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Description
My story begins with a cold wintry night and my father.  He was not my real father, no, far from it.  Arlin Cambridge was much more than my real father ever had been.  He gave me a new life, a life far away from the fucked-up one I was leading.  And let me tell you, my life was pretty fucked up.

I didn’t know who Arlin was at the time.  I later learned he was the leader of one of the most notorious gangs on the Continent.  I didn’t know the pain he had been through as I do now; I didn’t know anything about him.  But when he offered something better, I took it and ran.

He promised me a family.  He promised me a home.  He promised me a purpose.  He promised me that I wouldn’t need opium to stay sane.  He promised me that I’d be someone.  But a deal like that, it came with a catch.  A very serious catch.  But I couldn’t have cared less.  I was stealing just to make it through a day without starving, and that was when my addiction to opium was under control.  When it wasn’t, I won’t go into that.  So when Arlin lowered that rope to me, me in that deep trench I myself had dug, I took his hand without thought, fuck the consequences.

Y’see, Arlin wasn’t like the rest of us.  He was special.  He was a vampire.  And for me to have all the things he promised, I had to be one too, I had to drink his blood and go through the Change.  I had to become immortal and forever bloodthirsty.  And I did.

The Change was painful, a solid ten on a scale of five.  It felt like everything in my body was dying while I still lived.  Every time my heart would beat, a pain like fire burned through my chest.  But as time went on, my heartbeats came slower, and the pain became duller until my heart stopped altogether, the pain going with it.

I remember very little of my first days as a newborn vampire, but I distinctly remember meeting the others Arlin had Changed, a slight young woman with strawberry blonde hair and piercing red eyes that held Arlin’s hand and looked at him with starry eyes, and a young man who looked like he was straight from the Aryan brotherhood, soft golden curls and deep blue eyes.  These were my blood siblings.  Kayne and Dirk.  Arlin’s lover and another troubled young person saved by Arlin.

I was not the first to be saved by Arlin, and I was certainly not the last.  Two weeks after I was Changed, Arlin Changed another young male.  And Thirty-two years after that, the last of our Brotherhood came into existence.  All of us had been adopted as Arlin’s sons, and we all felt an undying loyalty to our blood father and his ambitions as a gang lord.

~*~END PROLOGUE~*~

I licked my lips as I watched the platinum blonde-haired girl duck into a black sedan through binoculars.  Standing up straight and flipping my jet black hair out of my eyes, I sighed.  “Damn she looked good enough to eat,” I grumbled, unwillingly salivating.  It had been a week since I had fed, and the Thirst was starting to get to me.

“Reid, please, control yourself,” Dirk said with a sigh.  “She’s one of Rafe’s girls.  Nothing good can come from even fantasizing about sinking your teeth in her.”  He ran a hand through his golden hair and turned away from the rooftop, his blue eyes stormy.  Dirk was the oldest of us four.  He sure was a pretty boy too.  Golden curls that he kept short and blue eyes, quite the model.  He was muscular and lean, but that had come from before his Change.

I rolled my eyes.  “Y’know, just because your girlfriend of however-long dumped you for no good reason doesn’t mean you can be a dick,” I retorted, crossing my arms over my thin, but lean, chest and poking my snakebites with my tongue, waiting for his comeback.

Dirk snarled at me, baring his fangs.  “This has nothing to do with Annette!  This is about you potentially blowing our cover and endangering everyone!”

I rolled my eyes again.  “Or you’re just being as pissy as a bitch in heat.  Oh, but that’s nothing new.”  It’s not like I really hated Dirk, it was just too much fun to mess with the pretty boy.

Dirk’s scowl narrowed – like I was scared.  “Would you just shut your damn mouth, Reid?  Gods!  Do we have to get into this shit every time?”

I looked at my imaginary watch.  “Nope, sorry, quiet hour isn’t for another ten minutes,” I said with a wicked grin.

Dirk growled and made to lunge when Jona, the third son, stepped in.  “Can’t you guys go at each other’s throats while we’re not scoping out Rafe and his men?”  If Dirk was the brawn of our bunch, then Jona was the brain.  He was slight of build with a mop of brown hair tied into a ponytail at his nape and his hazel eyes glinted dangerously in the semi-light.  He couldn’t take down either of us, but he had earned our – or at least my – respect long ago in different ways.

"Look,” the last of us said, his voice trailing off at the end, amused.  All of our attention was drawn to the ground below again.  Another one of Rafe’s cars had stopped on the street and a man with black hair and a moustache walked out.  “Wonder who that is…” the boy sitting on the edge of the roof mused aloud.

