Welcome to day three of First Chapter Week! The Age of the Vampire Goddess is the third book in The Vampiric Housewife series.
The Age of the Vampire Goddess
Chapter One
Atop Mount Olympus
Valerie stood on the stone balcony of her penthouse apartment with all of New York City laid out before her. The sun had just set over Central Park leaving only a slip of orange to linger on the city’s skyline. The trees of the park below were in the midst of a beautiful transformation as the green foliage ignited into brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges. Their branches danced an impassioned samba, raining their leaves down on the inhabitants below with each exuberant shake. How strange it was that the humans leisurely strolling through the splendor of the park shared the same odor as the vibrant, defunct leaves beneath the soles of their feet. Sweet, earthy, and rotting. Oh, how Valerie loved the scent of autumn. There hadn’t been anything like it in Sangre Valley or St. Thomas. Even so many stories up, she could still breathe in that magical aroma of leaves, earth, and humans so far below. She could also hear the distant sounds of traffic—horns honking, gears shifting, the bustling sounds of lives unfolding, the very sound of life itself. The powerful breeze and lateness of the season added a particularly biting chill to the falling night. Even so, Valerie stood erect with her back rigid and her head held high as the wind whipped her gossamer, white gown behind her like a battered flag, amplifying the litheness of her tall frame. Her russet, wavy mane twisted and twirled in a blaze that complemented the colors below. Accompanying the flowing, toga-inspired dress were an amethyst pendant sparkling around her pale, slender neck, solid and grounding, and a gold armband of a slithering dragon of ancient wisdom encircling her long arm. This was the vessel of the Vampire Queen. Beautiful, confident, fierce. It was also the face of a Goddess.
There had been no avoiding that title once she assumed the role of the Vampire Queen. Just like ancient Egypt, royalty and divinity were one. The fact that she was already immortal and immune to the weapons that maimed and killed her species—silver, sunlight, wood—only added to her grandeur as a deity. The legends of her triumphs in Sangre Valley and at The House of the Vampire Queen contributed to her mystique. But most convincingly were her rare violet eyes, the same purple eyes as the mythical Vampire Queen Aleekela.
“Valerie?” Ethan called out. With the sun safely tucked away on the other side of the earth, he was free to leave the sanctuary of their apartment and join her on the balcony. He softly planted a kiss on her neck. Ethan was the quintessence of masculinity in all its beauty. Six foot five with the massive, muscular build of a gladiator. The intense dark blue eyes, scowling mouth, and lustrous black hair of an Irish ancestry. Across his strong face, three jagged scars marred his porcelain skin, making him look only a little meaner and more dangerous than he truly was. Dressed in dark jeans and an olive green shirt, he was striking.
“You’re freezing,” he whispered in her ear and rubbed her pale, thin arms as goose bumps raced across them. She was impervious to the cold though. She was going through her own transformation, just as the leaves on the trees. She was leaving Valerie Murray behind and emerging as something else entirely.
Valerie Murray—woman, mother, lover—only existed during the daylight hours when most vampires were confined inside, shrouded in pseudo darkness. Only in the light was she a living creature, not so different from the humans surrounding her. She was born from the womb as they were; her heart quickened and raced and beat steadily in her chest. She enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her face. She could breathe the crisp fall air deep into her lungs. She had mothered three wonderful children. In the anonymity of a crowded New York street, she was just another person, not special or destine to be anything else. She was as plain and inconspicuous as a caterpillar.
But soon as night fell, Valerie transformed into a different creature, a mammoth black butterfly with luminous purple marking, beautiful and deadly. This creature lurked in the shadows and drank the delicious, metallic blood of humans. She moved with lightning speed and possessed unfathomable strength. Her hearing was supersonic, her sight stellar, her tactile senses heightened, and her sense of smell animalistic. Her unaging beauty was dangerous. At night she was the link between life and death, light and darkness, day and night. She was a vampire.
