Rooted to the spot, Sera saw it all through the eyes of the long-dead youth.
His name was Jamie, but his new, sophisticated London friends called him Jay. Bright and bored in an age of experimentation that belonged to the young—the sixties—he’d been fascinated by these new people, Tony, Chris, and Mark, and their bizarre tales of killing vampires across Europe. They’d used his knowledge of Edinburgh to follow this vampire to his lair, where they’d told him they could kill the vampire while he slept. It was how they’d killed the others. But this one hadn’t been asleep. When they burst into the room, he sat on a worn, red-velvet-covered sofa and regarded them without obvious interest.
“Shit,” Tony said with the first hint of panic he’d revealed to Jamie. “Why aren’t you asleep?” As if it was a weapon, he shone his flashlight full in the vampire’s face.
The vampire had luxurious long and wild chestnut hair, streaked with auburn. A thick lock of it fell forward across his high brow. Under it, the vampire glanced around his visitors but said nothing. The only sounds in Jamie’s ears were the creaking of the odd floorboard, the erratic breathing of his friends, and the drumming of his own heart. The vampire’s silence was curiously, reasonlessly terrifying. The light in his face didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.
“Surround him,” Jamie said, his voice too high with the fear he wished so badly not to reveal. But at least he hadn’t gone numb as appeared to have happened to the others. Obediently if hesitantly, they began to fan out, moving slowly to surround the velvet sofa. They all held sharpened wooden sticks, long and wicked looking. For the first time, a gleam of something that might have been amusement flashed in the vampire’s dark, almost black eyes, but he didn’t trouble to watch. This fact bothered Jamie. Was the vampire so powerful that he didn’t even feel threatened?
“Can you really not speak?” Tony asked, and the panic had gone from his voice, as if comforted by the vampire’s lack of obvious aggression. “Plead for your life, vampire.”
The spark of amusement was so faint this time that Jamie barely caught it, for behind it, the vampire’s eyes were dead. Weirdly, it came to Jamie that it was the deadness not of death itself but of utter misery.
“He wants us to kill him,” Jamie blurted. “He knew we were there all along. He let me follow him, left the door open deliberately.”
The vampire’s gaze focused on him, a faint almost-smile curling one side of his mouth. The black, dead eyes challenged, taunted, chilled. But Jamie had lost his stomach for killing.
Not so Tony, who used the vampire’s distraction to leap at him from behind and stab the vampire in the middle of his back. Blood oozed from around the stake, spreading over the vampire’s white shirt. He didn’t even scream. Tony leapt back, leaving the stick embedded in the creature’s flesh while Chris and Mark stabbed him from either side.
The vampire didn’t trouble to stand up. There was a glimmer of pain, perhaps, but he looked more resigned than angry.
“No, wait,” Jamie said urgently. “Maybe he’s sorry…”
The vampire threw back his head, dislodging the stake in his right shoulder. Blood gushed over his arm, and splashed onto his hand, shockingly red against the paleness of his skin. He was laughing.
Okay. Not sorry, then.
“Jay, now!” Tony commanded, reaching for the fallen stake. “He’s not fighting back. Finish him!”
A flash of movement from the door caught Jamie’s eye. “More!” he yelled in warning, just as the flash resolved into two more figures, a man and a woman, skidding into the room with fangs fully bared.
Tony, stake in hand, ran at them, and suddenly faced not the newcomers but their original quarry, who’d leapt so fast Jamie hadn’t even seen him. With an impossible contortion, he tore the stake from his back and hurled it on the floor. And before Tony could even have registered the danger, the vampire had seized him and bitten into his neck.
The female vampire smiled and strolled with monstrous casualness toward Mark. He stabbed at her, but she knocked the stake from his hand and reached for him. The third vampire leaned his shoulder against the wall and appeared to pick his teeth, watching Tony slither to the floor, undoubtedly dead. His sightless, terrified eyes stared at nothing.
