“I guess, yeah. Mostly we’re just Morganville. Why? You feeling nostalgic for the Old Country?”
Rozhkov smiled. It was chilling, and the cold light in his eyes had an edge like broken glass. “In a way,” he said. “Come, child. Sit.” He patted the sofa on his other side. Eve didn’t move. He patted again, the way someone would encourage a pet dog. Michael gritted his teeth against an urge—a very real one—to go at the guy with his teeth. “Sit and I will allow this woman to go.” Eve still didn’t move, and Rozhkov’s patience visibly frayed. “Or, by all means, stand and watch as I rip her apart for my entertainment. You may choose.”
It wasn’t even a choice. Eve let out a slow breath and walked to the sofa, but didn’t sit. She stood, looking down at the vampire. “Let her go and I’ll sit.”
He hesitated, just to draw out the moment, and then took his hand from around Mrs. Lockhart’s shoulders; the young woman—not that much older than Eve herself, Michael realized, maybe twenty-five—launched herself off the couch and ran to throw herself into her husband’s arms.
“Get out of here,” Shane said, without taking his eyes from what was happening with Eve. Michael didn’t spare the two a glance as they left, either, rushing upstairs to what was probably the kids’ room, bunkering down their family as best they could.
The living room was profoundly silent after that, and Michael’s vampire senses—on high alert—heard every click of the clock on the wall, the low hum of electronics, the heartbeats of his friends, the subtle whisper of their breathing.
“Sit,” Rozhkov said again, staring up at Eve.
She did.
Michael shivered from the barely controllable impulse to rush forward. He felt the displacement of air like needles on his skin as Shane stepped off to his left, out of the way, ready to make a move when needed. He felt immersed in his senses in a way he rarely did, an entirely vampiric dimension of the world that hurt; it pressed on him in so many intimate ways.
“You know,” Rozhkov said—not to Eve, but suddenly to Michael, driving it home with a shift of his focus—“you would not feel so discomforted if you didn’t keep the world pushed so far away. You fight what you are, and it makes you weak, Michael. We all know that. All except you, perhaps.” He laughed a little. It sounded sad, but it had the flash of fangs behind it. Rozhkov was disconcertingly contradictory. He shifted back to Eve. He hadn’t tried to touch her, which was good; Michael wasn’t at all sure he could hold back if that happened. “Your great-grandmother, we were speaking of her. Ulyana. I knew her.”
“You kidnapped a lady and threatened to kill her so you could ramble on about old dead people?” Eve asked. “Get help.”
Rozhkov’s faint smile disappeared, and there was something about his face that seemed like all the life had drained out of it—a corpse’s face, except for the living fire in his blue eyes. “Careful,” he whispered. “Your blood only takes you so far.”
Eve had a finely tuned sense of danger, thankfully, and she shut up and went still. Michael met her gaze and held it steady. I’ve got you, he told her. You’re safe.
Her faint smile said, I know.
“What do you mean, her blood?” Claire had been very quiet, but now she spoke up, and Michael sensed her moving forward on his right. “What do you want with Eve? Or rather, from Eve?”
“Clever girl,” Rozhkov said. “I’d heard as much about you. It’s gratifying to know that gossip can convey truth, occasionally. I’d heard much of the four of you. It seems it’s all true.”
“Answer the question,” Shane said.
Rozhkov made a motion that wasn’t quite a shrug, wasn’t quite a headshake. It was something that came from some earlier time, and a distant land, and it had the feeling of disinterest to it. “There is power in some bloodlines; even you untutored children must know that. Power handed down, life to life, generation to generation. Yes?”
“I’m not some witch,” Eve said. “I might wear the look, but—”
“Not witchcraft,” he said. “But your blood holds a secret that you do not know, and cannot use. I can.” He turned toward Eve, and Michael took a step forward, fists clenching in a sudden rush of dread and fury . . . but the other vampire only touched her hand very gently, with fingertips as pale as snow. Traced the blue lines of veins in her wrist. “Therefore I ask that you donate your blood to me.”
“Wait, back up,” Eve said. “What?”
“You give blood, as part of your taxes in Morganville, do you not?”
“Well . . . yeah . . .”
“Then I only ask you to give it to me.”
Michael’s urge to hit the man was only getting more pressing. Asking for Eve’s blood was personal. Way too personal. In vampire terms, it was like sex, and he was doing it in front of her vampire husband. He knew Shane and Claire might not get the distinction, but he knew Eve did.