Serafina and the Silent Vampire

CHAPTER Four


Sera found that calming Elspeth down actually helped in dealing with her own shock. “Yes, I saw Jason,” she soothed as they drove down Leith Walk. “That was him speeding past you. I guess he didn’t want to chat.”

“But those other men? They looked so threatening!”

“Yes,” Sera admitted. “Threatening and weird…” And not men at all. Surely not men. Dead men… “And Blair was there,” she said hastily. Blair, as sexy in jeans as in a kilt, his haunting dark eyes suddenly hard, murderous, terrifying… She caught her breath. “Interestingly enough, he didn’t seem to like them either.”

“Where did they all go?” Elspeth asked, bewildered.

“Vanished into the night,” Sera said vaguely. “Don’t worry; we’re quite safe now.” Are we? Is anybody safe when such creatures exist? The image of Blair flashed into her head once more, jumping from high above to land as lightly as a cat before striking, seizing and gouging with monstrous callousness, drinking… Aloud, she added, “Glad you showed up when you did, though.”

Elspeth smiled, genuinely glad to have been useful.

“Come on,” Sera said. “Let’s go to your house, and then I’ll drive myself home.”

In the end, she stayed and had a bite to eat at Elspeth’s. The receptionist’s abode was surprisingly neat and tidy. Whatever Elspeth let go, it wasn’t her house. Glancing at the photograph on the mantelpiece of a younger and happier Elspeth with her smiling late husband, Sera understood the loneliness and boredom that had led her to drink. She couldn’t blame the older woman for letting it get out of hand. Ruefully, she acknowledged that Elspeth was more than a “good deed” to her; more even than a friend. She was a living warning.

Although at least Elspeth had the years of a happy marriage to look back on. Sera couldn’t imagine even having that. She despised most men as liars. And she freaked out the few who weren’t, as soon as they got close enough to discover her gifts. Even Tam, who fancied her rotten, ran a mile from her now. Until last night, he’d merely been wary.

Sighing, Sera thanked Elspeth for dinner and rose to leave. “You are going home?” Elspeth asked anxiously.

“Oh yes,” Sera said serenely.

Of course, she had no intention of going home. She drove back to the C & H building, climbed onto the car-park barrier, and touched the side of the wall that Blair’s foot had glanced off in his stunning, heart-stopping run. Feeling slammed into her, knocking her off her precarious perch. But she smiled as she landed on the ground.

****

Weirdly, it seemed to get easier as she went on, as if getting closer to him made his “scent” stronger—that feeling that was peculiarly Blair stood out like a fiery beacon among all the other peculiar stuff out there. She knew him now from the Bells’ garden and from the car park. This time, she’d get to him. There weren’t quite luminous footprints on the pavement along York Place to guide her, but it began to feel almost as easy. Although there were long gaps, as if he’d done one of his amazing jumps, or even, God help her, run along the rooftops, she always picked him up again. Her feet, her whole body tingled when she stepped where he had stepped, brushed against a railing or a lamppost that he had touched. Her pace quickened down Dublin Street, along with her heart rate. Triumph amounted to smugness.

Damn, I’m good.

Until she stood under a street lamp on the pavement of a cobbled New Town street, staring down between the railings outside a large, terraced building, at the window of a garden flat. There were no lights on, but he was in there; she could feel it so strongly it had to be truth.

Besides, the closed curtains appeared to be black, like the ones in her vision of him.

Now what the hell did she do?

Did she walk in there like the lone, too-stupid-to-live heroine of a bad horror film? Did she wait for backup? Like who? Even if he was prepared to help her, Tam hadn’t exactly been a lot of use against the bastard last night. Remembering the sickening thud of her own feet on Blair’s impervious body and the speed with which he’d seen off her attackers in the car park, she knew physical protection could not help her. What she hung on to, somewhat desperately, was that he alone of the creatures she’d encountered tonight had not attacked her. Right now, he was all she had to explain what the hell was going on.

In the end, she dragged her phone out of her bag and hastily texted Jilly and Jack, giving the address and her request to get down here and contact her when they arrived. There was no need to tell them what to do if she didn’t answer.

As she stuffed the phone back in her pocket, she walked down the dark steps with thundering heart. Horror film, here I come…

****

Blair sank his teeth into the girl’s throat and drew her blood into his mouth. It wasn’t uncontaminated, but it was good enough. And she was enough in thrall to enjoy it and to stay all night, as he wished.

