Free Chosen by Blood by Virna Depaul

don’t tell” European policy he’d mentioned to Mahone couldn’t be sustained for long. The vamp vaccine had been widely distributed overseas, forcing Europe’s full vamps more and more into the shadows. That meant, whether they hid their true natures or not, they were practically on the verge of extinction. Moreover, although the rest of the world, when pressed, acknowledged the existence of Others within America’s borders, it refused to recognize them within their own. Most countries had even enacted certain visa restrictions that would, in effect, if not in express language, limit the right of any recognizable Others to cross into their land.
    Thomas came to his sister’s rescue. “Madam Serena, I’m a little confused.”
    “About what, Thomas?”
    “Mademoiselle Burgeon seemed to be very fond of Papa, but he’d never met her before. How can that be?”
    A short pause, then Serena said, “Friendships can be formed across great distances, Thomas. You have a pen pal in France yourself, do you not?”
    “Yesssss,” Thomas drawled. “But when I met him, he didn’t cling to me half the time. Not the way Mademoiselle Burgeon did with Papa.”
    Knox winced. Michelle had been extremely touchy the first few days, before she’d finally accepted Knox’s love for Felicia was real and unwavering.
    “Well, I’m sure—”
    “Do you know what else confuses me?” Thomas interrupted, clearly having lost interest in Michelle.
    Serena sighed. “What’s that?”
    “While in France, my cousin Bernard said Grandfather didn’t die as a soldier in the French Revolution, but because he was a traitor.”
    Instinctively, Knox flinched.
    “Thomas,” Serena whispered, then shushed him. Knox imagined her looking fearfully toward the doorway, but he’d already ducked out of sight. His heart pounded as he listened.
    “I told Bernard he was a liar, but he said Grandfather admitted it. Admitted that he told his friend, André Calmart, how to kill vamps.”
    “His name was Calmet and your cousin Bernard is a troublemaker,” Serena hissed. “You need to forget that name.”
    “But why?” Joelle asked. “If Grandfather was friends with Calmet, he can’t have been bad.”
    Knox closed his eyes as a voice from the past—his own voice—swirled around him. “My father isn’t a traitor,” he’d told Dante Prime, Zeph’s father. “So what if Calmet writes of vampires. That doesn’t mean Father told him anything.”
    In response, Prime had read Knox a passage from Calmet’s
    Dissertations sur les apparitions, des anges, des démons et des esprits, et sur les revenants et vampires de Hongrie, de Boheme, de Moravie et de Silésie , a book in which the Catholic Church officially acknowledged the existence of vampirism for the first time. In that passage, Calmet had provided details, including the fact a vamp couldn’t turn a human without dying himself, and the one way to kill a vamp, by ripping out his heart and burning it. The only logical conclusion was that Calmet’s friend, Jacques Devereaux, had revealed secrets he’d sworn to take to his grave. Calmet’s book, Prime said, was the reason why the vampire mortality rate had skyrocketed during the French Revolution, leading to the deaths of over one-third of Knox’s clan, a clan that hadn’t been that large to begin with.
    Still, Knox had refused to believe him. Even at twelve years of age, he’d remained unwavering in his belief that his beloved father would never willingly give humans the ability to kill vamps.
    Until his father had confessed to doing just that.
    “Stop pulling my hair, Thomas!”
    Joelle’s shriek brought Knox back to the present. Shaking his head, he cleared his throat, then entered the room.
    “Papa,” the twins cried simultaneously before launching themselves at him. “Where have you been?”
    “Discussing business with your Uncle Zeph, who is lying down for a nap, so please don’t disturb him, okay?”
    Thomas laughed maniacally,