Or to be more correct, she was a living vampire, nature’s own contradiction. She led one life by day and another by night. It had created a schism in her personality, almost as if she was schizophrenic, at least in its literal translation, a split mind. When she was the Vampire Queen, she could not be a mother or a lover, which often caused her to be insensitive and dismissive of the ones she loved, yet Valerie was always a conscious passenger during the Queen’s time, cringing at her callousness but in awe of her absolute confidence. And the Queen was always there, dwelling within when she was Valerie, silent and resilient. But never could she merge the two into one being. Oh, how Valerie longed to be whole again.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
She followed Ethan inside of the enormous apartment with its open floor plan, honey-toned wood floors, vaulted ceilings, and crown molding. The vast living room housed a comfy, never ending sectional sofa centered in front of a widescreen plasma television that the men of the house were more interested in than the females. The kitchen was open with stone countertops, stainless steel appliances, and a refrigerator full of red, delicious—donated—blood. The kitchen overlooked the dinning area with its long rectangular table, large enough to seat eight. At the opposite end of the open space was an office with two antique desks overrun with planners, files, and papers. The whole area was warm and homey.
She retrieved a dark, plum-colored cloak and tied it around her shoulders, the color making her eyes glow like candle flames. Ethan pulled on his leather coat. She could hear her eighteen year old daughter in their home gym, pummeling the punching bag. Each thump and smack of the heavy bag was accompanied by an angry grunt or cry. Often devoid of its shape and solidarity after Amelia’s continuous abuse and aggression, it had to be replaced weekly. Valerie contemplated asking her daughter to accompany them tonight, but she already knew what the answer would be.
A slow change had seeped over Amelia in the last two years. The black hair and blue highlights were gone. Her hair was a rich dark brown and long again, her bangs obscuring her eyes. The all black wardrobe, however, had continued on. Her quietness had returned, though it had nothing to do with shyness this time. Amelia was simmering inside, seething, her dark eyes burning with it. Was it guilt? Pain? Depression? Anger over the accidental death of her first boyfriend, Sam? Valerie didn’t know. Amelia had slowly withdrawn from the family and spent the majority of her time either in the gym honing her fighting skills or out in the city, doing what, Valerie could only guess. But Amelia was no longer a little girl. She had made that clear. She was a grown woman. As much as Valerie wanted to help her daughter with whatever it was that she was going through, Amelia needed to figure it out on her own.
Fifteen year old Harry was passed out in his bedroom, sound asleep and snoring. She knew better than to try to wake him. He was a full blown teenager now; his only interests laid in video games, motorcycles—he had been on a month long campaign to convince Valerie to buy him a crotch rocket, as he called them—and girls. Especially the girls. And they seemed to have just as much interest in him as he had in them. Harry had definitely grown into an attractive young man. At five foot eleven, he was tall and athletic with broad shoulders, toned arms, and a muscular chest. His sandy brown hair was now lighter, almost blond. Valerie suspected that he had been dying it. Harry took great pride in his appearance, often spending hours in the bathroom primping to go out, and owned more health and beauty supplies than anyone else in the house combined. Every strand of hair had to be in place, every article of clothing spotless and unwrinkled. He even had a tan now. A spray-on one, that is. He’d turn to ash if a ray of sun touched his skin. His open, boyish smile had remained the same, only adding to the charisma of his dark violet eyes. It was no wonder he seemed to have a date every night of the week with a different girl.
At first Valerie feared that he was looking for some kind of symbiotic relationship with these girls, whether it was consensual or not. His love for blood had not diminished over the years. Keeping the fridge stocked with donated blood was getting more difficult with each passing day because of his ravenous appetite. But Harry swore that he was behaving himself—concerning both blood and sex, that is. Valerie was also concerned about becoming a grandmother. The few girls—all attractive though often in very different ways, waif or curvaceous, petite or tall, blond or brunette, any race, ethnicity, or education level—he had brought back to the apartment never displayed any bite marks or baby bumps. Between his raging hormones, bloodlust, and being a teenage boy, he certainly did not have any interest in vampire politics. Valerie was actually thankful for that. Harry got to be as close to normal as possible in their given situation.
As they exited the apartment, she could hear Harry’s cell phone ringing, undoubtedly a female caller.
A rather large, burly man with a buzz cut and black suit waited for them in the elevator. He only gave them a nod of recognition, pressed the lobby button, and stood statuesque with his hands folded neatly in front of him. He was her home security; a human stationed by Col. Ramone Henrick to keep the Vampire Queen and her family safe from anyone who would do her harm. But he was more spy than bodyguard. The tensions between Valerie and Henrick had only grown over the last two years. Originally Henrick spoke of a country within a country, that country being vampires, to coax Valerie into stepping into the role of the Vampire Queen. She was supposed to be the liaison between the human government and vampiric population, but Henrick had just wanted to use her as a puppet. To him, all vampires were mere pawns, disposable and replaceable, in his plans to supersede the present military power all over the world. He wanted to whet their darker instincts, stamp a serial number on them, and use them as weapons. But Valerie wasn’t about to be his puppet, and he surely regretted persuading her into assuming the title of Vampire Queen. She had taken her title seriously. She had an agenda of her own—peace and unification of vampires as well as protection of them and from them. She made that blatantly clear. And the more recognition and power she accrued, the less Henrick trusted her. Their mutual hostility was barely confined by their perfunctory cordialness, but there was a shred of decorum left between them, so Valerie tolerated the spies disguised as bodyguards and limo drivers, and Henrick didn’t try to overthrow her—at least he hadn’t tried yet.
