Sweet Blood of Mine (29 page)

Dad was home.

Blue fire literaly blazed in Dad's eyes and rage contorted his face. I had never seen him with such a horrendous expression. His face hardly looked human, as if there were two versions of his face, one overlaying another.

Katie let out a tiny peep and passed out as an unseen force sliced through our connection. Dad turned his gaze back on me, his eyes emitting a cold dark fury. "What in the hel do you think you're doing?" he said through clenched teeth.

"Ouch," was al I could muster as I puled myself off the floor. I looked at him and felt real fear, the kind where you're in a dream but moving in slow motion. "What's going on?" I squeaked out.

Dad paced the room, looking at Katie, then back at me. The glow in his eyes faded but his face remained livid.

"Take her home."

"Won't she remember what happened?"

He sniffed. "She's so drunk I doubt she'l remember anything. Especialy not after I cut you off."

"You're the one who did that?" I asked.

He said nothing but turned and left, closing the door behind him.

I threw on my shirt and slid Katie's back on.

Otherwise, she stil had on most of her clothes, amazingly. I was stil trembling from fright and from the abrupt end to my carnal adventure.

I hefted Katie over my shoulder and loaded her into the Jetta. Dad stood near the doorway his face calm but sad.

"What's going on, Dad?"

"I'l tel you when you get back. Now go."

I hopped in the car and drove to Katie's house. It was late and the windows were al dark. I hoped fervently I didn't wake anyone up because her parents would
freak
. I took the keys from Katie's bag

I slid the key into the lock and slowly twisted it.

The deadbolt opened without a sound. The lock on the doorknob responded with a low click. I eased open the door. The hinges squeaked. My heart thudded. I paused and listened with my enhanced hearing. I heard slow breathing. No walking or anything else to indicate someone was up and about. I put Katie over my shoulder and crept up the stairs, my intrusion aided by a nightlight in the upstairs hal and in the only bedroom with an open door. I figured out quickly that the open room was hers. The excessive amount of pink on the wals confirmed it. What was it with girls and pink?

After depositing her under the covers, I made good my escape, engaging the bottom lock as I left.

Dad was pacing in the foyer when I got home. He placed his hands on my shoulders and stared at me, studying me like I was a science experiment gone wrong.

"It's about time you showed up," I said. "I need some answers."

He took a step back. "Yeah. I guess we need to have the talk after al."

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a little past needing to know about the birds and the bees."

"I'm wel aware of that, son. This is a different talk."

Dad seemed vastly altered. Confidence and authority radiated from him as opposed to drunkenness and apathy. Usualy, Mom was the one I thought of as wearing the family pants.

I grabbed a glass of water and took a seat at the table. "Man, I'm al ears. Please tel me you know what I am and why I can seduce women with brain waves. And
please
don't tel me I'm a faerie."

"I almost don't know where to start." He shook his

"I almost don't know where to start." He shook his head. "I honestly didn't think you would become like us.

Like me. You're kind of a late bloomer."

"Wait a cotton-picking minute. You have the same abilities?" I guess it should have occurred to me after the way he'd tossed me across the room. Glowing eyes should have been a clue as wel. On the upside, that probably meant my eyes could glow too which was realy cool. I imagined flicking the glow off and on in the dark so I could scare the pants off kids at Haloween.

"Of course I do," he said. "You are, after al, my son."

"And Mom's like us too?"

"Ah," he said with a sigh. "Your mother is another matter altogether."

"Okay, wel find a starting point and fil me in. Am I a vamprey? A fader?"

He put a finger to his chin and gazed at the wal behind me for a moment, then seemed to come to some conclusion. "You are an incubus."

The word sounded familiar but I couldn't place it.

"Okay, that doesn't help at al."

"We're the male version of a succubus."

The string quartet in my head struck a note of horror. I expected to see lightning outside and hear the roar of thunder as a spooky organ played in the background. I jumped up from my chair and nearly toppled the table.

"We're demons?" I couldn't think of anything worse. I'd rather be an evil faerie than a demon!

"Calm down, Justin. It's not as bad as you think."

I started hyperventilating. "We're demons, Dad.

Demons! Oh my God—can I even say that anymore without worrying about getting struck by helfire? Or is it heavenfire?"

"Sit down," he said with a firm note in his voice.

I dropped into my chair. Pain gripped my heart with steel talons. Elyssa had been right about me. I was a monster, one-hundred percent evil, doomed to Hel.

"We're not pure demons, not in the sense myth has portrayed us. We are in fact very much like humans—on the outside anyway—though our needs are more like vampires. "

"I was dating a vampire." My heart hurt with the thought of Elyssa.

He quirked an eyebrow. "You
dated
a vampire?

Are you sure?"

"I saw her fangs, Dad. Right after she kicked my butt."

Dad quirked both eyebrows. "Son, vampires don't date our kind. They feed on them." He blew out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. "I think you had better start at the beginning. I get the feeling you've gotten yourself in quite a mess."

"No thanks to you. First you drink yourself into a stupor, and then you vanish off the face of the earth. Where have you been?"

He blanched and put a hand to his forehead. "I'm ashamed of myself, Justin. I've let you down and put us both in danger. Tel me when this started and everything that's happened."

I sighed and glared at him. That was no explanation and he wasn't close to earning my forgiveness. But I told him the story anyway, starting with the disastrous drunk episode that turned me into a pariah, then worked my way to the gym and Stacey and my near deflowering at the hands of the woman in the grocery store. By the time I reached the end, Dad had covered his face with both hands from sheer embarrassment and probably amazement I'd survived so far.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," he said. "I guess you've done okay for a clueless teenager."