The last one of us was probably the oddest.  Sarrow, yea, you heard me, Sarrow, and his mother named him that.  Pronounced the same as it would've been with an 'o' instead of an 'a.' His hair was a platinum blonde, almost silver, but his eyes.  They were the strangest thing any one of us had ever seen.  One eye was cerulean blue, and the other was emerald green.  And he hadn't been like me, where his eyes changed colors after his Change – mine had been blue before and changed to a red-violet when I Changed.  They had been that way before.  Sarrow was the youngest of us, only being changed about 70 years ago.  He was a complete balance between Dirk and I, fast and strong.  He pretty much had the whole silent type going on, because he rarely spoke to us.  He liked us – or at least we thought he did – and on top of that, he had Arlin's full trust.

We had all been Changed by Arlin, we were his Sons in a vampiric sense.  Arlin was equivalent to the leader of a well-known mafia down in the vampire underground.  Rafe was the same thing.  So naturally, lots of fights come between the two of our "gangs."

"What are you four doing?” an irritated womanly voice asked.  It came from Kayne.  She had been sixteen when she was Changed, and she hadn't aged since, as was the case for almost all vampires.  There's this one tiny line of vampires that actually age, but really slowly.  Needless to say, we aren't part of that line.

"Nothing now,” I sighed, standing, my almost-conflict with Dirk forgotten.

"We were watching one of Rafe’s girls,” Sarrow said, almost pained-sounding.  It was obvious he needed to hunt; that would be the only reason Sarrow would sound pained.

Kayne raised her eyebrows.  "Speaking in sentences today Sarrow?” she said.  I’m sure she meant it as a tease, but unbeknownst to her, it had come out as a snap.  Kayne was just Kayne, likeable, funny, and just like a little sister, even though she was over 100 years older than Dirk, so it was weird that she was snapping at us.  Her eyes had been crimson at birth, and she was quite petite.  Her hair fell in a short asymmetrical cut, meaning it was longer on one side than the other.  Just in case you didn’t know that.

I raised my eyebrows at her and tried to use body language to ask her what was wrong, but she ignored me.  Either that, or it didn’t work.

Kayne cut straight to the chase.  "Arlin wants to see you all, now."

Each of us had a look of confusion on our faces.  "What for?” I asked.  I couldn't help it.

Kayne shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I didn’t ask.”  That was odd too.  Typically, Kayne was just as involved in the ‘business’ as Arlin was.

Jona groaned.  All of us were pretty much used to just being figure heads, not going on missions, so I didn’t blame him.  "Arlin's sons, Arlin's sons!  What an honor!”  We were pretty much treated like royalty all the time, by everyone except Arlin.

Arlin really was a father-figure to us all.  We had all come from bad homes and Arlin had embraced us into his underground life.  He had given us the choice of being changed and told us what we would be getting into before we decided.

But that didn't earn us any less slack.  Since we didn't have to go to school, we trained rigorously in the underground.  We had learned everything from a cheap price of a human liver on the black market to how to assemble a rocket launcher.  Sure it was interesting, but it was hard.

I could tell that even Dirk was disappointed.  "Let's just go and get it over with,” he sighed.

We jumped down to the alleyway below and into the bottom floor bar through the back entrance.  We were immersed in strobe lights and too-drunk sleazes for only a moment before we went behind the bar counter and through another door.

The route had been drilled into our brains several times over, so we had no problem with the twisting passages the stairs behind that door led us to.

Honestly, it was an underground city really.  Black market vendors were a frequent thing, setting up their stalls and such on either side of the canals.  This could technically be called, "Venice Underground.”

No houses though.  Doors led to expansive apartments and meeting rooms and restaurants and bars and everything you could possibly imagine.  There were no windows in the walls, but that didn't bother anyone really.

As we walked, I could feel the anger and hatred seeping out of Kayne as she led us to Arlin’s rooms.  I was probably the closest to her – she just got me – so I trotted up next to her and slung an arm around her shoulders.  “So,” I began slowly.  “What’s goin’ on?”

Kayne merely growled and shoved my arm away.  “That idiot,” she spat.  “I can’t believe him!”

I laughed nervously.  “You know, it’s hard to tell who you’re talking about when you only use insults and pronouns,” I commented.

“Arlin!” Kayne snapped.  “He went out without telling anyone last night and was nearly killed!  He came back all bloody and bruised, but when I asked, he told me it was nothing!  I heard him talking to Xavier about it this morning and it turns out that some of Rafe’s guys had ambushed him!  I can’t believe he kept this from me!”

I sighed.  “Just calm down Kayne.  I’m sure he just didn’t want to worry you,” I offered, trying to calm her down.

“Not to worry me?!” Kayne squealed.  “If he didn’t want to worry me, he never should have left without telling anyone!”  With an angry shriek, she yanked open Arlin’s door and disappeared.

I shook my head and sighed, followed her to Arlin's apartment.

