Serafina and the Silent Vampire

CHAPTER Eight


Sera had just about had enough of vampires. Falling back a step, she snatched the sharpened stick from her pocket and stood poised to strike.

The newcomer’s smile broadened. “How very Buffy-esque,” he observed in apparent delight. Without so much as glancing at Blair, he held out the bottle to him. It looked like whisky. “Care to swap?”

Two things struck Sera at the same time. Firstly, Blair hadn’t moved except to stuff his hands in his pockets; and secondly, the newcomer, like Blair, spoke in her mind without moving his lips.

“Fabulous,” Sera said bitterly. “Another bloody ventriloquist. What the hell do you want?”

The newcomer’s eyes widened. “She can hear us, Blair!”

“Yes, she can,” Blair agreed. “And if you’ve had as much of that bottle as I think you have, you’d better back off, because she’s also quite fast for a human. Serafina—Phil. And no, I have no intention of swapping her for that gut rot.”

“Why not?” Phil asked, his gaze riveted to Sera’s neck. “It grows back. The gut, I mean.”

Blair stirred at last, removing one hand from his pocket to clap it to Phil’s shoulder and drag him back from Sera. Rather to her surprise, Phil didn’t put up a fight.

“No,” Blair said mildly, and yet when she glanced at him, his eyes were like flint under the streetlight.

Phil met his gaze and laughed. He lifted the bottle to his lips. “Oh, very well. Have it your way.”

Hearing his voice while he drank seemed weirder than anything else that night. Sera glanced at Blair for enlightenment.

“Phil won’t harm you. Now,” he added, obviously in the interests of strict truth.

“Not me she should be worrying about, though, is it?” Phil interjected and lowered the bottle again. In apparently friendly spirit, he offered it to Sera.

“No, thanks,” she said, baffled.

“You don’t drink?”

“It interferes with my powers of vampire detection. So you don’t talk either? With your vocal cords, I mean.”

“Of course, I don’t. I’m dead.”

Despite the bizarre, not to say chilling, nature of Phil’s words, there was a spark of laughter in his intense blue eyes that was curiously beguiling. Sera almost smiled back, then glanced rather wildly at Blair for guidance. Blair, however, appeared to be watching the other vampire very closely.

“So what’s happening in Edinburgh?” Phil inquired. “Any more vampires?”

“Lots,” Blair said bitterly.

“Really? How very peculiar! What in the world are they up to?”

“Talking, for one thing. With their vocal cords.”

“They don’t do that,” Phil said positively. “You must—”

“Yes, they do, and I can’t really see what the big deal is,” Sera interrupted. “You walk and drink and wave your arms around. I can’t really see why your vocal cords shouldn’t work either.”

“She has a point,” Phil allowed. “Perhaps it’s because we don’t need them? Whatever, it doesn’t happen. Even Ailis doesn’t talk.”

“Who’s Ailis?” She had a feeling she didn’t want to know, but the answer made her jaw drop.

“The oldest vampire we know. She was made by the Founder.” Phil jerked the end of the bottle toward Blair. “And she’s his mother.”

“His mother?” she blurted, staring at Blair. “Your mother is a vampire too?”

“Not his birth mother,” Phil chortled—and that was weird too, for he really did laugh while he was talking. The two sounds were quite separate and yet occurred simultaneously, almost in harmony. “His maker. The vampire who turned him.”

Phil’s attention wavered to a couple of young women who crossed the street to avoid passing them. “I’m torn,” he complained. “I’m hungry, and yet I want to hear more about those talking vampires.” His gaze fell back to Sera, and his eyes gleamed. “I know. Let’s go to Blair’s, and perhaps I could prevail upon—”

“No, you bloody couldn’t!” Sera interrupted, since his meaning was blatant. “I’m going home, and if either of you comes within a hundred yards of me—”

“Phil knows who Nicholas Smith is,” Blair said mildly, halting her mid-flow.

She closed her mouth and glanced from one to the other. It was Blair who held her gaze. “How do you know that?” she asked suspiciously.

