Unraveling Mordecai, Marisa Maichel [ebook reader .TXT] 📗

desperate attempt to wake her up. I was afraid to shake her-I could break her neck that way.
“Mike, no! No! Stop! I don’t want this!”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Sarah! It’s me!”
She opened her eyes and rubbed them. “Reese?” She closed her eyes for a second, her brow furrowing. “Reese!” She hugged me tightly. “It happened again, Reese. I was having a nice dream…a sex dream…and then it got…dark…and there was Nales….” She began to cry.
“It’s okay, baby,” I said. “He’s not here. He can’t hurt you anymore. I’ll keep you safe.” I licked her eyes and kissed her soft pink lips.
“I’m worried, Reese,” she said. “I know I didn’t show it yesterday, but I was terrified when that guy was found. They know where we live. We can’t trust anyone except family, and some of our family we can’t even trust. I don’t trust Satira. You know she showed up the other day when you were at the music store, looking at guitars? She wanted me to go with her, but Mom, your mom, I mean, told me to stay where I was and told Satira to fuck off.
“Your mom told me all about her. Apparently, your mom’s side comes from a long line of witches and warlocks, and your mom abandoned witchcraft for Catholicism because it was more modern and made sense. She didn’t want to practice the dark arts, like Satira wanted her to. Satira started yelling at her, accusing her of abandoning her family and leaving us. Your mom accused her of causing all those miscarriages and stillborns she had when she was, well, not yet a vampire. Satira said something in Greek, and she mentioned Baba Yaga. Your mom looked like she’d been smacked, and then she started screaming at her in Greek. Then Satira sort of smirked and then turned around and left.”
I thought about David. He’d shown up the same day as Satira. I found that a bit, well, odd. Now Lee was here, claiming he had hacked into our computers for Bram Sterling, who was Head of the Vampire Council. I knew Bram hated us. Heck, he’d even canceled our credit cards without us knowing about it.
I knew that Uncle Soren and Bram had never gotten along in particular. Bram thought my uncle was too gruff and rough and strict, and Uncle Soren thought that Bram was, well, sort of evil. There had been a few incidents where Bram had taken things too far-killed a prisoner who didn’t deserve to be killed or who had information we needed, killing humans for fun, and even his ex-wife had accused him of being abusive to her.
You have to understand, even though time and things change, a lot of vampires don’t value human life as much as we do. They are seen as weak and inferior; a parasite, even. Vampires and humans have never really gotten along. We’ve slaughtered them, and they’ve killed some of us. Even today, there are Vampire Hunters who specifically go after vampires who attack humans or are a leech on society.
There are new laws surrounding this, but of course, the Hunters don’t follow vampire laws, only their own laws. Each vampire death must be recorded and a reason must be given for the vampire’s death. Even vampires kill each other sometimes, over territory, food, and mates.
The laws are very clear around these things. That’s why we are here; to settle disputes and enforce the laws, even if we break them occasionally.
The Council is here to keep us in check and to rule in our stead if we are not able to. That’s what they were supposed to be doing while Uncle Soren, Grandfather, and Louis were in America to help Grandfather recover from stress and depression. Now, apparently, they wanted us gone. Not cool.
“Sorry, little buddy,” Louis said, coming into the room. “I’m going to have to call Slutty Scorpia.”
I groaned.
“Who’s Slutty Scorpia?” Sarah asked, looking both concerned and curious.
“She’s a hacker,” Louis said, grinning. “She’s also a little bit crazy about little buddy here.”
“Do not call Slutty Scorpia,” I said. “Louis, I’m begging you.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“She locked me in a closet until I said I loved her! She stole my underwear and my hairbrush! She liked smelling my shoes!”
“How come I’ve never heard of her?” Sarah asked. If she were a color, she would be a tiny bit green. She was getting jealous, which amused me.
“I can’t stand her,” I said. “She cut up my shirts, she chased me around the garden, she even yanked my earring out of my ear and I had to have surgery to fix it. She’s crazy as hell.”
“All you had to do was say yes to one date,” Louis said, grinning.
“If I’d done that, she would have never stopped chasing me! I finally got her to back off by complaining to Father, and he told her to leave me alone.”
She nuzzled against me and kissed my neck.
“You’re mine,” she said.
“Jealous?” I teased.
“A little,” she admitted.
“No need to be. You’re the one carrying my baby.” I put my hand on her stomach and grinned. She just clung to me, her legs around my waist, her arms locked around my neck. She laid her head against my chest, purring. I purred, too, my chest rumbling with love and pleasure as she claimed me.
We stayed like that for a long time, just cuddling, while Louis quietly left the room to make the unfortunate call to my old enemy, Scorpia Garden.
