Sex, Lies, and Vampires

It is a long time in the past, Hasi. I appreciate the anger and outrage you feel on my behalf, but I assure you that I have long since accepted my fate.

Well, I haven't! I lunged across him, framing his face between my hands as I looked deep into his being, mourning for what had been ripped from him. You're not the Betrayer, Adrian, you're the betrayed. Is your father still alive?

A smile curved his lips as he moved my hands so he could kiss my palms before releasing them. "No. He ended his life many years ago when he tired of the shallow nature of his existence."

Impossible as it seemed considering the fury I felt on his behalf, that just made me angrier. "He sold you for sex, then killed himself when he wasn't getting his jollies anymore?"

"I doubt it was quite that simple."

"What about Saer? Did your father give him up, too?"

"No." Adrian's eyes would not meet mine, but I didn't need to touch him to feel the swift stab of pain that lanced through him. "Saer is the oldest son. My father did not feel he was expendable as I was."

"Like father, like son," I muttered to myself, but Adrian heard me. "Saer is a chip off the old block."

"Here you are," the cabby called back to us, pulling up before an old building done in faux half-timbering, a sign next to the door depicting a churchman in full regalia presenting his hindquarters as he looked over his shoulder at a saucy-looking woman who held a switch. "The Flogged Bishop. That'll be six pounds ten."

I stared long and hard at the sign as Adrian tossed some money at the driver, following slowly as he entered a small unmarked door at the side of the pub. "I have just one question—this is a real pub, isn't it? It's not another place like Gigli's?"

His dimples deepened as a grin flashed briefly while he knocked on a door at the top of a short flight of stairs. "You didn't mind me knowing Gigli, so why would you mind Belinda running a brothel?"

"Because Gigli said the only non-mortal beings she serves are poltergeists, which means I didn't have to worry about you having tasted forbidden pleasures there. This"—I waved at the blank wall that stood between us and the pub—"is an entirely different situation!"

The door opened before he had time to respond, the woman standing in the doorway clearly having just gotten up. I eyed her carefully, this woman who Adrian had once briefly thought was his salvation. She was pretty, much prettier than what I expected a pub owner to be, standing a few inches shorter than me, with short curly brown hair and soft brown eyes. "Adrian!" she said in blatant surprise. Her expression quickly changed to one of mingled hope and sorrow. "Have you heard anything? Have you found Damian? Saer said a demon lord has him. Is it true? Is he lost forever?"

"Damian?" I asked, at first a little surprised by her primary concern, then reminding myself that if she was Saer's Beloved, she would no doubt be worried about his son.

"Belinda is Damian's mother," Adrian explained before turning back to the woman. "Is Saer here?"

"No," she answered, stepping back and gesturing us through the door into a small apartment above the pub.

The nervous energy surrounding Adrian lessened a smidgen at her words. I heaved a mental sigh of relief as well. "Thank God he hasn't been here. We've been worried sick that you Joined with him."

The door closed with a hushed click as she turned to face us. "I'm sorry, you don't understand. Saer isn't here now, but he was earlier, and we are Joined. Saer insisted we take the final steps last night, before he left to call up his army."

"Army?" I asked weakly, groping blindly behind me for a chair. My legs gave out as the implications of Saer's actions became very clear in my mind.

"Yes," she nodded, bustling past us to a tiny kitchen. "He's gone to raise an army to defeat his enemy and rescue Damian. He's quite confident that no one will be able to withstand his force now. He's got a special ring, you see, and evidently with it, he's quite invincible. He told me that no one, not even the demon lord himself, can stand against him now." She paused, glancing from Adrian's still form to me, a cheery smile lighting her face as if she hadn't just spelled out the doom of everyone in the room. "Would you like tea or coffee?"

Chapter Fifteen

"How are you feeling now, Nell?"