Free Blood Hunter (The Grandor Descendant Series) by Bell Stoires Page A

dream. I don’t so much regret it, as I fear it… forgetting them and the people I loved before.”
     
    Ari couldn’t help but feel saddened at these words. Was that one of the consequences of becoming a vampire; forgetting who you were and supressing mortal memories so as to make way for immortal ones? Perhaps it helped with the acceptance of taking lives? The desire to kill and drink blood was so opposite to everything human. Pondering this, Ari thought about Sandra; she had changed so much in such a short time, all because she had lost Larissa. Had she lost her humanity too?   
     
    “It kind of feels like being reborn,” Ryder added, dragging Ari from her thoughts, “like everything before I became a vampire was just a story that I read.”
     
    “Have you spoken to your mum and dad since?”
     
    She knew the relationship between Ryder’s parents had not been perfect, especially since he had come out of the closet, but she couldn’t imagine that they would just let their only son disappear from their lives without so much as a phone call.
     
    “I told them that I was travelling overseas,” he said indifferently. “Patrick made me call them on our way over here so that they wouldn’t worry.”
     
    “That’s not exactly a long term solution.”  
     
    Ryder shrugged and added, “Patrick says that in a few years we will stage my death. Apparently it is the most common way that vampires disappear, so that family and friends don’t search for you.”
     
    “But… how?”
     
    “I gather it’s not that difficult. Pat said that when a fledgling is ready to die , they request in their will that they are buried in a cemetery and then just wait and leave after the burial. He said that most vamps set up a trust fund that is in their family name and that way they can still keep their possessions,” he explained, “otherwise they leave everything to their maker and then get it from them later.”  
     
    Ari felt her mouth open involuntarily in horror. How could Ryder be so indifferent at planning his own funeral?
     
    “But, won’t you be sad?” she asked.
     
    “I won’t really be dead Ari,” he said, a small gleeful smile sweeping across his handsome face.
     
    “No, I mean sad because you can’t see your parents anymore.”
     
    For the first time Ryder seemed to understand her; there was a shadow darkening his eyes that reminded her of the boy she had spent so many months with when she was a child.
     
    He looked at her, his blue eyes meeting hers and said, “Patrick says that when he was turned he had lost all of his family. That was the only reason he wanted to become a vampire. I think that is why he didn’t turn me right away. After the first night I met him, I asked him to turn me. But he made me wait; told me that I had to be sure what I would be giving up. He said he didn’t care that it would be breaking the Final Death Laws or possibly angering Nickolas and William; he just wanted me to be certain. I don’t think he understood why I would want to give up my family to become a vampire.”
     
    “What?” asked Ari, recalling the way she had been angered with Patrick, thinking that he had lulled Ryder and forced him to become a vampire.
     
    “Yea,” said Ryder, “he said that when he met his maker, Mark, that he would never have agreed to become a vampire if his family were still there. They were his rock. But when they died he had nothing left to hang onto, so he decided to take up Mark’s offer and become a vamp.”   
     
    Ari let these words sink in. Even after hearing Ryder’s explanation, she still couldn’t imagine what being a vampire was truly like. How could you forget who your parents were, or stop caring for your loved ones? Though she had no memories of her mum and dad, she still fantasied about what they would have been like. Ryder had got to spend more than twenty years with his family, but after only a few months with Patrick, he was ready to let them