Page 42 of Cloak of the Vampire
It doesn’t work on one person, though,a niggling, annoying voice whispered in his mind, darkening his mood immediately.
He didn’t have time to dwell on that thought, however, because he heard the bell of the entrance door ringing, indicating that someone had just come in. He recognized her by her scent and the light, too-quiet footsteps, but he still turned around, pulling his hood higher over his head, and watched as she walked toward him, the only one able to see him, for she knew he was there.
Eliza Wains would’ve been plain looking had it not been for the formidable scar running from her sealed-shut left eye down to her collarbone. Her right eye was dark brown, almost black, and it narrowed when she saw him. She pushed her curly sandy-brown hair behind her shoulders, and her short and petite body climbed the stool next to Ragnor.
Once she was seated, she gave him a hard stare, something she managed to do even with one eye. “What was so important that you had to have me fly all the way from Paris?”
He gave her a thin-lipped look. “Good evening to you too.”
A waiter—a vampire called Moses—came by, and Eliza glared at him, obviously in a foul mood. “Get me some beer,” she snapped.
Moses gulped and nodded, then turned to Ragnor. Unfortunately, the effects of the presence concealer were gone once someone saw his face, which Moses did. Suddenly pale, the waiter swallowed hard and asked, “Anything for you, my Lord?”
“AB positive with gin,” he replied quietly, not wanting the other vampires in the room to hear his voice and realize he was there.
Moses clumsily—and unnecessarily—bowed and left to fetch their drinks. Then Eliza arched an eyebrow and said, “Well?”
He didn’t like working with outsiders on anything regarding his League. Especially outsiders who weren’t even vampires. But he was at the end of his rope. His best people couldn’t decipher the latest mystery, so he had no choice but to turn to Eliza for help.
Everything in him rebelled against the idea of mixing her up in his problems, but he was out of options, and he could no longer avoid the matter. “I have an issue in my League that I’ve found no solution to.”
That seemed to perk her up. “Ragnor Rayne is having a problem he can’t fix?” she asked, her eyes widening. “I’m intrigued. Spill.”
He shot her a look that said he disapproved of her tone, but Eliza wasn’t one to take orders from anyone, and she simply smirked. “I’m waiting.”
Swallowing his ego, he laid it out to her. “Over a month ago, I planned to give the Imprint to the last human on the waiting list for this quarter,” he said, thinking back to that night. “I did everything as I usually do—I made sure to run a security check on her to confirm she wouldn’t be missed if I or one of my agents approached her with the suggestion. She had no close family members, but she had these two so-called friends and a couple of emotionally detached lovers, so I ran a background check on them all.”
“Let me guess,” Eliza said. “One of them came out fishy.”
Moses brought over the drinks, bowed again to Ragnor, and left quickly. Once he did, Ragnor took his drink and said, “It’s more than that. One of those two friends she had—she came out blank.”
She frowned. “Blank how?”
“Blank as in no information whatsoever,” he replied grimly, taking a sip from the gin-tinged blood. “At first, I thought she was using an alias, but my team confirmed this is her real name. However, they found absolutely nothing about her family or past. They only found that she’d been working at some grocery store for the past three years.”
The woman was quiet, mulling over the information before saying, “But how is that important? You gave the Imprint to that other girl. How is her friend still an issue?”
This is the biggest fucking question,he thought gravely. “Something happened,” he said, feeling his pride urging him to shut up.
Eliza must’ve sensed it, because she promptly asked, “What did you do, Rayne?”
“I gave the Imprint to the girl on the list,” he replied, then sipped from his glass. “But this friend of hers came sniffing. She hid behind the trash bins, and once I was done with the other girl, I found myself ...” He trailed off, trying to think of a way to put what he felt into words.
“Was it Bloodlust?” she asked. “Did you kill her?”
“No,” he said, scowling. “I gave her the Imprint too.”
She stared at him for a couple of minutes, shock written all over her face. It was hard to surprise the constantly guarded Eliza Wains, and that he had said something about what happened. “Why would you do such a thing?” she demanded to know.
“Giving the Imprint to a human depletes a normal Lord’s energy,” he said, angry at himself. “Since I’m not a normal Lord, as you know, it does the opposite to me. Giving the Imprint to a person gives me a high as though I snorted coke, but I’m used to the intoxication, and I know how to handle it.”
“You say you werehighwhen you gave the Imprint to that other girl?”
“Even though I was, I wouldn’t have given her the Imprint,” Ragnor snapped, losing his patience. “Whenever there’s someone who wasn’t supposed to be in the place where I give the Imprint, that high makesme kill them, no questions asked. This time, the high urged me to do something different.”
She was quiet again, and he could almost hear the wheels in her head whirring. “A few questions,” she said, tapping her beer glass. “First, how come you gave the Imprint to someone in a place where anyone could see?”
He didn’t feel like talking about this aspect of the whole issue, but he knew her well enough to understand that, in order for her to arrange her thoughts, she needed all of her questions answered. So, despite how hard it was to admit his mistake, he said, “I suspected the woman would be a Gifted. The one I planned on giving the Imprint to,” he clarified when she shot him a look. “When she told me she was ready right there and then, unable to wait a few more hours until the appointment, I ... agreed to do it on the spot.”