“I asked him.”

“I didn’t hear you,” she challenged.

Blair smiled, and in spite of fear and loathing and everything else, her stomach did a not unpleasant summersault. “I can be silent,” he observed. “And I can be very silent.”

“Apparently, so can he,” she said dryly with a jerk of her head toward the other vampire currently swigging from his bottle. “So who is Nicholas Smith?”

“Sorcerer,” Phil said apologetically.

****

Sera was sure that when she thought about it later—if she ever had the chance to think about it later—she’d be appalled at her own stupidity. But at the time, it seemed less scary to go to Blair’s house with two vampires than with Blair alone. Besides, she’d worked out that Blair at least needed her tracking skills and seemed prepared to protect her from other vampires, whatever his own designs. His strength was such that if he’d really wished to, he could have drunk from her, or killed her outright, at any point in the evening. That he’d chosen not to must mean something.

And she wanted to hear about Nicholas Smith the sorcerer.

So she found herself reclining on a pile of cushions in the room of her vision of Blair—the elegantly proportioned room with the three Georgian windows and the same long, black velvet curtains she’d already seen in the downstairs room, now open to the night. As Blair had led them inside through the garden flat and up the dark staircase, Sera was sure she felt cobwebs.

But Blair’s sitting room was surprisingly civilized, with tall bookcases lining the walls, a chaise longue and a sofa, and an artful pile of silk-covered cushions, which Sera immediately took possession of to avoid sitting beside either of the vampires.

Now, somewhat relaxed by their unthreatening manners, Sera began to feel a little too comfortable. The tired ache in her feet was fading. In her hands, she nursed a glass of single malt whisky. The feel of the glass in her fingers gave her a pleasant little buzz of “oldness,” of continuity and things that never changed. But there was no revelation, no vision. When she wondered if he’d ever drunk blood from it, like in Interview with the Vampire, she was sure he hadn’t and was glad. Even relaxed as she was, she’d have thrown up if she’d imagined she was drinking from a glass that had once held a victim’s blood. Was that trusting of her? Or hypocritical? Right now, it didn’t seem important.

The vampires lounged close by, Phil on the chaise longue, Blair on the sofa, both with glasses, since Blair had made Phil pour from his bottle in a more civilized manner.

“Nicholas Smith,” Sera prompted, since they seemed inclined to forget why she was here. She’d almost forgotten herself.

“I haven’t met the man,” Phil admitted with something like apology. “But in my travels, I have heard rumors of him from other vampires.”

“What rumors?” Sera asked.

“That he’s a genuine psychic with genuine powers of sorcery.”

“But what does that mean?” Sera demanded.

Blair stirred and stretched out on the sofa. “That he can harness occult powers for his own ends.”

“Magic…” Witchcraft, like her friend Melanie? Sera wrinkled her nose and took a sip of the gorgeous whisky. It burned, smooth and smoky, as it slid down her throat. “What ends could he possibly have with a bunch of undead?” As the thought struck her, she leaned forward excitedly. “Wait, though! What if he’s serving their ends? What if he’s somehow cast some spell for them that lets them talk and mingle with human society?”

“Why would they want to do that?” Phil asked, raising both eyebrows in wonder. “Vampire don’t mingle. We move in silence and prey in secret.” He lifted his glass to her. “Present company excepted.”

“More to the point, why would Smith do that?” Blair said lazily, drinking his whisky as he watched her. She had a sudden vision of him sipping not from the glass but from her neck and looked immediately at Phil instead.

“Because they compelled him. He has something they need—magic. Blair won’t believe me, but I think he was trying to help me when he saw me in Blair’s company.”

“He was certainly trying to detach you from my company,” Blair allowed. “But there’s no evidence as to motive.”

“He was anxious,” Sera insisted.

“I have that effect on a lot of people.”

“At least admit you don’t know that he isn’t being compelled.”

“He didn’t look very compelled when he let the vampiress into his house the night before last. Besides, what’s so kind about inviting you into a house full of vampires?”

