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blood-bonded to Bas too.  And now that Shanks was a vampire, well, things had taken a nasty turn.  He’d been blood-bonded to Bas, but was turned by another.  Never, never a good outcome.  The rivalry drove the new vampire to eliminate either the sire or the blood bond.  Usually, they sided with their sire because it was the strongest connection.  So Bas had become his immortal enemy.  The blood bond was generally one way, flowed from the point of power to the one who they had power over.  He could bond a human to him by blood, and they had to serve his orders.  Any time a direct order was given by their master, the blood-bonded obeyed.  Period.  He could release them to their own free will, but they would always be his on demand.  It was a lifelong bond.   The blood-bonded had no power over the vampire.  That was where Park differed.  She did not act in the normal way.
    Shanks, however, fell into a different category altogether now.  As a point of courtesy, honor, vampires never touched another vampire’s blood-bonded humans.  It just wasn’t done.  Generally.  But there were prick vampires, too, and one of them had changed Shanks.  Bas was still trying to find out who, but so far, had not been successful.  Shanks hadn’t exactly been in a conversational mood when they’d tangled recently.  What it had done to the blood bond, however, had been unfortunate.  It had made Shanks capable of tracking Bas.  Which was very not good for Bas.  And not good for any of Bas’s blood-bonds…he could track them too.  The bonds were murky for Shanks, not exact, took him time to figure them out, but it could be done.  It had been done.   Bas could no longer track Shanks like he used to be able to, but Shanks couldn’t track him as easily either. But it could be done.  This Bas had discovered when the only other living blood-bond he’d had, an elderly woman living out her final days in peace in sunny Florida, had been brutally murdered.  Viciously, as in drained and torn apart.   It was an offense that could not go unavenged…Bas vowed Shanks and his sire would not survive.  But before Bas could eliminate Shanks, he had to find out who sired him.  So far, he’d hit dead ends.
     
     
     
    First, now, he had to get Park back.  Find her, before Shanks did.  Luckily, his bond with her was sharp.  He could track her far more quickly than Shanks ever could.  But he couldn’t risk Shanks getting to her first.  With Park being something more than human, who knew what it meant.  He had to get to her now.  He decided to risk the time for a shower, which he accomplished with the super speed most vampires mastered, and was out of the dingy room inside twenty minutes.  Luckily, the sun had dropped and he was able to move through the dusky light that lingered at the end of day.  He wished he was more comfortable with driving, but he’d never really bothered with it.  It was so much easier to compel someone to drive him, and then send them home.  It hadn’t worked as well this time as it always had before.  So he looked around the lot, dismayed to realize not only was there little to choose from, but the choices were awful.  He didn’t ride in a ten year old rusted out hatchback.  He’d fucking walk first.  So he headed to the road when an oversized earth-destroyer SUV cruised toward him and he stared at the driver only partially obscured by the glass window.  The driver slowed and looked out, his eyes catching Bas’s.  That was all it took.  Bas was impressed by the sheer size and features of the massive car.  Yeah, this was his ride.   He leaned in.
    “Take me to L.A.” 
    The driver, a twenty eight year old Internet wizard who had more money that sense, smiled, nodded, and turned the huge vehicle around in the middle of the road, then headed back the way he’d come.  Properly compelled, the man, whose name was Timothy, spoke nonstop about his business, a  computer service