A/N: Welcome to Blood Rights my sequel to Blood Ties. This story will be told from Taber's POV. Please proceed with caution you are about to enter the psyche of a five-hundred-year-old sociopath murderer.

Disclaimer: Taber, Angel, Rae, Tally, the plot and all characters and ideas mentioned in Blood Ties belongs to me everything else is the property of people who will sue me if I don't put up this message.

Prologue

"They told me she screamed my name for ten minutes. Did you hear her? I didn't. There was no echo of this in my mind." I pulled my fingers through my unruly dark hair. "Ten minutes. Not a peep in five years and she was lucid for ten minutes. A fluke. Could it have been a fluke?" I sighed and wandered back into my mind.

Five years was nothing to a Vampire. Half a decade. One fifth of a century. One percent of my five hundred years. Sixty months. Two hundred sixty weeks. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days. Forty-three thousand eight hundred hours. Two million six hundred twenty-eight thousand minutes. One hundred fifty-seven million, six hundred eighty thousand seconds.

Too bloody long. It's been so long. "I wasn't even here. When she needed me. I wasn't here. When I got back she was… she wasn't really there any more." I shook my head sadly. "My Angel." I said softly. "Why did it have to happen to you?"

Chapter 1

I looked at the child I'd been speaking to. He was a new acquisition. He had dark skin despite supposedly being in the trade for six years. When you're in the trade you don't see the sun. Therefore his skin wasn't dark from a tan. He had brown curly hair and green flecked brown eyes. Oh and he doesn't speak. On pain of death he will not speak. He used to scream. Jaguar said he hasn't screamed in over a year.

He suited me. I needed some one to talk to. Some one who would listen and never ever offer me advice. He looked to be about ten. I hadn't had a slave who was already trained in a very long time. Not that he'd had to have been trained very much. He was only little when he was brought in. Scaring him into submission hadn't taken much.

He spent a lot of time drawing. I don't think he knew how to read or write. This didn't really surprise me. Slaves didn't get taught things. Except to obey. He liked yellow. He drew the sun a lot. I put him in a room with a window that looked out on the garden. I think he liked that. He seemed so perfectly innocent when he smiled that first time he looked out at the garden. I called him Rae.

I came and spoke to him a lot. It's not like I don't have friends but you don't tell Vampires about your weaknesses. Except for Jace. She'll forget in an hour or two anyway. I couldn't even tell Jace. She tended to get bitter about Vampire blood things that went wrong. That was one thing she remembered consistently. That she couldn't remember because of when her Sire had Changed her.

"It wasn't my fault." I said next. "Not my fault that something in her mind snapped. She should have been stronger." It was my fault of course. I'd put too much on her. Her human mind couldn't handle it.

I had started it by giving her my blood. By binding her to me. I told her once she got blood-sick when she didn't have enough of my blood in her system. The same was true of the reverse. Too much of my blood and it could make parts of her body run too fast for other parts to keep up. Then there was school. Her training. Our making love and what came after. It was too much for her. So the black outs started. She would have been fine if I'd allowed her to remember slowly so it wasn't so… intrusive. Her friend had told her though. It hit her hard. She started to break under the strain. Then she snapped and tried to take it all away. When I didn't allow her, her mind went on vacation. A five year vacation.

Much has happened since that night five years ago. Many things of note to Humans. Oil prices are soaring as peak oil is expected to be hit this year. Police slaughtered a high school in New York. Iraq has become a U.S. colony. There was a hurricane named Helen that took out the entirety of Charleston just a week after my Angel's mind left. It is good she wasn't alive to see it. It would've broken her heart. Only a few of her friends lived.

I have built a new home. A place to stay. A place to keep my Angel. My new home lies on my old property. It is a modern Mansion. Much of it lies empty. There are but a very few slaves for the up keep. Rae and a young woman who was lucky enough to be a Doctor have no hard work here. The others do their jobs but Rae does nothing but listen to me speak and Tally keeps Angel alive. It's an important job but apparently not particularly hard.

I sigh softly and ruffle his hair. He flashes me a brilliant smile as I retreat to my room while the day dawns. This room is much like my old room. Done in monochrome colors. The carpet is black. The walls matte black. The ceiling is black with random silver swirls. The bed is bright chrome with silver bedding. The amour and dresser where I keep my clothes are both painted silver.

I strip off my clothes. Black clothes on a black carpet. I curl up in my bed and pray not to dream. No god has answered my prayers in five hundred years.

It was the very same year the French were setting up colonies in Canada. And I was sailing across the sea. Travel. Ah, travel had been good. We'd made good speed across the broad sea.

I saved a man's life today. There was a storm. The man was nearly tossed overboard. I caught him. He must've weighed as much as I do. I dislocated my shoulder but I caught him and saved his life. The dark-hair beauty who travels among the other traveling beauties smiled just for me and said I did a good thing.

My shoulder's been fixed. Hurts like hell now but it was worth it. My dark-hair beauty will smile sweetly upon me as I sleep this night.

A/N: Love it? Hate it? (Though by my troth I've only ever had one flame.) Drop me a line. All you must do is press the pretty little blue button down below this message.