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impression of a passing breeze. As I ran, I pulled up power from the lines in a constant stream so that my energy was continuously renewed in a magical loop. Liam had called Carol’s mom to let her know what town I was resting in during the day so that there would be a volunteer waiting for me when I woke up later this afternoon. Magic from the lines was a tool that I used to fight or travel, but it wouldn't sustain me for long.
    As I raced through the rainy night  toward Liam and the others, I found myself thinking about my maker, Eleanor. I felt no guilt over her death or the manner in which I’d killed her. She’d murdered hundreds, plus threatened Jackie’s life and the Crescent City shifter community. We'd all agreed that she had to die. Her death had accomplished much that was good, bringing money for use in the community and added powers to help me protect those who needed my help.
    With rain soaking my clothes and stinging at my face, I thought back to the night I’d been kidnapped by her nest. My family and I were asleep, completely unaware that there were vampires who’d moved into our territory. They attacked three hours before dawn, forcing us into dirty cages in an abandoned mine. She'd appeared, exquisitely lovely, her seductive feminine charms a ruse to first entrap and then make you a victim of her horrible cruelty. Eleanor fed from me, allowing Antoine and two others to feed from my parents and sister, then had us tortured for everyone’s amusement. I will never forget the sound of my mother's and sister’s screams. After we’d healed, she moved us to her villa in Carmel, where she'd tried to change us one at a time by draining us to near death and then replacing our lost blood with hers.  First my mother died, followed the next night by my father and then the next, my sister. By the time she came to me, I was ready to die, but that wasn’t what the fates had in mind for me.
    I was sent to hell, instead.
    When the rare mood struck her, Eleanor would play the benevolent despot, treating us all like favored underlings, laughing with us and actually seeming to enjoy our company. Unfortunately, those peaceful spans were brief, and sometimes, within only minutes, we'd be once again drowning in a desperate misery which, for some in the nest, was not survivable.
    Her ego bred a fantasy where the dozens and dozens of vampires whom she 'd created would worship her, all of them grateful and eager to please her in any way they could. The reality was not as she'd imagined, and that made her furious and vengeful. When a human is changed against his will, he is not particularly grateful, nor eager to please, at least not at first. After a few rounds of punishments, a newly made vampire would either be dead or groveling. Even I spent years on my knees at the beginning.
    She was creative with her various tortures and they were usually done in front of all the others, the punishment combining pain with humiliation. Most of us despised her, some more openly than others. I was never completely successful at hiding my revulsion, and strangely, Eleanor respected me for my courage.
    Because I was unique, the only shifter to survive the change, she treated me as a favorite, which didn’t mean I wasn’t punished as brutally as the others, just not quite so often. But she would always force me to watch, and to me that was harder than enduring her cruelty myself. Sasha , and then eventually Heinrich, became her enforcers, but I often saw them lie to her about someone’s guilt to save that vampire’s skin. They hated what they had to do, yet we were all grateful that it was them performing her tasks and not one of the more sadistic vamps in the nest like Antoine. To discourage the friendship that Sash and Rick had formed, one was sometimes forced to punish the other.
    In recent years, y oung William endured the most. Eleanor enjoyed starving the weaker members of her nest just to see how long they could last. They would