Frustration at losing the vampire’s scent had added to his sexual frustration, and he’d been on his way to his favorite up-market brothel before he remembered they’d banned him because someone had finally remembered he never paid. And so he’d picked up this girl outside a bar, charmed her, and brought her home instead. Normally, he didn’t do such things, but the fantasy of having Serafina in his bed all night had stuck with him, and this girl, with her short, dark hair and slim body, looked enough like the psychic to attract his attention and his lust.

Perhaps his behavior was a trifle obsessive, but after the annoyances of the last few days, he felt inclined to indulge himself. He might have a superb night. And if it was merely mediocre, he might stop lusting so hard after Serafina.

The girl, whose name was Tess, gave a mewl of pleasure, twisting her head in ecstasy and pressing into him. Blair took one more draw and sealed the wound for now with the touch of his fingertips before he let his hands run all over the girl’s body. She was more than ready. And so was he. He drew her toward the bed and was assailed by another scent.

The scent of the girl he was thinking of while caressing this one. Imagination, surely. He caught Tess’s busy hands on the fastening of his jeans, holding them still while he sniffed the air.

Serafina. Without doubt. How the…?

Pushing Tess off, he strode to the window and peered through the crack in the black velvet curtains.

She stood in the dark street below, on the edge of a circle of pale light from the nearby lamppost. She was holding on to the railing, gazing downward at the entrance to the basement flat.

Bloody hell. How did she do that? Torn between admiration and annoyance, it took a moment before he realized exactly how much of a threat this made her. She’d tracked him across the city. Forget lust; the girl was trouble. And she was walking down the steps to his front door.

Hunger galloped, and yet he found himself laughing softly as he turned back to the bewildered Tess. “My dear,” he said, taking her hand. “Something else has come up.” But of course, she didn’t hear him, just saw his smile and rubbed herself against him like a cat.

Because it amused him, Blair used the power of his mind to open the door of the garden flat. It was a neat trick, and hopefully, it would upset Serafina’s nerves, if nothing else. Then he folded the eager Tess in his arms and bit her again, for strength as well as luck, taking enough this time to weaken her and make her more conducive to sleep. When she lost consciousness, he laid her out on the bed for later, and, with an intoxicating blend of anticipation and danger firing his blood, he walked downstairs to greet his nemesis.

****

Sera approached the flat warily, every sense screaming in alarm—especially when the door swung silently open without obvious reason. She’d have laughed at the cliché, except that, already steeped in the presence she’d been tracking, his sudden closeness overwhelmed her, and she had to stop and breathe deeply, forcing herself to focus on whatever dangers might lurk inside—or even leap out of—that ominously open door.

With relief, she remembered she could cope with powerful presences, however menacing, if she didn’t concentrate on them too hard. There was no need to track him now; he was definitely there, even if no one was visible in the dark hallway beyond the door. Nudging a loose stone with her toe, she edged it into the corner of the front doorframe in the hope it would stop the door closing completely. She might have to make a quick getaway.

He’d obviously seen her, so it seemed sensible to behave as normally as possible. She tapped on the door and called, “Hello?”

There was no response. Taking a deep breath, she stepped over the threshold and felt for a light switch. As a feeble illumination sputtered into life, she couldn’t resist a quick glance over her shoulder, half expecting the door to slam shut behind her. It didn’t.

The hall was wide and bare; she could just make out stairs at the end, disappearing upward into total darkness. Interesting… Did he have both floors or this whole section of the building? More importantly, where the hell was he?

His unseen presence oppressed her, causing every hair on her body to stand erect, every nerve to zing with alarm. Dust danced in the dim light. She peered at it, imagining it formed a looser, woollier version of Blair’s lithe shape.

Then, frightened that he’d catch her unaware, staring at nothing, she flicked her gaze around to the doorways on either side, and at the second, her heart gave a long, sickening lurch.

He stood just outside the farthest doorway, leaning one shoulder against the white, wooden frame. She blinked to clear her vision. She was sure he hadn’t been there on her first sweep, but he was certainly there now, wearing the same jeans and plain black T-shirt as earlier in the evening. Tall, lean, annoyingly good-looking. His dark eyes were steady, his face betrayed no expression, and yet his voice, though eerie and disembodied in her head, seemed to be amused.

“I feel I should say, ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ but the truth is, I haven’t.”

It shouldn’t have taken her breath away. “You’re psychic,” she blurted.

“Ah, no. You‘re psychic. I’m just dead.” Still, his lips didn’t move.

