Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) by Samantha Snow Page B

thought .  What would be the harm in me just listening? I’ve put it off for the last hundred years and it hasn’t necessarily made things any easier.  Maybe it just made more sense to humor her and give her a listen.  Maybe it was just good common sense.
     
    “No?  Nothing?  Does this mean I’ve finally got your attention?”
     
    Philip said nothing, didn’t trust his voice to speak, actually, but he nodded gravely.  Caroline looked, frankly, astonished.  Philip had to smile when he saw that.  He realized as he looked at his beautiful sister that he had no idea what her family of origin had been before she had been changed and primed to be his sister once he changed as well. 
     
    What he did know was that she had a stubborn streak just as thick as his own.  They were a lot alike in many ways, and that made him feel both better and worse all at the same time.  They were a lot alike but she had used her powers for good while he had used his for...for what? 
     
    For greed, for amusement, for sulking.  He guessed he’d used it for different things at different times, but he couldn’t say he had ever used them for good.  Not unless he was counting coming to Megan Wright’s rescue.  That might count, maybe, although it would feel more like it did if he hadn’t already slept with her.
     
    But now Caroline was returning to her (sometimes) seat without looking at anything but him.  He thought she might be trying to figure out if he was working some kind of a new angle with her and he supposed that made perfect sense.
     
    “Philip,” her tone so much softer than it had been only two seconds earlier, “do you remember when Papa turned you?  Can you still remember when he gave you your new life?”
     
    Could he remember?  Of course he could.  He didn’t believe that any vampire could ever forget his birthing, even if it was the thing he most wanted to do.  It differed very much from human birth in that way, although not so much so in others.  Just as with human birth, vampires came into their life with blood and pain and often times screams of anguish that rang in the ears like the beat of a drum. 
     
    It came with the confusion of human birth, too, the feeling of just not knowing what to do or what was expected or if this whole thing had actually been a huge fucking mistake.  More often than not, though, a vampire birth was not due to choice or desire, not a miracle to be pulled out as a reminder that good things really did happen on the days when one was feeling blue.  Philip’s certainly hadn’t been.  Philip knew that he would be dead by now if it wasn’t for his having been changed into what he was, but it was not what he would have been chosen.  Not back then. 
     
    If he hadn’t loved Celia so damned much, and maybe hadn’t been such a child, he wouldn’t have been changed at all.  If it hadn’t been for Celia, the thought of whom still made his heartache that hurt reserved for the loves long lost.  Like the memory of heartbreak.
     
    “Philip?”
     
    “I remember.”  It was all he could say.  It was all he wanted to say.
     
    “I remember, too.  He was rare, Papa, when he changed you and me.  There weren’t vampires like him.  There still aren’t nearly so many as there ought to be.  And there were no rules.  That’s what’s the most important thing to remember. 
     
    “There weren’t any rules to protect us or the humans around us.  It was only going to get more dangerous.  If Papa hadn’t done the research he did, he wouldn’t have realized what we were meant to do; our purpose.  He wouldn’t have discovered the order.”
     
    The order.  The goddamned order.  That’s what Caroline and Philip fought over the most.  They had done so since almost the beginning, for Philip hadn’t been a vampire for all that long before he decided that the order wasn’t something he was interested in being a part of.  He didn’t believe that there was