Queens and Monsters: A Vampire Shifter Romance (The Blood Falls Book 1)

Gigi opened a window, letting the breeze inside. And then she was gone. Well, not gone, but she was there and then she wasn’t. A yellow butterfly flitted around me a few times. It was beautiful. A delicate shade of yellow that reminded me of Gigi’s hair.

Then the butterfly became Gigi. “See? Shifting. Sometimes I think being a butterfly is the lamest thing to shift into but it’s come in handy several times. One time I was out with friends at a bar and these two guys would not stop flirting with me no matter how many times I told them to back off. I decided to leave and you know what these numb-nuts did?”

“They followed you out.”

“Exactly! I’m lucky enough that I had a way out.” She shuddered. “Anyway, I shifted right away and watched as they whirled around trying to figure out where I went.”

“She mostly uses her ability for evil though,” Leena said. “She used to spy on us all the time. She’d even use the air vents. Evil!”

Gigi shrugged. “Making use of my resources is not evil.”

Leena turned her eyes on me. “Evil.”

“And what do you shift into?” So far I knew Gigi could become a butterfly and Bo into what she called the “traditional bat.”

I blinked and a cat appeared where Leena had been. She arched her back and stretched her front paws, then back into Leena.

“Nice. What about Dray?”

You would have thought I poured a bucket of cold water on the women the way they reacted. Finally Gigi answered. “Dray chooses not to shift. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. It’s his decision and it’s personal.”

She didn’t leave space for me to dwell or ask any more questions, moving right on to her specialty: genetics.

“Approximately 300,000 years ago we had this crucible of human evolution going on. We were nearing the end of Homo Erectus, giving rise to the Neanderthals and other variations…including what would become Samhain. While other species were either out competed or bred into what became modern humans, we survived. Keeping separate but living alongside them. Like humans, we grew and migrated around the world. That’s how and why the different houses came to have different connections to the Plane. We adapted to the places we lived and to the connection to the Plane that existed there.”

Leena bounced her eyebrows. “There’s even a group that isolated way up north and they—get this—are so sensitive to light it causes them physical pain.”

I saw why she found this fun. “They don’t go out in light, stick to the darkness, basically the source of the vampires only come out at night mythology?”

She grinned and spun to Gigi. “I like her.”

“I told you.” She continued her lesson. “It’s basically Founder Effect, but for samhain. Founder Effect is when a relatively small population is isolated together and one genetic mutation or recessive gene becomes common. Like everyone having blue eyes or the prevalence of extra fingers or toes in the Amish population. For us, it means an extra sensitivity to the Plane eventually became the predominant and characteristic feature of each house. The House of Wren’s unusual fertility may be the result of this as well.”

I glanced down at my hands, remembering the tingling sensation I felt when I tried to access the Plane. “You said my mother’s house, the House of Nala, are sort of like witches in that they can make things happen with words.”

Leena flipped through a book and laid open pages with diagrams on them. “Humans see magic as creation from nothing because they can’t access the Plane, but it isn’t creation from nothing. It’s creation from things they can’t see, feel, or hear. When someone has a sensitivity to the Plane that allows them to Form—with words or thoughts or whatever—it looks like magic.”

“I think you may have this gift,” Gigi said. “I know you just barely touched the Plane, but your description and knowing your background, there is a strong possibility you can Form from the Plane.”

This felt…right. Like it made sense somehow. Like hearing a song you’d never heard before but it explained something you always knew inside yourself.

“I think it’s good you’re taking it slow. Accessing the Plane is as normal as turning on a television when you’ve grown up feeling it around you. But going from nothing to everything would be a lot more like getting electrocuted by plugging in that same television.”

They go insane.

“Hoo, girl. What on earth are you thinking right now? Your aura just went all nasty,” Gigi said.

“Dray told me about how samhain in the House of Axl can bring back the dead.”