She scanned his eyes, one to the other, looking for something, anything, to support the denial that seemed impossible after tonight. “Not noticeably,” she managed.

He straightened, and she had to force herself not to leap backward in alarm. “Undead is such a stupid expression,” he observed. “Like ‘mostly dead.’”

He gestured with his hand for her to enter the room before him.

Sera hesitated. All her life she’d been dealing with things she didn’t understand. Of those, the paranormal things had never been the ones to hurt her. This being, however, whoever and whatever he was, gave off danger signals more powerful than she’d ever encountered in any environment. She had no idea how to defend herself against his kind of threat.

He said, “The little sticks work.”

“What?”

“Wood. Pure, natural wood through a heart that doesn’t beat.”

Nervously, inside her jacket pocket, she stroked the point of the stick she’d felt so foolish leaving there last night. “I can’t make up my mind whether you’re stupid or overconfident,” she managed, just a little feebly.

“Or lying?”

She sighed. The threat, whatever it was, surely wasn’t imminent. With the speed she’d witnessed in the car park, he could have grabbed her easily already if he’d wanted to. Under his unblinking gaze, she moved toward him, trying to squash the sense of walking to her doom, and passed him into the room. He didn’t move any farther aside to accommodate her, and her shoulder brushed against the hardness of his chest. He leaned forward, bending his head as if to catch her scent. Every tiny hair on her neck, on her whole body, sprang up in awareness. She gripped the sharp stick in her pocket, ready to do some kind of damage with it.

And then she was past him unharmed and into the room.

The thick, black curtains were indeed those she’d seen in her vision. The room was lit by electric lamps with what looked like genuine Victorian shades in faded purple and red and blue. An equally faded rug adorned the polished wooden floor. An old sea chest stood under the window, the only furniture in the room apart from one winged sofa, at which her host gestured with another elegant wave of his slender, long-fingered hand.

Sera wasn’t used to feeling unsure of herself these days. She didn’t like this sense of not being in control. So she flung herself onto the sofa to show she wasn’t afraid and went on the attack.

“How much did you hurt Tam?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “The big guy? Not much.”

“But you killed Jason Bell.”

His eyebrows rose. “On the contrary, I didn’t even touch him.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

He didn’t trouble to respond, just continued to gaze at her until she asked the question she was really there for. “He did die, didn’t he?”

“You know he did.”

She heard her breath shudder. And yet she’d known it already. He could be yanking her chain in some massive, pointless conspiracy with the Bells, but by now such an accusation didn’t even seem worth bringing up.

Instead, she focused on his still face. “Can you really not speak normally?”

He strolled toward her like some large, prowling cat. “After two hundred and fifty years, this feels perfectly normal. Although it’s a novelty conversing at all with someone who’s alive.”

He folded himself onto the sofa beside her, and her muscles tensed. She refused to follow her instinct and move farther away. Instead, with an effort, she observed, “You told me you couldn’t speak because you were a vampire.”

He inclined his head, patient but distracted. He was gazing at her throat.

“And now you want me to believe that Jason Bell is a vampire?”

“You know he is.”

She sat farther back, willing his menacing gaze away from her jugular. “And yet,” she pointed out, “he spoke. Quite audibly and visibly. Using his lips.”

At least it raised his eyes back to her face. “And yet,” he agreed, “he did. That is one of the many oddities of this situation. Until then, I’d never encountered a vampire who could speak.”

“How come?” she prompted when the voice in her head stopped.

Blair shrugged. “We believe oral speech wasn’t used by the Founder, the first of our kind, and so it’s never been available to the rest of us. Communication with humans is unnecessary, and all vampires can communicate with each other telepathically.”

“And you can communicate with me because I’m psychic? Even though I can’t hear humans’ thoughts? Not beyond spotting lies, anyway.”

A smile flickered across his lips. “I’m dead. You talk to the dead.”

She stared at him. Am I being had here?

“Come on, Serafina. You wrote the book on how to do the having. You know the difference between fake and real.”

“Do I?” Was he really reading her mind?

“Only the bits you project. For the rest, you can teach yourself not to leak.”

Leak? “Oh for…!” Refusing to be drawn, she broke off. “All right. Supposing I buy in to this. You’re a vampire. I can sense the presence of the dead, solid or not, so why didn’t I sense you last night?”

“You weren’t looking very hard. And besides, I was making sure I didn’t project.”

“Scared of me?” she taunted.

“On the contrary, I knew nothing about you. I was spying on the others.”

“What others?”

“The other vampires who killed Jason Bell and turned him.”

