“Because I probably am damned. I’ve been a vampire for a very long time.”
“How long?” she asked curiously.
“Since 1751. Are you tracking or just enjoying the fresh air?”
“I don’t know,” Sera admitted with some relish. “I’ve had a tiring day.” She glanced at him. “I did try again with that piece of silk you gave me.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not until I held Jason’s cufflink at the same time. The owner of the dress and Jason know each other; they’ve been together very recently at C & H. Heads on desk, asleep. And in a house with a bunch of other—creatures like them.”
“You seem to have difficulty with the word ‘vampire,’” Blair observed.
“Trust me, it’s not the word.”
“We might be quite lovable when you get to know us. For someone so at home with the dead, you’re very squeamish.”
“Spirits are natural,” she retorted.
Blair spread his arms wide, mocking her—and yet he wasn’t quite laughing. “And what am I? How do you suppose I came to be?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, it wasn’t in a factory or a mad geneticist’s laboratory. I’m as much a part of the natural world as you and the Siberian tiger and the dead people’s spirits that haunt you.”
“Hey, calm down,” Sera said, regarding him with some curiosity. He appeared to be genuinely offended, which hadn’t been her intention at all. You’d have to be pretty stupid to go around pissing off vampires without a damned good reason. Or a damned good defense. She went so far as to give him a friendly nudge. “I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
His lip curled. “Then what did you mean to do? Explain your own irrationality?”
“No. I meant to tell you about these vampires all together in the house, waiting for instruction.”
She had the satisfaction of finally halting him in his tracks. The half-challenging, half-annoyed glint vanished from his eyes, leaving them surprised and intensely curious. “Instruction?” he repeated.
She kept walking. “Instruction. Or something like that. I had the feeling they were in the middle of some plan or other.”
Blair caught up with her. “That’s bizarre. Vampires don’t make plans. Not with each other, at any rate. They weren’t fighting?”
“Nope. They seemed to be in accord.”
“That’s even weirder.”
“Is it? I don’t like to doubt you, you being the first undead I’ve conversed with, but how well do you actually know your own species?”
“As well as you know yours, I suppose,” he said with a trace of hauteur.
“Yes? Well, I have to go by the evidence.” Clearly, she was pissing him off again, but as they turned into Rose Street, she could only hope the number of people there, milling around and spilling out of the bars for a smoke, would protect her. In any case, it was something that had to be discussed.
She said, “You told me vampires can’t speak except telepathically. But Jason does, and I’m pretty sure that girl at the party must have done too. You say vampires don’t congregate or plan, and yet they’re all in that house together—”
“They came for Jason too,” Blair interrupted, frowning. He didn’t seem annoyed at all. “At the car park. They didn’t come to fight over human scraps. They came to meet Jason, however swiftly they deserted the sinking ship. That really isn’t natural. What do you suppose their plan is?”
“If I overhear them discussing it, I’ll let you know,” she said dryly.
A bunch of young men all but fell out the door of the pub just ahead, pushing and shoving. Some of it might have been good-natured horseplay, but a couple of them were clearly spoiling, in a drink-induced sort of a way, for a fight.
“Was there a human in this house with the vampires?” Blair asked, ignoring the commotion if he even noticed it.
Sera veered to the right. “Not that I could tell,” she said. “Why?” One man, violently shoved, hurtled toward her with enough speed to knock her over. She sidestepped that one easily enough, only his friend followed, hurtling into him and knocking him, inevitably, into Sera.
She saw it coming, with that flash of recognition that she could do nothing to avoid it. And yet, without warning, the men were not only pulled up short but suddenly staggered in the opposite direction.
Baffled, they turned with one bewildered gaze to watch Sera and Blair walk past.
She hadn’t seen Blair move. He hadn’t even seemed aware, and yet… “Did you do that?” she asked, low voiced.
Blair twitched his lips in response.
