Serafina and the Silent Vampire (16 page)

“Sera? Are you…?” She caught sight of Blair and stopped dead. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Blair. Who the fuck are you?” he returned pointlessly, because obviously she couldn’t hear him.

“Where’s Sera?” she asked in panic, perhaps because he hadn’t answered her and she was wondering whether he was a robber or an axe murderer.

Blair took pity on her and jerked his head toward the bedroom. Watching him all the time, the blond girl circled warily around him, then bolted past him into the bedroom.

“Sera? Sera, wake up! Are you okay?”

Some sort of sleepy, leave-me-alone noises came from Sera, followed by more urgent commands from the other girl. Blair strolled toward the bedroom and leaned in the doorframe to watch.

Sera’s friend sat on the bed, tugging and shoving at Sera’s shoulder. Sera herself had managed to lift her head from the pillow to say comfortably, “More sleep.”

“No more sleep, Sera,” the girl said sternly. “It’s after nine. Who’s the dude?”

“What dude?” Sera yawned, struggling into a sitting position. “Oops,” she added, discovering she was naked, and hauled the quilt up for modesty.

“There’s a strange man in your flat. Did you know?”

To Blair’s delight, Sera looked over her friend’s shoulder and smiled at him. “Oh yes. It’s Blair.”

Blair could only see the back of the other woman’s head, but he could imagine her shocked expression, if it matched the sudden rigidity of her back or the sudden increase in anxiety that radiated from her like an explosion.

“Blair?” she repeated, clearly appalled. Her head moved, and Blair knew she was taking in the rumpled state of the bed, adding it to her observation that Blair hadn’t been wearing shoes when they’d met and multiplying the whole by Sera’s sleepiness. “Sera, you bloody idiot, you didn’t, did you?”

The smile faded into something like guilt. The other girl pushed Sera’s head ungently from side to side as if looking for puncture marks. Blair curled his lips. Any wounds created by him would have healed long since.

“Get off, Jilly,” Sera muttered. “I’m getting up. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

The girl—Jilly—stood up. “What about him?” she asked aggressively, jerking her head in Blair’s direction. “Shouldn’t he go away?”

“He can’t, can he? It’s daylight.” At least she didn’t sound disappointed.

With quite obvious bravery, Jilly stormed up to him, her eyes narrowed and spitting with anger. “If you’ve hurt one hair on her head,” she began.

“For God’s sake, Jilly, he hasn’t,” Sera fumed. “Stop the mother-hen act! I can take care of myself!”

She couldn’t, of course. Not against him. And neither could Jilly, although he suspected that together they presented a pretty formidable opposition to the rest of the world. But at least Sera recognized that he was not, at this moment, a threat to either of them. Jilly barged past him.

He glanced over at Sera, twitching his eyebrows, and she gave him a slightly shy, rueful smile. “I need to shower and dress,” she said.

“I think you should eat first. You’ll be dizzy.”

“Don’t be daft,” she scoffed, swinging her legs out of the bed and wriggling forward. “Woo.” She held on to the bed to steady herself. “Shit. What’s the matter with me?”

“Blood loss. I took too much.”

She touched her forehead, rubbing it gently. “Bastard,” she said without heat.

He walked over and lifted the fruit juice from the bedside table where he’d left it earlier. “Drink that. I’ll get you some sweet tea and breakfast. You’ll be okay then, if you take it easy for a couple of days.”

Obediently, she took the glass from his hand and drank half of it down without drawing breath. Then, lowering the glass, she glanced up at him. “You don’t seem very apologetic,” she observed.

In truth, he wasn’t. But the implication of her own regret hurt far more than it should. “Should I be saying sorry?” he asked lightly.

She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. Something like a laugh spilled from her throat. “No. Just don’t do it again.” She lifted the glass to her lips once more and drained it.

Blair left the room to make tea, but he discovered Jilly was before him, banging about in Sera’s kitchen. He watched for a few moments. When he came right in, she shrank away from him and frowned in obvious incomprehension as he spooned sugar into one of the cups.

