“Stay right there!” I yell at them. “Don’t come any closer!”
They stay where they are, but my father closes the door behind him.
“We don’t mean any harm, Lenore,” my father says, showing both his hands in a show of peace.
“You’re vampire slayers,” I say, feeling the anger rolling through me. “How can you not harm me?!”
“Lenore, sweetie,” my mother says in her patient voice, but it’s cracking, and the more that I stare at them and see the fear, smell their adrenaline, I realize the strain they’re under. They’re as scared as I am.
“Don’t,” I tell her, shaking my head. “Don’t try…I can’t…”
“I know you’re upset. I know this is a lot to take in,” my father says, his voice booming. He takes a step closer and I shrink back, hitting the kitchen table. So much for standing my ground.
“I know that you probably have a lot of questions for us, and we have questions for you,” he goes on.
“We need to know where you’ve been,” my mother says. “Who took you. We know someone did, but we don’t…we need to take action on the person who did this to you.”
She gestures to me and I look down at my dress.
I’m about to tell her that I think I look okay, when my necklace grows hot against my skin, and my nose floods with the smell of roses and tobacco. I look to the bedroom to see Absolon in his black suit walk out of the darkness, his eyes fixed on my parents.
My heart skips a beat.
“It was me,” he says to them, as cool and calm as ever.
My mother’s mouth drops open. “Absolon?” she asks as my father takes the blade out of his pocket, glowing blue in his hand.
Absolon eyes the blade, lip curling. “Really? How quickly you stab others in the back. Or the front, as it is. This wouldn’t be a sanctioned kill, James.”
“You took our daughter,” my mother spits out.
“You took a vampire’s daughter,” he counters evenly. “And killed them. Unsanctioned. I know what the guild would do to you.”
My mother makes a move for him. But she must know it’s pointless.
He’s just a blur and then he’s pulling me aside, stepping behind me, one arm around my waist, the other gripping my throat. I cry out but the sound dies inside me.
“Don’t be foolish,” he says to them, his voice low and scathing and rumbling in my ear. “You kill me, you have to kill her.” He pauses. My pulse beats against his palm. “Unless you were planning to do that anyway. Why else would you have that blade with you?”
“To defend her from vampires like you,” my mother says, and the moon is starting to appear in her eyes. This isn’t good, for anyone, but especially me.
Solon, I say inside my head, his grip on my throat too strong for words. Leave me.
Why would I do that? he answers in surprise. You’re mine, Lenore. You know this. And more than that, you need me now. You need me to survive.
“Tell me,” he says to my parents, voice deep in the room. “When you were planning to take Lenore to the desert, were you planning on helping her? Or killing her?”
“We were going to help her,” my father says.
“How? You have no idea what it’s like to become a vampire. You only know how to kill us. You’ve never spent a single second trying to understand us, not even when your so-called daughter is one of us.”
“You don’t know that,” my mother says to him. Then she looks at me. “Don’t listen to him. You don’t know who he is, the things he does.”
Solon releases my throat to let me speak. “Believe me,” I say, coughing briefly. “I know exactly what he does.”
“Then let us kill him,” my father pleads, taking another step forward, that blade shimmering. “Let us kill him, then you won’t be bound to him anymore. He won’t be able to hurt you.”
Solon grumbles into my neck. “Think they’ll take the shot if it means hitting you in the process?”
My father has the blade at the ready.
Solon might be right.
“Listen to me, Lenore,” Solon says tightly, his hushed voice making my skin grow hot. “I’m going to leave you now, because this isn’t worth the risk.”
“Coward,” my father says.
Absolon growls at him, his grip growing tighter around my waist. “I’m leaving you,” he says to me gruffly, “because the risk of you getting killed isn’t worth it.”
I flinch, going inside my head. Liar, I tell him. You were about to let a bunch of vampires sample my blood and bleed me before taking me away to do who knows what with me.
No, he says sharply, the sound like knives in my skull. I never had any intention of selling you. You’re worth more to me than anything they could give me in exchange.