Authors: Helen Keeble
I promptly put my hands in the air. “I surrender.”
“We don’t want you to surrender,” said the first guy in a deep, vicious snarl. His eyes were narrowed with hatred above the black scarf hiding most of his face. “We want you to die.”
“No, really, let’s talk about this!” I gabbled, trying to circle around to get both of them in view at once. They flanked me like wolves, the guns never wavering. “I, um, I know Lily’s secret plan! Take me to Hakon, and I’ll tell him everything!” My shoulders hit a brick
wall; they’d backed me up against the side of someone’s garage.
The two men exchanged a glance over their scarves. “What secret plan?” said the second one.
“Who’s Hakon?” said the first.
I stared at them.
The first guy shrugged. “Who cares?” He leveled his gun at my heart. “Time to die—”
“Cease!”
We all jumped, my attackers whirling round. Someone stood poised on the roof of the parked Range Rover, silhouetted against the starry sky. In a breathtaking arc, he leaped ten feet, landing crouched in the middle of the road. He unfurled back to his full height, his velvet frock coat billowing around him, the moonlight turning his hair to pure silver. His high-cheekboned, elegant face was set in an expression of icy determination. As he faced my stunned attackers, his lips drew back in a contemptuous snarl … exposing jagged, sharp-edged teeth.
He was a vampire.
His pale eyes flicked to me. “Run,
ma chérie
,” he said. His voice was as light and golden as honey, with a rich French accent that made the simple phrase sound like an invitation to unspeakable immoral delights. He
dropped into a combat crouch, empty hands spread. “I shall take care of these—”
And that was as far as he got, because as my attackers had been conveniently distracted by his appearance, I punted them fifteen feet down the road.
I hadn’t actually
intended
to do so. I’d only hoped to knock them off balance to give my unexpected rescuer an opening—after all, a dramatic pose was no match for two guns. So I’d shoved them, with all the strength I could muster.
Which, as it turned out, was quite a lot of strength.
“Quick!” I yelled as they skidded away, trailing shocked swear words. I dashed past the suddenly slack-jawed vampire. “Get them before they escape!” One of my attackers was already rolling to his feet—without thought, my blood roaring in my veins, I leaped for him. We crashed back to the ground, him flailing, me desperately trying to work out some way to subdue him. I grabbed for his hair, yanking upward with the vague thought of slamming his skull back down against the road—
I’d forgotten my vampiric strength again.
“AIEEEEEEEEEE!”
I shrieked, reaching a high enough pitch to stun bats. I flung the severed head away with all
my strength.
“AIEEEEEEEEE!”
I hopped from foot to foot, overcome with utter squick.
“Shh, hush, it’s all right!” The other vampire’s hands captured my flailing wrists. “Xanthe!” Lights were coming on in the nearest house; with a quick look around, he grabbed the corpse by the back of its collar. “Quick, back here.” He dragged us both into the shadow of the garage. After a few moments, the lights clicked off again, leaving us in darkness. I felt the tension in the vampire’s muscles ease. “Well, that went … differently.”
I managed to get enough of a grip on myself to speak, though my voice came out in a Mickey Mouse squeak. “Is he dead? Is he dead?”
The vampire looked down at the headless corpse. “Yes,” he said. “He is very,
very
dead.” He cleared his throat. “You must be wondering who I am.”
My legs didn’t want to support me anymore. I sat down hard. “What … what happened to the other guy?”
“I believe that he has fled, rather understandably. Now, my name—”
“Oh God, he escaped?” Even though I didn’t need to breathe, I was starting to hyperventilate. “Is he coming back?”
“No,” the vampire said firmly, catching my hands between his own. “Because I will not let him. I’m here to protect you.”
I looked at him. I looked down at the corpse. I looked at him.
“Ah …” He appeared mildly embarrassed. “I can also help you dispose of bodies?”
“Okay,” I said, still feeling a bit shell-shocked. “You sound very useful. Um. Who are you, exactly?”
