Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) - By Fionn Jameson Page 0,76

intend on staying for any longer than he had to.

“Ran.”

I nodded.

His brows furrowed downward. Had he been human, it would have left him looking permanently aged, but he was a vampire. He was perfection made to mimic the human form. “You will keep him safe.”

For the lack of anything else I do, I nodded again.

“Good,” he said and then paused. “He is under Noir’s protection, but there are many of us who are still…antiquated. The birth of something like Jason was generally at the beginning of any revolution, any great coup to the current vampiric power system. Noir has vouched for him, but that might not be enough to spare his life and keep him completely safe. It will be your duty to keep him…from harm.” He shook his head. “I still don’t know what it is that he has over you, why you have chosen to protect someone like him, when it seems the exact opposite of everything you have ever stood for. It’s not love. It can’t be for money.”

This time, I shook my head. “That is between Jason and myself.”

His green eyes hardened and unconsciously, I took a step back. “We’ll be watching.”

I was glad I wasn’t born with a sarcastic nature. If I had, I didn’t think I would have survived for so long. “You do that.”

Ryder shot me a salute through the pristine windows and they drove away, leaving me with a man who would no longer talk to me.

Not that it mattered, not terribly much.

And perhaps it was even better that way.

I counted fifteen windows on each sides of the building, three sets for each floor, but could not even start to fathom a guess about the insides or the back.

Still, I was here. This much closer to fulfilling my orders and then getting out of here, and getting away from these...monsters.

I was lucky.

But how long could my luck hold out for?

And how long could I think of them as monsters?

Frightening thought, really.

The front doors opened and a lovely, pale girl who would stand forever at the cusp of womanhood peered up at us, a curious expression on her fine featured, almost porcelain perfect face. “Yes?”

Jason looked at me. It was like being looked at by a stranger. I didn’t like it. If he didn’t like me, what would happen to the deal? “This is Jason. I am his Ailward. We were told Noir would be expecting us.”

She curtsied, low, holding out a sprigged dress that looked like a relic from the Revolutionary War. She even had a small cap tied over her sausage-curls. “Of course, Master Noir is indeed expecting your presence. If you would but follow me?”

She was dressed like a colonial, but spoke with a fine, cultured British accent. Then again, I supposed those colonials spoke like the British, for was their origin not of that country? Perhaps it had made the revolution that much more painful, that much more of a betrayal.

I followed Jason into the house, the foyer lit up by a large chandelier, the crystals sparkling like precious diamonds. My heels clicked on the parquet wooden floor and I watched our reflections in the mirrors on either sides of us as she led us into the main hall, a staircase extended up to separate into the two wings. There was much similarities between this house and the last mansion. Was it simply the style of the times or was there some kind of vampire architect that all vampires of money hired for their abode?

Questions after questions filtered through my mind as she took a right at the staircase, the dress flowing gracefully around her slim form. “There is a suite prepared for you underneath the house. I was told darkness would be preferred?”

Not for me.

But Jason spoke then, his voice low and rusty as though he hadn’t spoken in a very, very long time. “That would be preferable. Thank you.”

She nodded and led the way through an open doorway and those steps, those cursed steps down, down into the bowels of Hell.

Or perhaps I was just being needlessly dramatic.

But I really hated going to a place without any natural light. Although, in all honesty, it really wasn’t that dark going down. With a light sconce situated every couple of feet, there was a surprising amount of light in the lower levels of the building. With the walls wallpapered in a calm shade of blue and the plush white carpet underneath my feet, I could have fooled myself into