She wouldn’t know if he was lying. She was so full of his deep, terrifying chill there was no way she could sense anything so subtle as truth. Or was that just an excuse not to touch him?

She said hastily, “You’re asking me to believe this city is full of vampires, and yet I’ve never noticed one before last night?”

“Well, up until a few nights ago, there was only one. Two on occasion. Very rarely three. Quite frankly, I now consider Edinburgh overcrowded.”

Sera regarded him with a fascinated eye. “Overcrowded with vampires?”

“Exactly.” His gaze fell to her lips, lingering long enough for her to stumble into speech through discomfort.

“So where did they all come from?”

“From the south. Some of them. Two of those I killed, and the one who got away.” His gaze dropped lower, to the region of her throat. She was creeped out. At least she thought she was. There was no other reason for her stomach to spin or her skin to tingle as if he’d caressed it. Bitten it, more like.

“And the others?” she managed.

“Made here.”

“Made?”

“By the southern vampires,” he explained. Reluctantly, it seemed, his gaze lifted once more from her throat to her eyes. Sera, who always looked everyone straight in the eye, found it curiously difficult to withstand.

“Why?” she demanded. “I mean, is that normal vampire behavior?”

He shrugged. “No.” As if he couldn’t help it, he lifted one hand and, just like last night, touched the side of her throat.

Oh Jesus.

Staying quiet beneath his fingers was one of the hardest things she’d ever forced herself to do. And yet it wasn’t so bad—not like last night’s wild blast of infinite pain and icy darkness. This was controlled; she was seeing and feeling only what he wished to convey. There was solitude, at once lonely and necessary, corrosive and pleasurable. She had a glimpse of a beautiful woman with fangs like a wolf, saying farewell with a mixture of sadness and impatience as she vanished into the darkness. And some strong but equally ambiguous emotion relating to the being beside her.

“Freedom,” Sera gasped out. “You value freedom.”

The vision, along with the sense of solitude, was vanishing, but the fingers on her throat, gently kneading the skin around her jugular, were more, not less, insistent.

“And blood,” he said, his voice low and deep inside her mind. He bent his head closer. “Serafina… How apt. Fire and beauty…”

Sera swallowed. She knew what her name meant. It was all she had from her parents, and all she’d ever dared to find out about. They’d given her it, even though it sat oddly with MacBride and promptly died or buggered off in some other way. Right now, she didn’t care about that. She felt all fire and beauty inside, almost like a revelation granted by the vampire’s cool, stroking fingers on her skin, his seductive voice in her mind. She caught a faint scent of earth and spice, and for no reason at all, her stomach twisted and sent tingles dancing downward between her legs.

Oh f*ck! Sera dragged the despised stick from her pocket and pushed it into his chest. “Don’t tempt me.”

To her surprise, his eyes gleamed with something that looked like laughter. But at least he straightened and let his hand fall back onto his denim-covered thigh. There was a bulge in his jeans that had to be… No. Just don’t go there.

He said, “We are, by nature, solitary, territorial creatures. Creating a new vampire is rare, since too many can only impede the safe supply of blood. I need to be rid of these interlopers.” He tapped one finger on his thigh as though in deep thought. “Do you know, I might let you help me.”

Sera curled her lip. “Might you? Why? Can’t you find them on your own?”

Something changed in his dark eyes before his thick lashes dropped down, covering whatever it was. When they rose, he looked merely amused, but Sera was triumphant.

“You can’t, can you?” she crowed.

He shrugged elegantly. “I can pick up their scent if I’m in the right place at the right time.”

“Like a dog at a lamppost?” Sera interpolated.

The vampire regarded her without overt pleasure. “Not exactly. But you, you can track by touch. I thought so last night when you ran from me, and today you proved it by following me here. I confess, I wasn’t best pleased initially, but now…”

From his jeans’ pocket, he took a piece of cloth, black silk. “I picked this off a bramble bush in the garden last night, close to where we met. It might belong to a human. But I doubt it.”

“Why?” Sera looked at the frayed, torn cloth without touching it. It could have been part of just about any dress she’d seen last night.

“It’s not the sort of place humans go in all their finery. Besides, there was a vampiress at the party with a torn black dress.”

With odd reluctance, Sera reached out and took the piece of cloth from him. For obvious reasons, she didn’t want to close her eyes in his company, so she merely stared hard at the silk.

The red, swirling mists were still there, but they lurked in the background almost like old friends. Resentment and intrigue seemed to ooze from the cloth in equal measure; a trace of laughter, a surge of lust, deep and patient, and a vague scent of earth and spice.