“Oy!” yelled one of the drunks. Inevitably, there was a scrape of hurried footsteps against the cobbled street. A few people scurried past or into another pub out of the way. Blair turned to face the two in front. Their pals were muscling up in support only a few feet behind. Sera tensed. Although she could take care of herself, this was quite a crowd. Besides, what the hell would Blair do to them?
“What’d you…?” the first man began aggressively and then broke off. He was little more than a boy with too much alcohol in his veins, but he was still ripe for causing damage to someone.
“Look,” Sera interrupted placatingly, catching hold of Blair’s arm. “We…” She stopped, for both men were staring at Blair.
“Fuck. Forget it,” the lad muttered to Sera’s amazement. He and his friend turned as one and walked back the way they’d come, dragging their mates with them.
Sera let her breath out. “Some time,” she said, “I’ve got to see how you do that.” Did he show his fangs, mesmerize them?
“I don’t care to brawl in public places,” Blair said, carrying on up Rose Street.
“Good for you,” Sera approved, following. “I’m sure, in many ways, you’re a great role model for today’s youth.”
But Blair didn’t appear to hear her. He had his nose in the air, as if he were sniffing. Coming alongside him, Sera felt a twinge of awareness; a hint of red mist flashed across her eyes.
“Vampire,” Blair said with satisfaction and strode around the corner. Sera, clutching the silk and the cufflink once more, tried to retrieve and hang on to the red mist. She bumped into Blair’s solid back.
He’d come to an abrupt halt. “It’s gone,” he said in clear frustration.
“No, it hasn’t,” Sera said triumphantly. “Come on.”
At first it wasn’t as clear as tracking Blair. The feeling was vague and sometimes vanished altogether, but she always found it again, and as they meandered into the west end, it grew stronger. Not one but several vampires had walked these streets recently, and one of them was the woman belonging to the black silk dress. A little later, she picked up Jason too. Excitement mounted. She could sense the same feeling in Blair, who might even have been picking up the trail with her, for after a while, he seemed to know which way to go without her lead.
“Here,” she said, coming to a halt. They’d walked as far as Roseburn. With Blair silently at her side, she gazed at the building in front of her. A Victorian house at the end of a terrace. It had a couple of empty chains swinging over the front door, as if they had once borne the sign for a hotel or something similar. It was in darkness and gave the impression of being unoccupied. Or perhaps just neglected.
“I can’t smell fresh vampire,” Blair observed.
“They may not be here. But they have been.” From habit, she fumbled for her phone to call Jilly and Jack for backup before it struck her that Blair, surely, was all the backup she needed.
If she could trust him.
She shrugged. “Nothing ventured,” she murmured, walking through the gate and up to the front door. She rang the bell, which inspired no helpful visions, and waited.
Blair, very still at her side, said, “I can smell only one human. And I think he’s asleep.”
“Damn.” Wondering if they could break in, Sera began to scan the building for signs of alarms.
Blair stepped back and lifted his foo
t as if intending to kick the door in.
“Blair!” she hissed in warning. “Other people live in this street!”
He placed his foot back on the ground, but she couldn’t flatter herself she’d had anything to do with it.
“Someone’s coming,” he said.
“Vampire?” She couldn’t sense anything among her sudden panic.
“No,” said Blair, just as a light came on and the door opened.
A middle-aged man stood there. He was tall and fit looking, a shock of mingling gray and black hair framing a still-firm and handsome face.
Sera rushed into speech. “Ah. Sorry to bother you so late. We’re looking for a friend and were given this address.”
“Really? Who are you looking for?” The man’s voice was deep and pleasant, his accent English, which meant nothing—there were a lot of English accents in Edinburgh.
“Jason Bell,” Sera said, looking straight into his eyes. She read no recognition there.
“No, I’m afraid there’s no one of that name here. Who gave you my address?”
“Tony,” Sera said, plucking a name out of the air. “Maybe I remembered it wrong. You’re not Malcolm, are you?”