By this time, the sounds of the shower could be heard from the bathroom. Blair politely handed Jilly the cup for Sera. She seemed almost mesmerized as she took it and scuttled out of the kitchen.

Blair rummaged for a suitable breakfast.

****

Some of it was probably blood loss, but Sera felt oddly numb as she showered and dressed. Somewhere, although her body ached from all the sex it had enjoyed last night, a warm, cozy glow burned, but she was too tired to analyze it. What she’d done last night, what Blair had done to her, almost felt like someone else’s story. But he was still here, in her flat. It had still been dark when she’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t far to his own place, and at the speed he moved, he could easily have made it home before dawn. He’d chosen not to, and she liked that. She liked it too much, considering he was a powerful, murderous being who’d drunk her blood without compunction and to whom one night of sex among centuries was a mere drop in the ocean.

Oh, but it had been good sex. And he’d liked it. He’d kept coming back for more. Was that why he was still here?

Her body flushed all over at the possibility, and she had to sit down on the edge of the bath to finish drying. Overcome with a shyness that was ridiculous after last night’s uninhibited debauchery, she’d taken a pair of jeans and a shirt into the bathroom with her.

“Sera, there’s a cup of tea on the table,” Jilly called to her. “Do you want me to stay?
He
‘s still here!”

“No, you’re fine. I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she called back.

Emerging, fully dressed apart from socks and shoes, she found a plate of bacon, egg, toast, and tomato on the table. Beside it was another glass of orange juice, a cup of tea, and a large chunk of melon.

Her stomach rumbled. “Tea indeed!” she murmured, smiling, before she realized Blair was standing at the window—the curtains were still shut—watching her. Her stomach flipped. He was one sexy devil, even dressed and barefoot. She swallowed. “How fab is Jilly?” she said lightly and sat down to tuck in.

Blair walked to the table and sat in the chair beside her. His knee didn’t touch hers, but she had the sudden urge to close the distance.

He said, “I declared against Smith’s vampires last night. They may consider it negotiation, which gives us time. But it may, by association, have put you in danger from them. I’ll be around at night, but in daytime, you have to remember that Smith doesn’t need the dark to operate.”

Sera waved her fork and swallowed. “I don’t believe he’ll hurt me. Can his vampires hurt you?”

“If there are enough of them, yes. And they’re creating more every day. I need more information before I can decide what to do.”

She frowned, reaching for the teacup. “We have to oppose them. We can’t allow them to dominate humans like that, use us as animals for feeding purposes and slaves while they hog all the wealth.”

“You speak like a human,” he mocked.

She took a sizeable swallow and laid down the cup. “Funnily enough, I
am
human.”

“I’m not.”

Her fork hovered over the final piece of bacon. She stared at him. “You wouldn’t go along with it, would you? Not now…” She bit her lip as if she’d said too much.

She had. She could see the implication register in his dark, fathomless eyes.
Not now that we’ve had such fantastic sex.
Would he imagine she’d done it to bribe him? Had she? Certainly she’d been very conscious of a desire to have him on her side. Because without him, they didn’t stand a chance against the other vampires. But the sex, the surrender, had been about pure lust. And this strange warmth still clinging to the region of her heart.

How the hell could she tell him that?

In any case, did it matter if he wouldn’t be on her side after all? Would she have to fight him too? How did she do that?

Grabbing the last piece of toast from her plate, she stood up, muttering, “I have to go.”

She couldn’t look at him, just walked swiftly to the door, a working girl late for work. It was good to have a role. She didn’t hear or see him move, but he was there at the door before her.

“Be careful,” he warned.

She nodded, raising her eyes from her chest to his face.

His lips quirked. “I’ll make inquiries.”

“So will I.”

He touched her face, tilted it up for his kiss. Her stomach melted, even before his lips touched hers. Sweet, and definitely too short. Then she was clattering downstairs to the office. She felt human again.

While Elspeth bolted across to the shop to replace the bottle of vodka currently residing beside Sera’s bed, Jilly glared at Jack until he looked up from whatever it was he was reading.

“She’s been with Blair again,” Jilly said abruptly. “Last night. He’s still upstairs.”

