A Den of Tricks (A Shade of Vampire #54)

“No, I just have very good hearing,” he muttered. “You mentioned his name more than once during dinner. Which, by the way, smelled quite nice from outside, though I kind of feel sorry for your species. You don’t eat souls, you can’t eat meat… It just feels drab, if all you get to enjoy is blood.”

I scoffed once more, and kept walking, increasing my speed in order to get away from him. He wasn’t being helpful, yet he was asking a lot of questions. I had to tip the scales a little bit. He kept up with me as we reached the bottom of the stairs. The Broken Bow Inn was just a few minutes away, farther down.

“You seem upset,” Zane said.

“I just don’t understand why you’re so interested in me and my relationship to the people around me,” I replied.

“I am simply making assessments as to whether you are worth saving or not, ahead of what is coming.”

I stopped walking again, and turned to look at him once more. It was becoming increasingly frustrating to try to get any information out of Zane. He was so cryptic and unwilling to tell me anything that could be of use to us, and yet he could not stay away. Meanwhile, an ominous feeling crept up my spine. I knew for a fact that what he wasn’t telling me made the difference between us walking out of this alive and us getting carried out, feet forward.

“You love talking in riddles, don’t you?” I muttered, my hand slipping into a secret pocket that I had cut into my dress. I’d slipped a knife in there earlier, for just such an occasion. He gave me a half-smile and inched closer, enough for the air between us to get thicker and heavier.

“I just don’t like giving away all my secrets at once,” he breathed.

With one swift move, I brought my blade up to his throat, the sharp metal digging into his tan skin. He stilled, slowly raising his hands in a defensive gesture. A grin slit his face, but it was all he could do.

“Oh my, well done,” Zane said. “Impressive speed. You’re learning fast…”

“Tell me the truth, unless you want me to slit your throat and let you bleed to death right here,” I hissed, menacingly baring my fangs. Judging by the glimmer in his eyes, he seemed to like that, which immediately made me press my lips together in a thin line. I couldn’t give him any sort of satisfaction.

A couple of moments went by in sinister silence. I wondered if my knife against his throat might make him talk. He didn’t seem bothered. If anything, he was amused. That just riled me up even more.

Something hit the cobblestone behind me with a sharp noise. I instinctively glanced over my shoulder, just to make sure that I wasn’t going to get attacked by someone else—especially not another daemon.

It was all Zane needed to blow more yellow powder in my face as soon as I turned my head.

Damn it, how many more times am I going to fall for this?

“Crap, not again…” I wheezed and coughed, and everything went dark.





Heron





After our talk with Lemuel, we went back to the Broken Bow Inn, just as the third moon reached its highest point in the starry night sky. I dropped Avril off at her room and slipped into the shower in my own. I welcomed the cold water against my skin—I could make sense of almost everything that had happened to us over the past couple of days, but the one thing I had yet to wrap my head around was how I felt about Avril.

Restlessness took over, and I put on a pair of pants and started pacing the room. Something had developed between us, something very intense. It heated me up whenever Avril was near me. I had an urge to see her again, even though it had only been twenty minutes since we’d last spoken. Literally.

I had already been attracted to her long before Neraka, but the dynamic between us had changed—particularly since our accidental Pyrope back in the gorges. To say that I was conflicted was a serious understatement. I wanted to talk to her. I needed to be near her. There was something about Avril that made me think I had a chance at a soulmate after all.

At the same time, I was afraid of another rejection, since I had really messed it up the last time. I sure as hell wasn’t looking to get slapped, or worse, again. What made things even worse, for me at least, was my near certainty that Avril felt the same way. My body and my soul were battling it out with my brain, and I had very little faith in the latter. My instincts had kept me alive for years in Azazel’s prison. Why was my brain interfering?

Probably because Avril isn’t just any other female; probably because she is the best thing that has ever happened to you, and you have no idea what to do with that.

I exhaled sharply and scraped away at the bottom of my heart, until I found the courage I needed to go to her room and tell her how I felt. Given the mess we were in, and the possibility that our lives might come to an abrupt end, it made no sense to hide my feelings any longer.

Who knew what tomorrow would bring?

I found myself standing outside her door. My palms were sweaty, my pulse was racing, and my stomach was starting to bother me—as if thousands of needles had filled it. It hurt like hell. As much as I racked my brain for something intelligent to say to her, I couldn’t think of anything.

She was by far the most beautiful and fierce creature I had ever come across. As much as I wanted her, and as much as some might have said I deserved it, my previous philandering made me feel unworthy of her attention.

Get it together, man…

I cursed under my breath. I had been brave enough to make it to her door, and yet I seemed to have no strength left to freakin’ knock.

After a couple of deep breaths, I raised my hand, and just as my knuckles were about to touch the door, it opened. Avril stood before me, freshly showered and changed into a training suit, her hair wet and her skin smelling of roses and lavender. She looked surprised to see me, while all I could do was stare blankly at her.

The effect she had on me was close to devastating, and all I wanted was to lose myself in her, in everything she was, and in everything we could be together. I was in so much trouble.





Avril





(Daughter of Lucas & Marion)





For some reason, Heron was standing outside my door. The look on his face startled me, because it was exactly what I had seen of myself just minutes earlier, in the mirror. My temperature spiked, as I wasn’t sure why he was there in the first place.

I had been meaning to talk to him about Pyrope, about what it meant to him. I couldn’t find the right words, mainly because I knew how important it was to him, as opposed to how it had taken place. We had obviously not planned for it, but it was still a very intimate gesture—especially between the two of us. I was clearly into Heron, and maybe him being here was a sign that I should talk to him about it. It had been eating away at me since yesterday.

We stared at each other, quiet and blank, as I tried and failed miserably to formulate a coherent sentence. I had opened the door to go talk to him, and yet here he was, somehow one step ahead of me. Unless he wasn’t here to talk about us. In which case, my internal turmoil was pretty much useless.