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I frown at him. “But, you still bite them, regardless.”
He further narrows his eyes at me. “No, I drink their blood from goblets.”
“Goblets?” I ask, frowning more narrowly.
“I am not an animal—I am a sophisticated, cultured man—”
“Vampire,” I correct him.
“Gargoyle-vampire,” he corrects me. “And as a sophisticated, cultured… gargoyle-vampire, I use such things as goblets and glasses. There’s never a need for my fangs to break skin.”
Odd.
Very odd.
Especially for a vampire. Even one of the gargoyle variety.
“Hmm,” I say, clearly unconvinced.
“And now I have a question for you,” he says. I raise my eyebrows to tell him to get on with it. “Why is it you so resemble someone… from my past?” he asks and eyes me narrowly.
“This again?”
“I believe you and she are not the same person,” he amends. “That would be quite impossible as she is dead and has been for many, many years.”
“Then shouldn’t this mystery be put to rest?”
“No,” he answers, shaking his head. “Your resemblance to her is uncanny—so much so that I can’t imagine you are not of her blood line.”
“I already told you and I’ll tell you again—I know no one by that name.”
He doesn’t say anything right away, but just studies me as if trying to decipher if I’m telling him the truth. I am.
“I grow tired of you,” he announces and with that, he’s gone, leaving me alone in my dank rocky cell.
Vampire powers are pretty impressive when you see them close up, and most vamps are arrogant enough that they enjoy showing them off. In my experience, they enjoy it so much, in fact, that they oftentimes forget or ignore the fact that humans have powers of their own, less showy perhaps but still useful.
I open my closed fist to reveal the key to my cell in the center of my palm. Being able to zip about at superspeed is all very useful, but I’d rather be a clever pickpocket. Dickhead D’Orsay had used the key to lock me in, but was so pleased with himself that he never noticed my hand slip back through the bars to lift that same key the instant he dropped it into the pocket of his long coat.
That is the greatest weakness of the vampire; they are much too smug.
Of course, if I don’t want to fall into the same trap, then I need to get moving quickly. Reaching through the bars, I insert the key into the lock and turn it as quietly as I can. It squeaks more than I’d like, and my heart is in my mouth as I await Kellen or one of his people to come charging down the corridor to stop me.
But no one comes and the door swings open.
Escaping from the same cell twice in less than an hour. Even for me, that’s pretty good.
I bound through the dungeon hallway, the opposite way to that in which I went last time. The humans might be stationed throughout and I have to be on guard. But it’s dark here, save for the dim illumination provided by the few and far between torches, and my hearing is better than the average human’s.
I turn around an oddly sharp corner and find a stone staircase. There’s a window at the top. It’s beautifully adorned with a gold patterned border and a stained glass image of a lion and lamb. Biblical. How fitting. The stairs are lit up a bit from the window, thanks to the moonlight streaming in. And if moonlight can get in, that means, I can get out—theoretically, of course. I sprint up the stairs and approach the window without ceremony.
“Where is the girl!” I hear Kellen yelling from a great distance away.
It’s an encouraging distance, because it means they won’t be able to get to me in time. I take off my shirt, now chilled to the bone in just my hunting brassiere, and wrap the shirt around my hand, minding my wrist. Then, facing the window, I try not to wince as I punch through the glass and quickly kick free the remaining shards that cling to the bottom border.
“I heard something!” someone yells, a woman, much closer now.
I grab onto the stone side of the window and hoist myself onto the platform. From here, it’s just a short hundred foot fall into the Bluecrest Waterway, otherwise known as “the bottomless sea.”
