“What else?” Two words that made my ears feel like they needed to pop.
“I don’t know.” Ben whispered.
“His chest. Look at his chest.”
Ben blinked and blinked, his gaze scanning over Sven’s body, flitting across his face, neck, chest, unable to rest.
“I don’t see, can’t see anything else. A bullet. Just a bullet.”
Ben was so distressed I was about to tell Rossi to let him go. I didn’t understand what was going on, exactly, but I liked Ben and I didn’t like seeing him looking so cornered and panicked.
“Do you see blood?”
Ben was visibly trembling now, his thin T-shirt soaked with sweat. Still, he stayed where he was, his gaze searching the dead vampire.
“No. No blood.”
Holy crap. I could see the blood clear as day. Obviously Old Rossi could see the blood too. But Ben was not lying. Even I could see that.
“Thank you, Ben.” Rossi’s words were gentle, light and laced with the vampiric tone that both hypnotized and soothed. “That is all I need. I’m sorry to distress you. Get a drink of water and rest. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Ben nodded woodenly, swallowed again several times and then all but fled the room, closing the door so quietly not an egg rattled.
“Okay, so Ben can’t see the blood,” I said.
Old Rossi had pushed up to sit on the edge of the couch, elbows propped on his thighs, fingers linked together, thumbs pressed against his mouth. He nodded.
“And that blood plus that bullet killed Sven.”
Again, he nodded.
“So there’s a way to kill your kind that isn’t stakes, garlic, or solar power.”
“Garlic is a myth. Although severing our heads works quite well. And so do the blood arts.”
“Technical ichor?”
“Ichor techne. An art many centuries old. An art I thought burned, hidden, buried with the devils who first developed it.”
Two ways I could take this conversation: ask about the devils who had developed a way to kill vampires I had never heard of, or find out who might have found that art to use now. And why on Sven. So I guess that was three ways.
“Did you know them?”
“The devils? Yes.”
I waited. “Could they still be alive?”
“One of them is.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
Not what I expected. I wiped some of the sweat and rain off of my face and rubbed my palms on my jeans.
“Okay.” I took a second to process that. “Okay. I’ve never asked about your past, and Dad didn’t tell me anything more than we have noted in the family records. I’m going to assume you think this,” I spread fingers toward poor Sven, “is tangled up with your past life? Lives?”
“It is.”
