Do I risk saying something? With my social skills there’s a pretty good chance I’ll say the wrong thing and make it worse.
I could operate in a roomful of vampires, but I didn’t know how to befriend them.
“Considine.” I fidgeted when another vampire pinged my senses.
“Just tell us what game you’re playing, Elder Maledictus, and we’ll adjust to it,” Auberi snapped.
Amée laughed. “Don’t you see—thereisno game! He’s really taken. With a slayer!”
“Maybe we should all sit down and have a drink?” Margarida suggested.
“Quiet, Margarida!” Amée said. “You might accept this with your weak heart for humans, but I will not!”
Margarida snapped straight, all signs of good humor draining from her face. “At least I haven’t so little self-value that I’m jealous of them!”
“You take that back!”
The door slammed open, hitting the wall with a crack that made me suspect it might have damaged the wall.
This time I risked looking back and was confused by the unusual vampire who stood in the doorway.
Built like a truck, the new vampire was tall and thick with defined muscles that showed underneath the short-sleeved dress shirt he was wearing. His strawberry blond hair was shaved at the sides but long on the top and gathered in a bun I recognized from my fashion history classes as a Viking style.
“Vígí?” Killian asked. “What are you doing here? I thought Considine burned your mansion down and you were in the middle of rebuilding?”
“Amée called me—told me about Considine’s slayer,” the vampire, Vígí, rumbled as he meticulously scanned the room.
When his red eyes landed on me, they narrowed. He hunched his shoulders, then sprinted at me.
CHAPTER
TEN
Jade
Every fighting instinct I had in my body roared to life. I pulled my handgun and my dagger before Vígí dropped to his knees. He skidded the last few feet, stopping directly in front of me—still on his knees—and he clasped his hands above his head.
“You are…the slayer,” he said, his voice gentle.
Bewildered, I glanced at Considine.
He’d appeared at my side during Vígí’s approach, standing perpendicular with me and hovering so close his chest pressed into my shoulder. He met my eyes and shook his head. “This is a reaction I didn’t account for.”
“Vígí,” Baldwin drawled. “What are you doing—to a slayer of all people?”
“I am here to pay my respects to the honored slayer who has so captured Elder Maledictus’s attention,” Vígí said. “And to give her every welcome our broken and backward Family can afford.”
I suddenly felt terrible for holding both my handgun and my dagger when the giant vampire obviously didn’t mean any harm. I put them away, hoping no one had noticed.
Baldwin rolled his eyes. “That’s it, the whole Family is going mad.”
“Have you no shame?” Auberi demanded.
“No!” Vígí leaped to his feet and turned around, towering over his much smaller brother. “Not when it comes to methods to counteract Considine. In case you haven’t noticed, none of us—not even Sire’s-Pet-Killian—have escaped his wrath.”
“I am offended at that label,” Killian said.
“As am I,” Considine said.