Description
My story begins with a cold wintry night and my father.  He was not my real father, no, far from it.  Arlin Cambridge was much more than my real father ever had been.  He gave me a new life, a life far away from the fucked-up one I was leading.  And let me tell you, my life was pretty fucked up.

I didn’t know who Arlin was at the time.  I later learned he was the leader of one of the most notorious gangs on the Continent.  I didn’t know the pain he had been through as I do now; I didn’t know anything about him.  But when he offered something better, I took it and ran.

He promised me a family.  He promised me a home.  He promised me a purpose.  He promised me that I wouldn’t need opium to stay sane.  He promised me that I’d be someone.  But a deal like that, it came with a catch.  A very serious catch.  But I couldn’t have cared less.  I was stealing just to make it through a day without starving, and that was when my addiction to opium was under control.  When it wasn’t, I won’t go into that.  So when Arlin lowered that rope to me, me in that deep trench I myself had dug, I took his hand without thought, fuck the consequences.

Y’see, Arlin wasn’t like the rest of us.  He was special.  He was a vampire.  And for me to have all the things he promised, I had to be one too, I had to drink his blood and go through the Change.  I had to become immortal and forever bloodthirsty.  And I did.

The Change was painful, a solid ten on a scale of five.  It felt like everything in my body was dying while I still lived.  Every time my heart would beat, a pain like fire burned through my chest.  But as time went on, my heartbeats came slower, and the pain became duller until my heart stopped altogether, the pain going with it.

I remember very little of my first days as a newborn vampire, but I distinctly remember meeting the others Arlin had Changed, a slight young woman with strawberry blonde hair and piercing red eyes that held Arlin’s hand and looked at him with starry eyes, and a young man who looked like he was straight from the Aryan brotherhood, soft golden curls and deep blue eyes.  These were my blood siblings.  Kayne and Dirk.  Arlin’s lover and another troubled young person saved by Arlin.

I was not the first to be saved by Arlin, and I was certainly not the last.  Two weeks after I was Changed, Arlin Changed another young male.  And Thirty-two years after that, the last of our Brotherhood came into existence.  All of us had been adopted as Arlin’s sons, and we all felt an undying loyalty to our blood father and his ambitions as a gang lord.

~*~END PROLOGUE~*~

I licked my lips as I watched the platinum blonde-haired girl duck into a black sedan through binoculars.  Standing up straight and flipping my jet black hair out of my eyes, I sighed.  “Damn she looked good enough to eat,” I grumbled, unwillingly salivating.  It had been a week since I had fed, and the Thirst was starting to get to me.

“Reid, please, control yourself,” Dirk said with a sigh.  “She’s one of Rafe’s girls.  Nothing good can come from even fantasizing about sinking your teeth in her.”  He ran a hand through his golden hair and turned away from the rooftop, his blue eyes stormy.  Dirk was the oldest of us four.  He sure was a pretty boy too.  Golden curls that he kept short and blue eyes, quite the model.  He was muscular and lean, but that had come from before his Change.

I rolled my eyes.  “Y’know, just because your girlfriend of however-long dumped you for no good reason doesn’t mean you can be a dick,” I retorted, crossing my arms over my thin, but lean, chest and poking my snakebites with my tongue, waiting for his comeback.

Dirk snarled at me, baring his fangs.  “This has nothing to do with Annette!  This is about you potentially blowing our cover and endangering everyone!”

I rolled my eyes again.  “Or you’re just being as pissy as a bitch in heat.  Oh, but that’s nothing new.”  It’s not like I really hated Dirk, it was just too much fun to mess with the pretty boy.

Dirk’s scowl narrowed – like I was scared.  “Would you just shut your damn mouth, Reid?  Gods!  Do we have to get into this shit every time?”

I looked at my imaginary watch.  “Nope, sorry, quiet hour isn’t for another ten minutes,” I said with a wicked grin.

Dirk growled and made to lunge when Jona, the third son, stepped in.  “Can’t you guys go at each other’s throats while we’re not scoping out Rafe and his men?”  If Dirk was the brawn of our bunch, then Jona was the brain.  He was slight of build with a mop of brown hair tied into a ponytail at his nape and his hazel eyes glinted dangerously in the semi-light.  He couldn’t take down either of us, but he had earned our – or at least my – respect long ago in different ways.

"Look,” the last of us said, his voice trailing off at the end, amused.  All of our attention was drawn to the ground below again.  Another one of Rafe’s cars had stopped on the street and a man with black hair and a moustache walked out.  “Wonder who that is…” the boy sitting on the edge of the roof mused aloud.

