My Vampire Queen

I fight, I scream, I head-butt someone. I know because they yelp and I smell the tangy scent of blood. After getting thrown into the back of a car a knife is pressed to my throat and I stop my movements. There’s a cackle from the front seat of the car and the higher-pitched voice of a woman says. “Good, I don’t want you to die before I get a chance to even see if your worth taking in.”

So this is Elizabeth.

I don’t respond to her, I try to see through the bag they’ve put over my head. As we drive all I see are flashing lights through the holes of the bag, not able to make anything out. I try to keep my bearings and focus on where we are going but it’s hard with all the turns and how the driver speeds up and slows down in an instant. I hear a humming that comes from where Elizabeth is. “Don’t worry about your Blood, my magic stops them from feeling your bond. When we’ve had a chat I might let them come back to you.”

I wasn’t too worried about them, they had me turn on the tracker on my phone and link it to Nathans. They would be close behind. There’s a slap of a hand against the leather. “Why don’t you talk? I know you’re not mute, I saw you speaking to those humans.”

My face twists up at her, even though she can’t see. The knife is pulled from my neck and I’m jerked to sit upright in the back of the car. I can tell I’m between two people, men I think from the size of them. Cold metal is pressed to my side, just the flat of the blade to remind me that it’s there.

“Why the hell were you dancing with humans anyway?” The tone tells me she finds it very distasteful, like how dare I fraternize with humans. That’s something that’s going to probably be the same throughout all of the Queen’s I’ll meet and it’s not a good sign for how our future as a whole would go. There’s a snort from Elizabeth. “Fine, well talk at the nest.”

She sounded like she was pouting like I gave a fuck about her feelings when she kidnapped me. I just settled back into the seat of the car, crossing my arms over my chest. Sure I was now pouting, but I had a goddamn reason for it.

We drive for what feels like at least an hour before the road turns to a gravel one. The car makes a smooth turn on the gravel and comes to a slow stop. The passenger door is open then slammed shut a second later, the other doors are open and I’m dragged out by one side. I’m dragged half-carried by two people on either side of me. I’m brought into a house I think, judging by the overwhelming smell of something floral and the opening and closing of doors.

I’m dropped onto the floor, I have to steady myself so I don’t fall over. The bag is ripped off my head my hands go to my hair to smooth it down. Looking around I cringe at the room I’m in. Now I like the color pink, but there is a limit to how many shades of pink I like at once. This room overdoes it completely. Baby pink couches with white floral, white coffee table with pink flowers painted on the legs, walls that are a rose gold color, and a chandelier with pink crystals. If the walls and rug on the ground weren’t pink the rest might work.

“Now we can talk,” Elizabeth said. I look over at her, and somehow she looks exactly what I had guessed she would look like. A few inches taller than myself, with what I’d guess is natural blond hair pulled up into a styled bun her makeup is light in mostly pink shades. She looks me over just as much as I am her.

When she looks down she heaves out a sigh and turns her nose up. “A tattoo really? I thought the humans were bad enough.”

Her hands are placed on her hips when I don’t answer right away. I just look around the room, noting two of her Blood are here. At least I assume they are her Blood, both are average height and build with blond hair and blue eyes. Pretty jock boys. When I look back to Elizabeth she raises her brows as to say ‘Well?’ I scoff at her. “You literally kidnapped me and you expect me to play nice?”

“I expect you to act like a Queen.” She hisses out and my brows raise at her audacity. “What kind of third-world nest were you raised in?”

“What kind of fucking delusions are you having?” I ask her back and she frowns. “You can’t just kidnap people and ask them to behave themselves.”

She sneers at me then snaps her fingers looking back behind her. Two women are escorted into the room by two more Blood, at least I assume they are Elizabeth’s Blood. They look very similar to the other two already in the room. When she looks back at me she gives me what some would say is a sweet smile. “I found them, and they behave themselves.”

The women who come into the room look incredibly uncomfortable. One of them is tall and willowy, she reminds me of one of the elves from the movies. The graceful ones that have a beauty that’s hard to put words to. She has curly brown hair that just brushes her shoulders, her skin is a deep tan and she is clutching her arms to her middle. The shorter one has a body type similar to mine, her hair is a dirty blond pulled back into a quick braid. I notice her nose has a bump in it and it’s slightly crooked, and there’s a spatter of freckles across her face.

“Silva and Sarah,” Elizabeth said without bothering to tell me which is which. Both women only glance at me to acknowledge that I was there, both look like they had been dragged in here from bed. They clearly didn’t want to be here, and I was glad. I didn’t want to fight more people than I had to. “Are you going to tell us your name at least?”

