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“True.”
She ordered steak and lobster.
He ordered the same.
Levka telepathically communicated with Stasio,“We leave first thing in the morning before first light. If you want to spend some time with your girlfriend, do so tonight.”
“Thanks, Levka. Maybe we’ll take a walk along the beach and see the sunset. I’ve already told her we’re leaving.”
“Good.”
“Have you mostly lived here?” Jasmine asked.
“No. We’ve lived all over, but in truth, this was my castle back when it was first built.” He bowed his head a little. “I am a prince, as are my friends.”
Jasmine’s mouth gaped. “Oh, wow, I’m not only dating another assassin, but I’m in the presence of royalty. How cool is that? Of course the relationship will be short-lived, but I will love telling others I dated a Welsh prince.”
At least they had never been to New York, so they’d never had any trouble there and nobody should know them. He wondered how difficult it would be to get lost in New York City.
“Levka said we’re not leaving until tomorrow morning, so we have time to enjoy a walk on the beach and we can see the sun set.”
She smiled. “You have a deal.”
After dinner, Stasio took Jasmine for a long walk along the beach, both carrying their shoes, their toes covered in the shifting grains of sand.
“Did you fight a lot in earlier times?” Jasmine asked.
“Many times. We had a lot of kin, but when our parents died due to the Black Death, we thought we would succumb too. At first, we wished we had. It took us a while to learn how to control our actions—to feed only when necessary and never to kill our hosts. The hunters were just as troubled as us. They became killers of vampires, whether we were rogues or not.
“So many people had died from the Black Death already that if humanity—such as it was then—was to survive at all, we had to form separate hunter and vampire leagues to police our own.”
“Right.”
“But the rules aren’t always just,” Stasio said, holding Jasmine’s hand as they walked on the beach, waves crashing along the shore, the sea breeze whipping around them. No matter what she might think of him if she knew he was a rogue, he had to set things right with how he felt about politics in general. Often, assassins lived by the league rules, giving no thought about whether they were right or wrong.
“You sound like an anarchist,” she said, smiling at him.
“My friends will tell you I am caught up in the past. I have to admit I do love history.”
“Me also, though my history isn’t as old as yours. My mother was from London and my father was from Germany. A Hessian prince paid my father’s way to America and many others from his region to fight in a mercenary army for the British Loyalists against the Patriots.”
Stasio’s eyes widened. “Really.”
“Yes. But he wouldn’t fight the Patriots. He thought what George Washington and his people were doing was courageous and right. He and his friend fled to New York City where he had some relatives and he ended up meeting my mother and well, the rest is history.”
“Your father and mother were vampires?”
“My father was. My mother’s people were hunters.”
More and more fascinating. Her father had been a rogue, by league rules. “Your father turned your mother?” he asked.
“Yes. She wanted it. They loved each other, even though she was a huntress and he was a vampire.”
“I’m surprised the New York League didn’t object.”
“You don’t hold it against me, do you?”
He smiled. “Not at all.”
