“It is her!” the vampire announces to the crowd. “It is the daughter of Jeremias! I have tasted her blood, I know!”
I stare at him numbly, my hand at my neck, trying to stop the bleeding. Wolf is already at my side, holding onto me, and Solon goes straight for the rogue vampire, slower than normal because of the dreamy state we’re both in, but he gets there all the same.
Solon reaches out and grabs the vampire by the throat, lifting him off the ground, squeezing so hard that I think he might decapitate him that way. It takes everything in him to regain control of himself, his rage indescribable. Everyone in the nightclub has stopped, panic on their faces, unsure what Solon’s rage might unleash.
“Who. Are. You?” Solon ekes out his words, each of them landing like the sharpest knives. “Who are you?”
I guess the vampire is as unfamiliar to Solon as he is to me. He’s got a buzzcut and black eyes, skin deathly pale, my blood running down his chin. Solon is breathing in deep and I know the smell of my blood on someone else is making him crazy.
I think back to what I saw, the monster inside Solon, the beast who ran wild with madness for hundreds of years, and suddenly I’m afraid. Not for myself, but that this might put Solon back, tip him over an edge he can’t come back from.
Wolf’s arm goes around me, holding me to his chest, trying to comfort me, perhaps picking up on my thoughts, but I can’t stop watching the scene unfold.
“Who are you?” Solon repeats again, his voice echoing through the room.
The vampire smiles in response, bloody teeth. “Yanik sent me,” he whispers raggedly, his voice ruined by Solon’s grip. “He told me we’d find the truth. The truth you’ve kept hidden from all of us. Surely you’ve had her blood, Absolon. Even you don’t have that much restraint.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Solon says. “But if she’s the daughter of Jeremias, then that’s what she is.”
But he’s lying. Solon’s lying!
He did drink my blood. A lot of it.
Far more than this guy had.
He knows the truth about me too, he knows I’m the daughter of Jeremias, whatever the fuck that even means.
Why didn’t he tell me?
“And now you must die for what you’ve done,” Solon says, his voice turning to steel, his eyes flashing with vengeance. “You took the blood of another vampire. That’s not allowed in this club, in this house, in this city. You will pay for this with your life.”
A hush goes over the crowd, everyone taking a step back. I grab hold of the lapels on Wolf’s tuxedo, holding tight.
Solon lowers the vampire to the floor, taking his hand off his throat, black and blue fingerprints left behind.
The vampire stiffens, makes a move to run, but Solon snaps his fingers, freezing the vampire on the spot. The vampire’s eyes go wide with horror.
Solon lets out a low, raspy growl, the kind you’d hear from a wolf about to strike, and sticks out his finger, running it down the middle of the vampire’s dress shirt, then going slightly to the left, poised right in front of his heart.
Oh, fuck.
With his eyes fixed on the vampire’s wild ones, he holds his hand against his chest, fingers curved slightly like claws. Then it happens almost too fast to see.
Solon brings his arm back and then jabs his hand forward at lightning speed, driving his fingers straight into the vampire’s chest, the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones filling the room, followed by the slick, sloppy sound of organs cased in blood.
The vampire can’t even scream, he’s held in place in much the same way I was with Atlas Poe, but the terror and indescribable pain is clearly visible.
Then Solon retrieves his hand.
With the vampire’s still beating heart gripped between his bloody fingers.
I gasp.
Someone in the room screams, possibly faints.
“Holy shit,” Wolf utters under his breath, and the fact that this is a shock to him isn’t a good sign.
Solon holds up the bloody beating heart so everyone in Dark Eyes can see.
“This is what happens if any of you ever lays a hand on her!” he booms, his voice never sounding so confident, clear, and deadly. “Let this be your only warning.”
Then he snaps his fingers as he stares up at the heart in his hand.
The heart immediately goes up in flames.
More gasps fill the room, cries, whimpers.
Solon then lowers the flaming heart and shoves it back inside the vampire’s chest. Then he steps away and the flames start to spread from the heart outward, quickly incinerating the vampire as if he were doused in gasoline.
The vampire can move again, his wild, desperate screams filling the air as he stumbles forward, hands waving wildly. He’s now just walking flames, his skin turning to charcoal as he falls to his knees in front of Solon, trying to reach for him.