“For what it is worth,” I said, glancing at her, “I never thanked her for helping with Violet. Or you.”
She shrugged, the gesture small and almost dismissive. “I care for my girls like my own. Like family.”
“And yet that same family swims amongst the waters of sharks unknowingly.”
Jules sighed, the sound heavy with resignation. “I do not expect you to understand the balance, Rowan.”
“No, I do not think I will. Not when it threatens those I care for.”
“Folly is perennial, and yet the human race has survived.” She quoted Russell as our steps echoed down the alley across the street from Oubliette, the club’s neon sign visible in the distance.
I started to respond when two figures rounded the corner. They slinked down the alley towards us, their strides fluid and unnatural. The absence of heartbeats confirmed what I feared even before I saw their faces: vampyres. My ears strained against the silence where their pulses should have been, that void of sound more alarming than a growl. As they neared, their skin gleamed like polished alabaster under the distant streetlights.
“Jules, stay near me.” My voice left no room for argument. She startled at the command before she pressed into my side, her breath coming fast and shallow.
“They shouldn’t be hunting, much less so close to Oubliette.”
“Well, it seems they do not give many fucks, do they now?” I snapped, already mentally preparing for a fight.
Once the pair drew closer, I recognized them. The twins from the club. Their heterochromia gleamed in the streetlight with an unnatural luminescence that human eyes didn’t possess. The soft scrape of their shoes against the pavement created an eerie rhythm.
“Well, well, well,” the twin to my right said with a grin, his voice as smooth as polished glass. “Louis, what is this we have stumbled across?”
The twin to my left, Louis, raked his gaze over me, measuring, dismissing, then speaking with a faint curl of lip. “René, I do believe this is that grim guard dog of the newest girl. What was her name?”
René made a show of pretending to remember as he tapped a slender finger to his temple. “Alexis, I believe?”
Violet’s stage name. Relief flickered through me that they didn’t know her real name. It was a small mercy in a world that rarely offered any.
“I want no trouble,” I said as I raised my hands, the universal signal for passivity and truce. I inhaled deeply. The night air was thick with the stench of nearby garbage and the scent of distant rain. I hoped they would leave us alone and fuck off to their coffins.
They did not.
The twins’ grins grew in unison as they took a few steps away from each other, then started to circle us. I could handle myself against these bloodsuckers, but Jules. . . She was breakable, as fragile as spun glass in a storm. I didn’t think I could take them both while also protecting her.
“Pax vobis ambobus sit,” I said as I pushed Jules back and kept myself between her and the twins.Peace be with you both, in Latin. From my previous life, I knew there were some long-lived vampyres who respected the ancient language despite its ties to Christianity. Such a greeting was meant to dissuade the undead, a respectful and subtle way to show fealty.
René edged further to my right as surprise flashed across his face. His raven-black hair spilled down his back like oil as he cocked his head, birdlike, studying me as though he were deciding which part of my throat to tear out first. “Did you hear that, Louis? This guard dog speaks.”
“It’s an impressive bark,” Louis said as he stepped closer to my left. He combed a hand through his equally long hair. “But we have no interest in a dog’s tricks. Where is your master, little guard dog?”
“Not here,” I said flatly as I lowered my hands. I felt the violent tension rising and knew we were about to come to blows. I shoved my hands deep into my jacket pockets.
“Yes,” René said with a hunger in his voice, “that we can see. Butwhereis Alexis? She always looks so delicious on that stage. . . we were thinking of having a taste.”
At that, any desire I’d harbored to resolve the encounter peacefully snapped like a frozen branch. My lips peeled back in a snarl as the words tore out, guttural and unrestrained from a primal darkness within me. “You will never touch her,chudovishche.”
Their smirks died, faces hardening to marble. Whether they spoke Russian or not, they didn’t need a translation to know I had called them amonster.
Behind me, Jules’s breath hitched, a frightened rabbit heartbeat hammering against my back. The twins’ eyes tracked the sound, nostrils flaring at the scent of her fear. I saw their fingernails flashing into claws as they bared their elongating fangs. The alley suddenly felt too narrow.
In a blur, they lunged.
Against a single vampyre, even a very young one, an unprepared and unarmed man stands little chance of survival. Against two, in a dark alley, in the middle of the night, while simultaneously trying to protect a friend? It would have been certain death.
For an unprepared and unarmed man.
Thankfully, I was neither of those things.