He let go of my hand and stood, clearing his throat again. “In life, I was the Comte Ebène Bellefleur. Now, I am simply Ebène de Sanguine.” He bowed deeply, sweeping back his long, black frock coat with perfect grace, as though this was his customary attire. “I would be pleased if you would call me Ebon. I have come to bring you home.”
The best I could muster was a heartfelt “huh?” I was lagging about two minutes behind the conversation. I kept thinking of that horrible
crunch
through my hands.
“I must deeply apologize from the bottom of my soul that it has taken so long for us to send one of the Blood to welcome you,” Ebon said, somehow managing to enunciate the capitalization. “I must confess that we were unprepared for your Transfiguration”—once
again I could hear the capitals clanging into place—“but I can assure you that you will be a treasured jewel among us. Now,
ma chérie
, we must make haste.” His face turned serious, and he held out a long, white-fingered hand. “This place is not safe. As you have discovered, the hunters are closing in. I will protect you with my very life, but I cannot hold this place secure for long. You must come.”
I struggled to get my brain to concentrate. “Come … with you? Where?”
“To your true home,” he said—and suddenly his face was only inches from mine. I froze, transfixed by the pale blue of his eyes, as clear and cool as the light at the heart of a glacier. “Come, Xanthe,” he murmured, shaping the hated sound of my name into something beautiful and wild. “I long to teach you. To show you who you are, and the power you will become. It is time for you to learn everything.”
I stared at him, and he didn’t become any less real. There was an actual gorgeous vampire aristocrat in front of me, vowing to lay down his life in my defense. All I had to do was take his hand.
“Okay,” I whispered, my throat dry. “First let’s hide this body somewhere, and then …”
“And then?” he whispered back, his breath cool on my lips. His pale eyes gazed into mine, wordlessly promising to whisk me away from all my troubles.
Or, to put it another way, a very strange man with predator’s teeth wanted to get me alone.
“And then,” I said firmly, taking his hand, “you’re coming home to meet my parents.”
I
had to admit, Ebon was somewhat less cool in our living room than he had appeared when dramatically posed on top of a car. What had been an elegant, model-slender physique in the starlight was now the slightly stretched look of a teenage boy who’d hit his full height too quickly, leaving him with gangly limbs and gawky wrists. Sure, his pale blue eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones could have launched a thousand boy bands, but put him in jeans and a T-shirt, and he’d easily have passed as a student at any high school. As it was, the wildly spiked hair, leather trousers, and velvet coat gave the vague impression of a teenager dressing for Halloween as the bastard love child of Edward Cullen and Dracula.
With Ebon seated on the sofa and the three of us arranged opposite him on dining chairs, the whole scene had the air of a job interview. Ebon perched gingerly on the very edge of the cushions, spine perfectly straight, as though afraid the sofa might eat him if he leaned back. His eyes flicked from me to Dad to Zack and back again.
“So,” Dad said in a horrible fake-hearty voice that made me cringe in my chair, “you’re a vampire, are you?”
Ebon inclined his head stiffly.
“See?” I hissed to Zack, who was staring at Ebon with unreserved interest. “I
told
you so.”
“I still think he could be a zombie,” he whispered back, loudly enough that Ebon would probably have been able to hear it from the next room. “He looks awfully rigid.”
Zack had a point. Ebon’s bony hands were clenched on his knees. Rigor mortis seemed to have set in.
Mum came in, carefully balancing a tray. Despite the fact that it was one in the morning and she was wearing fuzzy, leopard-print slippers, her hardwired sense of What We Do When Unexpected Company Appears had kicked in. “I made tea,” she said, putting the tray down on the coffee table. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Mum,”
I said, just as Ebon said, “Yes, thank you, ma’am.” I’d never seen anyone accept a cup of tea so gratefully. As we all watched in fascination, he gulped down a mouthful as though doing a shot of vodka. Catching our eyes over the rim of the mug, he flushed, lowered the cup, and stared down into the tea as if divining the future.
“So … Ebon.” Mum sounded as if she was grilling a particularly hapless PhD student on his dissertation. She even had a pad of paper balanced on her knee, a mechanical pencil poised to take notes. “Tell us about yourself. How old are you?”
