Creature of Habit (Book 3) Read Free

minute we were born until the day we died. Our family consisted of the carnival employees.  We didn’t go to school, but we knew more than most kids by the time we could walk. We spent our days hanging out with the guys in the freak show or helping the animal wranglers. Most nights were spent watching the burlesque dancers under the flaps of the tent. We’d either sleep outside near the animal menagerie or in the train car on bales of hay.”
    “Like I said, unimaginable.”
    “No, I’m sure you can’t. Life is so different now.” He sighed and scratched his forehead. “Sometimes I miss those days, but then I remember living without electricity and the smell of pig crap and I realize I’m okay with the here and now.”
    “What did your mother do at the carnival?”
    “She was a whore.”
    I froze, trying to figure out if he was serious or just joking.  Ryan simply inspected the blade and rubbed a spot with his finger.
    “A whore?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
    “Yeah, she slept with men in the towns we visited. Half the time while their families played games on the midway or watched the shows beneath the tents.”
    “Wow,” I said. “That must have been difficult for you and Sebastian.”
    He shrugged. “It’s what we knew and it was okay. She kept us safe and we had food and shelter. There were a lot of people worse off back then.”
    He placed the blade in the bag and took out several containers. From the smell of them, I assumed they contained gasoline or other flammable liquid. “One night my mother took a customer to her bed. He spent hours with her, way past the time of the side-shows. Sebastian and I had finished our work for the day—we were eighteen at this point and had our own jobs—and were waiting outside the train car when her handler came by to close up for the night. This handler—what you would call a pimp today—he was huge.” He flashed me a grin. “Bigger than me. Mean as a snake but was pretty much the only father we had. He came running out of that train car, face white as a sheet. Looked like he’d seen a monster.”
    “What was it?” I asked, having the horrible feeling I already knew.
    “At the time I didn’t know, but Sebastian and I had no choice, we had to check on our mother. We found her inside, tied to the bed, stripped naked, with bloody marks all over her body. She wasn’t dead.”
    “Oh God.”
    “She clung to life by a thread. The guy? He was there too, and even at eighteen I knew he wasn’t human. I didn’t know what he was, but there wasn’t an ounce of a soul in him.”
    “He was a vampire?”
    “Yes. I went after him and Sebastian tried to release my mother. The Vamp, he turned it on. In the carney world I had seen so many things. Weird things. I thought nothing could surprise me, but this guy… this demon. He was like nothing I’d ever seen. Speed, power, and agility. He had it all. Within seconds he had me pinned to the wall, he whispered something and I froze. Now I understand it was compulsion. He told me to stay and to watch. I had no choice.”
    “Oh Sebastian, I’m so sorry.”
    He shook his head. “He spent the rest of the night raping my mother while he mutilated and fed on Sebastian.”
    My hand moved to my mouth and I blinked back tears. Even after all the damage and horror Caleb had inflicted—the terrible things Sasha and Joe attempted to do to me, the harsh reality of Ryan’s transformation made me sick.
    “By dawn he’d decapitated my mother and left both Sebastian and I drained but with enough venom to transform. Just as in our original birth, we were once again reborn twins.”
    He tightened the caps on the containers and secured them in plastic. “I don’t know what to say,” I told him, feeling utterly useless.
    “There’s nothing to say, Amelia. We were all human at one point. None of us had a choice in our fate. The fact you’re willingly entering this world with Grant doesn’t sit well with my