Page 64 of Midnight Kiss
A gentle rustle of paper, the occasional murmur—the words muffled.
I knocked once.
“Enter.” The voice came immediately.
I opened the door, a sense of foreboding coming over me, and entered a circular chamber that held a bench rimming its interior. Hooded figures in velvet sat along the bench, waiting for me to enter.
Haldren was notably absent. I was alone in this meeting with them. Alone with vampires more powerful than any I’d encountered before, bar one.
The circular bench contained an opening which led to the center of the chamber, where a single chair waited.
“Take a seat, Mr. Knight.” The voice came from the vampire who sat directly opposite the central chair. He lifted the hood from his head, and I stiffened.
The vampire was entirely bald, pale as a sheet, his skin so wrinkled it hung in sheets around his skull. Two golden eyes blazed from within. This was what happened to vampires when they were “alive” for too long.
The others around the bench removed their hoods, and I was relieved—not all of them were wrinkled and aged. There were women and men, all with those golden eyes, blazing with focused intention.
“It’s fortunate that you could join us on short notice,” the elder said.
I took my seat. “I wasn’t afforded a choice.”
“Would you have chosen any differently?” a female vampire with raven hair asked. “It’s a great honor to be called before us, is it not?”
“It is.”
A silence followed, and they watched me closely. Their gazes would’ve made any vampire’s skin crawl, but I withheld my reaction to it.
The oldest vampire raised a hand and clicked his fingers, and another shadowy figure emerged from behind him. The figure placed the book in front of the elder. The copied book.
I kept my features still. The last thing I needed was them discovering what I had done, particularly before I could save Emily. The longer I stayed here with them, the higher the risk became that she would die from the curse or from an attack.
“We have brought you here in part to congratulate you, and in part because we have much to discuss regarding the contents of this book.”
“The contents? You have examined them already?” I asked.
The elder pointed toward the same raven-haired vampire who had spoken previously. “Elder Saskia has a particular gift for absorbing knowledge at a high rate of speed. I will leave her to explain what we have discovered regarding the book.”
“Thank you, Elder Finnian.”
The conversation was eerily controlled. Vampire culture was always like this. Externally controlled with an essence of predator underneath.
Saskia cleared her throat, drawing every eye in the room. “The book,” she said, “served as an interesting read. I assume you know what it contains, Mr. Knight?”
“No, I haven’t read it.”
“Forgive me, I meant that you surely know who wrote the book.”
“I have a basic awareness,” I said, not willing to give anything away.
“Then I will tell you everything I have gleaned,” Saskia said, with a swift smile that showed off her fangs. She had no need to hide them as there weren’t any humans around. “The book was written by a French vampire. A nobleman who had started his own coven with his partner. A human woman.”
“A human.” It wasn’t unheard of for vampires to court human beings, but never to take them as partners, wives, or husbands.
“Correct. But not just a human. She is, according to the book, a Guardian.”
“A Guardian.”
“Yes. And that is exactly the information we’ve been seeking for decades,” Saskia said. “Every reconnaissance mission for the last ten years has been about finding this book. This information.”