With an effort of will, I squared my shoulders and brightened my expression. “So, is that a yes, then?”
Len gave the keys a rueful glance, and lifted his gray eyes to mine. “That’s an ‘I’m so poor and fucked up right now, I’d have to be an idiot to turn down free housing.’ Even if it stings my ego.”
“Eh. Look at it as a live-in housekeeper and groundskeeper position, if that helps,” I told him. “Keep the damn lawn mowed, and we’ll call it even. Seriously, I can’t begin to tell you how much trouble that lawn has gotten me into this year.”
He looked through the patio door, at the backyard and the garden shed sitting in the middle. “I guess it does look a bit ragged.”
“You have no idea,” I agreed. “Now, you’ve got Guthrie’s phone number, right?”
Len’s expression turned wry. “Gramps the Vamp? Yeah, I got it.”
“If you ever get into trouble, call him, Len,” I said. “Seriously. The man’s got more money than god.”
He gave me a sour look. “Sure. If nothing else, it puts a whole new spin on selling plasma to pay the light bill.”
“Ha,” I told him tartly. “First off, that’s not why I gave you his number, and you know it. And second—dude, I don’t need another man in my life with a penchant for bad vampire jokes. Trust me when I say, I’ve heard all of them before. All of them.”
A smile tugged at one corner of Len’s mouth, and he looked down at the counter. I came around and pulled him into a hug. He returned it awkwardly, patting my back.
Easing him back, I met his eyes solemnly. “Take care of yourself, you hear? Don’t make me use the mesmerism thing to make it stick.”
“Back at you, Miss Oops-I-Died-and-Came-Back-as-an-Undead-Creature-of-the-Night,” he shot back.
“Believe me, I’m planning on taking it easy from here on out,” I told him. “No more near-death experiences, no more constant fight or flight battles with the forces of darkness.”
I let him go, and he stepped back, putting space between us.
“Where will you go now?” he asked.
I sighed. “Oh, you know. Straight to Hell, I expect.”
“Yeah... I know the feeling,” Len said.
TWENTY-ONE
“WHAT’S A... VAMPIRE, exactly?” Sharalynn asked, pronouncing the unfamiliar word with care.
Rans and I were visiting my friend and her partner Finn in the titheling village in Hell, while waiting for Nigellus and some other members of the demon’s ruling council to arrive for a meeting with the human elders. From my perspective, the journey here had been surreal—revisiting familiar surroundings and seeing them through new eyes, in more than one sense of the word.
Not only did undead eyesight render the depths of the Moaning Cavern in shades of charcoal gray rather than pitch blackness, but the context of our presence here had also been turned on its head since the last time I’d visited.
“It’s what I’ve become,” I told her, not entirely sure how to encapsulate centuries of human myth and legend for someone who’d never even been exposed to such a concept.
All of the tithelings had, by definition, arrived in Hell after the last great war between the demons and the Fae had already ended. By that point, all of the vampires in existence had been destroyed—except for Rans. Apparently, the demons hadn’t deemed it necessary or prudent to explain about their doomed vampire allies to the humans in their care.
I was trying really hard not to read anything sinister into that omission.
Rans shifted restlessly against the wall he’d been propping up. I could tell he was ill at ease here despite the knowledge that he was not, in fact, a prisoner in the demon realm. He’d been polite but distant during my reunion with my titheling friends. Now, though, he spoke—saving me from floundering through an overly convoluted explanation.
“Vampires are a form of supernatural creature,” he said in a low tone. “The result of either a vengeful deity or a genetic mutation related to magic, depending on one’s belief system. We don’t age and are impervious to most kinds of injury, but we require human blood from living victims to sustain ourselves.”
Sharalynn blinked.
“Our blood heals humans and slows the aging process,” I added. “Vampire blood is the magical ingredient in the wine the demons provide you. Which... is why we’re here, not to put too fine a point on it.”
Sharalynn’s partner Finn looked between us nervously. Despite myself, I couldn’t help focusing on the way his heart rate had increased when Rans explained that vampires used humans as a food source.
“So... you drink blood?” he asked. “Do you kill people?”
“Only the ones who deserve it,” Rans said—not terribly helpfully, in my opinion.
I shot him a disapproving glare. “No, we don’t have to kill to feed. Making new vampires does involve draining a person to the point of death and then feeding them vampire blood to resurrect them, though.”
Silence reigned for a beat.
“Okay, sorry,” Finn said, at length, “but that’s still kind of creepy.”
“Is it?” Rans asked. His eyes glowed eerily in the hut’s candlelit interior, and the curl of his lip bared a hint of fang. “You lot have been drinking my blood for centuries without my permission, and you don’t hear me complaining.”
“Oy. Put a sock in it,” I said. “Seriously, Rans—no taking out your frustrations with Nigellus on my friends. It’s not like they knew.”
He waved away the words and strode to the hut’s tiny window, looking out at the village beyond.
Sharalynn looked warily between us. “So let me get this straight,” she said. “Nigellus was stealing his blood—” She tipped her chin toward Rans. “—and using it as the magic ingredient in the wine that slows our aging and keeps us all healthy?” She frowned. “Why?”
“Because he thinks he might need more vampires to use as cannon fodder in a future war,” Rans said bitterly. “Whenever hostilities with the Fae break out again.”
Sharalynn’s expression hardened at the mention of the Fae.
“The weapon
