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He laughs. This time, it isn’t just a little chuckle. He chortles with his whole damn chest, even throws his head back a bit, and I can see his mildly protruding Adam’s apple bob up and down.
“Are you finished?” I ask, once his laugh dies down.
The chuckle is still in his eyes. “You are my prisoner and yet your only concern is finishing a job?”
“I didn’t earn my reputation for nothing,” I respond, sounding put out.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t get your name?” Derith gestures for me to say it.
“I’m not interested in polite introductions,” I nearly interrupt him, throwing him as many glares as I’m able. “As I said: I have a job to do and you’re in my way.”
“Yourway?” he asks, folding his arms across his chest, as though mimicking me. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, you daft woman, but you are inmycastle, and that makesyourwaymyway.”
With little to no ceremony, he closes the distance between us in a mere blink, grips me around the waist, pulls me flush against him, and, in the blink of another eye, we’re moving, almost faster than I can see, zipping through the rooms and corridors of the castle, arriving finally right back, yes—you guessed it—in the dungeons. Before I can catch my breath, I find myself back in my cell with him on the other side of the bars, my bobby blade in his hand.
“No!” I throw myself against the bars and reach through them, trying to get to the bobby blade. I can’t lose it. It’s all I have left of her. “Please, please, don’t take it.”
“And allow you to pick the lock again?” he chuckles, shaking his head. “I think not.”
“You don’t understand,” I continue, my voice belying my panic. “It was my mother’s!”
“A grave loss, I’m certain,” he says with absolutely zero interest or compassion. He slips the bobby blade into the front pocket of his trousers.
“It’s all I have left of her,” I manage.
“You shall have it returned to you when you’re released.”
“And just when exactly will that be?” I demand, glowering at him. In general, I don’t like playing by anyone’s rules and especially not his.
He doesn’t answer my question, only smiles as if he’s the devil himself, which he probably is. Then, before I can think of a fitting curse word to bestow upon him, he simply disappears in a flash of dark hair and pale skin.
“Wait!” I scream.
To my surprise, he blips right back into being, still wearing that amused smirk on his stupid mouth. He just stands there, outside of my cell, looking me up and down again. His gaze lingers on my eyes. “What?”
“I… want to know… what are you?”
“Isn’t it obvious what I am?”
“I’ve never seen a vampire who can do what you can do.”
Except when you killed my family, I think, but I keep the thought inside. Of course, back then, he didn’t turn into a misty cloud of vampire condensation or become a gargoyle just for the hell of it. Derith has truly outdone his former self and I wonder for another brief second about my vampire evolution theory. I just don’t understand how he’s managed to change his biology, unless he was always able to do these things and just didn’t display them on that fateful day. That’s probably more along the lines of the truth.
“I suppose you could say I am an amalgamation of a great many entities that were all joined through curses over many thousands of years.”
I stare blankly up at him.
“I call myself a gargoyle-vampire,” he responds to my obvious confusion. At this announcement, I’m somewhat satisfied. At least the thing has a category and a name.
Gargoyle-vampire, I think, rolling the name over in my head. No trace of familiarity at all.
“What is that?” I ask. “And how is it different from a normal vampire?”
“It’s different in the ways you’ve already seen,” he explains on a shrug. “I have a gargoyle form, a mist form as well.”
“And you drink blood?” I ask, figuring I might as well find out as much about him as he’s willing to tell me. It’s not as though I have a whole hell of a lot more to do in this damned cell anyway. And knowledge is power—for whenever I manage to break myself out of this hell hole.
“I do drink blood, but I only do so in order to survive.”
