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“Am I wrong?”
“How do you know?”
“I’m not certain, I just do.”
He smelled of the truth, so I asked my question, though I posed it as a statement. “Legend tells us slayer blood is poison.”
“Augustus feeds from Nina, Blade. Sorry, she’s Nina to me, but I try to remember to use the name everyone knows her by. She says letting him feed from her gives them a closer connection. I’m not prepared to open a vein for you, and you should be wary of it as well. Augustus calls it a double-edged sword.”
Right, because they saw more of each other. Be careful you aren’t sliced by the blade you slice others with. Time to be honest with myself — I wasn’t ready to have sex with the slayer, but I wasn’t ruling it out in the future.
I considered something we could do to spend a little more time around each other, and I realized I had the perfect social occasion coming up.
“Marco and I have been invited to Homewood for drinks and conversation Thursday night at ten. My invitation said I could bring a guest. Would you like to attend with me?”
He’d been leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and he sat up. The scent of lust had slowly faded, and now he took in a breath and dissipated the rest of the lust. He’d realized sex wasn’t happening tonight.
“I would love to attend as your guest. Since you don’t drive, let me know where to pick you up.” He pursed his lips and relaxed them. “You should know I’m friends with Kirsten, and on friendly terms with Cora. The three of us have worked together.” He rubbed a palm on his thigh. “We had issues with Griffin on a work trip, come to think of it.”
“He didn’t take me to Africa, but I’m aware of what happened.” Kirsten had come damned close to killing my old Vampire Master, and she’d still been human at the time. Or, reportedly human, anyway.
“How much interaction with the Celrau did you have?” he asked.
Marco’s file on Ryan hadn’t been terribly thick, but there were a few nuggets of information. One of which was a report of how cold Ryan’s eyes get when he kills, and that his emotions come off as white noise, static, when he’s killing or fighting. This information had primarily come from a deer shifter he’d saved, when vampires later went through the mind of the non-predatory shifter. Similar data had also been obtained from the minds of several gazelles he’d saved in Africa, interestingly enough.
Sometimes, I feel the same when I kill. Even when I can eat their fear, my emotions have to be put into a box in order for me to do what must be done. Lock them away, do the job, and then retrieve them later. Sometimes much later.
I decided to partially answer his question and change the subject at the same time.
“Not much, though I was given a newly turned Celrau as a pet, once. I didn’t feed him, so he died after three weeks. His fear was quite intense in the days leading up to the new moon. It was a good feeding.”
Celrau feed once a month, on the new moon. They drain the human of blood and consume their soul, and this gives the Celrau vampire enough life force to live for another month. Since I didn’t feed him, he’d died, and he’d known his nights were numbered leading up to his final moments.
“Did he die right away, or did he fade?”
“He was young. He didn’t rise on the night following the new moon.”
“So, he died at dawn and never rose again. No pain?”
I shook my head.
“Did he know it was his last night to live?”
“He feared it was.” And I’d spiked his fear, over and over, for days.
“Occasionally, I take on jobs to kill Celrau. If you’d like to go with me, I’ll split the fee.”
“I don’t need money.”
“Do you need adventure?”
I smiled before I realized I was going to, which wasn’t like me at all. My facial expressions are always calculated. I could be free when in private with Marco, but I hadn’t been free with anyone else for more than a century. Centuries, actually. Since I’d been traded to Griffin.
Marco gave a telepathic knock, and I told Ryan, “One moment, please.”
I looked down and opened the conduit to Marco.
Your scent in the back yard is recent, along with the slayer’s. I sense you close, but not on the grounds, and no one has seen you. Do you need assistance?
