Daring Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys Of The Underworld Book 2) by Mallory Crowe

her fingers.
    The tips of her four fingers lightly traced his cheekbone and down along the curve of his jaw. Light stubble tickled her fingertips as they moved along his face. His head turned slightly and brought his nose close to her wrist. He took a deep breath in, and she felt his warm exhale against the sensitive skin of her wrist.
    He brought his eyes up to hers and she was shocked to see the normal ethereal blue color had turned jet-black. That wasn’t the only thing changed about him. His upper lip was now protruding slightly more than it had been a minute ago. Gena didn’t have to ask why. He was hiding his fangs from her.
    She brought her hand back down. “Should I be worried?” she asked softly.
    “I think that’s a loaded question. However, in relation to our current situation, I have enough control over myself to keep you safe from me.”
    Well, she couldn’t fault his honesty. “You’re so warm. Shouldn’t you be cold to the touch?”
    “I’m not dead,” he said. “I never was. I was born as a vampire and have always been one. I even have a heartbeat.”
    Gena glanced at his chest. “So vampires can only be born?”
    “Not necessarily. If someone is close to death and ingests vampire blood, there’s a chance they could turn.”
    “Just a chance?”
    “A slim chance. In order to convert, the vampire cells must be what we call ‘activated.’ A living person cannot activate the blood, and if it gets too diluted within a human body, they will not activate. So the blood must be ingested shortly before death, before the human immune system has time to fight the transformation. Once the person is dead, the vampire blood will become dominant and start converting the human organs and tissue. Once conversion is almost complete, the heart will start beating again and the new vampire will wake up.”
    “So this isn’t done a lot?” asked Gena.
    “Well, personally, I would only want to turn someone I enjoyed and respected and wouldn’t mind hanging around me for an eternity. Unfortunately, most of the time, the human dies and the conversion doesn’t take. So most new vampires are only turned if they are already dying.”
    Gena nodded, feeling a bit overwhelmed at all the new information but also unable to keep herself from asking more questions. “Have you ever turned anyone?”
    “Once,” he said. “Actually, it was just a few weeks ago.”
    “If you just made a new vampire, shouldn’t they be here with you?” Gena didn’t know much about vampire life, but it seemed like there would be a traumatic adjustment period.
    “Not in this case. I turned her as a favor to someone else. I mentioned that Kirill had a son who barely escaped an attack from the humans before the war. Well, once Kirill was king, his son, Nicolas, was his second-in-command for the next four hundred years.
    “Kirill was a good king and did a lot of great things for us, but something seemed to snap toward the end of his reign. He started killing indiscriminately and slaughtering humans. He wasn’t discreet about it and was becoming a risk to everyone.
    “Aleksander was the one who led the rebellion against Kirill. Kirill was killed and Nicolas was exiled. He stayed in exile for thirty years. A couple months ago, everything changed. Nicolas infiltrated Aleksander’s Canadian complex with a young human woman. They’d been led there by a member of the new rebellion that I’m now dealing with.
    “The rebellion’s plan was to murder Aleksander and make it look as though Nicolas had done it out of vengeance. One of their members would have probably come forward to take Aleksander’s place as king and they would have all the power.”
    Gena stopped him. “Your life is insane.”
    Marcus let out a soft laugh. “You have no idea.”
    “Obviously Aleksander’s not dead.”
    He nodded. “The human Nicolas brought with him, Anna, had been childhood friends with Aleksander’s wife, which is another story entirely.