Dead and Everything (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 2) by P. S. Power Read Free Book Online Page A

head.
    “Lutheran.
Most of us follow the religions we were born into, but there’s no rule saying
that we have to. There are even a few atheists in our clans. Not many, of
course. Being what we are informs most of us that there is more outside of
ourselves than what Humans regularly get to know about.”
    “Really?
That’s new. I don’t think anyone has thought to ask about that yet. So if I
call up Richard Swerlin, he’d tell me that you’re all into God?”
    Eve
nodded a bit.
    “Yeah.
He would. If you can get a hold of him? I mean, don’t get me wrong here, I’m going to try and kick his behind as soon as I see him, but it’s the truth. It’s
like regular people though. I mean, I’m a Catholic, but I haven’t been to
confession in a while, you know? Life gets in the way, just like with everyone
else. Plus, not all of us like to be up during the day.”
    She stopped
there, but Lenore took over, her face pleasant, if forced to be that way.
    “It’s
rather torturous and painful to some of us. The new breed of Vampire can walk
in the light without effort, but the rest of us must fight horrible pain to do
so. Even right now both Eve and I are in agony. We’ve simply learned not to let
it show. It doesn’t take direct exposure either, even being inside offers
little relief, until the sun sets for the day.”
    Then the
man asked about boring things, like what powers they had and all that. He
didn’t ask for tests or anything, and after forty minutes, where Eve kept
mentioning how important god was, and how they very definitely weren’t demons
or anything like that, and loved them some church and holy water, the man left.
    When he
was out of earshot she turned to Lenore, feeling half panicked.
    “I laid
it on too thick, didn’t I? The whole religion thing…”
    “A trifle ,
perhaps. I did take your plan however, and agree with it. Setting the mood and
groundwork early will be important. We should recommend it to others. I don’t
suppose you could use your contacts to get in touch with Mr. Swerlin? If he
still lives, I mean. Before you kill him yourself?” There was no hint that she
wasn’t serious about that last bit, though it was a bit insane.
    “ I just said that I was going to try and kick his ass. Which, by the way, is
pretty tempting. I don’t know if I can do it, but someone has to. He outed all of us, not just himself. It was implied before, when he said he and
his wives were Vamps, that there were more of us, but a lot of people didn’t
believe him. No one did, really. I mean, I knew first hand that Vampires
were real and I kind of thought he was fake at first, you know? This though, it’s
forcing all of us to respond now. To play this game that no one was ready for.
We didn’t get three years to set things up, and get our families ready for the
news, did we? I mean, mine knows, but how rare is that? So, unless he really
was controlled by someone else, yeah, I’m going to be kicking his behind.” The
part where it probably wouldn’t work didn’t get said. She was pissed, but it
was mainly for other people. For Lars and his gang at the role playing thing.
For other Vampires that didn’t have what she did, and who would end up being
really hurt if everyone knew who, and what, they were. A lot of people working
for Human businesses would probably be losing their jobs, for instance.
    She’d
gotten a really sweet deal, thanks to her friends and the work she’d put in
first, but a lot of them found out that Vampires were real when they woke up
dead one day, and killed a family of four for a snack, not knowing any better.
It wasn’t the same thing at all. The problem though was that Richard Swerlin
was much older than she was. Hundreds of years at the very least, and his
powers would reflect that. Just getting mad and rushing him wasn’t exactly a
great plan. Not if she wanted to survive the fight. Part of her started to work
out how to get it done then. She’d need to use all the speed