Free Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions by Susan Sizemore Page A

three-carat diamond set in platinum she currently wore on the third finger of her left hand. She was such a romantic.
    “Perhaps I haven’t conveyed the gravity of the situation to you,” he confessed, gentle and contrite. “You, my love, are being ordered to leave your home. You, me, and everyone in your nest have been given an eviction notice. We must go, and it is not right.”
    “Go?” Rose caught his gaze, and he felt her looking deep into his mind—or, as deep as he would let her. A part of his mind was open, the thoughts he placed there easy for her to read. For all her great psychic talent, Rose was a simple person. He saw worry finally begin to crease her lovely, smooth brow after she had examined his thoughts for a while. She drew her hands from his and sat up from her languid pose, pushing herself away from the luxury of the pillows. “This cannot be true,” she declared.
    He nodded slowly. “It is, my love. The hag’s slave gave the order as if it meant nothing. As if you meant nothing.”
    Rose blinked huge blue eyes at him, eyes that finally held a hint of comprehension. “This is my home. This has always been my home.”
    “I know how you love this place.”
    She rose up off the bed, not with her usual grace, but with the speed of a vampire. She moved across the room to stand before the fireplace and gaze at the portrait over the mantel. From the style and the dress of the man in the portrait, Bentencourt guessed that the painting dated from some time in the late seventeenth century. The man in the painting was fine boned and had a square, cleft chin, but was not particularly handsome. The style of his clothing showed that he was a well-off merchant orlandowner, a solid, middle-class gentleman, perhaps. And probably a vampire, for he was pale, a candelabra blazed on a table beside him, and a full moon showed through an open window behind his head. Bentencourt assumed this was a portrait of the vampire that had sired Rose, but he had never noticed her pay any attention to it until now.
    “This is my home,” she insisted. Her fingers stroked the finely carved wood of the mantel, then she picked up and put down several pieces of the bric-a-brac that rested on the shelf beneath the painting, including a small, tapestry-covered box. “Our home.” He got the impression she spoke not to him, or even to herself, but to the man in the painting. “I’m an American vampire.” She chuckled. “Sometimes I’ve even thought about applying for membership in the DAR. That’s how long I’ve been here. Longer. A good American. In England I was just an ignorant girl who told fortunes in a highwayman’s tavern. When the king’s soldiers cleaned out that thieves den, I was loaded onto a ship without so much as a trial. Sent as a bondservant to the new world. I made it my world. I was worked hard, and I nearly starved that first year. I nursed the sick when the swamp fever came. I hated the man who owned me and loved the land like I’d never loved the place where I was born. Then one night I heard a call in my head and ran away from the farm, ran into the woods, into the night, into the arms of a good man who took my blood and taught me how to kill to survive. I learned how to love, how to think, how to fend for myself. Ours was the first nest in the colonies. Only one for a long time. When I made the change, we stayed together because there was no one else who could foster me. We obeyed the laws, never touched each other again, and we both took companions when I was old enough to feel the need. We cleared the land and worked it, and our slaves were bought with blood, not caring about the color of their skins but the spark of magic that makes the weak need to serve the strong. The tobacco merchantsbuilt their port town around our land. We fought in the war for independence and the war with the British in 1812 and used our magic to call up the storm that kept the city from being completely burned when the