Blood Descendants (St. Clair Vampires Book 1) by Beverly Toney Page A

first place. The myth of ghouls, or
Renfield’s from the Bram Stocker novel, was actually true. As
humanity invented tools for protection against threats, animal and
Vampire alike, the need for daytime protection grew. It was most
likely that a female Vampire took a human mate and accidentally
produced the first Stewards. This man was an ancestor of the Spartans
and was more resilient than other humans; the combination of genomes
made the offspring perfect for the job. The Stewards grew stronger
and lived longer than humans but did have the need to drink blood. As
the population of Stewards grew, early leaders sought to breed them
with Vampires to reduce the need for blood or hibernation. These
offspring simply created stronger and longer lived Stewards, but did
not fix the Vampire problem. For many years the Stewards simply
captured humans in order to feed their Vampire patrons. Entire
villages, living in fear of their mysterious neighbors, began to form
lynch mobs and killed several hundred Vampires. Humans outnumbered
Vampires and Stewards, so an all out war was out of the question. And
the idea of treating humans like cattle was not appealing. As time
went by the mysterious nature of Vampires drew the attention of
admirers. Men and women alike flocked to the edges of villages and
townships for a chance encounter with the mythical creatures.
    Many Vampires lived on
the blood of these admirers and began to keep regular human hours. As
the years went by and Vampires began to thrive and prosper,
differences in attributes caused divisions. The most powerful
Vampires separated the population into five different clans and led
them as their sovereign monarchs. These Royals had set up a governing
body called the Council that was granted the power to create,
implement and enforce laws. This new governing body sought out the
brightest of the Vampires and set them to work on biological issues
within the species. These Vampire scientists had worked tirelessly
for solutions to the problem of feeding without the fear of
discovery.
    At the same time,
Vampires and Stewards began to mate with humans. Many Vampire/human
offspring were abnormal and deformed causing their superstitious
human parents to put them to death. The Steward/human offspring were
much healthier, however. They were so healthy, in fact, that they
were found to be the perfect source of food for the Vampires. It was
discovered accidentally when the teenage twins of a Steward/human
relationship were being educated by a Vampire scholar in an Italian
monastery. One evening the scholar began to feel ill. He had been so
engrossed in his studies that he had gone without feeding for over a
month. It was the middle of the night when he fell to his knees and
called for the Steward half-breeds to get a human for him to feed
upon. The human donor they found, however, was insufficient to repair
the damage of his unintentional fast. As the scholar continued to
waste away, the twins, being of Steward blood and having the innate
nature to care for Vampires, offered their own blood. Each day one of
them would puncture their wrist and fill the scholar’s chalice.
Slowly, the scholar returned to his senses, but he had many
hallucinations while he healed. Each morning when he was fed, he
looked up and saw sun streaming in through the window to illuminate
the chalice and each twin. When he regained his common sense he wrote
that he had been saved by “the getter of blood” or “the
carrier of blood” which he wrote in a combination of Italian
and Latin; Sanguine Fare. He did not know that the twins had fed him
their own blood until he called them for his weekly feeding. When the
human donor did not satiate him, he asked them how many humans they
had used for his restoration. At first, the twins were afraid that
the scholar would be angry at their news, but they soon found out
that they had solved a problem plaguing the entire Vampire
population.
    The Vampire Council
formed a society with