Screaming, Chris charged at the first vampire who’d killed their friend and leader, and Jamie forced himself to help. It was no longer murder. They were fighting for their remaining lives.
Too late for Mark, who was thrown across the room by the vampiress who’d just drained him.
The first vampire backhanded Chris so that he flew through the air and hit the wall beside the third vampire, who stopped picking his teeth to snatch him up and bite into him. By then, the first vampire, their original quarry, had Jamie in his impossibly powerful grasp.
Jamie stabbed wildly at the vampire’s arm and shoulder. Blood dripped onto the floor, but the vampire’s grip didn’t even loosen. Jamie might have been a midge for all the good he was doing.
In a blur of motion, the vampire’s head swooped, and Jamie screamed as teeth pierced his throat. The useless stake fell from his suddenly numb fingers as he felt the strange pull of his own blood into the vampire’s mouth. It was gross; it was utterly, lethally terrifying, and yet somewhere, the sensation intrigued him. He imagined the blood rushing through his body, desperate to escape him and to feed instead the beautiful creature who was killing him. It wasn’t an unpleasant death after all. It was strangely pleasurable. Sexually pleasurable. His blood, his life was being taken, he was being taken, and God help him, he liked it. At least he’d die on a sexual high. Better than drugs, unbelievably better than drugs.
Abruptly, the pull stopped. There was more pain as the teeth detached from his skin, and he slid from the vampire’s viselike grip to the floor. Disappointment warred with desperate relief, because he was still alive after all.
As if it were a fuzzy dream, he watched the vampiress touch the vampire’s arm—his vampire’s arm—gazing up at him with serious, liquid eyes. She was the most beautiful woman Jamie had ever seen.
The vampire stared back at her. Their lips didn’t move; there was no sound; but Jamie realized that some kind of silent communication was passing between them. And whatever it was, the auburn vampire didn’t like it.
He spun away from her, and the third vampire was there too, waving his hand negligently from the vampiress to the carnage of Jamie’s friends’ bodies to the curtained window, as if indicating the broader world outside.
Some deep, powerful, emotion passed across the first vampire’s face. There was fury there and frustration, a sorrow so profound that Jamie couldn’t bear it and started to cry. No one paid him any attention. The vampires continued to gaze at each other. The woman touched the first vampire’s cheek, reached up and kissed him. She smiled with something that might have been affection. It was hard to tell. But Jamie thought she’d just asked for something unpalatable.
The first vampire walked away to the middle of the room. For a second, the other two looked at him, still communicating, Jamie was sure. Then they turned and walked out of the room.
The remaining vampire stood perfectly still for several minutes, his back to Jamie. Then, the vampire kicked a chair against the wall. The wood shattered. After the long, eerie silence, the sounds of the vampire’s fury shocked Jamie. A table swiftly followed the chair. The sofa flew back against the wall, landing broken upon Chris’s drained body. Jamie could only watch helplessly as the vampire indulged his orgy of destruction and finally came to notice his last breathing victim.
The vampire’s lips curled, his eyes flashed, no longer remotely dead but gleaming with blood lust as he snatched Jamie back up into his tender, unyielding arms and bit once more into his throat.
Jamie cried out, but he had the feeling his voice was now as silent as the vampire’s. There was pain and rushing pleasure and Jamie reached for both, knowing they were his death…
Sera gasped as the vision vanished. Shaken, she t
ook a moment to remember where she was, to refocus.
Phil still stood in the middle of the room, watching her. He said, “Blair had this idea that I should protect you. If necessary. Is something wrong?”
As the present reformed in a rush, something fizzed inside her. A warning, because despite Phil’s laid-back approach, both he and Blair acknowledged danger from the visitors; determination, because it meant he deserved help. A strange, oddly triumphant warmth closed around her heart, because he was trying to look after her.
And yet she couldn’t ignore what she’d just seen of his past. He’d killed humans—admittedly, humans who’d been trying to end his existence, but nevertheless, the knowledge chilled her. Why? He’s a fucking vampire!
