One Lucky Vampire(60)

Jake had grown up on vampire movies, and in those movies the vampires were always the bad guys. Finding out about “the family” had been like waking up to find himself in the middle of a horror movie. It had been even worse to find out that his mother had been turned and that his little brother, who he had adored from birth, had been born one. But the unforgivable bit had been learning that they all, including his little brother, had used their abilities to control him to keep him from realizing what they were before he was old enough to decide if he wished to join them.

Jake had avoided the rest of the family after that, but he couldn’t do the same with his little brother. It wasn’t Neil’s fault that he was born the way he was, so Jake’s interaction with the family had been limited mostly to his brother and mother. He’d avoided the rest of them as much as he could, but it was pretty much impossible to avoid a Notte who didn’t want to be avoided . . . unless you ran away and disappeared, which he hadn’t done until he was turned and became one of the “bad guys.”

“There you go,” Dante said and Jake peered at him blankly.

“What?”

Dante and Tomasso exchanged a glance, shook their heads in unison and then Tomasso said, “Nicole is willing to listen. Tell her.”

“Tell her what?” he asked with alarm. He’d rather hoped the two of them were going to do that for him. It had certainly seemed like they were going to.

“We are here to help, not do it for you,” Dante said dryly.

“Besides, maybe in the explaining, you’ll understand better,” Tomasso said quietly.

Jake peered at the man silently for a moment and then glanced to Nicole. She was eyeing the three of them uncertainly, prepared to listen, but obviously not sure she was going to like what was coming. The problem was, he wasn’t sure either. Breathing out unhappily, he said, “I—you see—it’s—”

He turned to Dante helplessly and the man clucked with exasperation and turned to Nicole to announce, “We’re vampires.”

“We’re not!” Jake denied at once, smiling reassuringly at Nicole.

“Yes, we are,” Tomasso argued.

Jake scowled at him and then assured Nicole, “We aren’t. We’re immortals. Vampires are cursed, soulless dead people. We are not cursed, soulless, or dead. In fact, I was turned seven years ago to save my life.”

“Yeah, but we’re still bloodsucking neck biters,” Dante told Nicole. “And that’s what everyone thinks of when they think vampire so you might as well just call us vampires.”

“We are not bloodsucking neck biters!” Jake snapped, eyeing Nicole with alarm, afraid they were going to scare her off. Smiling reassuringly, he said, “I have never, ever bitten anyone. And these guys only did it before blood banks, because they had to, to survive. We consume bagged blood from blood banks, like transfusions, like hemophiliacs do. I have never ever bitten anyone,” he repeated.

“You tried to bite her,” Tomasso reminded him.

“Like some Stoker monster,” Dante added.

Jake jerked his head to the man and nearly snarled with frustration. “I was sick and in agony and out of my head with blood loss. I’m not a monster.”

“Neither are we,” Dante said quietly.

Jake sat back as if he’d been slapped. Ever since finding out about what his mother had become and what the Notte family were, Jake had thought of them as monsters. The kind who acted all friendly and lured you in with candy and cookies like you were Hansel or Gretel. Only once they got you back to their little cottage in the woods, instead of revealing themselves to be a witch, they sprouted fangs and swept you up in a dark embrace so they could suck your blood.

He’d been afraid of them, Jake acknowledged. He’d seen all those horror movies as a boy, labeled these people he’d known all his life as vampires, and had been terrified of them. And then, once he was turned, he’d feared that now that he was one of them, he too was a monster. But while he’d tried to bite Nicole the night he was so sick, he had been out of his head, and he’d felt guilty as hell ever since waking up to the recollection. Monsters did not feel guilty.

Being turned had not changed who he was, Jake realized. He was still the same man inside, with the same values and beliefs. He was just healthier, looked younger, was a hell of a lot stronger, and was likely to enjoy a much longer life.

Jake glanced from Dante to Tomasso. These two men had been nothing but kind to him since he’d first met them as a boy. Even when he’d found out what they, and all the others were, they’d remained kind, responding to his attempt to shun them and shut them out of his life with patience and kindness. They’d just been waiting for him to get over his fears and realize that carrying the nanos that made them immortals did not make him, or them, less than human. That he was still a real boy.