In the back of the black stretch limo sat her eldest son John and Brynn Hodge, a human survivor from Luann’s coven. Just a couple of days shy of his twentieth birthday, John had grown from a boy into a man. He was the spitting image of his father, handsome with his stretched, slender build, dark eyes, thin lips, and gaunt features. He had matured a lot in the past two years. His black hair was slicked back in a very businesslike, corporate style. He dressed in a tailored navy suit with a white shirt and silvery blue tie. He had become her personal assistant, scheduling her events, fending off Henrick, basically organizing her very chaotic life. He knew how to take charge of a situation, remain cool and collective, get the job done, and still maintained his magnetic sense of humor. He had become the person she always knew he could be, and she was so proud of him. Her only worry was that his entire life revolved around her career as the Vampire Queen. He had no outside interests, hobbies, friends, or girlfriends. He woke up, went to work, came home, and went to bed only to start all over again the next night. She wanted more of a life for him.
Brynn was just a seventeen year old girl, skinny and knobby, with a pale, though heavily freckled face, that would have been cute and sweet with its button nose and bow of a mouth except that mouth was in a perpetual scowl and her pale green eyes forever narrowed in suspicion. Her long strawberry blond hair was always pulled back in a braid and her bangs were just a little too long so was always brushing them out of her eyes. She wore a chocolate colored suit that amplified her very slim frame and made her look like a little kid dressed in Mom’s clothes. Yet young was not an adjective Valerie would use to describe Brynn. She may be a high school dropout and a runaway, but Valerie had never met a more tenacious, self-assured girl in all her life.
After the fall of The House of the Vampire Queen, Valerie had tried to send the girl back home to her parents—she imagined that they had to be going out of their minds worrying about their only child. She didn’t know what she’d do if she didn’t know what had become of one of her children. The torment those poor people must be going through. But Brynn adamantly refused to return home. She was convinced that her parents didn’t care about her and were happier now that she was gone. She threatened to run away from home again if Valerie forced her to return. She insisted that she would be safer with the Murray family than living on the street. In fact, she had attached herself to the Murrays with superglue, which was a bit ironic given her open disdain for vampires as a whole. But considering what she had been through, Valerie understood why she might consider the Murray family safe.
Valerie and Ethan climbed into the limo, and it started towards the Plaza.
“I have the notes for your speech, even though I know you won’t use them,” John said with a smile, his leather planner open on his lap. “I’ll feed them into the teleprompter anyway. Everything for the European tour is set.” Tomorrow night the Vampire Queen was going to take Europe by storm and hopefully make some European vampire converts. “Vanessa got in from her trip just before sunrise yesterday. She did great work. We now have a census of all vampires living in the U.S.”
Vanessa was one of the poor kids taken in by Luann and Morris and their vampire religion. Looking for unconditional love and meaning to her life, Vanessa had joined their coven and donated her blood to vampires before she sacrificed her life and became a vampire herself. But Luann had sheltered her made-vampires, kept them secluded from the rest of the vampiric world in order to control them. They were clueless as to how to survive or defend themselves in world outside Luann’s mountain fortress. Valerie felt responsible for these misled, naïve vampires. It was in her name that they had been deceived. So she provided for them, educated them, and like Vanessa, most of them had become Valerie’s apostles, spreading the word of her return. When Valerie decided to conduct a census of vampires within the United States, it was the meek and beautiful Vanessa that volunteered. She had been traveling for a little over a year now. Hunting down vampires was not an easy task. Generally vampires did not want to be found.
“Let me see,” Valerie said, taking the papers from him.
Ten thousand vampires. That wasn’t a great number when compared to the three hundred million humans that occupied this country. But it explained how they had kept hidden for so long. For nomadic loners, they did seem to crowd in certain locations though—New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco. That explained why she received so many requests to adjudicate territory wars—not a high overall population, just a high concentration in particular metropolitan areas. Though they tended to shy away from states with lots of sunny days like Florida and Texas, vampires dotted the map in every state. There were two vampires in all of Alaska and one single vampire, one hundred and fifty years old, by the name of Snake living in Death Valley who fed off of, well, snakes.