"That doesn't make me feel very good."

"That doesn't make me feel very good."

"To survive the attentions of a felycan is quite a feat."

"Was the big cat I fought a felycan?"

"No, that sounds like a moggy. Those are strays or aley cats felycans mutate into guardian forms. They use them as drones to guard or to attack and they're tough to kil."

"Wel someone or something cut that moggy's head off."

"You must have a guardian angel."

"Angels are real too?"

He chuckled. "I didn't mean it in that sense.

Felycans are solitary creatures unless they have mates. You were obviously in her lair, and that was probably one of her moggies. As to who kiled it, that's anyone's guess."

"Can felycans infect humans like werewolves do?"

"I'm not realy sure what they're capable of. They're very rare, and I've only met one. They do like our type though. If you weren't protected by your mother, she might have leeched your essence dry."

"How is Mom protecting me? She wasn't even there."

"There's so much to explain. Maybe I should just tel you the essentials and teach you the rest over time."

"Just what I need. Supernatural kindergarten."

"Our real last name is not Case. It's Slade."

The memory of my parents arguing popped into my head.
Dear old Daddy Slade
, Mom had said.

"So that's what you and mom were talking about.

Who is Daddy Slade?"

"He would be your grandfather."

"Why haven't I met him?"

Dad shook his head. "If I have my way, you'l never meet my family. Justin, demon spawn have a bad reputation for a reason. In fact, it's why your mother and I took on the last name Case. We've been hiding from both of our families for years."

I hazarded a guess. "The Conroys, too?"

His eyes widened. "How did you know that?"

"The private eyes you hired. Were you looking for Mom?"

"Yes. I have to find her, son." A tear trickled down his cheek. "Life isn't worth living without your loved ones."

I wondered how he, or I for that matter,
could
love. We were demon spawn. Was the love I felt realy an ilusion after al? Stil, the thought of Mom being in danger from the Slades or the Conroys choked me with fear. "Are the Conroys as bad as the Slades?"

Dad nodded. "They're sorcerers."

I snapped my fingers. "That would totaly explain the frogs and rats."

"So, you listened to my voicemail."

"You're darned right I did. I needed answers and you weren't here to give them." I stood up and paced restlessly, grabbing an apple from the fridge and taking a bite. "I take it Mom is also demon spawn?"

Dad leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair.

"Your mother and her family are human."

"I'l bet her family didn't like the idea of having you as a son-in-law."

"No more than my family wanted me to marry a human." He twirled a pen on the table, his eyes giving it a thousand-mile stare. "My kind colectively cals itself Daemos, though everyone else refers to us as spawn. Had I not left home I would have been forced to mate with my sisters, my mother, and other female relatives. I would have been little more than a stud horse for breeding."

I spat apple chunks al over the place. "Mate with your sisters and mom? Holy crap, Dad! What kind of family do you come from?"

"Inbreeding doesn't affect spawn like it does

"Inbreeding doesn't affect spawn like it does humans." His eyes left the pen and settled on me. "But it's revolting and I'l have nothing to do with it."

"Good lord. Don't I have any normal relatives?"

"Define normal."

Considering I wasn't even human, I supposed my life wasn't meant to be ful of your typical nuclear family activities. "If Mom is human, does that mean I'm half human?"

"Spawn consider interspecies breeding disgusting and repugnant."

"As if sex with your relatives isn't the worst ever!"

A chuckle lit his face for a moment. "True. We hadn't seen the result of a spawn-human mating in centuries, but it's rumored the resulting children are born true—either entirely human, or spawn."

"But don't spawn have sex with humans when they're feeding?"

"Oh yes. But never mistake feeding for breeding."

"Have I told you how mental your family is?" Talk about double standards. "So I can't be half-and-half?"

"I don't think so. You appear to have inherited the skilset from my side of the family. As such, that would mean you are pure spawn. Like me, you are souless."

Another wave of panic hit me when I realized what he was saying. I took a deep breath to banish an anxiety attack. "I don't have a soul? Oh, God this sucks."

"Our demonic nature gives us a form of immortality in exchange for souls, or so I've been told. "

I fought back the dread until another thought burst into my mind.
How can I have a soulmate if I don't have
a soul?
Was true love even possible for my kind? Had Elyssa been right about me from the start? This was horrible news.

I found my voice. "This makes no sense. Do vampires have souls?"

He shrugged. "I believe they forfeit their human souls for immortality, but I'm no specialist. Your mother and I escaped the supernatural life and tried to make normal lives. But you'l have nothing approaching a normal life if I don't teach you to use your powers responsibly."

"Better late than never, I guess." My dread morphed into anger. How could I have been so blind al this time? It seemed my parents might have told me something.

But if I'd turned out human maybe they would have worried me over nothing.

Dad's voice broke through my stony silence.

"Justin, listen to me. The world is far more dangerous than you know. When you feed on psychic energy, your activity burns bright like a beacon. Any nearby leech can feel it.

That includes felycans and vampires. Werewolves can smel our kind especialy wel when we're leeching. While they probably won't interfere, vampires regard us as something of a rare treat. Not only is our blood like a fine wine to them, but some believe it can increase their vampiric abilities. Imagine being reduced to a living wine cask for vampires."

I shuddered at the image. "Point taken."

"Also, there are ways to feed without exposing yourself. You've been going about it a bit too enthusiasticaly."

"I did feed on those laughing guys in the bathroom."

"Exactly. I've found comedy clubs to be a good focal point of positive energy. Passive feeding takes longer and is less satisfying but it wil keep your nature hidden.

That, I think, wil be the first lesson I teach you."