“You were the only vampire within spitting distance,” Sera retorted.

Phil stood up. “You two should be married or something,” he observed, weaving across the room to slosh some more whisky into his glass. “Seems to me the only thing we know is that there is a connection. Any more connections?”

“C & H. I’m going to look into that tomorrow,” Sera said reluctantly, leaning back against the cushions. Her wrist brushed against the silk, picking up an unexpected aura of peace. As if he never killed or was even angered in this room. Am I being manipulated? She took a last sip of whisky and set the glass down on the floor with determination. “Now I’m going home.”

She expected some opposition from Blair, at least, but, jumping to her feet, she was ridiculously piqued to discover that neither vampire was paying her the slightest attention. They were in fact, gazing at each other, as if in some tense yet silent communication. Without a word, Blair got up and left the room.

“Bye,” Sera said dryly to the closed door, torn between amusement and annoyance.

Phil rose to his feet with surprising elegance. For the first time since she’d met him, he held neither bottle nor glass. “Blair has unexpected company,” he said politely inside her mind. “He’s hoping you’ll wait until he returns before you leave.”

Sera scowled. “If he’s brought that girl back for his ‘supper’—”

Phil turned his head on one side to regard her. “What is it with you and Blair?”

She stared at him, suddenly overwhelmed by the memory of those few feverish moments in Blair’s arms. “Nothing! There is absolutely nothing between me and Blair. Two nights ago I didn’t know he or his kind existed.” She paused. “Now, it seems, we both have an interest in finding out what the hell is going on.”

Then, since Phil merely nodded sagely and she was insatiably curious, she asked, “You and Blair are old friends?”

Phil smiled amiably. “We’ve shared the odd meal over the centuries.”

Ignoring that, she asked, “How come you can ‘talk’ to each other without me hearing?”

“Practice. Like a different level, a different path.” His eyes, suddenly, were extremely focused and cold enough to remind her exactly what he was. “I’ve never encountered a human telepath as strong as you.”

“I’m not a telepath,” she argued. “Or at least, I don’t think I am. I can talk to the dead, that’s all.”

“Who were your parents?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Your parents. Gifts and disabilities are often passed through blood. I know ours are.”

“Mine aren’t. My parents were drug addicts who left me at the local clinic.” Although it was suddenly difficult, she managed to hold his gaze until a massive thud in the room below caused both their heads to snap downward as if they could see through the floor. “What the hell was that? Are his visitors—hostile?”

“Sounds like it,” Phil said without apparent interest as another bump and a swishing sound was heard beneath.

Instinct propelled Sera across the room to the door, but by the time she got there, Phil was before her. “Don’t worry,” he said, amused. “He doesn’t need us.”

Two odd thoughts crashed into her mind: that she shouldn’t be this worried about a vampire’s safety; and that she was, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner.

****

It was the discourtesy that irritated Blair. Fighting a vampire for territory was one thing; breaking into his home with a party of allies was just plain rude. As he made his silent way downstairs, he sensed four of them in close proximity, and more outside. It was hard for a vampire to surprise other vampires, so he knew he’d need to rely on speed.

His skin tingled; his fingers flexed and closed around the stake in his pocket. There were two lurking at the foot of the stairs, ready to jump him from either side. He could smell their aggression, their eagerness for blood, but no trace of fear. It was a pity they wouldn’t have time to learn about that one.

As soon as his foot touched the bottom step, they leapt on him from the shadows. The first impaled himself on Blair’s stake, an expression of ludicrous surprise on his face at encountering such a thing at such a moment. But Blair didn’t have time to laugh. Even as he seized the other vampire to break his neck, someone else dropped on him from above, another from straight ahead, and he could sense those outside coming closer.

As he fell to the floor under their combined weight, Blair’s teeth found flesh, buried themselves, and with two powerful sucks, the flesh’s owner disintegrated. Clutching one attacker’s neck, he heaved himself to his feet, shaking another loose like a dog dislodging rain water from its fur. A backward thrust of the stake and an upward twist, and a third vampire was dispatched.

