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“You must have asked Malone about him later though, right?”
He looked at me and just blinked. He had the same confused expression I’d often seen on the faces of thralls. Their vampires told them to ask no questions, so they didn’t. They let things slide, even major, important things like this fight that resulted in the deaths of four men. The vampire told his thrall everything was fine and to forget about it—and that was what he did.
“Didn’t you ask Malone about that night when he later found you in Georgia, Jace?”
He just stared back at me, his mouth parted a little and his eyes dazed. “I—well, we-we never talked much about it. Dylan said it was all in the past and it should stay there. He said he didn’t know the man well at all. He said he met him in a bar, earlier that night, and it was all a huge mistake. A terrible tragedy about those men who died, of course, but…Dylan said…”
“Yes? What did Dylan say?”
“I-I can’t quite remember. I…” He shook his head and tried again. “I left New York soon after. My bosses were very conservative, and the incident was in all the newspapers. I think some of the partners didn’t even know I was gay. They didn’t fire me, but they let it be known I didn’t have any future with their firm. My mother needed me back here at home, so I quit and moved back.”
“And Dylan Malone followed you?”
“Yes. After a while. Not right away.”
“And you took him back, just like nothing happened? Even though he cheated on you with a man who would do something so—what did you call it? Sotragic, to those poor officers and the paramedics. He hurt you too, isn’t that right, Jace? He fought againstyou, the one he lived with, and was supposed to love, just to help this man he’d met at a bar? Right?” I asked, not giving him a moment to regroup.
He shook his head. I should have kept after him, but the look in his eyes made me stop. He didn’t volunteer anything else, but then why waste his breath? We knew all of it anyway. Jace had quickly left New York andhadcome back to Atlanta after it was all over, even though as far as he knew, Malone was still in a hospital being treated for his injuries. He had run from New York like a refugee, not looking back, and I wondered if he knew why. Did he know what Malone was, or was this some elaborate subterfuge? Thralls weren’t usually able to break free once a vampire or even a half-blood had their claws in them.He must have had some powerful incentive back home.
Malone had followed Jace to Atlanta. Why? Was he that obsessed with Jace or did he blame him for the death of his vampire and want revenge?Very strange, but then Dylan wasn’t like others of his kind. As a matter of fact, there weren’t many like him, and hadn’t been in hundreds of years. The half-bloods who survived became Hunters like Conway and me, and the ones who were too damaged to live were put down. Always. Malone had been the only one to wake the fuck up on the table. The monks and priests told us they’d never experienced anything like it. They said he must have been even more devolved than they knew; that’s why their drugs had little effect on him.
He was undeniably strong, and savage, yet he still liked to pretend to be human. He’d affected the same human identity when he could and used blood and sex thralls to survive after Jace left New York, only taking an occasional stranger as a victim so he could keep strong and under the Hunters’ radar. He was deadly, though, and he obviously had some fascination with Jace O’Neal, the man he’d followed to Georgia and made his blood and sex thrall.
No one knew how or why vampires chose their thralls—maybe for the convenience. Maybe it was an unholy attraction. Up until a year ago, Dylan Malone, for example, had been one of the hundreds of young actors in New York City theaters, working odd jobs while going on auditions as often as he could. An older vampire, who we had identified as a man who had once been a ship’s captain, had targeted Malone and taken him as his blood thrall.
Captain Todd had been a ship’s master on a cargo ship out of England. They had unwittingly taken onboard a vampire while still in port in Europe, and once they were underway, he emerged and began feasting. Almost the entire crew had fallen victim to the monster on the journey across the sea. He had kept only a few of the crew members alive to ensure he made it to America. Once the ship arrived, the vampire had jumped from the ship to the docks and scurried off into the night, leaving Todd and a few of the crew still alive but badly compromised.
When the port authorities had gone on board and found the dead and dying, they had immediately notified the police, but one man, whom they recognized as the ship’s captain, had escaped. This man the others identified as the captain had managed to make it to a dark warehouse on the docks in all the confusion. Hunters had tracked him there later and surmised that he had probably lived off rats or other rodents until he’d finally turned into a full-blood. From that point, he had made his way to the city and began claiming victims.
We had no idea why the creature eventually chose Malone. Perhaps he’d fixated on the young actor when he saw him near the theater district, or perhaps it was just some insane whim when he’d randomly come across him. Malone was reported to be handsome. But for whatever reason, the monster had made Malone his blood thrall and undoubtedly his sex thrall too. He probably would have eventually killed or even turned Malone. Most vampires used thralls that way for a time, eventually discarding them. Rarely, they turned them, but from the wild howls the creature had given when he was separated from Malone, something more had been going on between them.
Jace said he’d known Malone for about almost a year—six months since they’d reconnected in Atlanta. Full-bloods rarely kept thralls any longer. So Jace was already past his expiration date. Very soon now, Malone would either turn him or kill him, and it was hard to predict which route he’d take. Their relationship was already exceedingly strange.
Jace was a sex thrall as well as a blood thrall from what we could tell, so that might mean Malone might turn him and begin his own nest. It was one explanation for the special treatment he gave him. Then the two of them would return here to Jace’s home and slaughter his family before they disappeared again. It was important to know how much time we had before that happened, so we could try to save his folks. It was one reason we needed to question him so closely.
My next question made Jace jump. “When did you say you last saw Dylan Malone? Didn’t you say a week? That was a lie, though, wasn’t it? Didn’t you just see him yesterday? Didn’t the two of you fight again? And isn’t that really where you got all those bruises and that black eye?” My barrage of questions made him shrink back in his chair and look panicked.
I already had him on the ropes, so I finished him off with one last verbal blow.
“Oh, and let’s talk about that mark on your neck.”
I must have blown his mind, because his hand suddenly flew up to his throat. The deep, red and purple bruise marred his white skin, and I knew it was Malone’s very recent bite mark. Probably as recent as the night before. Jace winced as he touched it and actually looked shocked to find it there, like he hadn’t even realized he had it. Entirely possible, as vampires had an anesthetizing chemical in their bites. He rubbed the skin over it a few times and got a blissful expression on his face. His eyes changed when he touched it, too, getting a faraway, dazed look that I didn’t like.
We’d seen that before too.
After that first startled moment, he came out of it and glared at me. “I… No, I didnotsee Dylan yesterday. I was working all day.”
“And how did you get the black eye?”
“I had a silly little accident at work yesterday.”
“Yeah? What kind of accident?”
“I dropped my briefcase and got down to pick up some papers. When I straightened up, I stumbled and fell into an old lady in the hall. It startled her, I guess, and she hit me.”
I glanced over at Conway, and he made another note. “Did she give you that bruise on your jaw too?” I asked.
His hand twitched, like he wanted to rub his jaw or maybe go back up and soothe himself with stroking the bite on his neck.