I first met Scorpia when we were both ten. She was an orphan who’d been adopted by our guard, Raz. He was a powerful guard, if a bit strict and uncaring. Any emotion he showed was toward Scorpia, whom he saw as a daughter, seeing as he was the one who had found her at the castle entrance and took her in. A heartbreaking note was left from her mother, saying that she loved Scorpia, but couldn’t take care of her. She was born under the sign Scorpio, thus, her name was born.
When I met her, I was exploring the garden by myself and watching the fish in the pond swim around.
I was sitting on my hands and knees, watching Pearl and the other koi swim around. Father was in France, dealing with some issue that required his attention, so I was with Uncle Soren for the summer.
“Hey.”
I glanced behind me. I stood up and turned around, and saw a girl vampire. She was sort of pretty, with ivory skin and black hair and brown eyes. She wore black jeans, black Converses, a black jacket, and a striped black and white shirt.
“Hey,” I replied. “What’ s your name?”
“Scorpia.”
“Hey, Scorpia. I’m-“
“I know who you are. Your name is Reese. You’re Prince Mordecai’s son.”
“Er, yes.”
“I’ve been watching you.”
“Really? Why?”
“I think you’re cute.”
Now I was uncomfortable.
“Er, thanks. I have to, um…”
“Do you think I’m cute?”
I was silent. She stared at me expectantly.
“Er, yeah, sure. I have to, um, go now. My uncle-“
“Do you want to kiss me?”
“Um, no,” I said honestly.
“But you just said I’m cute.”
“I think kittens are cute, but I don’t want to kiss one,” I told her.
“Kittens have germs. I don’t. My dad works for your dad. I was left on the castle steps when I was a baby, and Raz found me. He adopted me and named me Scorpia. My favorite color is red, I like cats and dogs, I have a hamster named Minnie, and my favorite music is classic rock.”
“Cool. I like cats, too. I don’t care for dogs, though. I don’t really have any pets, but I have a favorite koi in this pond. His name is Pearl.”
“A boy fish named Pearl? That’s…weird. Don’t you have some dogs, or something?”
“The only dogs I have are the dogs who watch our sheep and cows and stuff. Father says that livestock are a necessary item for vampires who employ human servants.”
“Livestock? What’s that?”
“You know, cows and horses and sheep and pigs. We sell their meat and hides and wool at a discount for humans who can’t afford to eat regularly-priced meat and they’re also for our human employees. We have to feed them somehow. That’s also why we keep a vegetable garden and an apple orchard. It’s not just because the apples smell nice, which they do, but because-“
She put her finger against my lips. “You talk too much.” And then she kissed me. Later, I would muse over what possessed her to do that. I was a prince. No one was allowed in my space unless I said so, but I was too nice to say no most of the time. As I grew into a teenager, I started to grow a thicker skin and told Scorpia to stop following me around, and then she started crying and begging me to go on one date with her. I had no interest in her, and I told her such.
She went crazy. She started following me around, stealing anything that smelled like me, cutting up my clothes, and so on. She became adept at stalking me online. She became so skilled on a computer that Father hired her to test the security systems. She found and fixed several flaws, and he paid her well for it.
I finally had enough when I was fourteen and asked Father to tell her to back off, and then she stopped speaking to me. She remained a security employee, and everyone started calling her Hacker Stalker.

I was interrupted from memory lane when I heard a snore. Sarah had fallen asleep again! I smiled into her hair and nibbled a few strands. She was so soft, so breakable. And now she was pregnant with my baby. She was already three months along, but she was still small. That concerned me. When Mother was pregnant with me, she’d been huge, almost as big as she was now with triplets. And vampire/human pregnancies always, always, resulted in someone’s death; either the mother’s, or the baby’s, or even both.
Sarah loved being pregnant. She would just stare at her own belly for an hour. She loved the chance to eat whatever she wanted, although she wasn’t able to eat as much due to the pressure on her organs. She had a mixture of good and bad dreams, and chicken made her sick, even if it was well-cooked and prepared correctly. She was addicted to eggs, especially raw eggs. She added them to her spinach and strawberry smoothies.
One of the things that irked her was that she was not allowed to drink as much coffee as she normally did. She loved the icky dark brown/black stuff that stained teeth and caused her heart to beat faster than normal. (Did you know that women’s hearts beat faster than men’s anyway?)
I was becoming nervous. I loved this baby as much as she did, but what if I had to choose between my child and my mate? What then?
Mother was always complaining about the constant kicking from the triplets. Did our baby kick Sarah, or was it too early for that? Did vampire babies grow faster or slower with human mothers? I needed to ask Alexander.
I put Sarah in bed and found my stepfather in his study, writing something at his desk.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked.
“Not now. I’m busy.”
“What was it like…I mean, with Kieran and Celine?”
“Difficult and long. Now go away. Go listen to that crap you call music or read one of those pieces of trash you call a novel.”
“Are you ever nice to anybody except Mother?”
“Not really. She’s the only one I like, besides Cirino. Now scoot. Skedaddle.”