Essence (Nectar 3)

He knew there were enemies to be wary of but he’d had little involvement in those issues, dealing more with day to day issues in the quest to protect vampire secrets and prove his worth with Kovac Capital.

Taking over for Claudio, if that’s what he did, would change that. He’d hit a new level, that final ladder rung, the pinnacle. And then what? All the truths? More responsibility with secrets, with what else? How much more truth could he handle? What else had been hidden from him?

He’d kept his distance from Taryn for a while after he’d first been turned and it hadn’t gone over well. He and his mother were close so it didn’t take long for Taryn to get tired of being dodged. She used the spare key he’d given her to let herself into his apartment about three months after he’d been turned. He hadn’t been using the apartment much since turning, preferring to prowl at night for blood, or staying in a spare room at Andre’s, but had happened to be staying at his place on a night where she’d come looking for him. But he wasn’t alone.

She walked in on him feeding on a girl while another girl sucked him off. He didn’t look her in the eye, just sent the two feeders into the other room while his mother proceeded to converse with his back, asking questions, demanding answers, in tears. He’d already penned her a letter and so instead of talking things out, he handed it to her, meeting her eyes and telling her to believe it, even though it was outlandish, but to read it at home and then to burn it as soon as she’d read it.

In the letter he’d told her what he was, what she was, how she could choose whether or not to be turned because it hadn’t been offered to her at her coming of age because his grandfather had reportedly wanted him raised as a human, without knowledge of his true identity until it was time for him to be turned.

Taryn wrote back a careful cryptic letter asking him to turn her so that she could help him, be there for him, and told him that she’d burnt his letter as he wished. He sent Sam to erase her memory. Then he’d sent another vamp with strong programming skills ordering her to stay away from him because by that point he’d seen how Becky was adjusting to being turned. He stayed away a few months but the emptiness was sinking in. It was getting old. The constant hunger, the gnawing feeling like something was missing.

He’d shown up at his childhood home on his 26th birthday and, in a fit of drunken despair while he’d been fasting out of self-loathing, and with a myriad of emotions churning inside of him, he turned her, while she slept. He’d leaned over her sleeping body and dripped blood from his opened hand into her mouth, thinking it’d help with the emptiness he felt after turning Becky and having it go wrong, thinking that he would have his mother, that she couldn’t possibly be the same as Becky.

It didn’t help. It made things worse. His selfishness ruined his mother. The truth showed him that his sweet, loving, golden-hearted mother was a scheming, nasty she-monster who cared only about feeding her own bloodlust and buying her son more power through her scheming. She wanted Tristan to have more power so she could have more power as a result of being mother to a powerful royal vamp.

Taryn was cunning and powerful, being Alexander Kovac’s daughter and being turned by Tristan’s blood. She was hell on wheels times ten. She was the strongest female vamp he’d met. She also became the most deceptive and cruel vampress around, too. She took no time earning a reputation as someone no one wanted to cross.

He’d been wrong about Rebecca and his mother both. He’d turned Becky for Andre, seeing his mentor broken at the risk of losing his pet, a non-mesmerized pet who’d started out his prisoner and became his beloved treasured companion.

He started to wonder if Kyla had turned properly if Kyle’s blood would work on her to turn off that bitch switch. Family members generally weren’t able to feed one another, though. Even Adrian and Lyle hadn’t been affected by the scent of Kyla’s blood so that probably pointed to the fact that she wouldn’t be affected by her brother’s blood the way Sasha had.

He could suddenly see merits of a breeding program because someone like Kyle but unrelated to Kyla could be on tap, waiting to help. He could see how someone like Constantin would plan for various eventualities. He knew from conversations with Sam that there were other enchanted pets on site. There was a dormitory behind locked doors near the lab. Was there someone there who could help?