Bathin raised his eyebrows. “Do you think Rossi would betray you? That’s not really in his nature is it?”
Betrayal wasn’t something I’d ever seen from Rossi. He was about as straight a shooter as anyone in this town. Clear about his wants, needs, goals.
Clear about his laws, rules, and punishments too. He was a steady hand and presence who dealt with all the vampires in this town. If someone crossed him, if someone broke his laws, he just killed them. No betrayal necessary.
“He’s trying to protect me,” I said, putting it together. “He promised my dad he wouldn’t let anyone kill me, and he won’t use the bite to…deal with Lavius because it might harm me to do so.”
It felt right. Even if I didn’t know the exact details, it felt right.
“He made that promise. Your father told me as much. It’s the truth.”
“If I believe you.”
“If you believe me.”
“How can the bite harm Lavius? Could we use it to…lure him into a trap? Slow him down? Chain him up?”
“We can use it to kill him.”
I frowned. There had to be more to it than that. “How?”
“First, you have to die.”
I didn’t have a clock in my living room, so the silence that followed that statement wasn’t broken up by anything except the push of wind scattering a few fir needles across my roof.
“Theoretically?” I ventured.
“Literally. He has tied you to him with only a single bite. There is a reason vampires turn their victims quickly or kill them quickly. Turning is final. Killing is final. But a single bite? That is a transient state.”
“For him or for me?”
“For both of you. If you are killed, if you die while still being tied to him, he is vulnerable. For a very short time. Minutes. But just long enough to strike. He would be caught, tangled in your death, mortal, killable, no special spells required.”
Chills rolled down from my scalp to my knees. This wasn’t exactly good news. I understood why Rossi hadn’t wanted to tell me. For one thing, it was a vulnerability in vampires I hadn’t known existed. For another, I’d have to pay a pretty big price—the biggest price—for it to work.
“I’m not seeing this as our opening volley,” I said.
“Which is why it would be so unexpected. Rossi won’t know you have this information. Lavius won’t think you’d be stupid enough to act on it.”
“But you think I’m stupid enough?”
“Clever. Clever enough. Because you have me.”
I raised my eyebrows.
He sighed. “And I have your soul. You won’t die, well, not completely, as long as I hold your soul. I can keep death, or any other god, from taking you.”
“And I trust you to do this?”
“Do you want to trust me?”
“Are you saying all this time you were holding my father’s soul he wasn’t really dead?”
“He was dead. His body died, and then we came to an agreement, before his soul passed into death. And after a year of being dead, unless the body is very carefully preserved, there is no going back.
“But for you, with this. It would take seconds. You’d would be back in your body before brain damage could set in.”
“Way to sell it.”
