Vampire Kissed (Supernaturally Yours Book 1)

Prologue

Theworldhaschanged so much since my parents were children and not for the better. They used to tell me stories of how there was a time when humans ruled the world. But that”s not the case anymore. Everything has changed. In fact, at this point, the world has gone to shit, or at least it has, in my opinion. When my parents were still kids, the world was normal. But then the supernaturals came out of the closet. The demons dragged themselves out of Hell in search of souls; the vampires came out of the shadows thirsting for blood, and the wolves crept out of the forest, taking women and dragging them back to their lairs. Or at least that”s how the stories go.

Now they run the world, different supernaturals claiming their own territories.The United States has been split into factions, each taken over by a different type of supernatural. The vampires took the West, the wolves, the mountains and central, and the demons took the East. They make the rules now; what they say goes. Their takeover was slow at first, slipping into important roles and working their way to the top. There were some already hiding in plain sight we didn’t know about. But once the others made themselves known, the rest followed suit until they were in charge.

There is now a Supernatural Council, with one member from each species, that runs their designated territories. The demons claim souls to take back to Hell, and once your time is up, you”re all theirs. They can make all the deals they want and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The wolves have a ball each year to find their mate. All women of age must attend. In my area, the vampires are in charge. Each month, they require everyone over the age of eighteen to donate blood. If you don”t donate and try to run from it, they hunt you down.

There are few who miss their monthly donation, and those that do are never seen again. For all I know, they kill you on sight. Or they could take you to harvest your blood, leaving you hooked up to machines to drain you at a slow enough rate so you keep replenishing it. Those in charge say they need the blood donations to keep the vampires fed, to keep them civilized, and to stop the risk of them draining people dry. But I”m not sure I believe that anymore. I”ve seen too much over the years.

My parents were born in Oregon. Even after they knew who was taking over, my grandparents didn”t want to leave. They stayed, and here we are to this day, or at least this is where I still am. My brother Antonio left not long after my parents died. The cops filed their deaths as a home invasion gone wrong, but I never believed that, not after how I found them.

My mom had called me that fateful night. I still remember her screams as she told me a monster had killed my dad. Then the screams stopped, and the line went dead. I’d rushed straight over to their house, breaking every speed limit to get there. The door was ajar and I’ll never forget what I saw when I opened it. There was blood everywhere. Odd you might think, for vampires. I found my dad in the living room, covered in claw marks, with his throat ripped out. I’d jumpedinto nurse mode and checked his pulse, but with the extent of his injuries, I already knew he was dead.

Walking carefully around the blood pool surrounding his body, I made my way along the hall to my parents’ bedroom. That’s where I’d found my mom. Her eyes were looking straight at the door, her hand out to the side and the phone she’d called me from on the floor next to the bed. It was smashed to pieces as if someone had trodden on it. She was no longer clothed. Her legs were splayed open, and every inch of her skin was covered in blood.

I had crumpled to the floor next to the bed, holding her cold hand. That’s where the cops I didn’t remember calling had found me; my cell phone clutched in my fingers, tears streaming down my face. When they tried to move me, I started screaming, and they had to sedate me in the back of the ambulance. That’s where my brother had found me after they’d called him. Curled up in a ball on a gurney, staring at the blood coating my skin.

Shaking my head, I pull myself away from the images flashing up in my mind. I know it wasn’t a home invasion, it couldn’t have been. There was too much blood, and after the cops had done their thing and left, I checked the house. Nothing had been taken, not even my mother’s diamond necklace. Her words about the monster were cemented in my mind. She hadn’t said ‘intruder’; she’d said monster. But what kind?

A vampire would have drained their blood, not let it splatter all over the walls and floor. Blood is too precious a commodity to be wasted to vampires. I know there are other supernaturals in the area, however, they can only enter with special permission from those in charge. But what if there is something flying under the radar that they don”t know about?

My brother asked me to leave with him, but I refused. My life was here. As soon as he thought I was okay, he hightailed it out of town and left me here to fend for myself. He still calls me once a month, but our calls are mundane. We tell each other about work. I never tell him I miss him, and he doesn’t say it either. We never talk about what happened to our parents. It”s a no-go subject. I tried to tell him what I saw straight after the attack, but he refused to listen and told me it was a home invasion.