Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) - By Fionn Jameson Page 0,32
to anger. “It’s not the fact you have a bodyguard that surprises me. It’s the fact that you have her as one.”
Calling me a bitch would’ve been less offensive. It was that sort of tone. I could have been on fire and he wouldn’t have pissed on me to save my life.
Jason tilted his head to one side. “Who better to protect me than someone like her? She has made it her life work to eliminate vampires. Human bodyguards are easy to get, but someone like her? No…she is a rare treasure and one I plan to protect.”
Strange choice of words. After all, I was meant to be protect him, not the other way around.
He put a hand on my waist and I let him. “She is, for the lack of a better word, incorruptible. Wouldn’t you agree…Vincent?”
Vincent’s lips tightened until they almost disappeared in the pale oval of his face. “So be it. Keep your secrets. But consider this a warning, newborn. I am going to watch you. I am going to watch your so-called Ailward. If I so much as sense some sort of treachery from you, if you do anything to harm Reiko and her House, you will not live to see another moon rise. Do you understand?”
Jason nodded. He did not have to see anything.
I stood still as Vincent’s eyes raked me one last time.
“One foot out of line, hunter. One foot out of line and I’ll rip you apart.”
I had no doubt he would. “Warning well noted.”
He whirled on one heel and left us then, the faint scent of oranges and something else, something coppery, staying in the air for quite some time.
His human emissary was the last to leave.
She paused, one hand on the metal railing and then looked over her shoulder.
“If I were you, I’d listen.”
I had to clear my throat to get any words out. “But you’re not.”
Her lips twitched. “No. I’m not. And thank God for that.”
She left and I let my knees get a little weak.
That I had been around such a vampire like Vincent and emerged alive and well…this was certainly quite an education. “This complicates things.”
Jason sighed. “You don’t say. It appears Reiko did not share with Vincent the…details of our relationship.”
“If I kill Noir and Vincent gets the idea it’s me, I won’t stay alive for long,” I said quietly.
“I can keep you away.” Jason looked up at me, eyes glittering like black diamonds. “I can hide you. Get you a new identity if you need it.”
A tempting offer, but… “If that vampire wanted me dead, I don’t think a new name would keep me alive.”
“What about a new face?”
He looked much too earnest. “I think I’ll pass. If the Fellowship can’t keep me hidden, I don’t think anything would.”
He stared at the mass of dancers on the ground floor, their hands waving in the air, reminding me of sea anemones, colorful and beautiful. “I think I’m hungry.”
Of course. That was one of the biggest reasons why we were here after all. Consensual feeding seemed to be the norm, or at least none of the staff thought to stop the various couples hidden here and there, buried in on themselves. Bile rose in the back of my throat as I thought about the blood that would flow down Jason’s throat.
Better anyone else than me. “Do you need my help?”
He grinned and for a moment, I saw the face of the skater punk from so very long ago. “Shouldn’t think so.”
“Well, in any case, I can’t just stand here.”
“Can’t you?” he asked, sounding terribly amused.
What was I supposed to say? “I don’t…”
He stood up, pushed the hair behind his ears and adjusted his shirt cuffs. “Standing here, or in my case, sitting here is hardly going to fix or change anything. You can stay here and watch me feed, or you can go down and get yourself a drink or something.” He laughed. “Perhaps they’ll have some juice.”
The way he said the last sentence made me feel like a child. But I was thirsty and all the expensive alcohol on the table less than a foot away was as useful to me as a bucket of sand in a desert.
I followed him down the stairs and stood at the very edge of the massive dance floor, watched Jason look at the mass of writhing, sweating bodies with a predatory gleam in his eyes.
“I’m off.” He slipped into the crowd as graceful and deadly as a hawk homing in