Page 29 of Keeper of Death (Ouroboros Academy #1)

L ucian was clearly an original instead of a god. Well, he was a god to whatever these people were, but his original life was some kind of mortal who meddled in magic. Lucian looked wholly uncomfortable at all the prostrated people for someone who was supposed to be a prince. Uncomfortable enough to not ask the right questions.

“Can you help him? We can’t figure out how to feed him.”

They all started sharing looks.

“He’s probably figured it out and doesn’t want to admit it to himself. It’s perfectly natural.”

“It is not!” Lucian snapped.

Liam marched over and shoved Lucian so hard, he landed on his ass.

“You knew what you had to do, and you ate all our food, anyway? You could have killed Sage! You heard what Headmaster Mykene said. The people who drop out of the trials don’t have the tools to survive if a rogue hunts them. You’re a piece of shit.”

We all figured out what Lucian was and what he wanted to eat when he jumped at Liam with his fangs bared and sank them into his neck. Lucian was a vampire. The original vampire. Liam was either completely immobilized or was just going to let him because he wasn’t fighting.

“Christ, buy me dinner first,” he muttered.

I guess Liam decided to let him because when he was over it, he threw Lucian off of him.

“I didn’t kill him,” Lucian said.

“It’s hard for vampires to actually kill during a feed,” a girl said. “The amount of blood you’d need to take to kill someone is like eight glasses of water and unless you drain them to save it for later, it’s too much for one feed. Only psychos do that.

“You don’t even need to take so much that someone passes out. The amount you need to stay strong and satiated is just enough that someone would need an iron supplement and some B vitamins. None of us have met the original, so it might be less for you.”

“You could have just asked to bite me instead of eating all our food,” Liam said.

“I would have offered, too,” Khalid said.

“Me, too,” I said.

“I didn’t know, and I didn’t realize I was eating the food.”

“Wait, do vampires and fairies have some kind of feud going on? Because they seemed scared of Lucian when they saw his eyes after he caught one of them,” Khalid said.

“One of the fairies said Sage feels like kin.”

“Despite all the human hysteria, we don’t feed off of them because their blood does nothing for us. Their lore is that we are dead and we need the blood to animate us. We aren’t. Some of us are made, but most of us are born. We need the magic in supernatural blood to survive.

“Fairies are potent, but they also find it offensive when parasitic races like vampires and the incubi and succubae try to feed off of them without asking.

“Things are different now, but there used to be some consent issues. There still are with certain people and with the Master being so new, they might have thought he would snap.”

“The wildlife were scared of his arse, too,” Liam pointed out.

“There are some very confused vampires that got deep into human fiction where some three-hundred-year-old vampire goes to high school, falls in love with a teenager, and only drinks animal blood. It’s basically a phase. Every supernatural race has their cliché they go through when they are teenagers. The Master had no idea who or what he was. He could have killed the wildlife and it wouldn’t have sated him.”

“So, we aren’t in any danger of Lucian?” I asked.

“Isn’t Dracula required reading in your country?” Liam asked.

“At Christian private school?” I said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

I was making my way through all the books and movies I hadn’t been allowed to read. I knew the basics, but not the plot.

“There are two versions of Dracula,” Khalid said. “The published version and then the Swedes translated a version based on the unpublished version that’s sexier and has a few unique characters. You can get your hands on both versions if you speak more than one language. But Dracula was a fictional take off a man in Romania who was known for his cruelty. I think I know what you saw, Lucian.”

“Our original sire was violent, and those he made relished in it, but the children they had were less so. It’s always like that. It’s why it’s against the law to make more vampires without permission and it has to be for a good reason.”

“That bodes well for me,” Lucian moaned.

“You aren’t a made vampire like the Master. He was human until he tortured a dark witch until she made him more than that. She made him immortal, but with an additional curse because of what he did. You’re a born vampire, you just needed it unlocked. Most people make vampires for the wrong reason and it always goes terribly. From what our history tells us, reincarnations of the Master have never had his temperament.”

“Sorry, is anyone going to name drop the Master?” Liam demanded.

The vampires looked like they didn’t want to tell him out of loyalty to Lucian. Lucian looked like his entire mind had been blown. I honestly didn’t know, so Khalid took it.

“Pretty sure the original vampire was Vlad the Impaler.”