Jack glanced upward as if he could see through the ceiling for proof. “Is that—safe?” he asked,

“Of course, it’s not bloody safe!” Jilly exploded. “The question is, what the hell do we do about it?”

“I don’t really see that there’s anything we
can
do, except keep an eye on them both. From what she’s said, whatever his reasons, Blair appears to be on our side.” He hesitated, even removed his spectacles for an unnecessary polish. He obviously knew he was on thorny ground and about to step on territory sacrosanct to Sera and Jilly, from which he was normally and quite rightly excluded. “Is she having some kind of relationship with him?”

Jilly nodded curtly. “Think so.”

“Phew.” Jack let out his breath in a rush. “Heavy. Makes any interference counterproductive.”

Jilly widened her eyes at such unexpected common sense. She always thought of Jack as an upper-class oddity, avoiding the reality of his own wealthy, high-achieving world by playing in one he didn’t really understand.

Jack put his glasses back on, and for once, Jilly let him speak. “I think we just have to be there for her. And warn the bastard that she’s not alone and that if he does her any harm whatsoever, somehow we’ll manage to stake him to hell.”

Jilly stared at him, but he didn’t back down. She grinned. “That’s the first time you’ve ever spoken like a sensible man.”

“Stop, Jilly,” Sera said, coming through from the inner office. “Such exaggerated praise is liable to go to his head. What’s happening?”

“Nothing much,” Jilly said. She decided not to care whether or not Sera had overheard her and Jack. In fact it would be good if she had—might wake her up to her own idiocy. “Elspeth’s gone for vodka, I mean milk, and as you asked, we’ve been researching a bit deeper into your Nicholas Smith. His name crops up in the membership of several groups and societies—what would you call them, Jack?”

“Esoteric,” Jack supplied mildly.

“Aye, what he said. Anyway, they’re to do with pretty heavy magic, witchcraft, Satanism, that kind of thing.”

“Yes?” Sera eased her hip onto Jilly’s desk. She looked better than she had in the flat—well, who looked good when they first woke up? “That fits with what I heard, that he’s a ‘real’ sorcerer.”

“Does any of that stuff work?” Jack asked, almost apologetically. “Or is it just a symptom of the way he thinks, the power he’s looking for and found with the vampires?”

“Oh, some of it works. Some of it definitely works. Trust me, a friend of mine is a witch.”

“Mel,” Jilly remembered. Melanie Merrow had flickered erratically in and out of Sera’s life since childhood. Jilly had once wondered if, young as she was, Mel was Sera’s real mother, but Sera had laughed so hard at this speculation that Jilly had been forced reluctantly to drop the dream. Mel would have been a good mother to have. Or at least better than a drug addict who abandoned her baby at a clinic or whatever other wild or pathetic stories Sera produced for the entertainment of others. “Scary woman,” she observed.

“Very knowledgeable woman.” Sera frowned, staring at Jilly without really seeing her. “Why does he smell like me?” she said inexplicably. She stood up, reaching for the phone in her pocket. “I think I need to see Mel about many things.”

****

Although she was still pissed off at Ferdy, she’d be driving so close by his house on her way to visit Melanie that she decided to call in. There were more important things bothering her, personal things, like what she’d done with Blair last night and which way Blair would jump. And how she was going to feel about both of those things when he did.

Before she left, she ran back up to the flat to fetch the Christmas present she’d bought for Mel last year. And although it was only half an hour since she’d seen him last, her heart beat like a teenager’s on a first date with her long-time crush.

Silence rang in her ears. There was no sign of him in the living room. She could almost imagine he’d gone, had somehow found a way to leave in daylight, except the whole flat resonated with his personality. No echo of presence but the real thing. Slowly, she followed her instinct to the bedroom and found him lying stretched out on her bed, still clothed, staring at the ceiling. He looked dead.

“Blair?” She rushed over to him, wondering wildly if some ray of daylight had seeped through the curtain and zapped him. Though, of course, his body would have disintegrated, wouldn’t it? She grabbed his arm. “Blair!”