“The years of my life numbered one-and-twenty, madame.” He had both hands wrapped round his teacup, like a boy clutching a teddy bear, but his voice was velvet-smooth again. “But the years of my unlife span considerably longer. I was born in Paris in 1770.”
The point of my mother’s pencil snapped. The silence was so thick I could hear my parents’ hearts beating.
“Oh,” Zack said, sounding disappointed. “I hoped you were a Victorian.”
We all stared at him, nonplussed.
“What?” he said, looking around at us. “Then he could have helped me make some period trousers. All
the steampunks would have thought that was awesome.”
“Steam … punks?” Ebon said.
“Don’t ask,” I advised him. “Really.”
“Ebon?” Dad said. “How long do vampires live?”
Ebon turned one hand palm up, spreading his fingers. “Until we are killed.” He leaned forward, his pale blue eyes intent. “Which is why I have come. There are those in the world who hate and fear our kind, and seek out any newly emerged member of our race. They attempt to slay us in our infancy, before we know how to protect ourselves. And as you have found, Xanthe, they are already here.”
Mum stiffened. “As you have found?” she repeated, shooting me a narrow-eyed glance of suspicion.
I avoided her gaze. I hadn’t felt the need to share the full details of the night’s events with my parents. “I, uh, kind of ran across a few of them. Only briefly. I was perfectly fine! No danger at all, really!”
“Terrible danger,” Ebon corrected, supremely unhelpful. “The hunters are a hereditary secret brotherhood, intent on eradicating the Blood from the earth. Throughout the centuries their fanatics have hunted down and slain many of us.”
“Well, to be fair,” Zack said reasonably, “you are
bloodsucking, undead monsters.”
“Hey!” I slapped him on the back of his head as Mum said, “
Manners
, James!”
“I cannot condemn you for holding that opinion, young master.” Ebon shook his head, one corner of his mouth twisting. “The hunters have carefully cultivated lies about my kind for uncounted centuries, and the fruit of that harvest is fear and hatred.” He gestured in my direction. “As you have discovered, in truth we wish only to live in peace, taking nothing that is not freely given by those who love us. But the hunters care not that we do no harm. They see us as animals, to be hunted for sport.”
“Huh,” I said, frowning. “Great. As if I need another group of people out there wanting to kill me.”
“Xanthe Jane Greene.”
Dad’s parental sixth sense had obviously just pinged into the red. “What do you mean,
another
group?”
That’s right—with all the excitement, I still hadn’t gotten round to filling my parents in on last night’s conversation. “I got that call from my sire,” I told them. “Lily. But she wasn’t worried about hunters. She said that the real danger is this evil, ancient vampire named Hakon.”
“Ah,” said Ebon, clearing his throat. “If I may?”
From my mum’s and dad’s faces, we were two seconds away from complete parental explosion. I charged on in an attempt to defuse the bomb. “Because, you see, they’ve got this sort of massive feud going on, because he’s like the vampire Godfather or something, but Lily managed to escape from his evil organization—”
“Um.” Ebon half raised his hand. “I really—”
“And she vamped me in the hospital because she felt sorry for me, but Hakon doesn’t like that, so she thinks they might want to get me too. But it’s okay!” I said hastily as both my parents drew sharp intakes of breath. I waved my hands at Ebon. “See, she sent Ebon to protect me!”
“
Actually
”—Ebon finally managed to jam a word in edgewise—“Hakon sent me.”
Silence fell. We all stared at him.
“Um,” he said. His ears were turning pink. “The situation is not quite as you think.” He sighed, running one hand through his spiked hair. “
Ma chérie
, I’m afraid that your sire has not been entirely truthful with you. There are no, ah, evil vampires out to kill you. Only the hunters, who always plague us.”
I remembered the way my attackers hadn’t recognized Hakon’s name, and my stomach lurched in sudden uncertainty. “But … Lily said …”
“Your sire,” Ebon said, “is a liar. And very dangerous. Madame, monsieur.” He turned to my parents, his face grave. “I think you will agree that a virtuous individual would not bring a young girl into this life without her parents’ consent, let alone encourage her to then run away from her own family.”