Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,30
is saying something.”
“Sinclair,” he started. If he was using my surname, he meant business.
“No,” I interrupted. “You want to work together now, when you are in danger, but the rest of the time you are quite content to be aloof and look down your nose at us. If you ask me for protection, I shall happily grant it. But I will not be lectured by someone determined to drag our species back to the dark ages.” I frowned at him a bit more. “I quite enjoy my iPad, not to mention the number of skins I have accumulated in Fortnite, and I am becoming quite fond of that Mrs. Maisel show.”
“Bloody hell.” Laucian’s face had become set. “Well then, it seems as if you are right. If you cannot see the value in what I am offering, if you cannot see that I would be the right leader against the Vryloka, then we should go our separate ways. We clearly cannot work together.”
I smiled, showing my fangs. “You never wanted to work together, Laucian. You wanted to take all I have achieved, and then re-shape it to suit yourself. I never factored into your plans.”
I was surprised when he replied with a cocky smile. “You will live to regret this conversation, Sinclair.” He picked up his glass to drain the last of the virgin blood he had brought. For a few moments he toyed with the empty glass as if deciding whether to say something more.
Finally he spoke. “Sinjin, we all know what happened with you and the elemental. Not the specifics, but enough to know you are still grieving your loss.” He looked up at me then and I attempted to school my expression best I could. “Be honest with yourself; is this decision the same one you would have made if you were not still bemoaning her loss? Is this Vampire Coalition the same one you would have created if your mind had not always been split between here and Kinloch Kirk?”
Perhaps it was a fair question, but the fury still burned inside me and I clenched my fists, trying to control it. “My fleet is safe and secure. You may have a moat about your castle, but I have an ocean about mine. There are thousands of us here. Let the damned Vryloka come. Much good may it do them.”
“I hope you are correct.”
He stood, retrieving his cape and whirling it elegantly back about his broad shoulders. “One day Sinjin, you and I are going to fight. I hope when that day comes, it is shoulder to shoulder rather than face to face.”
I hoped for the same. For all his affectations, Laucian was a fierce fighter and a dangerous man. Again, I found my mind drifting to James Bond; someone who could fit in at an exclusive dinner party and knew which fork to use and what wine complimented the fish, but also knew how to throw a punch. Bond was a suave thug, a streetfighter who had been cleaned up a bit. You might not know it to look at him, but Laucian was the same; the elegant, traditionalist was veneered over the monster that raged beneath, and you would not want to be there when that monster was released. Perhaps such was true of all vampires to some degree, it was certainly how I felt from time to time.
Although his visit had left me irritated and more inclined to throw him off the ship than see him off it, I did my duties as a host and escorted Laucian back to his old-fashioned, ludicrous and yet, somehow, cool clipper. We shook hands and parted as equals, if not friends. I watched as the little ship sailed away, gathering speed as the sails filled. It was a sight from another age, and some days I would rather have been living in that one than this.
Walking back to my state room, I ran through the conversation in my mind. Without Laucian there to press his points home, much of the reality of it, which had seemed so vivid at the time, began to slip.
The Vryloka? They were a legend. And what proof did he have, really? Five dead bodies with red circles on them? That was not much as far as proof went. And Laucian was talking about practically an army of these creatures? Even if we were to say, for the sake of argument, that those deaths had been the work of a Vryloka, then it