We’l be al alone for a good while yet, girl.”
“What do you want?” Briony forced herself to say.
“Surely the question is what you want, Briony.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Yes you are. I can hear your heartbeat, remember?”
Pietre stood there a moment longer, letting the tension build, and Briony resolved to fight him regardless of her lack of weapons. To at least try to protect herself. At exactly that moment, Pietre stepped backwards with a laugh and resumed his seat on the bed.
“You’re brave. It’s a start. Now, what did you want with me?”
“What?” For a moment Briony couldn’t think. “You’re the one who has broken in here.”
“And you are the one who has been looking for me,”
Pietre pointed out, “ever since that debacle at my previous home. You even helped reopen that sil y little diner to do it.
How is George, incidental y?”
Briony bit back an angry response.
“That good?” Pietre’s tone didn’t vary. “Oh, you think I should have shown him kindness, after he spent his life trying to kil my kind. After he let my beloved Sophie escape. She nearly got me back at the lair, you know. It is just as wel that she found herself distracted at just the right moment.”
“I wish she h a d staked you.” Briony couldn’t help letting some of the anger she felt into her tone.
“Of course you do. Just as I wish that the situation al owed me to spend the next few hours making you beg me to turn you into one of us.” Pietre examined his fingernails in a bored fashion, as though he were discussing stock market prices rather than the possibility of torturing and murdering her. “Apparently though, we need one another.”
one another.”
“What do you want, Pietre?”
“The same thing that you do, apparently.” Pietre gave up the pretense of disinterest and stared at Briony intently. “Sophie. At least, I assume that is why you have been trying to find me rather than running and hiding the way you should have.”
That was true, and Briony tried to remind herself that this was what she had wanted. That talking to Pietre was her best chance of finding Aunt Sophie again. Though she hadn’t expected it to be like this; this intrusion into one of the most personal spaces she had.
“I’m looking for her,” Briony admitted. “I thought you might be able to help get her back.”
“She found Palisor, then.” It was a statement, not a question.
“So you do know about it?” Briony asked.
Pietre shrugged. “Obviously. It is the place al supernatural creatures feel a pul towards. A place for us, where we can live without having to hide. Where humans,”
he gave the word roughly the same spin he might have given ‘cockroaches’, “do not rule over everything. Of course, those from the darker end of the supernatural spectrum are not al owed in, but with the right key…”
Realization dawned for Briony. “So that’s why you wanted Aunt Sophie. She was supposed to be your way in.”
“Oh, that is hardly fair. I loved her. I want her. I care about her.” Pietre stood again. “After al , if it were only a question of finding someone with the right blood, yours or your mother’s would have done just as wel .”
Briony backed up, just a little. “There’s no point in you going anywhere near my blood. I tried to get through the gate. I couldn’t. And I don’t believe you about my mother.”
Pietre smiled again in that disconcerting way he had. “Wel , perhaps I did try just a little with her. The trouble was, turning her seemed to be the best way to control her, and that didn’t exactly make her useful. It didn’t even work properly when it came to keeping your blasted parents in line.”
He spoke as though it didn’t matter to him that he had turned Briony’s parents into vampires, and then eventual y staked them both. It probably didn’t. To Briony though, it was just a fresh wave of pain on so many others that day. She bal ed her fists by her side, and looked at the vampire through a blur that threatened tears.
“I hate you,” she breathed.
“Oh, would you listen to the big, tough slayer? You real y stil are no more than a child in some ways. But you’l help me.”
“No.” Briony shook her head. “I won’t. Besides, I’ve already told you that I can’t. The gate closed when I tried to go in.”
“You can. Believe me on that. Or at least