Drake Chronicles: 01 My Love Lies Bleeding Read Online Free PDF Page A

underscored by his expression: righteous anger.
    Great.
    “I don’t get it,” Lucy whispered to me. “Who is he?”
    “Not one of us,” I whispered back, my gaze never leaving his. I didn’t know what I was reading there, but it was complicated, what ever it was. I’d heard of the cologne some hunters wore; it mimicked vampire pheromones, to take a potential enemy off guard. We’d believed it completely out in the garden, until he’d had to fight my mother, who would have killed him if my dad hadn’t been so adamant about having someone to question.
    Nicholas half stepped in front of us, annoyingly overprotective as always. He didn’t like surprises and unanswered questions and we’d just had our fill of both. I’d been trained just like they had, but none of my brothers could get it in their thick heads that I wasn’t delicate or defenseless.
    The Helios-Ra agent was wearing black nose plugs, which just proved he knew more about us than we knew about him. I reached over and yanked them out.
    “What are you doing here?” I could tell he was trying to hold his breath. I could’ve told him that strategy never worked for long. He glared at me mutinously.
    “Tracking,” he finally answered on a sharp exhale.
    “Let me guess,” I said, disgusted. “Because I’m just so beautiful and you don’t know why but you just have to be with me?” I was really starting to hate this whole pheromone thing.
    He blinked, nearly smiled. “Not exactly.”
    I blinked back. “Oh.” Damn it, he was even more attractive when he didn’t seem particularly affected by my questionable charms. “Well, who are you then?”
    “Helios-Ra,” he answered, his tone clipped.
    “Yeah, we got that.”
    “Your name?” Dad scowled.
    “Kieran Black.”
    “Since when has Helios-Ra been on our trail? Last time I checked, we had a treaty. We don’t eat humans, so you don’t bother us and we don’t bother you.” My mom snorted. She hated the treaty. She preferred fighting, being much more skilled with weapons than tact, but my dad was all about practicality and the long view. He’d made the treaty before my oldest brother was born, determined to give his children a chance. He didn’t want us being harassed and followed about by the league just because we’re vampires. After all, vampires aren’t all good or all bad, any more than humans are. But try telling that to the Helios-Ra. They only recently admitted that being a vampire wasn’t a good enough reason to be killed on sight.
    Still, old traditions die hard with them, almost as hard as with us.
    But our family, at least, has a good reputation. We mostly drink animal blood, only resorting to human blood if it’s consensual or if we’re ill and can’t heal without it. If that fails, a quick break- in at the blood bank works well enough. We’ve never gone feral; the disease has been in our bloodline too many centuries for that, and every generation is born stronger than the last. It’s not easy dying, even if you know you’re going to wake up afterward. And it’s even harder controlling the blood thirst. Still, hardly any of us go mad anymore during the turning. I had to remind myself of that little fact every time I looked at the calendar to see my birthday edging closer and closer. Lucy nudged me.
    “You’re looking morose,” she said under her breath. “You’re thinking about it again.”
    I turned my attention back to the matter at hand. I couldn’t afford to get sidetracked with self-pity—or by the fact that this particular Helios-Ra agent was really good-looking, with his dark eyes and strong cheekbones.
    “Things change,” he said. “You should know. You broke the treaty.” Mom’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
    “I beg your pardon?” she said, soft as a mouse near a sleeping cat.
    Uh-oh. Mom was big on that whole honor thing.
    “Big mistake,” Lucy said pleasantly. She was a lot more bloodthirsty than I was, ironically enough. She would have made a