Vanessa had done an excellent job. She had gotten more than just head counts and locations. She interviewed those willing to speak to her. She had names, ages, political views, feeding preferences, and multiple maker stories. It was fascinating data.
“Fax Henrick the head count,” she said but sent a second message with her eyes to her son so the driver would not overhear. That message was: Under no circumstance let Henrick get the names, addresses, or any other information gathered. Valerie feared what he would do with such knowledge. “And fit in a meeting with Vanessa before I leave for Europe. I want to thank her personally.”
John nodded and scribbled in his planner. They had all learned long ago to use body language and looks to convey messages.
“The Vampire Supremacists have sent you more threats,” Brynn said disapprovingly. “They’ll be in the crowd tonight.”
The Vampire Supremacists were vampires who believed it was their natural, evolutionary right to take a human life. Since Valerie promoted respect for human life and alternative feeding methods, they protested her every appearance, often making threats on her life. She was used to their pompous threats by now and was not intimidated. It was Brynn that they riled. Brynn was determined to badger Valerie into installing laws against the killing and non-consensual feeding on humans. She had no sensitivity for the fact that this was how vampires had been surviving since the beginning of time and that Valerie couldn’t put in place laws that might cause a vampire to starve to death. Brynn tended to see things in black or white.
Valerie’s own agenda was to popularize symbiosis, vegetarianism, and donated blood. Once she winged the vampire population off murdering, then perhaps she could pass laws prohibiting it. Thankfully, this was one thing she and Henrick agreed on. Three months ago the U.S. government rolled out a Blood Bank program for vampires, using New York City as the testing zone. Located in the seedier parts of town, in buildings disguised as butcher shops, a vampire could receive eight ounces of human-donated blood for free. After the initial suspicion and fear wore off, these Blood Banks had become quite popular. It seemed a majority of vampires were tired of hunting for their prey. It was as if they had been waiting for a change. The donated blood came from mandatory blood donations from all different branches of the military. Hopefully, they would be able to have Blood Banks all over the country and this census would tell them where to build. But the Blood Banks were only a temporary alternative. Donated blood would never be able to keep up with demand for human blood. That was why she had to push for symbiosis and vegetarianism or a combination.
“Do you want them kept out?” John asked.
She shook her head. “They’re vampires, they have a right to be there. If I barred them, they’d only use it as evidence that I’m collaborating with the government to suppress and enslave vampires.”
“Val—” Ethan started.
“Trust me dear, I’ll be fine,” she smiled ironically.
“What are you going to do about them?” Brynn asked in an accusatory voice. Valerie was so used to it that she ignored the tone. “They are murdering humans every single day and you condone it by ignoring it! Those people will never get justice within the human legal system. All they have is you. You’re the enemy, but you’re also their only protector and rectifier!”
John gave a small smile. “Your enemy is your protector? There has to be something oxymoronic about that,” he teased. He couldn’t help it. Brynn was so intense and serious all the time, arguing with just about everyone, which of course meant that John couldn’t resist pushing her buttons on occasion. She needed to relax and not take life so seriously. But he knew that the combative personality was just a cover, a defense mechanism to keep people out. He would tease her, she would scowl and glare and pretend to hate him—she generally pretended to hate all of them, except Amelia, though she didn’t really hate him or any of them. Well, maybe Ethan and Harry. Her coldness towards them seemed genuine. Ethan still fed on the dying; she saw him as a murderer. Harry . . . maybe from spending two years secluded with dangerous vampires she learned to pick up on a certain vibe and Harry definitely had that vibe. But John preferred not to think about that or about his little brother at all. He’d rather pretend what he saw in the Appalachian Mountains never happened. He had never spoken of it and avoided his brother at all times.
He received the glare and scowl he had provoked and anticipated. He had to admit, he enjoyed the glare. “Oxymoron or not, it’s the truth. You protect your vampires from humans; you have to protect humans from vampires!”
“Not true,” Ethan growled, his voice rumbling like a vicious dog. “She does not punish vampire slayers who kill vampires either.”
Brynn met his cold hard stare with her own. She had no fear of vampires, and certainly no fear of Ethan. “You took care of that yourself. There are no such things as slayers anymore. You eradiated them like cockroaches.”