The fourth, he grabbed and threw across the hallway just in time to strike the vampires pouring out of the room in which he’d first entertained Serafina. Several of them fell back in. Blair followed, bent over the thrashing pile, and stabbed the top vampire in the back. He was plunging with cool efficiency for the next in line when the light blazed on and a strange woman’s voice said in horror, “Stop, for God’s sake!”

It might have been curiosity that gave him pause, made him haul the vampire upright instead and hold him in front of his body like a shield. He wasn’t used to a vampire invoking the Almighty, audibly or otherwise. So he sidestepped the rising heap of vampires, stake at the ready, and faced the vampiress who’d spoken.

The woman from the Bells’ party, she of the black dress, wore a smart black trouser suit today, and there was panic all over her pretty face.

“You’re killing them all,” she said worriedly. “There won’t be any left.”

It was bizarre. She was undoubtedly dead, like him, and yet the sound definitely came from her mouth, her throat. It made her annoyingly superior. Because she could speak to him, but he couldn’t reply. She wouldn’t understand him. He battered his way into her mind; she didn’t seem to notice. It was as if her pathways to receive were blocked with rubbish. He thought of shoveling his way through for ease of communication. But for the moment, it seemed more important to hang on to any tenuous advantage. And if these vampires could only communicate verbally with each other, surely that was in his favor.

Blair let himself shrug, then placed the stake against his captive’s heart. His question was clear, even to the non-telepathic vampiress.

“Why shouldn’t you?” she said quickly. “Because we have a proposition for you.”

Blair curled his lip and exerted a little pressure on the stake. His captive screamed while the other bewildered vampires got to their feet, waiting, it seemed, for orders.

“All right, all right, listen,” the woman said urgently. “We don’t know who you are, but we get that you’re strong and much older than us. We’d like you on our side.”

Blair lifted his eyebrows. It wasn’t so hard after all. Centuries of silent if basic communication with humans made questioning her simple.

“Why? Because we don’t think you want to hide, feeding off human flotsam and leftovers. There are riches out there that could so easily be ours, that would reverse human-vampire positions and put us in control.”

Although she was still afraid of him, she spoke with increasing confidence, knowing she’d caught his interest.

“We don’t need to fight,” she said persuasively. “There’s enough for all of us—enough blood and enough wealth,” she added as he stirred. It might not have been telepathy as such, but she understood him quickly enough.

Slowly, Blair smiled and released his captive to wave the lady politely to a sofa. He was listening.

****

Phil, Sera knew, was well aware of his own superiority. He was stronger, faster, and far more deadly than she. So she moved away from the door again, went back to pick up her glass. As she’d known he would, Phil followed her, relaxing as she did, although he didn’t retrieve his own glass. She did her best to radiate submission.

“Vampires,” she said, lifting the glass to her mouth. The whisky sloshed against her lips as she began to pace around the room. “I can feel other vampires in the house.”

Phil inclined his head.

“Not friends of yours,” she hazarded, lowering the glass with no whisky swallowed. “Or of his. So why aren’t you down there helping him?”

“He doesn’t need my help,” Phil said carelessly.

“What did he say to you that I couldn’t hear?” Pausing for an instant at the dark window, she paced restlessly on.

“He wanted me to stay here with you.”

She kicked off her shoes to further allay his suspicions and glanced over her shoulder as she took another step toward the door. “Why?”

Sensation shot through her foot from the cold floorboard, up through her leg and spine to her brain, blasting her with vision.

A man. A young man, little more than a boy, a university student. His fear and horror tore through her before she realized what was happening to him.

She’d been wrong before, so wrong. Blair had taken life in this room, right here where she stood, in an orgy of bloodletting and death. Part of her tried desperately to move away, to stop the awfulness of the young man’s suffering, while her cool, thinking self wanted to know more. But it seemed she had no choice, for suddenly she was swamped with far more than the young man’s pain. She felt the sensual pleasure mixed up in it, his confused jumble of emotions that somehow included pity for the being killing him.

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 took 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 f*cking 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.