Page 76 of Fear

I felt him trying to send something, so I let a shield down and opened the pathway wider, and saw multiple images of a man and woman in a variety of disguises.

If you see them in town, it means they’ve come to kill you. It occurred to me the other night, when the grizzly seemed focused on our back-and-forth exchange, that rumors about us are likely to start up before we’re prepared to deal with them. It’s possible my parents will try to kill me as well as you, if they find out. It feels best to warn you now, so I don’t miss the window by trying to wait until you actually need to know.

I’m not sure what the purpose is in… What is the end result you’re hoping for, by sharing this information? Was he telling me to kill his parents in order to stay alive? Or was he asking me to defend myself without killing them?

My end goal is to keep you alive. If you have to kill them to save yourself, then by all means do so. If you can avoid them long enough to reach me, that would be preferable, but I don’t want you trying to save them if it puts your own life at risk.

And what happens after I reach you? If he was going to have to be the one to kill them, I’d rather do it myself and save him from having to.

I go over their heads. They’ll be of a mind it’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, when they come for us. If I can get the Slayer Council to call them off before they have a chance to act, I feel there’s a decent chance they’ll leave us be. If the two of us can prove to the greater supernatural community that our pairing benefits both sides, Slayers and vampires alike, as Blade and Augustus have managed, they won’t be able to touch us at that point — not without risking their own deaths, and my parents want to live, so they can kill as many monsters as possible.

There’s a Slayer Council?

He was silent a good fifteen seconds before he said, I assumed you knew of it. The Slayer Council negotiates with the Concilio on Terms of Engagement. You worked for the Concilio, yes?

I was owned by someone high up in the Concilio. He listed me as an employee, but I was his puppet.

My research tells me you oathed to Griffin, and then you worked for the Concilio.

Your research is lacking, but I don’t wish to speak of the past couple of centuries. My research tells me you’ve recently visited your parents.

I’d clearly shocked him, because he locked everything down so I scented nothing, not even the fact he was sitting beside me, and then slowly let his natural scents return, as if a breeze had blown them away and now was returning them, but he didn’t fool me.

My parents are heading up a project I needed information on. It was the first we’ve been in the same room together in years.

Were you ever close?

He shook his head and changed the conversation. Below us, Kelsey had a bit of an issue, but the mongoose pulled her away from the humans tripping her up before it became a problem, and Ryan asked, You still certain she’s got this?

I’m not in the habit of setting my pupils up to fail.

But you don’t like her.

That has nothing to do with how I teach her, and how do you know I don’t like her?

She’s the exact opposite of you. Also, there was your reaction when the mongoose called her sweet.

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, but I avoided further comment on why Strigorii Vampires are not, and will never be, sweet.

I have a great deal of respect for young Kelsey. I know something of the vampire who made her, and I know her life would’ve been a living hell leading up to being turned, and then in the time since she was turned as well. The fact she’s made it this far means she’s made of some damned stern stuff, whether she’s choosing to show it or not. I can work with that.

But she was going to kill again while she was under my care. Ryan didn’t need to know, and I’d make sure she killed someone he wouldn’t worry with, so likely a predatory shapeshifter who’d done something bad, but it was going to happen.

And that brought me to something else I’d considered, but I didn’t have the nerve to mention, so I came to the edges of it with a question. You enjoyed watching me make Kelsey kill the duck.

I find it interesting that you parsed the difference between me enjoying watching her torture him, and watching you force her to do so.

That gave me pause, because he was right. Most people would’ve assumed his enjoyment of the exercise had been in the torture and death of a rapist monster. I’d instinctively understood that, while he didn’t dislike that part, what had truly gotten under his skin so much he had to hide it, was watching me force Kelsey to do what she defined as a horrible thing.

Rather than respond to his statement, I decided it was my turn to change the subject. Patience has my eagle while I’m here, to see if he can be taught to help keep my schedule under control. Once I get him back, I’d like to invite you to an evening of torturing him, by my side.

“Fuck.” He said it out loud, and he tamped down on everything again, so it was as if he was no longer beside me. I couldn’t even sense his body heat, and out of curiosity, I reached out and touched the top of his forearm.

You’re the same temperature as the air, I noted.

Figment of your imagination.

I sensed his radiant warmth again, and scented a normal human male — not a slayer.

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