The last one of us was probably the oddest.  Sarrow, yea, you heard me, Sarrow, and his mother named him that.  Pronounced the same as it would've been with an 'o' instead of an 'a.' His hair was a platinum blonde, almost silver, but his eyes.  They were the strangest thing any one of us had ever seen.  One eye was cerulean blue, and the other was emerald green.  And he hadn't been like me, where his eyes changed colors after his Change – mine had been blue before and changed to a red-violet when I Changed.  They had been that way before.  Sarrow was the youngest of us, only being changed about 70 years ago.  He was a complete balance between Dirk and I, fast and strong.  He pretty much had the whole silent type going on, because he rarely spoke to us.  He liked us – or at least we thought he did – and on top of that, he had Arlin's full trust.

We had all been Changed by Arlin, we were his Sons in a vampiric sense.  Arlin was equivalent to the leader of a well-known mafia down in the vampire underground.  Rafe was the same thing.  So naturally, lots of fights come between the two of our "gangs."

"What are you four doing?” an irritated womanly voice asked.  It came from Kayne.  She had been sixteen when she was Changed, and she hadn't aged since, as was the case for almost all vampires.  There's this one tiny line of vampires that actually age, but really slowly.  Needless to say, we aren't part of that line.

"Nothing now,” I sighed, standing, my almost-conflict with Dirk forgotten.

"We were watching one of Rafe’s girls,” Sarrow said, almost pained-sounding.  It was obvious he needed to hunt; that would be the only reason Sarrow would sound pained.

Kayne raised her eyebrows.  "Speaking in sentences today Sarrow?” she said.  I’m sure she meant it as a tease, but unbeknownst to her, it had come out as a snap.  Kayne was just Kayne, likeable, funny, and just like a little sister, even though she was over 100 years older than Dirk, so it was weird that she was snapping at us.  Her eyes had been crimson at birth, and she was quite petite.  Her hair fell in a short asymmetrical cut, meaning it was longer on one side than the other.  Just in case you didn’t know that.

I raised my eyebrows at her and tried to use body language to ask her what was wrong, but she ignored me.  Either that, or it didn’t work.

Kayne cut straight to the chase.  "Arlin wants to see you all, now."

Each of us had a look of confusion on our faces.  "What for?” I asked.  I couldn't help it.

Kayne shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I didn’t ask.”  That was odd too.  Typically, Kayne was just as involved in the ‘business’ as Arlin was.

Jona groaned.  All of us were pretty much used to just being figure heads, not going on missions, so I didn’t blame him.  "Arlin's sons, Arlin's sons!  What an honor!”  We were pretty much treated like royalty all the time, by everyone except Arlin.

Arlin really was a father-figure to us all.  We had all come from bad homes and Arlin had embraced us into his underground life.  He had given us the choice of being changed and told us what we would be getting into before we decided.

But that didn't earn us any less slack.  Since we didn't have to go to school, we trained rigorously in the underground.  We had learned everything from a cheap price of a human liver on the black market to how to assemble a rocket launcher.  Sure it was interesting, but it was hard.

I could tell that even Dirk was disappointed.  "Let's just go and get it over with,” he sighed.

We jumped down to the alleyway below and into the bottom floor bar through the back entrance.  We were immersed in strobe lights and too-drunk sleazes for only a moment before we went behind the bar counter and through another door.

The route had been drilled into our brains several times over, so we had no problem with the twisting passages the stairs behind that door led us to.

Honestly, it was an underground city really.  Black market vendors were a frequent thing, setting up their stalls and such on either side of the canals.  This could technically be called, "Venice Underground.”

No houses though.  Doors led to expansive apartments and meeting rooms and restaurants and bars and everything you could possibly imagine.  There were no windows in the walls, but that didn't bother anyone really.

As we walked, I could feel the anger and hatred seeping out of Kayne as she led us to Arlin’s rooms.  I was probably the closest to her – she just got me – so I trotted up next to her and slung an arm around her shoulders.  “So,” I began slowly.  “What’s goin’ on?”

Kayne merely growled and shoved my arm away.  “That idiot,” she spat.  “I can’t believe him!”

I laughed nervously.  “You know, it’s hard to tell who you’re talking about when you only use insults and pronouns,” I commented.

“Arlin!” Kayne snapped.  “He went out without telling anyone last night and was nearly killed!  He came back all bloody and bruised, but when I asked, he told me it was nothing!  I heard him talking to Xavier about it this morning and it turns out that some of Rafe’s guys had ambushed him!  I can’t believe he kept this from me!”

I sighed.  “Just calm down Kayne.  I’m sure he just didn’t want to worry you,” I offered, trying to calm her down.

“Not to worry me?!” Kayne squealed.  “If he didn’t want to worry me, he never should have left without telling anyone!”  With an angry shriek, she yanked open Arlin’s door and disappeared.

I shook my head and sighed, followed her to Arlin's apartment.