Night's Master Read Online Free Page A

I were able to attend. We moved out of our parents’ home the next day.”
    “Just a happy Vampire family,” I murmured, intrigued by the story he had told me. I tried to imagine being married to a Vampire, having Vampire children, but it was a concept totally foreign to my way of thinking, to everything I believed in. Try as I might, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. And then I frowned. “What happened to your mother?” I supposed there was a slim chance she could still be alive, but if he was eighty-five, she would have to be well over a hundred.
    “She’s one of us now,” Raphael said. “My father brought her across when Rane and I reached adulthood.”
    “Did she want to be a Vampire?” I had never heard of anyone asking to join the ranks of the Undead.
    “Of course. My old man wouldn’t have turned her against her will.”
    “Was she the same, you know, afterward?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “And she was never sorry?”
    “Not that I know of. And you have to remember, her parents, her husband, and her sons were all Vampires. We made the transition easy for her.”
    “Did you watch it happen?”
    “No, although I wanted to.”
    I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to see such a thing, all that blood. Yuck!
    “It’s not such a bad life once you get used to it,” he said quietly.
    “Yeah, right.” Drinking blood, living only at night, giving up all my favorite foods, not being able to enjoy a sunny day or take a walk in the rain on a pretty spring morning. I was surprised the whole world wasn’t clamoring to join the ranks of the Undead. Not!
    “Sure, you have to give up some things,” he admitted, “but I’m never sick, never tired, I don’t age, all my senses are enhanced. And,” he said with a grin, “I don’t gain weight.”
    It would have been a good selling point if Vampires could eat anything they wanted. “Vampires don’t eat,” I muttered, trying to imagine a life without chocolate or cookies or ice cream. “Of course they don’t gain weight.”
    Rafe laughed. “True enough, but, like I said, it’s not a bad life.”
    Technically, he wasn’t alive at all, but I didn’t say that. “And now you’re the leader of the North American Vampires,” I remarked. “How did that happen?”
    He shrugged. “My godmother arranged it.”
    “You have a godmother?” I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if he had told me that he was related to Cinderella.
    “Yes.” He grinned, no doubt amused by the stunned expression that was surely on my face. “Her name is Mara, and she’s the oldest living of our kind. When we went to war with the Werewolves, our people decided we needed a leader. She was the obvious choice. She appointed others to positions of authority in various parts of the world. I was given North America, and my parents were given South America. My grandparents are looking after things in Europe. Last I heard, they were in France.”
    “What happened to your brother? Do you see him very often?”
    A dark shadow passed behind Cordova’s eyes. “I don’t know where he is.”
    I heard the knife-edge of pain in his voice, a soul-deep sorrow that went beyond tears.
    “No one in the family has seen Rane, or heard from him, in the last fifty years.”
    “What happened? Did you have a fight?”
    “No, nothing like that. Not all who are made Vampires react the same way. Some seek it and embrace it. Some are turned against their will. Some accept the change and move on. Some can’t adapt to their new lifestyle and quickly end it.”
    I held my breath. Was Rane one of those?
    “For me, it was a natural transformation,” Raphael said. “For Rane…” The pain in his eyes deepened. “At first, it seemed as though Rane had accepted it as I did. He was gifted with all the powers I had, and more.”
    “What do you mean ‘more’?”
    “He has a knack for magic, as well. It’s a potent combination.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “Oddly enough, my maternal