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“All right.” Lauren?iu then inquires, “What is your name?”
They stare at him for a long time with those shadowed eyes, distrustful of everyone and everything.
“Adrian.”
“Adrian,” Paimon repeats. “It’s a nice name. Now, why are you following us?”
This new person, Adrian, doesn’t address him; they address Lauren?iu.
“I told you,” they reply in a soft rasp. “I felt that you were like me. I felt your presence, and you felt mine, every single step of the way.”
Paimon tilts his head in thought. “How were you following us? We would’ve noticed if there was a car behind us the whole way.”
“I became mist,” Adrian explains. “Just once. I haven’t been able to do it again.”
Paimon blinks and looks between Lauren?iu and them. “Can all vampires do that?”
“I don’t know if all of them, of us can. I haven’t met others like me.” Until now. “We can change into anything, I think, if we’re powerful and experienced. Especially at night.” Lauren?iu asks Adrian, “How long have you been like this?”
“Almost six months.”
Lauren?iu feels a pang of pride for this stranger. “You’ve already done so much.”
“Really? Funny. I thought I was behind.” Dryly, Adrian changes the subject with crossed arms, “I followed the two people with hair so long and well-perfumed I could smell it across the state. Under the soap, rain, and blood. And I saw you kill that man.”
“You’ll have to be more specific, darling,” Paimon replies. At Lauren?iu’s look, he elaborates, “What?” To Adrian: “Just so you know, we’ve killed two people.”
Adrian replies, examining one of their bloodstained hands. “Oh. Good to know.”
Lauren?iu asks, “Do you have anyone?” The air leadens with those words.
“No. I spent three months in a silver casket.”
He and Paimon exchange a disquieted glance.
Horror shudders through him. Locked. In complete darkness. “How did you escape?”
Adrian blinks once, their right eye squinting.
“I told myself that I would. That I wouldn’t live like this, a living death. And I was able to slip out. Change. It took too long.”
Lauren?iu admires their tenacity. He could barely move when he first changed; of course, the hospital bindings didn’t help when he first tried to bite a nurse. “That’s impressive, since you had no guidance.” He wants to know who hurt them, who trapped them. Who changed them and, possibly, who attempted to kill them.
But he doesn’t dare ask now.
“Yes,” is all Adrian says, looking as if they want to say more, but they don’t.
Lauren?iu looks at Paimon, whose eyes soften when they stare at one another.
Does he look at Lucifer like this?
Paimon looks at Adrian, and his tone is all business. “Well, we have something that we’re doing, but if you would like to come with us, you can. We are trying to be discreet, however.”
“Of course, I could absolutely tell,” Adrian replies with a completely neutral face. “I will try to be discreet. It isn’t usually like me to look like this. You caught me at a compromising time.”
Lauren?iu can’t help himself. “Why do you eat the heart, and not drink from the neck?”
Paimon blinks rapidly. “Eat the what, now?”
