Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [84]
“Only that I am not the monster you want to believe I am. Your body knows me. Your senses tell you that you are safe with me. You need only listen to them, Gabrielle. And listen to me, when I tell you that I did not come here to frighten you. I will never strike you, nor will I ever take your blood. On my honor, I will never harm you.”
She let out a choked laugh, a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a vampire possessing anything close to honor, let alone pledging it to her now. But Lucan was unwavering, solemn. Maybe she was crazy, because the longer she held his silver stare, the weaker her grasp on the doubt she wanted so desperately to cling to.
“I am not your enemy, Gabrielle. For centuries, my kind and yours have needed each other to survive.”
“You feed on us,” she whispered brokenly, “like parasites.”
Something dark moved across his features, but he did not rise to the contempt in her accusation. “We have protected you as well. Some of my kind have even cherished yours, sharing life together as blood-bonded mates. It is the only way the vampire race continues. Without human females to bear our young, we would eventually be extinct. It is how I came to be, and how all those like me came into being as well.”
“I don’t understand. Why can’t you…mix with women of your own kind?”
“Because there are none. Through a genetic failure, Breed offspring are solely male, from the very first of the line, down through hundreds of generations.”
This last revelation, among all the other astonishing news she was hearing, gave her pause. “So, that means your mother is human?”
Lucan gave a slight nod. “She was.”
“And your father? He was…”
Before she could say the word vampire, Lucan replied. “My father, and the seven other Ancient Ones like him, were not of this world. They were the first of my kind, beings from another place, very different from this planet.”
It took her a second to absorb what she had heard, particularly on the heels of everything else she was coming to grips with at the moment. “What are you saying—they were aliens?”
“They were explorers. Savage, warminded conquerors, in fact, who crash-landed here a very long time ago.”
Gabrielle stared at him. “Your father was not only a vampire, but an alien besides? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”
“It is the truth. My father’s people did not call themselves vampires but, by human definition, that is what they were. Their digestive systems were too advanced for Earth’s crude protein. They could not process the plants or animals as humans did, so they learned to take their nourishment from blood. They fed without restraint and wiped out entire populations in the process. You’ve heard of some of them, no doubt: Atlantis. The Mayan kingdom. Countless other unnamed, unrecorded civilizations that vanished seemingly overnight. Many of the mass deaths historically attributed to plagues and famine were not that at all.”
Good Lord.
“Assuming you can be taken seriously about any of this, you’re talking about thousands of years of carnage.” A chill spread over her limbs when he said nothing to deny it. “Do they they…do you—God, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Do vampires feed on any living thing, like each other maybe, or are we humans the main course?”
Lucan’s expression was grave. “Human blood alone contains the specific combinations of nutrients we need in order to survive.”
“How often?”
“We must feed every few days, a week sometimes. More is required if we are injured and need strength to heal from wounds.”
“And you…kill when you feed?”
“Not always, seldom, in fact. Most of the race feeds from willing human Hosts.”
“People actually volunteer to let you torture them?” she asked, incredulous.
“There is no torture involved, unless we will it. When a human is relaxed, the bite of a vampire can be very pleasurable. When it’s over, the Host recalls nothing because we leave