Page 195 of Disillusioned
Brient slapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, that is the last thing you would want to do,” said Artus. “Fortunately for us, I’d have to be the one to invite him in.”
“But he is in evident distress,” Rupert suggested.
Garin’s lip twitched.What a righteous prick.
“Yes, and blood is the only thing that will soothe him,” snapped Bog.
Garin found himself only half paying attention to the bickering that spread throughout the crowd. Rupert was strangely hard to convince of Garin’s vampirism for a Daemon hunter’s son. He supposed his neutral eye color made it hard to believe, but if they onlyknewhow difficult it was to kill with his rapier and hands while his parched mouth ached to be flooded with blood…
Someone was shifting around in the house, lighting the west hall hearth. Garin’s vision only sharpened in the deepening nightfall, each andevery vein within eyesight painstakingly visible and audible to him. So many to choose from.
There was a crash; Brient had pushed Bog’s shoulder, so Bog shoved Brient into the vase table in front of the very window Garin burned his arm through just weeks ago. The scuffle knocked some of the broken pieces of glassware onto the porch.
“You idiots,” a sharp-voiced woman shouted from the back of the parlor. “Buthowwill we leave for the hunt if he’s standing there?”
“He’s trapped us,” stammered Hamon.
“He has not,” shouted Artus. “So long as we’re in here, no vampire can enter.”
“He is a wolf outside a rabbits’ den. We’re done for.”
The hunt. He could’ve guessed as much. Garin stared at the familiar wide base and long stem that had rolled to his feet. The pair of his parents’ engraved wedding flutes were the most prized things they’d owned. Adelaide’s family and Sable and Jeanare had been gracious enough to leave them in the aged aumbry in the kitchen, still visible at the back of the northern hall.
His composure shocked even himself. The result of the pain eating away at his sanity, no doubt. The last fragment of his resolve.
Rupert was staring at him while Bog and Artus continued to argue with the crowd.
“I know you,” Garin crooned. He allowed the hunger to seep through his voice, though he wasn’t sure it was a choice at this point. His tone was familiar, warm—the very one he’d used to lure a victim away from the crowds when he and Bastion would prowl the towns. “We met the other night, didn’t we?”
As Rupert nodded, all Garin could think of was him, trying—and failing—to control Lilac’s unruly rhythm. From the table, Garin had eventually combatted his jealousy by eyeing his favorite sweet spot at the base of Lilac’s throat, her dizzying scent made all the more intoxicating by her anger and humiliation as they’d traversed the floor.
Right side. Plump blue-green veins.
“Don’t listen to him.”Finally, a delicious drop of fear in Artus’s voice.
“Handsome. Strong jawline. Poised stance.” Garin shrugged, swallowingthe saliva that had accumulated. “The bold walk of a Lord in his own right. A potential knight, one worthy of the favor of the queen.”
The bastard had his grandmother’s high cheekbones; they reddened as he dipped into a shallow bow. The contusion on his temple was still visible. “We did, My Lord.”
“Get him out of here, Bog.” A sheen of sweat frosted Artus’s forehead. Perhaps he’d realized they could keep a vampire out of its own home all they wanted, but they’d eventually run out of sustenance.
If Garin hadn’t had an alliance to secure, he would’ve reveled in waiting them out. He’d circle the house several times, allowing them to watch from the windows. Maybe he’d climb his mother’s trellis, perch quietly onto the roof, and pounce on the first mortal foolish enough to believe he’d left. He’d drink his fill, drag their remains to the porch. Rinse and repeat. He knew, too well, the horrors of waiting for death to come—for the ghosts of his past to catch up to him.
He waited for the gods to smite him, but instead, they’d sent a destroying woman who brought him to his knees. He supposed it was one in the same.
“Let’s go, son.” Bog tried to insert himself, slipping his arm through Rupert’s. “It’s not safe.”
But Rupert remained in place.
“Right, because taking him on one of your Daemon hunts is? Underyourwing?” He remembered Rupert’s gaze dropping when he’d mentioned his father to Lilac. Garin crossed his arms and glanced between them. “Is this… your first time meeting? Have I interrupted your dear family reunion?”
“I reached out, finally,” muttered Bog, seemingly to no one in particular.
Rupert frowned down at him. “I happened across your bar.”
“I reached out from across the bar,” he replied, far too drunk for a chance at a coherent thought. “Decided my boy was old enough to join in. He came all this way for me.”
