Without Regret

Frowning, Chris asked, “How do you know she’s untrained?”

Eric’s lips twitched. “Oh, we have a pretty good idea.”

“I don’t understand why you brought her here,” Chris said, wondering why they didn’t just take her to the Boston compound to interrogate her. Then a thought occurred to him. “Did you know that she was my mate?”

“I need you to head the team that’s going to keep her safe. Five hours ago our intelligence division discovered this woman is on every Master’s wish list. Whatever she has, they want badly enough to work together to get her.”

“Fuck me,” he breathed. The Masters working together was no laughing matter. They were like drug lords defending their territory while killing and scheming to steal more. The last time they worked together was over twenty years ago during the uprising and before that it had been a good four hundred years. For them to all come together even momentarily for a woman was bad.

Very bad.

“Are they going to share her?” he asked.

Eric nodded. “That’s the plan. Our sources tell us there’s a lot of bitching about who gets her first, but the game plan is to share whatever the hell it is she can do.”

“What can she do?”

“That’s the really f**ked up part. We don’t know. She won’t tell us, but whatever it is, it’s bringing an alliance among the vampires and that’s bad enough. If they get their hands on her we could seriously be f**ked.”

“Shit,” Chris said, hating what he was about to suggest it, but if it could stop a massacre what other choice did they really have. “If she’s that big of a risk maybe we should cut to the chase and discard her.”

“Can’t do that either.” Eric ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “To answer your earlier question, Chris, I knew she was your mate. We’re hoping you can use your connection with her to find out what the hell she’s done to give every Master in the world a hard on.”

Chris frowned as Eric continued. “You have two Pytes here, ten Sentinel homes set up within a fifty mile radius to provide Marc with protection until he undergoes his change.” His little brother was basically human except for the need to drink blood with his Cheerios in the morning.

Marc would be vulnerable until he turned sixteen and went into a coma. When he woke up he would be changed into a full grown man, strong, fast, have fangs and most importantly never die. It wasn’t surprising that the Sentinel council wanted and protected him.

Even if he never worked for the Sentinels they wanted to make sure they influenced Marc.

Their greatest fear was an army of enhanced vampires that only a Pyte could create. It also didn’t hurt that Ephraim was already working for the Sentinels and that made the council extremely pleased to have another Pyte among their ranks and were more than happy to wait for Marc’s transition.

That day couldn’t come fast enough for Chris’ peace of mind. Right now the boy was as weak as a human, albeit a human who had to drink blood to grow normally, but still very much human. When Ephraim had been a child he’d grown at a very slow rate, looking like a little boy until he went into a coma and his transformation started.

Chris liked to think of the entire Pyte progression as a process of elimination. First off, it is extremely rare for a male vampire to impregnate a human and completely impossible for them to impregnate a female vampire, although they could get pregnant by Pytes, or so he’d been told.

Of those pregnancies that did occur there was a fiftyfifty chance of the baby being a natural vampire. The baby would be a slightly stronger vampire, but still have all the setbacks a made-vampire had, aversion to holy relics, burn to a crisp in the sun and his personal favorite an allergy to Sentinel blood. Then of course there was the problem that the baby would eventually kill the mother by ripping her apart from the inside so it could get more blood. Once it was born it would have to be hunted down and killed since it was basically soulless and would kill without discrimination. Even Masters refused to allow them to live since they caused more problems than anything.

Then there were the babies who were born Pytes. They were extremely rare and for some reason were only males. Eric thought it had something to do with the DNA mutation, but nobody was sure. A few years ago Madison found herself pregnant for the second time and it had been a little girl. Everyone knew the odds of the baby being born alive were zilch, but that hadn’t stopped her or Ephraim from hoping.

He could still hear Madison’s anguished cries and his father’s roars when they lost the little girl. It was the first and only time he’d ever seen his father cry.

Although he knew the baby wasn’t going to survive he hadn’t been able to stop himself from picturing a beautiful little girl with long black hair, baby blue eyes and Madison’s sly little grin. He knew without a doubt he would have cherished that little girl and spoiled the hell out of her.

They’d all counted their blessings that Marc had survived the birth, and Madison since human woman never survived giving birth to Pytes. Ephraim had turned Madison early on in the pregnancy after she’d attracted the attention of a Master who wanted the baby for herself and would have done anything to get the baby had she lived. It was the same reason why they hid Marc and Madison’s existence.

From conception to about age sixteen Pytes were at risk since it was the only time they could be killed. After that they were truly immortal and were equally feared by every species on earth, well the species that were aware of them. Humans for the most part were still blissfully unaware of the world they really lived in and it was Chris’ job was to make sure it stayed that way.

That job would be made a hell of a lot harder if a Pyte ever decided to create an army.

That was every Sentinel’s fear, stronger, faster vampires and they’d do anything to make sure it never happened. Anything. If a Master ever got his or her hands on a Pyte child the council would do whatever it took to get their hands on that child before the transformation and if it appeared the child could not be reformed before it reached its immortality it would be destroyed.

Other Masters, demons and shifters acted just as violently when it came to Pyte children. If they couldn’t have them for themselves they would do whatever it took to destroy them before they became unstoppable since an army of stronger vampires could just as easily wipe out the demon and shifter population.

Chris’ eyes shot to his father just as the other man gently rubbed Madison’s stomach almost as if he couldn’t help himself. He really didn’t know how his father had managed to survive to his transformation.

Before Ephraim’s transformation he’d never consumed blood and it had made him very weak. He’d been very fortunate to survive. Most Pyte children weren’t so fortunate and died from simple human accidents or illnesses.

His brothers would never have to worry. He would make damn sure they made it to their transformations.

Chris thanked god everyday that no one outside their family except for a few select Sentinels knew about Marc’s existence. If word got out about Marc every Master in the world would storm their house to take the young boy. That was why he trained twice as hard and patrolled twice as long as everybody else. He’d do anything to protect his family.