And suddenly he wasn’t on the bed but in the doorway, both hands raised in self-defense. His eyes were steely, murderous, just as she’d seen him in the car park, a timely reminder—or was it too late?—of the nature of the being she’d welcomed to her bed. And yet in the time she took to register this, he was already lowering his arms to his sides. The vicious glare faded from his eyes.

“Serafina.”

“Were you asleep?” she asked in disbelief.

His lips quirked. “I had a busy night.”

Her face, her entire body flushed, and yet beyond her own memory and embarrassment, she recognized that she’d found his vulnerability, that he knew it and didn’t like it. “Normally, I’m aware while I rest.”

“But you didn’t even hear me come in.”

“No, I didn’t,” he acknowledged, his voice very carefully even. “It seems I don’t register you as a threat.”

“Not sure that’s a compliment,” she said ruefully. His eyes lightened, seemed to smile, and her breath caught. She wanted to walk into his arms and hug him. She wanted to fall onto the bed with him and repeat all the things they’d done last night. Instead, she spun the other way, opening the wardrobe door to rummage for the wrapped Christmas gift. It was a small parcel—a ring—so it was difficult to locate. “I’m going to see my witch friend. She lives near Loch Lomond, so I’ll be gone most of the day.”

Finally retrieving the ring box, she shoved the fallen things back in and closed the door. “Nicholas Smith
is
into magic—real magic, like Phil said, not conjuring. Jilly found stuff on the Internet.”

He hadn’t moved, just continued to watch her. She drew in her breath and walked toward him. “I can trust you, can’t I, not to touch my friends?” She brushed his hand lightly. It might have been casual, almost accidental, but Blair would know better.

His mouth tugged upward on one side. He said nothing. His mind was as silent as his lips.

“Can’t I?” she repeated with a shade of desperation. “Blair, please!”

“What do you take me for? A trained animal?”

Uncomprehending, she frowned.

He leaned closer. She could smell him, earth and spice and sex on legs. “Don’t make that mistake,” he whispered. “I’m not trained at all.”

She snatched her hand away from his as if it burned her, but he moved faster, grasping her wrist and yanking her close into his body. Remembering and yearning, she found her gaze riveted on his lips, so close to hers they were almost touching. Her nipples, pressed into his chest, ached for attention. Between her legs pooled the moist warmth of sexual arousal, made all the more intense by the feel of his erection growing against her stomach.

“I have no interest in drinking your friends.” His words seemed to echo around her mind with contempt. “I am quite capable of finding my own supper.”

Only pride stopped her struggling in his hold. As if he felt it, he smiled and ran one finger down the artery in her neck. She gasped without meaning to. And he released her, walking past her to flop back down on the bed. This time, he closed his eyes.

Sera felt like a disciplined child. And she had never taken well to discipline. It didn’t help that he spoke the truth.

“Sleep well,” she said nastily and marched out of the room without looking back. It was tempting to slam the doors as she left, but she refused to give him the satisfaction.

****

Dropping in on the Bells, she was surprised to be ushered into their sitting room by Ferdy. Under the stark wooden cross on the wall sat Mrs. Bell, a tired, worried smile on her pale lips. Shit, who was she to get angry with people suffering like these two?

“I thought you were running away
with
us last night,” Ferdy said as she sat down. “How did you get away?”

“I had friends there with—er—a getaway vehicle.”

Mrs. Bell stood abruptly. “Cup of tea, Miss MacBride?”

“No thanks. I can’t stay long.”

“We need to know which vampire you killed last night,” Ferdy said in a rush.

Mrs. Bell sat back down. “Was it Jason?” she blurted.

“No, it wasn’t Jason,” Sera said quietly, and Mrs. Bell dropped her head into her hands.

“It would be so much better if it had been Jason,” she wept. “And yet I’m glad; I’m glad.”

Sera stared at her, frozen by the conflict suddenly tearing her apart. The Bells needed closure, to grieve for the death of their son and begin to move on, to cope with life without him. And yet Jason wasn’t just dead; he was undead. Like Blair.