“No, I’m not Malcolm.” The man’s gaze was piercing, and for a moment, she thought her ruse wasn’t going to work, that he wasn’t going to say any more—especially when she discerned a distinctly amused gleam in his gray eyes. Then, unexpectedly, he said, “I’m Nicholas. Nicholas Smith.”
Sera stuck her hand out. “Sera,” she said, modifying the vowel slightly so the name might have been heard as the more common “Sarah,” especially to an Englishman. The man blinked a little sleepily, but he didn’t refuse her hand.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said politely. And oddly, for so obvious a platitude, she got no sense of lying. He really was pleased to meet her. But she picked up very little else—perhaps because his attention had shifted to Blair, still and inevitably silent beside her. Nicholas Smith dropped her hand but not before she picked up a sudden wave of emotion from him, as intense as it was unexpected. It contained an element of surprise and fear and a lot of curiosity, overwhelmed by something she couldn’t analyze.
She cast a quick, surreptitious glance at the vampire, who, after all, was very good at inspiring both surprise and fear, but whatever he’d used on the Seelies or the drunks in Rose Street was completely absent from his face now. He looked as mild as it was possible for him to look.
“Would you care to use my telephone?” Nicholas Smith offered unexpectedly, and Sera realized his regard had switched back to her. His eyes were almost—concerned. Had he recognized Blair for what he was? Was he offering her a means of escape?
Alarm plunged through her stomach. Did he know something about Blair that she didn’t? Was she in more danger than she recognized?
Whatever, she’d no objection to looking round this house or conversing further with Mr. Nicholas Smith. She’d opened her mouth to accept, but then Blair waved a mobile phone in front of her while he nodded amiably to Mr. Smith and turned her away from the door.
She thought of resisting before discarding the idea as pointless. She knew the vampire’s strength.
“Thanks, Mr. Smith!” she said over her shoulder. And under her breath to Blair, “I could have learned a lot more in there.”
“It might have been the last thing you learned,” Blair said grimly.
Chapter Seven
“You shouldn’t trust him,” Blair said severely after several minutes of fast, silent walking. Again, Sera was following a mixture of “feel” and instinct to decide direction, and Blair seemed content to let her.
She retorted, “I get more trustworthy vibes from him than from you!”
“And why do you suppose that is?”
“Because you’re a vampire that drinks blood and kills people?” she suggested, walking even faster.
“And he’s—what?”
“Just a dude. Probably the wrong dude, since I’m still sensing vampires. I think Jason just walked past that house, probably en route to his own flat in Palmerston Place.”
“He’s just a dude who recognized me for what I am.”
Since the same thought had crossed her own mind, she spared him a glance. “Did he ‘hear’ you?” she asked uncertainly.
“I didn’t say anything. Offhand, I’d guess he sensed me, much as you do.”
“Then he’s psychic?”
“Almost certainly. Was his house the same place you saw the vampires congregated?”
“I don’t know,” she retorted. “You dragged me away before I could look.”
“Well, the girl in the black dress came here the night Jason died. He let her in like an old friend.”
Sera frowned in annoyance. “Then you knew about that house? Why didn’t you say?”
“I was hoping you’d find another place, where the vampires hang out the rest of the time.” He frowned. “A psychic who consorts with vampires,” he mused. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Or a psychic who was threatened by vampires,” Sera said defensively, though quite why she felt the need to defend the stranger, she had no idea.
Without warning, he grasped her wrist and swung her against the wall of the nearest building, closing her in with his tall body while he stared into her face. Before she had time to feel afraid, she felt a brush like a butterfly’s wing in her mind, much deeper and totally different from the surface sensation when he spoke to her.
“Get out,” she whispered, trying to push the butterfly away.
“Have you ever been hypnotized, Serafina?”
“No. Several have tried and failed,” she blustered. “My mind was always stronger than theirs.” They’d been therapists, recommended by doctors to one set of foster parents, to try to curb her unruly behavior. She’d laughed in their faces, much as she was trying and failing to do in Blair’s. But he was too close, his hips actually pushing her into the wall, while his eyes, so deep and terrible, glowed with some strange, almost golden fire. A trick of the streetlights, it had to be.
