“Let’s see what else, kitty?” His flirty voice pulls me out of my thoughts. “Garlic is an acquired taste for most vampires, I would say, but I love the pungent aroma of one’s blood after they’ve feasted on garlicky meals. We can see our reflections just fine in mirrors, and most of us, vain as we are, spend quite some time appraising ourselves in front of them. We are, after all, quite dashing, don’t you think?”
“Someone thinks highly of himself, I see.” I scoff, only slightly bemused by his antics. He ignores my jab and continues.
“Stakes do us no harm, nor does silver. I personally find it quite tacky, though.”
“So cover myself in silver jewelry, got it.”
I think I’m starting somehow, maybe, just a tiny bit, to enjoy our banter. Must be the whiskey.
“If you prance around the castle half naked, kitty, only covered in silver, I would make an exception just for you, and peel it off with my teeth,” he says in a singsong voice.
“You wish!” A laugh escapes me unwillingly. The balls on this male! He is slightly funny for an insufferable vampire. “Enemy, he is the e-ne-my!”my inner voice chides, and I internally wince. Against my better judgement, he seems to grow on me with his witty remarks and easy-going attitude. But he’s the one who kidnapped me, and I should not forget that.
He throws me one of his signature smirks before locking his arms behind his head in a relaxed posture.
“What else, mmm? I know! Crosses! Oh, the horror of crosses!” I perk up at that, and he laughs heartily at my reaction. “They’re just so fucking ugly to look at!” he blurts out, and I deflate.
“Sorry to tell you this, pretty princess, but the only thing to kill a vampire is beheading. And in order to do that, you either have to be facing a newly turned vampire, still weak by our standards,or you have to be an extremely powerful magical creature. Neither of those things applies here.”
“I get it, I get it. Your kind is pretty darn invincible,” I mutter.
“No one is invincible.” He sobers up unexpectedly fast, changing his demeanor back to serious. His eyes regard me with a calculating gaze. “There might be some things that could be a hindrance to us.”
“Such as?” I ask, knowing that he probably won’t trust me with such information.
“Iron, kitty cat. It doesn’t kill us in the slightest, but it affects our abilities. We can’t use our hypersensitive senses when it comes to that damn metal.”
Ah yes, they teach us that during our educational years. Vampires cannot see, sense, or hear through or around iron. The Fae armies heavily used that metal during the war, so it’s not like he’s sharing with me a preciously kept secret.
“That’s common knowledge. Nothing else?”
His gaze darkens, and I sense our conversation is coming to an end.
“There might be other things, but you aren’t really trustworthy enough at the moment, are you?” He stands to leave and offers me a slight bow before heading for the door.
“I’m afraid our history lesson is done for the day. Feel free to call upon me any time you feel chatty, or particularly any other thing. Horny would be preferable!” He blows me a kiss and walks out of the room before I can come up with any witty remark.
CHAPTER 8
Killian
I’mdrummingmyfingersimpatiently on the polished dark cherry wood desktop of my personal office, which doubles as our strategic assembly location.
The heavy black steampunk pendulum clock hanging on the left side indicates that ten minutes have passed since our agreed-upon meeting time.
“Where in the blasted barren lands of Hell is he?” I growl, more to myself than to the two vampires sitting in front of me.
“Gallivanting around, as per usual,” Leilah says from the right. Marhus snickers before catching himself and straightening his posture. He stares out the window, avoiding Leilah’s gaze as if it were the plague.
The two generals are my most esteemed and trustworthy warriors, second only to Blaise himself, but far more punctual than that wretched vampire.
If I find out he was fucking some maid in a corner instead of attending our tactical meeting in time, I’ll tear him a new asshole, right where his stupid cock now resides. He is already walking on thin ice with me after that fiasco of a kidnapping. We spent months, years, gathering intel carefully about the identity of the Foretold One, only for him to abduct the wrong sister.
My mood worsens at the mere reminder of last night. It’s not just any minor setback; it’s a motherfucking delay in our plans that could cost us thousands of vampires. I grind my teeth in frustration, my fist clenching painfully.
“Come, come, love. You know how he is. Maybe it’s time to appoint someone else as your second-in-command, no?” Leilah murmurs in a sultry voice, reaching out to cover my white-knuckled fist with her bronzed fingers. She pushes her cleavage against the wooden frame of the desk with no hint of subtlety, giving me a full-frontal show of her perky breasts, covered in a tight-skin leather bodysuit. I abstain from swatting her hand away, my jaw clicking with restrained rage. Marhus silently laughs behind her, his shoulders trembling a bit, while his azure eyes take in the scene. He shrugs as if to say, , and, by Akaori, he told me; I just didn’t listen at the time.
Every damned vampire knows Leilah develops centuries-long infatuations with her lovers, and we’ve both experienced that firsthand. Or rather, he had, while I am still experiencing it. She was obsessed with Marhus for almost seventy-five long years before I had the ill-fated idea of having a passing fling with her, over a century ago. It takes only one night of drunken passion to fuck up the entire dynamic of a group. And the only things that we vampires hold longer than grudges are sexual obsessions.