She was right—she was sure she was right—to fight the takeover bid of the banking vampires. But was it right to kill them? Would it be right to kill Blair?
“I’m not trained at all… I’m quite capable of finding my own supper.”

Somehow, murmuring soothing inanities, she managed to get out of the house and back into her car to begin the drive across to Loch Lomond. She hoped Melanie had some answers for her, but because right now, she was struggling to know anything at all.

****

Blair was no knight in shining armor.

He’d never wanted to be. Or had he? He had some vague recollection, hundreds of years old, of a boy desperate to save his mother the killing drudgery of work in the factory by obtaining food and clothes for her, some luxury to make her happy again. If the memory was true, he’d failed utterly, because the poor woman had died of exhaustion within two years of coming to Glasgow. Knights in shining armor didn’t pick pockets or suck blood from strangers. They didn’t cheat bartenders and prostitutes or consider betraying the trust of girls they seduced. In fact, he was pretty sure they didn’t go in for seduction at all.

But then, they weren’t real. They’d never existed in that sense and never would. He’d found that out even before his mother died, so exactly why he wanted to be Serafina MacBride’s knight in shining armor, he really had no idea.

It wasn’t as if she trusted him or expected anything of him.

Did she?

He shifted restlessly on the bed. Why the hell did she? She knew what he was.

No, she doesn’t. She didn’t realize vampires existed until three nights ago, and she knows nothing about me except she likes me to fuck her. No damsel in distress. No knights. Just sort it out, and stop being an arse.

One way or another, it was probably going to come to a fight, in which case, he might well need support. He could summon them all, every vampire in the United Kingdom, including those who’d never crossed his path. It was within his power and, in Ailis’s absence, his right. However, with at least one older vampire still left in the banking camp, he preferred not to risk a general call being picked up. Besides, quality not quantity was what counted here.

To start with, he reached out with his mind to Scotland’s largest city, to the old, silent building which, only a few hours before, would have been vibrating to the blare of human music. As always when he contacted Davie, he could almost smell the stale alcohol, feel the human pleasure and slightly squalid excitement of the nightclub where he’d chosen to hang out lately. He was, officially, the caretaker. He had a tiny flat at the top of the building and even received a pittance of a paycheck, which was quite an achievement for a vampire. It certainly amused Davie no end. He wasn’t there for the money but for the easy nighttime access to human blood.

“Blair?” Davie acknowledged in some surprise. He didn’t trouble hiding his location or his occupation. He rarely did. He lay naked in his own bed between the legs of an equally naked young woman. Her improbably red hair was wildly rumpled and her makeup smudged. A narrow trickle of blood ran down her neck, which wasn’t surprising, since Davie was drinking from her semiconscious body. He saw no reason to stop in order to talk to Blair. “What d’you want?”

“I’m giving you warning. I might need you to come to Edinburgh at short notice.”

“What for?” Davie asked with a spark of interest, though not enough to detach him from the girl’s vein.

Blair said, “To fight.”

Davie stopped sucking. He even sat up while the girl fell back into a deeper sleep. “Now that’s funny, since the last time I saw you, you were beating the crap out of me for—oh aye, fighting.”

“That was different,” Blair said serenely. “You were drawing human attention to yourself and therefore to the rest of us.”

“And your fight won’t?”

“It might,” Blair admitted. “But there may be no other option. This threatens all of us. You have to be ready to drop everything as soon as I give the word.”

“That right?” Davie sneered.

“Yes. That’s right.”

Davie shrugged, mentally and physically. “Better get my energy levels up then,” he said and bent over the sleeping girl once more. She moaned as Davie sank his fangs back into her throat.

Vaguely, as he left Davie to his breakfast, Blair wondered how long she’d been there, but he wasn’t particularly worried. This was what passed as a relationship in Davie’s world. A girl he preyed upon first in the club, now in thrall to him, supplying him with regular blood and sex. She probably never left his room. When he was done, or she was, he would feed her up a bit and send her home with little memory of anything except a few nights of debauchery.

It was a simple life for a vampire. Blair had done similar things on several occasions. And for all the girl slept in his bed, Davie was preserving vampire isolation far more efficiently than Blair was right now.