Vampire Uprising by Marcus Pelegrimas Read Free Book Online Page B

of the rocks. It seemed ready to approach Liam, but was hesitant to glance in Randolph’s direction.
    When Randolph stepped back, his body flowed into an upright form and settled somewhere in the middle ground inhabited by creatures whose appearance was just human enough to bring its prey in a little closer. “You are the ones who delivered Liam from the Skinners?” he asked.
    The burrower with the greasy fur pulled himself from the hole he’d dug and trembled as his body attempted to mimic the Full Blood’s transformation. With a great amount of effort, his limbs became shorter and thicker. His teeth were sucked up into his gums, leaving thick rounded points, and his fur retreated under his flesh to leave a coarse layer of stubble. With a bit of clothing and the right lighting, he might have passed for a man with a skin condition and an aversion to showering. “I’m the one who took him from Kansas City. My name’s Max. The Skinners were gonna finish him off when Liam told us about how Full Bloods are made. The deal was for him to change us in return for his life.”
    “But we ain’t Full Bloods,” the bobcat said.
    “Who are you?” Randolph asked.
    Deferring to him out of instinct, the Mongrel removed the edgy tone from her voice and said, “Lyssa,” in a way that made it sound close to
listen.
    “Liam passed the gift to you,” Randolph said. “I’ve heard others of your kind weren’t strong enough to endure as much.”
    Lyssa glanced down at one forepaw that looked as if it had been nearly halved by an axe. “We’re different, but not like you. We think Liam was lying just to save his own skin.”
    “Lying?” Liam asked as he reared up and showed the full glory of his one multifaceted eye. Subsiding like a tide after laying waste to a beachside community, he growled, “Maybe a little.”
    “Kayla warned us of that,” Max explained, curling his lips and tongue around every word, as if still getting used to his new mouth. “But I knew there was a chance of something happening. At the very least, his meat would have been shared by our entire pack instead of handed over to those Skinner ghouls.”
    “Shared,” Liam beamed, “and most definitely enjoyed. Just ask some of my old lady friends from London.”
    After silencing Liam with a growl, Randolph shifted his focus to the burrower wolf. “Your name?”
    As the Mongrel bared his teeth, its eyes showed equal parts fear and longing.
    “He don’t speak,” Liam explained. “Either that or the poor fella’s shy.”
    “What about the rest of your pack?” Randolph asked. “Have they been changed?”
    Even on a face as twisted as Max’s, the contempt was clear to see. His eyes narrowed into yellow lines as he replied, “Kayla wouldn’t allow it. She and Ben are content to grow fat in Kansas City, scrounging for whatever human scraps they can find. When she saw what we became, she wanted to be rid of Liam forever.”
    “Some of us volunteered for the change anyway,” Lyssa said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s more than we were before.”
    “You think so?” Randolph growled. Even after he stood up straight, his body continued to rise. His ankles stretchedinto reversed knees as his legs stretched to new lengths. Claws snaked out of his toes and fingers. When his snout emerged from his face amid a series of loud, wet cracks, the true Full Blood stood before them.
    Liam looked on with an eye that darted back and forth between the Mongrels. “Oh, see I was afraid of this. Randolph don’t exactly like to share his territory with anyone.”
    “You brought us here to be slaughtered?” Max asked. Re-flexively changing into his squat burrower form, he sprouted claws that curved around like scythes to dig trenches into the rock. Whiskers sprouted from a nose that extended from his face to make way for the uniformly rounded teeth in his mouth. “You said we’d look for others like you,” he snarled.
    “And it looks like we found one. Sorry,