Zen and the Art of Vampires

'The Zorya.' I winced when he took a corner too quickly, slamming me back against the car door. 'Are we being followed?'

'You are the Zorya,' he insisted, his face grim as I hauled myself into the seat, quickly grabbing for the seat belt.

'I am now, but I wasn't as of an hour ago. That job was held by a woman named Anniki.'

'No,' he said, his eyes on the road as he sped out of town. I glanced around. The car had darkly tinted windows, which gave everything a dull blue-black flavor, but I thought I recognized the road leading to a quaint little fishing village to the south that my group had visited on our first day in Iceland.

'Look, I know you didn't believe me before when I said that I wasn't the Zorya, but I really wasn't. Then.'

'No, we're not being followed,' he said, casting me a curious glance. 'You knew the Zorya.'

'It turns out I did, although I wasn't aware of it.' I pulled off my necklace with its modest little garnet rose, and slipped the moonstone onto the chain, wrapping it around my wrist a couple of times before securing it. Did Kristoff know that Alec spent the night with me? If he was waiting outside the hotel for his friend, it would appear he did. 'You don't know where Alec is?'

'He said he was going to be with you.' Kristoff's jaw tightened. Obviously, he didn't approve of Alec's interest in me.

'He was. At least, he was there when I fell asleep. He wasn't there when I woke up. What were you doing outside the hotel?'

If he heard the suspicion in my voice, he didn't comment on it. 'Alec told me to pick him up in the morning. Tell me about the Zorya.'

I hesitated, unsure of whether or not it would be wise to tell him.

He slid me another glance. 'Afraid?' he asked, one eyebrow quirking.

'Honestly? Right now you're tops on my list of suspects,' I answered. 'Despite the fact that you're about swear up one side and down the other that you would never harm poor Anniki.'

'On the contrary, I would quite happily dispatch a reaper if it was within my means.'

A cold sweat started on my palms, but the memory of Anniki begging for justice was too fresh in my mind to ignore. 'Did you kill her?'

The words came out stark and bold.

He glanced at me, his eyes unreadable. 'Would you believe me if I said I didn't?'

'That's not an answer.'

Silence filled the car for a few minutes. 'Answering is a moot point if you don't believe I speak the truth.'

'I think you do whatever serves you best,' I said baldly.

To my surprise, he nodded. 'Yes.'

'Including killing the Zorya?'

His lips thinned. 'As a matter of fact, I didn't kill her.'

I relaxed against the side of the car, relieved.

Kristoff sent me a puzzled glance. 'You believe me?'

'Stranger things have happened,' I said, trying to gather my wits.

'That's not to say I wouldn't kill a Zorya if given the opportunity.'

I stared at him. He looked in deadly earnest.

'I suppose, then, given the fact that I just promised Anniki I'd do her job, I should be very worried.'

Amusement flickered momentarily on his face. 'I have a different plan in mind for you.'

'Oh, that makes me feel better,' I said, my stomach turning over at the thought of what sorts of evil things he might do to me. I shook my head at my folly—surely the police would have been a better choice than a madman? 'Why would you kill one of your own people?'

'I wouldn't.'

'But you just said—' The penny dropped with an almost audible clang. 'Wait a second—you're not part of the Brotherhood?'

'Would that I were so I could see them pay for their crimes,' he said, biting off each word.

'Pay for what?' I was feeling more and more like we were talking in circles.

His knuckles went white on the steering wheel. 'They killed Angelica.'

'Your girlfriend?'

He nodded.

'I'm sorry. Alec said something about you losing a loved one a few years ago.' Against my better judgment, a small well of sympathy opened up. Having lost both of my parents to a drunk driver some eight years before, I knew how long the grief of sudden, tragic death could remain. If he was on a vendetta against a murderer, I could understand his desire to see someone pay. 'I assume the person responsible was never caught?'

He shot me a quick, unreadable look.

'I'm not asking just to be nosy—my parents were killed by a drunk driver with a long record and no license. It took my brother and me four years of legal wrangling before we finally got a vehicular homicide charge to stick, but I remember how consumed we were to see justice done.'

'I killed the reaper who conducted the ritual upon her,' he said flatly, his voice as hard as flint.

Horror stirred the hair on the back of my neck at the way he spat out the word 'ritual.' I remembered Anniki saying something about how the Brotherhood performed rituals on vampires…

That last word echoed in my head with a terrifying enlightenment, one that left me gaping openmouthed for a moment. 'You're… you're… you're one of those vampires, aren't you? The ones Anniki was telling me about. The whatchamacallits… Black Ones?'

'We prefer the term 'Dark One,'' he said without the slightest sign of concern that he had just admitted he was a vampire.

'Holy Jehoshaphat and the wizard of Oz,' I swore, fear skittering up my back. 'A vampire. A real vampire. Oh my god. Does… does Alec know?'

He bent a look upon me that implied I was a moron, which at that moment was probably deserved. 'Alec is older than me.'

I stared at him, my brain trying to come to grips with the fact that the man sitting next to me, the perfectly normal-looking man, was, in fact, the evil undead. 'What does that have to do with anything?'

He spun the wheel, sending us careening off the main road and down a winding track that led into the small fishing town. 'You can't expect me to believe you're that naive.'

I gasped, really gasped as his meaning struck me. 'You're not saying Alec is one, too?'

'I just told you he's older than I am. I was born in 1623. He has at least eighty years on me.'

My jaw dropped again, so stunned was I that it only dimly filtered through my brain that Kristoff had stopped the car in the shade of a squat stone building that was perched on top of a cliff that overlooked the small fishing village. 'But… a vampire? Alec? No. I don't believe it. You're just trying to scare me.'

'If I wanted to scare you, I'd tell you what I was thinking at this moment,' he said dryly.

'Alec is no more a vampire than I am,' I told him, absolutely confident in what I said.

Kristoff raised an eyebrow.

'Answer me this, then, Mr. Fangs—vampires drink blood, right? So if Alec is a vampire, why didn't he drink my blood?' I asked in tones of indisputable reason.

'I have no doubt that he did.'

'A feeble answer at best,' I said smugly. 'I'd know if someone was drinking my blood.'

Kristoff suddenly leaned over me, turning my head to examine the side of my neck farthest from him. 'I thought so,' he said after a moment's silence, releasing my chin and sitting back in his seat. 'You are mistaken. You bear a mark.'

'What?' I pulled down the overhead sunshade, examining myself in the mirror contained on its back. Sure enough, there was a small bruising on the side of my neck, right where I remembered Alec nuzzling me. 'That's not vampire teeth marks. It's a hickey.'

I could swear that Kristoff was having to fight to keep from rolling his eyes. 'It is the same thing.'

I touched the spot gingerly, eyeing it before turning to him. 'I always thought vampires left two little teeth