Free Braced to Bite by Serena Robar Page A

officially call myself a vampire without it?”
    “No—you aren’t fully Blooded, that’s why you can’t call yourself a vampire. You are too many generations removed from the original vampires to actually be one.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Your attacker, Charles Winthrop, is a fully Blooded vampire, but we estimate he is twelfth or thirteenth generation. We aren’t entirely sure, but we do know his offspring are not fully Blooded. Mongrels, if you will.”
    I’m not a vampire?! I’m a half-blooded mongrel?! Oh, I don’t think so.
    “So even though you have vampire characteristics, you are not a true vampire,” Thomas finished.
    “I see. Tell me what characteristics a true vampire has.”
    “Well, we can’t go in the sunlight; are burned by holy water; must feed daily; have superhuman strength, speed and hearing. Also, we have a finely tuned sense of smell, and we are immortal.”
    “That’s it in a nutshell then?”
    He smiled at my comment.
    “Do half-bloods tend to have some of the characteristics?” I asked.
    “Yes, they can have any combination but never at the same capacity of a Blooded vampire.”
    “Probably gives you Blooded guys a feeling of real superiority over us poseurs, huh?” I said it teasingly, but he nodded as though I was serious.
    “We are superior—and there are no other half-bloods. The license process ensures that no genetic mutants are created.”
    Genetic mutants?! No one calls me a genetic mutant, no matter how hot they look in jeans!
    “Seems like your vampire license process just doesn’t work,” replied the resentful genetic mutant half-blood.
    He nodded in agreement.
    “Occasionally a vampire goes rogue. They can’t handle the new system; it’s too much for them. They become unstable and want to start their own clan.”
    “How new is this system?” I envisioned a process that was still so young, a lot of the vampires weren’t ready to adapt.
    “Only about two hundred years old.”
    Wow!
    “How long have you been a vampire?”
    “I was turned during the war.”
    I didn’t want to sound stupid but if the law was considered young at 200 years old, then Thomas could be referring to any number of wars. Human history was jam-packed with them.
    “Which war?”
    “World War Two.”
    So he was around eighty years old, give or take a few. It wasn’t fair that gramps here still looked like a college boy and now that I knew his real age, I was still infatuated with him. Was I creepy or what?
    I looked down at his hands. Sure enough, he was wearing a ring similar to Chuck’s but not nearly as old. I played dumb. “What’s that?”
    “My license.” He held his hand out for me to see.
    “Can I hold it?”
    He smiled. “Sorry, it only comes off when I’m dead.”
    “Eek,” I muttered, looking it over across the table. “Looks old.”
    “Not really. I am relatively young. I didn’t have a license in the beginning either, you know.”
    Now that was intriguing. “Really? Tell me about it.”
    “I was stationed in Germany, in the war. We marched on Normandy and during the fighting I was separated from my unit. I was terrified, I’m not ashamed to tell you. Anyway, I was hiding until daylight so I could find my unit without getting shot by patrols when this German soldier is suddenly right next to me. I didn’t hear a thing. I thought for sure I was a goner. It was odd he didn’t reach for a weapon. No gun, no knife, nothing. I was struggling to get my gun when he told me to stop, and I did. I just looked at him and was filled with numbness. I couldn’t move. He told me to look at the stars and I did, then he fed upon me.”
    I was transfixed by his story, remembering the sensation of numbness but also remembering that I was able to fight it off.
    Thomas continued, “When he drank his fill, I was barely alive. I don’t know why he did it, but he opened his own vein and made me drink. He created me.”
    “What happened then?” I was fully