Kat Parrish [Parrish - Misbegotten

M isbegotten is the term coined by para-biologist Lyla Johnston-Yates to describe a fetus exposed to vampire hormones when its pregnant mother receives the sharp kiss and is born into the blood .

Very few misbegotten babies survive to term most of them female but those that do are born with several traits linked to what Johnston-Yates calls the V-factor. They are slow to age, quick to heal, and their eyes are sensitive to sunlight .

D o you know how old a vampire has to be before it begins to show its age? The one sitting across the table from me looked sixty-somethingsilver-haired and still vigorousbut I knew he was much, much older. Hed told me once he was born into the blood when he was only fourteen and that had been some time during the fifty-year reign of Djer, back in Egypts 1st Dynasty. That made him something like five thousand years old, give or take a century .

Hed told me once in his youth he had been beautiful, even before his transformation. I saw no reason to doubt it. Even now, even to my eyes, he was a handsome man .

He called himself Haarith and the mayor called him Harry. The cops who worked in the Los Angeles Police Paracrime Division (LAPPD) called him the Godfather, but said it quietly. Everyone else who did business with him addressed him as Mr. El Gabri and treated him with the respect due the most powerful paranormal in the city. Even the fae walked softly around him, and in the years Haarith had run things, there had been an uneasy peace among the various kinds of paranormal creatures who coexisted in the city of angels .

Haariths family was the largest and most powerful in Los Angeles and when the city had gone bankrupt, Haarith had bought Griffith Park and repurposed the observatory into his own private manor house. Haarith kept his children on a short leash but lately there were rumors that all was not well in the house on the hill. Thered been a series of murders in Silverlake that no one wanted to talk about until a fed-up cop sent me an anonymous e-mail with crime scene photos clearly showing the puncture marks. The autopsy reports Id seen indicated that not only was the killer a vampire, so were the victims. So something was definitely going on .

Id broken the story on my paracrime.com blog three weeks ago, scooping TMZ by publishing both the official and unofficial police reports. The resulting controversy had landed me on Alexa.coms list of one hundred top-ranking sites in the United States, somewhere between eBay and aliexpress.com. Best of all, the site was tracking way higher than the L.A. Times site, which had folded their paracrimes coverage into the regular crime beat two years ago and downsized all their paracrimes reporters, including me. Call me a sore winner, but it felt good .

The scoop had also landed me in hot water with the LAPPD, but that was nothing new. My history with them was long and complicated, both personal and professional. I tried to stay out of their way as much as possible, but I wasnt about to stand around and wait for permission to follow a hot lead to an exclusive story .

Haarith had asked to meet with me, and hed shown up at the diner I suggested in full Godfather splendor, his Brabus Rocket driven by a hulking chauffeur who may have been part goblin. A pair of bodyguards wearing beautifully cut suits trailed Haarith inside. Both wore discreet lapel pins with the logo of Etebari Enterprises, a company owned by a werewolf clan that had pioneered paranormal security in the United States, and had gone global with offices in Paris, Berlin, London, Abu Dhabi, and Beijing .

Haariths guards were brothers, so similar in appearance and demeanor it was hard to tell which one of them was the alpha. Id run into both of them before. Jon, the younger, was all right but his elder brother Michael was dangerous. Hed served in Afghanistan with distinction, returned with a chest full of medals, a bunch of Army issue weapons, and a bad case of PTSD. Thered been some incidents with Michael Etebari, but the clan had had hushed them up because he was in line to take over the Etebari branch and their elders knew just how nervous people would be if they knew the guy controlling L.A.s largest wolf pack was unstable .

* * *

T he diner cleared out when Haarith and his dogs rolled in, the late-night patrons suddenly deciding they really didnt need that last bite of pie. That was fine with me. People who arent used to dealing with paras tend to get scared. Scared people do unpredictable things. Scared people can get themselves killed .

Scared people can get me killed .

Haarith waited until my coffee cup was filled before getting down to business. Vampires are rarely in a hurry. Time is on their side .

I was curious to know what he wanted, but played the game anyway, pretending to be absorbed in the ritual of sweetening my coffee, letting the silence lengthen between us .

Someone is trying to kill me, he said, finally. Good luck to them, I thought but I said, Surely that has happened before? Though I tried not to show it, I was surprised. I would have sworn hed summoned me to talk about the Silverlake murders .

It would make a good story, Haarith added coaxingly, as if unsure of my interest in the tale he had to tell. That surprised me even more. Unlike some of the citys vampires, Haarith was not a publicity hog, on a first-name basis with all the paparazzi .

Its only a story if they succeed, I said .

He studied me for a moment. Thats remarkably cynical even for a reporter, Kara .

Kira, I corrected mentally .

Do you think my would-be assassin could succeed ?

He seemed genuinely interested in my answer. I took a sip of my coffee and winced at the taste. Depends on who it is .

If you had to guess? That question threw me. It meant he had no idea who might be trying to kill him, an admission of ignorance he never should have made to someone outside his family .

I glanced at his security men. They both looked back at me with the intensely focused attention that marks were-gaze. If it hadnt been so warm in the shop, I might have shivered .

Could it be a power play? I asked. One of your children thinking its his or her turn to be the Big Bite? I deliberately used the offensive term to see if I could get a reaction from him. Instead, Haarith dismissed the possibility with a wave of his hand .

Dont be absurd .

I wasnt surprised by his dismissive response. For creatures that live such a long time, vampires dont seem to have much of a grasp on human nature. Youd think that self-absorption would lose its appeal after a few centuries, but no .