She’d worry about it later. Right now, the vision changed nothing, so she thrust it aside, kept her mind deliberately on Phil in case he could read her leaking thoughts, while she again paced closer to the door. Despite the rapid events of the vision, she couldn’t have been “out” for more than a few seconds.
She thought quickly. She could use her moment of distraction. “I’m not sure… Who are these visitors? What do they want with him?”
Phil shrugged. “I suspect he got in their way once too often, and they want to kill him. A stronger vampire is too much of a threat.”
Sera kept pacing, kept her mind on her own personal fear and revulsion as she said slowly, “I don’t feel well. Maybe I should sit down…”
Phil’s distraction—concern seemed too strong a term—gave her the extra instant she needed. She’d already grasped the door handle and tugged before she finished speaking. Phil flew at her so fast he looked some monstrous, terrifying bat, but it was too late; she was out the door and dashing for the stairs. Every hair on her body stood up because she’d no idea if he would grab her and haul her back or just kill her for disobedience. She was depending on his own desire to help Blair and on his recognition that the three of them were on the same side—in this, at least.
Jamie had seen some good, some compassion or regret or something in Blair. Although it had done him no good when it really counted. Again, Sera banished the vision. She needed her mind focused on the present
“Clever,” Phil acknowledged in her mind as he ran down the stairs beside her now. “Think one thing, do another. You’re going to lead Blair a fine dance.”
With the immediate danger from Phil apparently averted, she caught on to the other important point—that there were no sounds of fighting from downstairs anymore, only a female voice. Sera exchanged frowning, interrogative glances with Phil as she crossed the hall to the sitting room. He inclined his head and stayed where he was, propping his shoulder against the wall opposite the door.
The room was full of vampires. Several of them turned toward Sera, staring at her with enough inhuman hunger to freeze her bones. Yet she stood paralyzed by the vision of Blair seated close beside a young woman—the vampire of the black silk dress, the one from her vision, who’d been asleep beside Jason Bell at C & H.
Neither Blair nor the female vampire paid her a blind bit of notice. Blair sat close to the vampiress, his arm stretched behind her along the back of the sofa. She wasn’t immune to his proximity. Her undead eyelashes were fluttering; one of her fingers toyed with a lock of her hair.
Jesus Christ, Sera thought, suddenly stricken. Is that how I looked to him too?
“No,” Blair said in her mind. “Never.”
What the hell did he mean by that? That she was less attractive than the vampire or more? And why the hell should she care? Before she could work any of this out, Phil stepped in front of her, and the vampires advancing on her halted uncertainly. One of them said, “Ella.”
The female vampire glanced round impatiently, her gaze glancing off Sera to Phil. She rose gracefully from the sofa saying, “You see how wonderful it could be for us? You’ll come?”
“Oh, I’ll come,” Blair murmured, but the vampire didn’t seem to hear him. Sera, listening to Blair in her mind and the others in her ears, began to think her brain would melt. Ella went on gazing at Blair, eyebrows raised in expectation. He inclined his head and stood up. Apparently satisfied, she called to the others that they were leaving. As one, they made for the window, but Blair moved unexpectedly, blocking the way. They stopped at once, clearly wary of him. With mocking politeness, he gestured them out of the room to the front door and herded them out like a sheepdog for Phil to oversee their departure.
Baffled, yet with slow-dawning understanding, Sera gazed after them. She felt betrayed; she felt stupid; and she knew she should feel far more afraid than she did. Not for the first time, sheer anger made her brave.
“What the hell was that all about?” she exploded as soon as the door was closed behind the vampires. “Have you done a deal with them?”
“Not yet,” Blair said. “Except for the one that they enter my house again uninvited and I kill them all.” He indicated the stairs, but Sera spun on her heel and stalked back into the bare sitting room.
For a moment, she thought her gesture had backfired, because no one followed her. She drew a breath of frustration, started back toward the door just as Blair strolled in with her shoes in one hand. Brought up short—and much too close—she glared at him and went on the attack.