“You,” she gasped. “I’m just getting you.”

He smiled lazily, watching the flush suffuse her face and neck. He could probably smell the blood rushing with such embarrassment through her veins.

“Take it with you,” he offered. “I’m sure you’ll get more when you’re less…disturbed.”

Indignantly, she stared at him, floundering for words.

“Your friends are outside,” he said mildly. “I thought you’d want to leave.”

Her phone went off before he’d finished speaking, and, glad of the interruption, she grabbed it.

It was Jilly. “Sera?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Just coming,” she mumbled and broke the connection, shoving the phone into her pocket as she stood up. She glanced at Blair, who rose politely with her. He was too close, and the fire and the butterflies intensified; but again, she refused to admit her weakness by moving away from him. “Exactly what is it you expect me to do if I find any of these…creatures?”

“Tell me,” Blair said. “And I will come and kill them.” His sensual lips tugged upward. “You look shocked. Remember, these are the creatures who killed your friend Jason.”

“And you’re the good vampire?” she retorted with blatant mockery. “The one who doesn’t kill?”

“Not very often,” he amended.

“And yet you’re quite prepared to kill several of your fellow…fellows,” she finished weakly. She still felt foolish saying the word vampire with any seriousness. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll kill you first?”

“At the moment, they seem to be ignoring my existence. Which I find rather rude when they’re stealing my supper.”

“What if I don’t agree to anyone being killed?”

“Serafina. They’re already dead.” His sharp teeth gleamed, and terror and attraction tore through her in equal measure. “Like me.”

Jesus, how could he say those things, be those things when he stood there looking at her like that?

“There you are,” said a sultry female voice from nowhere. “Come back to bed, gorgeous.”

Startled, Sera stepped back, her gaze flying to the speaker, a rumpled brunette in a black minidress that hung slightly askew across her hips and breasts. She had the swollen lips and contented eyes of someone newly awake after a satisfying bout of good sex. The thought appalled Sera for all sorts of reasons, most of which she’d no intention of analyzing.

The woman sashayed up to Blair and almost fell against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. As she pressed her cheek contentedly into his chest, she appeared to catch sight of Sera for the first time.

“Oh,” she said, blinking. She lifted her head. “I didn’t know you had company. Shit, am I in the middle of something?” She sounded both accusing and uneasy, prepared for either anger or distress. Her sleepy eyes were suddenly watchful.

But Blair didn’t seem remotely put out. He simply put one arm around the woman’s waist and half turned her to face Sera properly. His voice in Sera’s head was merely polite. “This is Tess.”

Sera swallowed. “Hello. I’m Sera.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Tess said warily. “Tess Mason.”

Sera swung back to the blandly observing Blair. “Is she?”

“A vampire? No. She’s supper.” He smiled provokingly. “And breakfast.”

“No, she bloody isn’t.” She faced Tess with determination. She hadn’t needed to ask. There was no death about this girl, who looked merely randy. “Something’s come up,” Sera said firmly. “I’ll give you a lift home.”

She moved toward the girl, had even touched her arm, when she found Blair standing between them. Like a dog guarding his bone.

She stared defiantly up at him, clutching the stick in her pocket. Would it really work? His eyes were hard with something of the same look she’d glimpsed before he killed the vampires. She tensed, ready to strike and knowing she’d have to be fast. She’d only get one chance. If that.

For a moment, it hung in the balance. Then his lips quirked, and he stood aside. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Something has come up. And it’s getting increasingly hard to do anything about it.”

Uncertainly, Sera searched his face. In a human male, she’d have understood that as crude innuendo. In a vampire, what the hell did it mean?

While she speculated, he took Tess’s hand; but although Sera started forward in fresh alarm, he merely kissed the girl’s fingers like some gallant of old. It would have been a graceful gesture had his gaze not been on Sera the whole time. Tess, however, seemed enchanted, smiling mistily into the back of his head—besotted or mesmerized?

Sera pushed rudely past, seizing Tess’s arm and almost dragging her out of the room. Her neck, her whole back prickled all the way out and along the hall. He could still stop them if he chose. There was really nothing Sera could do.

But it seemed that, for whatever reason, he didn’t choose. Perhaps he really did want her help. At the front door, which was still ajar, she couldn’t resist glancing back. He stood in the hall, watching them, the gloomy light casting sinister shadows across his left eye and cheek. He looked mysterious and deadly. And so inappropriately sexy.