Serafina and the Silent Vampire Read Online Free

had reformed him only feet from the vampiress’s car. This was the best lead he’d had, and he was damned if he’d lose it. Although he was conscious of a twinge of regret. It would have been good to stay a little longer with the beautiful psychic. He was hungry, since she’d interrupted his meal, and the scent of her blood had been extremely alluring. But he was too old, much, much too old to let even the most intriguing of women get in the way of his supreme goal. Which was, of course, personal comfort.
    By the time his quarry reached the Roseburn area, Blair was running across the rooftops, keeping time with her car below. She parked in a residential street of Victorian houses and got out. She looked slim and sexy in her black silk dress. It didn’t seem to matter to her that it was torn and stained with human blood.
    Blair thought quite seriously about jumping down and draining her dry. She’d just caused him a massive amount of trouble, present and future. But on the other hand, he needed to know more, and perhaps he owed her for leading him here. He’d see what he could learn first.
    She went up a short garden path to a quiet, detached house. A bit of wood stuck out above the door, with two short chains dangling from it, as if it had once held a bed-and-breakfast or hotel sign. The building bore an air of neglect, and it seemed to be in darkness. Blair leapt across the street to the house’s roof, and the vampiress in the black dress glanced uneasily upward as if, at last, she’d sensed something. However, whether or not she saw him, she was distracted as soon as the front door opened.
    Blair leaned right out from the roof at an impossible angle in order to see. A middle-aged man, attractively gray, had opened the door. The girl brushed past him, and he made to follow. Then he paused, hesitating, and slowly turned his face upward.
    Interesting. Another human psychic who’d sensed his presence faster than the vampire. Perhaps that was why he reminded Blair of the scolding girl at the party.
    “Uh… Good evening,” the man said, apparently unfazed by a vampire leaning at almost ninety degrees off his guttering.
    Blair inclined his head. Even more interesting, although the girl in the black dress was the only vampire currently in the house, the whole building reeked of undead presence.
    “Who are you?” the man asked.
    Blair was disinclined to answer that. He considered going inside, killing the man and the vampiress by way of a territorial message to the others. It was one solution, and it might work. But he realized that alongside his irritation lurked a grain of curiosity which a murder spree would not satisfy.
    “Can I help you?” the man asked. “Would you like to come in?”
    Blair stepped off the guttering, and the man fell back in spontaneous alarm. As Blair landed, soft as a cat, his knees only slightly bent to absorb the force, the man reached for the door with one hand and shoved the other into his pocket as if for a weapon. Blair smiled.
    “Not yet,” he said telepathically and walked away. He had the feeling the man understood. Blair waited until the man closed the door; then he walked up the first side street, jumped onto the nearest roof, and doubled back. Perhaps he’d just spy for a while. Besides, a rather juicy couple of young men were wandering up the road, and he rather fancied a midnight snack.
    ****
    Being discovered in the dead man’s bedroom was not the introduction to the police that Sera would have chosen. She’d calculated it was worth the risk—erroneously, as it happened.
    She’d snuck in while close family and friends looked after Jason’s parents downstairs, and sat on the edge of the bed to take Jason’s cold hand and will him to talk to her. With his eyes closed and all vitality gone, he looked unexpectedly young and unassuming. His straight, brown hair was mussed-up, almost like a schoolboy’s, and he had a faint scattering of freckles that brought a lump to her