Page 103 of Black Curtain

Vampires.

“I knew it,” Dex muttered. “I fuckingknewit.”

“Shhhh,”Nick and Kiko scolded.

I was still watching the vampires in my mind.

They exchanged looks almost like seers would have, and I found myself thinking they were communicating with one another without speaking. They must have shared blood before they came here.

One of them frowned even as I thought it, shaking his head.

“No,” the black-haired vampire said. “It came from here. I know it did.”

“They are human,” a female responded. “It wasn’t our brethren at all. I thought you said it was some kind of distress call?”

The black-haired one frowned.

“I was mistaken, perhaps,” he admitted.

“Or they were,” a red-haired one said darkly.

A few of the other vampires smiled.

I found myself looking at their ethnicities.

The one in charge looked African-American. I couldn’t help wondering if he was a freedman, or if he was from some other part of the world. Walking next to him, I saw another who looked Native American, and two more who looked ethnically European. One was the male with bright red hair, the other a tall male who was blond.

I found myself doing a double take when I saw the blond one.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “Is that––?”

“Dorian,” Nick confirmed from behind me.

Presumably he was seeing all of this through Dalejem.

Thinking about Kiko and Dex, I frowned.

“I told you,” Dalejem said, annoyed. “The cakes, Miri.”

I forced myself to let it go.

It was still trippy to me that Dex, Kiko, and Nick could hear all of us.

I was also pissed, because it would have been fun to play with the mind-reading stuff with Angel and Cowboy, and now I’d been cheated of that as well.

“We’ll have another wedding,” Dalejem assumed me. “Assuming we survive this. There will be more seer weddings here.”

I wasn’t really appeased, but I found myself watching the vampires again.

I saw the blond one, Dorian, gaze out the windows to the back part of the house.

He frowned as he stared out there.

“I think they are gone,” he said, his voice low. “There is no one here.”

“Agreed,” a female said from next to him.

She was also African-American. I hadn’t seen her clearly because of the darkness of the room, and the cloak she wore over her head and most of her face. She lowered the hood now, and I saw her cracked-crystal eyes shining out of her face, and an odd blueish-black glow on her skin that I remembered from other vampires.

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