep hissing at me, I'm going to be soaked in saliva by the end of the day,” Knight complained after the fifth vampire had flashed their fangs in his direction.
I patted his arm like I would a puppy and sighed with happiness. I was so happy. Happy, happy, happy. “Don't worry. I'll protect you from the big bad vampires.”
He glared at me frostily. “I can't tell if that's my blood talking or if you're just always like this. Oh, wait. You are.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “They say age makes you more mature, but in your case, they lied.”
“Who said age makes you more mature?” I retorted. “I've never heard that. And I've been friends with plenty of philosophers.”
“Like who, Friedrich Nietzsche?”
This time I glared. “Galileo, smarty pants.”
He actually looked surprised. “Really? Wow. That's cool. I mean, I've known a few influential people too, but Galileo? What was he like?”
“And that is the question everyone asks me about everyone. What was Tolkien like? Was Jane Austen cool? Did the pilgrims like music?”
He was trying not to laugh. “Did they?”
I shrugged and smiled. “I didn't know the pilgrims. The one person who asked me that, I lied and said no.” He’d gone on to create an entire religion based around that fact, but let’s not dredge up the past.
Knight was still on the topic of famous friends. “Knowing someone who became famous isn't a frame of reference. You just knew them as a friend. You didn't know them as their public image,” he said.
“You sound rather knowledgeable,” I told him, surprised he understood something I’d felt for a long time. So many well-known people I’d called friend. And they were all dead now. Well, most of them. “Who'd you know?”
“I fought in the civil war, remember? I knew a lot of the officers. I met President Lincoln once. He smelled like shoe polish.”
“What side did you fight on?” I'd already guessed, but I wanted to ask.
He smirked slightly. “Let's not go there.” We stopped at a hot dog stand to get some lunch. The owner, a young human, took one look at Knight and started to scowl.
“Sorry,” he said curtly. “I don't want your business.” Knight's face fell for a second before it went blank.
“Why not? We haven't done anything,” I told the man. I was James’s main squeeze. All the humans should be doing whatever I wanted.
“My best friend is a vampire,” the man said. “Lycans killed her brother. James told everyone that this guy is a Lycan too. We don't want his kind around here.”
I stared at the prejudice hot dog vendor, my mouth curled down and my good mood gone, until he looked me in the eye. “Please. We just want some hot dogs. We won't bother you anymore if you just give us some food.”
To my surprise, he blinked, reached down, and handed me four hot dogs that were already prepared in a paper carton. Knight grabbed my elbow and tugged me away before the vendor could start complaining again.
“What just happened?” Knight asked when we'd turned the corner.
I knew exactly what had happened. I’d controlled the human. And I liked it.