“Well, his is stronger than yours.” As Blair spoke, the butterfly merged into his voice, still present but not battering its wings anymore where it had no business to be. “And he’s a master of suggestion. Why did you suddenly trust him more than me?”
She shoved at his chest with no effect. “Can we go back to the drinking-blood-and-killing-people bit?” Worse than anything, her voice shook. “Get out of my head, you bastard,” she whispered.
A frown flickered across his brow. “You hate that, don’t you? Not being in control. Not doing the manipulating.”
She gazed at him, loathing him, failing to find the words. Although the scary glow didn’t vanish from his eyes, they seemed to soften. His body didn’t. It still pinned her helplessly to the wall. He lifted his hand and touched her cheek, trailing his fingertips down her jaw to her throat. She gasped.
“Serafina,” he murmured in her head. “Some things are just stronger than you. They don’t necessarily hurt you, and they won’t necessarily defeat you.”
Distracting her from his surprising words, the bulge in his jeans was hardening, both alarming and exciting her. After all, he had the kind of face and body to die for. Sera had no intention of dying.
“Okay, celebrate!” she spat. “You’re stronger than me.”
His lips twitched. “I was thinking of Nicholas Smith. But now you mention it, yes, I am.” His fingers lingered over her vein, stroking. She shivered, trying not to feel the spurt of physical pleasure that was in danger of drowning out her alarm, especially when he swayed his hips in a slow, sensual caress. His erection rubbed against her tummy, and she had an insane urge to stand on tiptoe to feel it grind between her legs. “And, you know, I like that too.”
“Why?” she got out, reaching wildly for the smart comment that somehow eluded her.
His fingers slid upward to her face once more, and he traced the outline of her lips. “Because I can kiss you
without you feeling the need to stop me.”
She narrowed her eyes threateningly, although her heart seemed to plunge right through her stomach to her womb. “It won’t be the need that’s lacking,” she managed.
“But you like the way I look,” he pointed out, pressing gently on her lower lip to part it from the upper. “I’ve read it in your mind.”
“Doesn’t mean I want you slobbering all over me!” Oh Jesus, what would it feel like?
“I won’t slobber,” he promised and bent his head.
She couldn’t have avoided it. She refused to dent her dignity further by trying. So she glared into his face, daring him, while her heart thundered in treacherous anticipation. His lips hovered over hers for an instant, just long enough for her to panic that perhaps he was changing his mind and wouldn’t do it, after all. She felt an urge to close the distance herself—only to break the tension, of course. And then he did it, sliding his fingers away from her lips to cup her face and sinking his mouth into hers with blatant, wonderful, terrifying sensuality.
There was none of the buildup she was used to, the gentle brushing of lips, the soft, quick kisses that grew deeper and longer. It was an outright assault on her senses, and it was devastating. His lips were cool and firm as they moved on hers, savoring, almost as if he were drinking from her. Oh shit, don’t think drinking here! He opened her mouth wider for his tongue, which swept around her teeth and curled around her own, drawing it into his mouth. She tried to speak, but the attempt got lost in the shock of his long, sharp teeth under her tongue. Blood drummed in her head, a tattoo of fear all mixed up with wonder and sheer, unadulterated lust.
A weird sound came from her mouth, and he deepened the kiss, almost grinding his mouth into hers, demanding the response she found it impossible not to give. There had never been a kiss like this one, fierce and overwhelmingly sexual, driving all thought from her head but the gratification of desire. She melted into it, opening wide for him, winding her tongue around his, sucking and biting his lips, drawing him deeper in.
At some point, he’d begun to grind his hips too, rubbing himself against her, and she found herself moving with him, standing on tiptoe and pressing back to try to assuage the aching need between her thighs.
Serafina and the Silent Vampire Page 9