“Are you going to tell me yours?” I shoot back.

Her face drops into a frown for a split second, when she smiles again she says. “I am Elizabeth Maxwell, descendant of Aphrodite.”

That makes me frown even harder. How was a descendant of Aphrodite so fucking crazy? Wasn’t she a Goddess of love or some shit?

When she starts making her way over to me, feet stomping as she gets closer I tell her my name with a sigh. “Luna Morningstar.”

Elizabeth stops right in front of me. “Morningstar? What weird name is that?”

I didn’t want to tell her Tyet just yet, something made me pause before I said it. Elizabeth’s head turns to the side as I hear a long loud howl, one that sounds like a wolf. When it ends she looks to her Blood. “Someone’s crossed the nest boundary.”

Her gaze falls to me next and I give her a sly smile. Looks like Tank did get through.We follow Nathan closely, the last thing we needed was to be split up. Nathan drives cars behind, we didn’t want them to know how close we were or that we were following in the first place. I couldn’t feel our Queen at all, and that is what worry’s me the most. If I could feel her emotions I then could at least hold myself together better. Not feeling her is stressing me out, enough that Vinny has to drive and Tank has to stay in the back. Tank is quickly getting worked up and I can feel his energy surrounding me in the car.

Tank is on the verge of wolfing out.

When Nathan turns onto a gravel road I let out a long breath. He drives until he comes to a quick stop and then I feel it, a nest boundary. Normally you can feel these a mile away, as I get out of the car I notice I can’t feel it until I’m almost on top of it. All of the car doors are open, I have to grab Tank by the back of his shirt before he can take off towards the glow of the house. He snarls at me and I have the urge to whack him on the nose. “Calm, give me a moment then I will let you run in.”

He snarls again, it sounding more dog-like than human. He stops fighting my hold so I drop his shirt. I turn to Nathan who points to the short human first. “This is Jaxon and Marcus. Bjorn, Vinny and Tank.”

Nathan points to each one of us as he introduces us. Marcus looks at us like we are all crazy. “Are we going in to help her or not? What are we doing out here?”

To answer him I reach out with my hand, once my hand touches the nest boundary it lights up in an area around my hand in a transparent red. Both human’s mouths drop open and when I try to push into the boundary light crackles and I have to jerk back with the feeling of being shocked. As I shake out the numbness of my hand I tell them. “Nathan, Vinny, and I can’t go in because of the boundary. You two can’t go in because they will slaughter you. Tank on the other hand.”

Both of them look straight over to Tank. Tank pulls his shirt over his head tossing it aside, his back ripples with the start of the change. I’ve never seen a werewolf or a shifter change, I’ve only heard it explained. But nothing could have prepared me to see Tank change. His skin shifts, stretching with the movement of bones underneath, and fur grows in patches, covering some of the gross shifting of his body. All of us are silent for the two minutes it takes for him to shift fully into the seven-foot wolfman he is. His jeans are ripped at the ankles from his wolf-like feet, his gold necklace is tight around his throat like a collar. He looks like a thing out of a horror movie.

“Don’t kill anyone if you can manage it, I want our Queen to decide their fates,” I tell him. Tank throws his head back letting out a long howl that raises the hair on my arms. When he runs head first into the boundary I cringe, it turns red but he’s able to push into it and he’s off towards the house.

“W-what the fuck?” Jaxon says the same moment Marcus says the same thing.

“He’s a werewolf,” Nathan said to them like it isn’t apparent. “And we are vampires.”

Both mouths drop open again, and Marcus moves like he tries to think of something to say. A light coming up the driveway pulls my attention from them. The roar of a motorcycle is followed by a small sleek thing with someone not much smaller than Nathan. I can smell the Amina on them as they park, black helmet hiding who they are.

“The new Blood?” Vinny questions and I nod. They didn’t feel like a threat.

They get off and I question if the new Blood is a woman, tight leather pants to show off their ass, but the leather jacket is bulky and zipped up all of the way. They don’t stop to greet us and I think I’m correct in saying she is a woman when she yells. “Sorry!”

She runs past the boundary, no lights not even one confirming an Amina is passing. That.. is a scary thought that a Amina can hold that power. I’m just glad that she had been called to our Queen.

“Is anyone going to explain anything?” Marcus asks, his voice strained. The man is trying to hold his shit together. While we wait for Tank and the new Blood to get to our Queen and break this nest boundary I guess we had time to speak to the humans. Luckily Nathan starts talking - he tends to do that when he’s stressed out, for once I’m thankful for his chattiness.