“You got the description right.”
“Enough,” Valerie said calmly. “We’ve had this conversation before. It is not the proper time. Vampires have to have other alternatives before—”
“They do! The Blood Banks, vegetarianism!”
“Symbiosis,” John piped in, knowing that Brynn did not consider symbiosis an option for vampires. Given her history with it and the abuse she underwent, John couldn’t blame her, but that did not mean he’d let her self-righteous rant continue uninterrupted. Self-righteous, that was a good description of Brynn.
“Symbiosis is no different from physical assault,” she snapped, those pale green eyes glaring at him again.
“Brynn, I promise you, we’ll get there. But we’re not there yet.”
“And how many people die before you’re there?”
“This is closed for discussion,” Valerie said firmly, though it was the Queen speaking, not Valerie. Valerie wanted to comfort the girl, make her understand that not all symbiosis had to be as she experienced it. Hug the child because she had probably never been hugged in her entire life. And promise her that she would be taken care of, that Valerie would never let anything bad happen to her. She didn’t need a law to protect her or to be so tough all the time; she had someone who loved her as one of her own. But it was night and the night belonged to the Vampire Queen. “Do we know which Vampire Supremacists will be there?”
“Rodney and his crew,” John said.
Rodney was her biggest adversary. He was a three hundred year old Spanish soldier from Queen Anne’s War. He fought against the English on the side of the Native Americans for control of the New Land. He was slightly less broad through the shoulders and chest than Ethan, but vastly shorter, which made him look incredibly wide, like a long brick wall, which could be intimidating. His face was a distortion of handsome, thick black hair, aquiline features, dimpled chin, but all smudge by narcissism and malevolence, which rendered him less than beautiful. His voice was loud and commanding as it often boasted how he had forged this great country himself—the vampiric part at least. He claimed to have created over a thousand vampires himself, though no vampire had claimed him as their maker. In fact his age, history, and story had yet to be verified. Valerie suspected it was embellished—greatly. Despite that, he was a natural leader and his fellow vampires listened to him. He preached the antithesis of Valerie: bloodlust instead of self-control, biological evolution versus moral evolution, and vampirism against humanity. The younger ones clung to him as a leader who encouraged their most basic instincts and provided them with power over the weaker being that they once were. The newborns were not yet schooled in the vampire legends or else had been deeply jaded by the religion of their human years. To them Valerie was nothing more than an overbearing parent. Rodney also had a knack for convincing vampires who had retired from murder to return to their old blood-lusting ways, convincing them that murder was their vampiric birthright. The biological craving for human blood, the immense pleasure of feeding, the physical superiority of the vampire to man, that was Rodney’s rationale. Humans were prey, cattle. Vampires predators. It was evolution. Nature. Valerie had heard it all long before she became the Vampire Queen. It was the same rhetoric that had been used in Sangre Valley.
“He’s rumored to be planning an assassination attempt against you,” John said heavily.
“Let him try.”
“At the very least, he’s going to try to stop you from getting a word in edge wise,” Brynn said. She was the only pragmatic one of the family. She truly comprehended how ridiculous it was to take threats on Valerie’s life seriously. She had seen Valerie rise from the dead with her own eyes. “He’ll bring up Henrick, your relationship with the U. S. government and military. He’ll make you out to sound like their puppet in order to locate vampires and start a genocide against them. He’ll paint you as a threat to the vampiric world. Call symbiosis de-evolution and vegetarianism degrading. The Blood Banks, mere tools for domesticating vampires like dogs.” She had a bored tone to her voice.
“Then I’d say Rodney needs to get some new material. How many people are we expecting?” Rodney gave the same speech a million times.
“Full capacity. Four hundred and fifty,” John said. “But we can probably count on a couple hundred more. I took the liberty of booking a suite at the Plaza for live circuit video to be set up. We should be okay.”
The Queen just nodded. Valerie wanted to smile and tell her son how proud of him she was.
The limo pulled up to the grand, majestic Fairmont Plaza Hotel where Valerie would speak tonight. The spy of a limo driver opened the door for them and the kids climbed out.
“Val, be careful. I don’t care if you’re immortal, you have vampires in that room that want you gone. I don’t care if you think you can’t die, don’t be cavalier,” Ethan said crossly. In her head, Valerie reached out, stroked his cheek, softly kissed his lips, and promised him that everything would be okay.
The Queen said, “Don’t worry about me,” and exited the limo.