Page 9 of Unholy Gambit: Checkmate in Blood
That martial brain again, figuring out more than she should with just a few facts. He telepathed as much of an explanation as he could get away with.There’s this big rule that says I can’t tell you other people’s secrets. There’s also a rule about not telling you my secrets, but there’s a legal workaround we’ll handle later, so I can speak freely about how I may or may not be different. I’ll never be able to tell you about other people, though.
I shouldn’t trust you, but it’s like I know in my heart you won’t break your promise about never lying to me.
When it was finally time to leave, he was tempted to pick her up and carry her out, but he merely walked with her while carrying the bags with her unique chair and footstool, because he understood the importance of walking in and out under her own power.
He did, however, give her a tiny bit of levitation, a small gravity adjustment.
What did you do?
Lightened the load on your knee by a third. I can do more, if you’d like.
She shook her head.Thank you, but please don’t do that again without telling me first.
Vampires rarely have need of a restroom, and he wasn’t interested in playing human for his Aurélie, so he stood outside the one she went into, following her thoughts as she moved. The knee was tired, but with only a little pain, and she opted not to turn her pain signals down.
Humans aren’t supposed to be able to do that, but he’d forever altered her when she was five years old.
He stood beside her when she told Ruby she was going to eat with him and would meet her later at the apartment. Ruby smiled at him, hugged Aurélie, and turned to a waiting group, each with a problem they needed her to solve.
“Let’s take your car to Ruby’s,” he told her. “That way I can drop you off at the restaurant, and you can go in and grab a table while I park.”
She knew he was doing it so she wouldn’t have to walk far, and she appreciated his phrasing, like it was about saving time. And if they were packed, it would, so she didn’t argue.
But she’d just met him, and she wanted her own transportation. She wasn’t big on trust, his Aurélie. She looked at his rental, a Genesis G70, and then looked at him.You saved my life once, but you’re pretty intense. This is just getting food and then returning me to Ruby’s? Nothing else?
I will do nothing against your will. Nor will I interfere with your will, unless I need to do so to save your life.
He could see her calculating, tactical brain working through the possibilities. “For this night, I need you to not interfere with my willpower under any circumstances.”
She said it out loud, and he could see that she did so because this was important. She wanted it to be a physical vibration, not merely something in her mind.
“For this night, I’ll agree.”
It was a little after eleven. It would be a new day in forty-five minutes.
Chapter 4
Aury pulled out first, since she knew where they were going, and she considered everything she’d learned. He wasn’t a normal human, he could change her memories, he could turn her pain sensors off, and he hadn’t aged. Since he could fuck with her mind, that last part wasn’t a sure thing, so she scratched it off the things she was positive of.
She was also certain that, if she was in danger, getting into his car wasn’t putting her inmoredanger. If he intended to kidnap her or enslave her or whatever, he could likely do that whether she got into his car of her own free will or not.
Also, there wasn’t anyone she could go to for help. If she started talking about some kind of superman who’d saved her life when she was five, and who’d come back into her life without aging a day, her family would have Dr. Woods deal with it, and it might involve locking her up and drugging her.
And that led her to another train of thought. If Dr. Woods had recognized her memories had been fucked with,andknown who to contact to ask who’d done so, what did that make him?
She’d be seeing him in two days. She’d ask him.
Ruby had two parking spaces assigned to her, and Aury parked in one of them, slid her key fob into her pocket, and slipped into the sleek Genesis.
“It’s a rental car,” he told her when she complimented it. “I haven’t been in town long, and I’m here as a tourist. If I decide to stay, I’ll have to return home to apply for a work visa, but it shouldn’t be a problem to attain one.”
“Do you have a job? You just dropped everything and came because… why?”
He pulled into a half-full restaurant parking lot and angled into a shadowed corner at the back. “There’s something we have to do before I can legally tell you what I am. If we can do that now, here, then I can explain everything over our meal.”
No way was she agreeing to anything without understanding the process. “Explain what we have to do, please.”
“It’s a blood oath,” he said calmly. “I’m a vampire. A few drops of my blood won’t change you, and won’t harm you in any way. I have a cooler with small bottles of Stella Rosa, which I understand you like. I’ll put a few drops of my blood in.
