Read Online Prophecy of the Undead by Fiona McGier - Free Book Online Page B

her seat a couple of rows ahead of them. Before the plane had even taken off she snored loudly.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to create anything...” Keisha began quietly.
    Yuri smiled and patted the back of her hand, answering too quietly for most mortals to be able to hear, “You will learn. Better to practice on willing donors, though. I should have thought of that. No harm done. How do you feel?”
    “Warm and fed. I feel strength moving through me. The blood doesn’t seem to need any heartbeats to move it around.”
    “Not so gross this time?”
    Keisha shook her head.
    “Good. Now we can enjoy the flight.”
    Keisha settled back against the airplane seat and looked around.
    “So, this is what first class looks like, huh?”
    “Yes. Haven’t you ever flown it before?”
    She shook her head. “Hell no. I’ve only flown to present papers to international symposiums. Researchers are the grunt-work peons, so the best we can hope for is that they pay for our flights. Back before I worked for this lab, I used to have to buy my own tickets. Believe me; some of the pieces of crap I flew on were barely still flight-worthy.”
    “How fortunate for me that they got you up and down safely,” Yuri remarked dryly. “Already I feel as if my eternity would be much diminished had I not discovered you.”
    “Discovered? What am I? Some sort of lab rat to you?” Keisha’s eyes flashed with quick sparks of anger, yellow swirling in the center around the pupils.
    Yuri admired her eyes for an instant before he replied. “Your eyes are beautiful when you’re aroused,” he murmured in a low voice, which tickled her right down to her sex. Her inner muscles clenched in reaction to remembering their earlier shared pleasure. One of his hands covered hers on the armrest and caressed the skin of her fingers.
    “Stop that,” she said but the angry edge had left her voice.
    “To answer your question—I mean that I discovered you through your writings. I told you, I have asked questions since I was turned but no one knew or even cared about the answers. I have sought out the oldest ones I could find and even they had no idea how we came to be. My instincts tell me it is something in the blood, since we are all about the blood. Just what that is, I need someone with your special skills and intelligence to find out. When I followed the links to your published papers, I was excited to read your words and fascinated by what you had already learned. I engineered a meeting so I could begin a conversation with you, hoping that would lead to a friendship which might let me ask for your help.”
    “Seriously? You planned on asking me to study some of your blood to discover how you became a vampire? How did you plan on breaking that to me? Gradually, or all at once over dinner?”
    Yuri grinned at her. “Actually I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I was just pleased to track you down and get that assistant of yours to introduce us. Once we started talking, it was all I could do to concentrate fully on what we discussed because you are so incredibly intelligent that I was afraid you would realize I was a fraud and walk away from me.”
    “I guess you couldn’t really go through the official channels, even if you offered to throw big gobs of money at the lab.”
    “Uh...no. Not that I don’t have big gobs of money, because I do. Living as long as we do allows us to begin by inheriting from our own family members, then using the mind-fuck to continue amassing more. No amount of money or mind-fuckery would have gotten you to take samples of my blood and study them...nor would I want it to be done through official channels. We have safely coexisted with mortals for generations by keeping to ourselves. I see no need to threaten our safety by exposing ourselves to public scrutiny.”
    “Wait a minute. Does that mean all of the authors who write vampire-related stuff know one or more of us? Or are they just making things up?”
    “