“I told you.”
“You told me a lie. Now tell me the truth.”
“I don’t like him. I don’t trust him. I don’t think he is innocent in the death of one of my own.”
Well. He didn’t mess around. Good. I liked it best when Rossi was being blunt.
“You don’t have to like him or trust him. But you do not get to decide on any creature, deity or mortal’s innocence in this town. That’smyjob, and I am good at it. So you want to try that again? Tell me that you didn’t bring him out here to kill him?”
One eyebrow rose up toward the curl of black hair that brushed his forehead. “If I were going to kill him he’d already be dead, and buried so quickly, he’d still be steaming six feet under.”
“Why don’t you trust him?”
He paced over to his couch. He didn’t sit, instead walking along the back of it, his hands gripped at the wrist behind his hips. “That is a question I would rather not answer. Are you sure it’s the question you want to ask?”
“Yes.” I could tell him I had ideas, theories as to why he had been trying to warn me off Ryder ever since he’d found out we were dating. But I didn’t want to influence what he was going to say.
“That isn’t the question you came here to ask me, is it Delaney?”
No.“Yes. One of them.” See? I could be truthful.
He had reached the far side of the couch and studied the eggs in cases there for a moment before turning back toward me.
“He smells funny.”
Okay, that was not what I expected him to say.
“Funny how? Like ha-ha? Or like weird? Is it a blood thing? A fanger thing?”
He looked mildly offended by the fanger remark, but continued as if I hadn’t said anything.
“Throughout the years there have been those who hunt. Those who seek out the creatures of this world. Those who would eradicate anything that is different, misunderstood, alien.”
“You think he’s a vampire hunter? Like Buffy? Sam and Dean? Seriously?”
I had it on good authority that there were no vampire hunters in the world. Sure, there were people who were curious about cryptozoology. There was scripted monster hunting that might make for a good half-hour slot on some fake historical or nature channel. But there were no organization of hunters who really believed there were real vampires in the world.
“There is an organization of hunters,” Old Rossi started, and I could only blink several times as my brain did some revisions and carried the dumbfounded. “It has not long been formed. Throughout the years, such organizations come...and go.”
From the slide of his tongue over his upper lip, I could guess how exactly those organizations had disappeared.
“They often die from being ignored. If they are exposed, mockery is their bane. This is not a world that wishes to believe in the things that linger in the shadows.” For that he gave me a lazy half-smile.
Okay. Maybe I liked it better when he didn’t smile.
“So you think...there’s a group of people hunting vampires? Killing vampires like Sven? You think Ryder is a part of that group?”
“It was his blood.”
“He donated blood. To the Red Cross.”
He snorted. “You believe that?”
“I checked the records. It’s on the up-and-up. He donated blood. I think someone used his blood to kill Sven.”
“You think there is someone who wants Ryder blamed for Sven’s death? Who hates him that much?”
“You.”