The women traded a look. Leena reached for me. “You won’t succumb to it. We’ll make sure of it. Besides, you’re genetically a samhain so you have a lot more going for you than a poor human who is being transformed against their will and having their DNA rewritten.”

It all sounded horrifying.

Over the course of the day Aethel taught me some tai chi, hoping it would help me learn to manage the Plane. She shared that she also had a psychic sensitivity, or Sight, but unlike Gigi, she didn’t see it in pictures, but in symbols.

Bo was really good with electrical fields and finding lost things. Kris could morph the Plane to move himself and other things using the natural flow of the Plane. Vic could manipulate the state of matter. He demonstrated this by walking out of the library through a wall of books. Bridge and Cass had the gift of Luck. They sensed good and positive things in the same way Dray could sense evil. So they were really good at finding the right people, just the right spot, the right numbers.

The last person to enter the library wasn’t Dray. It was Aunt Bethany. Dray avoided me all day. Even lunch.

“I don’t think you’re going to like me very much, unfortunately,” she said as she sat beside me on the couch. “Give me your hands.”

I did so without question. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. I felt an overwhelming urge to do the same. The next thing I knew my mind was filled with pictures. Memories of Bethany’s of my mother. I knew it was her based on the stunning red hair. She was right, it was the most beautiful shade of red. The woman I saw in my mind was young and happy. She smiled. Then a man appeared. They hugged and smiled at each other with complete happiness. He had dark hair the same shade as mine and his profile was very similar to Antyne’s.

My father.

Then those images disappeared and all I saw was black. It felt like I was being pushed somehow deeper, into the darkness. A rush of energy hit me again. I tried to pull away but Bethany held me firm. I had no choice but to take it this time. It hit me like a wave, and it was as if I was taken away by it, tumbling through nonexistent water.

I washed up on a glimmering beach where the sun and moon were both muted by a blue veil. The sand was more like glitter the way it sparkled beneath my feet. I took a step. It was as if the whole world tilted on its axis and I was back in the water.

The whispers returned. This time they were quieter and more distant, not overlapping quite so much. I tried to listen.

There’s a crack, a crack!

They’re here, here.

Things change. We’re changed. You changed.

He has the answers. The answers you need.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I yanked my hands free and gasped as the real world slapped me hard back to reality.

Bethany gasped too, blinking her eyes open. “Hate me?”

I assessed my body from top to bottom. My head was a little fuzzy and there was a faint headache in the background and my heart was pounding pretty hard, but I was physically okay.

“You showed me my parents?”

She nodded. “They loved each other very much. For a while, they were very, very happy.”

“Do you know who did this to me? Hid me?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t. I was as surprised as anyone that they had a child. I never saw your mother pregnant.”

“After the memories…that was the Plane?”

She nodded again. “Don’t be afraid of it. You’re ready. That’s why I pushed you. Sometimes that’s what we do as parents…we push the ones under us when they need it. I hope you don’t hold it against me.”

I didn’t like that she did it without asking me, but I appreciated that she cared. “Next time just ask. I’m not a child.”

“Deal.” Then she stood up. “After all that you’re probably starved. The boys should have dinner prepared.”

We ate on the porch under string lights. Tonight’s meal was more subdued than breakfast. Food was passed more leisurely and wine poured generously. There was more laughing.

I helped clean up dinner with the rest of the girls. Aethel stacked a dishwasher while Leena hand washed others and Gigi dried. Bridge put leftovers away. Cass was on garbage duty.

“Can you put these back in the wine cellar?” Bethany handed me two unopened bottles of wine. “Did you notice there were two doors last night? This is the other entrance.” She led me to the pantry, pushing the bottom corner with her foot and releasing the wall of dry goods, swinging it open to reveal a locked door. She slid a piece of wood aside and revealed the key. “Make sure you put this one back, too.”

I descended a very similar set of stairs and found the room exactly how I left it. Soft yellow lighting and a confused Dray sipping wine at the table.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”