“Did they kill Jason Bell?”
Blair dropped her shoes on the floor and inclined his head. “Ella did that. And turned him. An older, English vampire called Arthur met him when he woke and took him away to explain things to him. Then he was sent to work before it got light.”
“Then he’s one of them,” she said flatly, cramming her feet back into the shoes. Although she’d known it already, the confirmation hurt with unexpected sharpness.
“Undoubtedly. And I have to say they have an interesting plan. Why do you look so sad?” He brushed her cheek with the back of one finger, and she knocked his hand away.
“What plan?” she demanded.
“To take over the banks and siphon off unlimited wealth. In time, they can also control the Scottish Parliament and spread their influence into England. After that, who knows? World vampire domination via banking.”
“That’s stupid! How can they take over the banks? They only come out at night!”
“Yes, but they can stay in their offices all day. They don’t need to sleep all the time, and as they get older, they’ll need less. Plus, winter’s coming up—gives them longer hours. They already have three key staff at C & H, four at the Bank of Scotland, five at the Royal Bank, a scattering through building societies and insurance companies based in the city—”
“She told you all that?”
“Oh yes.”
Sera narrowed her eyes, ignoring the pain clawing at her stomach. “You like the idea. You’re going to join them.”
“Well, think about it. I could have a much more comfortable house, and easier meals, since discretion won’t matter for much longer.”
“And that’s all you care about?” she raged.
“I’m a vampire. What else is there?”
Her hand flew without permission, all her strength behind it in a forceful, ringing slap. She didn’t see him move, knew even then through her anger and disappointment and reasonless hurt that he allowed the blow but immediately trapped her stinging hand, holding it against his cheek.
“Why are you so angry? Isn’t that what you do with your fake séances and vampire hunts? Make money.”
“I don’t kill people!” Didn’t she? Wasn’t Jason at least her fault? And George and Mattie and my mother… Gasping, she tugged at her hand, and he lowered it from his face without releasing it.
“You’re not a vampire,” he observed, turning her palm upward and gazing at the veins in her wrist. His thumb brushed over them, sending shivers of fear up her arm to her spine. At least she called it fear, although behind it was the same insidious desire that had swamped her earlier in the evening.
“You can’t allow this!” She yanked her hand again, hard,
and this time, he released it so that she staggered backward, raging, “Humans would become no more than food!”
Blair shrugged, closing the distance between them once more. “What makes you think you’re more than that now? To a vampire?”
Oh Jesus Christ. “Vanity,” she said bitterly. “Stupidity.” She only just bit back the eternal cry of the too-stupid-to-live: I trusted you. Why the hell had she trusted him? She who never trusted anyone outside the tiny circle of her friends. Because he flirted? Kissed her? Even now, when he took hold of her shoulders, part of her treacherous body melted. The other, fortunately, was waiting for the right moment to knee him in the groin.
“You would make a delicious meal, Serafina.” His low, insidious voice murmured inside her head; monstrous words spoken in almost loving, tragic tones. As if she were already dead. Like Jamie.
One of his hands lay heavily on her shoulder; the other slid up to her throat, stroking. A breeze from the window left open by the invading vampires stirred the hairs on her neck. He must have been able to feel the trembling of her body; he might even have been able to hear the treacherous thought that slid through her mind: What would it be like for me?
Somehow, she managed to use the question, to keep it echoing, while her fingers gripped the sharpened stick in her jacket pocket. She whipped it out, swept it around behind him and plunged down hard, aiming for the center of his back. If it didn’t kill him, it would surely slow him up.
But the force of her thrust sent her staggering forward, for he was no longer there to hold her. The stake whooshed through air, and she found herself staring at Blair on the other side of the room. For the space of a heartbeat, she gazed into his cruel, profound eyes, and then she spun around and ran for the open window.
There was no triumph in escaping through it. He let her. As he’d let her live.
Serafina and the Silent Vampire Page 12
