Page 41 of The Nephilim's Finesse

Raph's eyes hardened. "You seem to misunderstand your position here." He leant closer, crowding me, and I had to fight not to recoil.

“Oh, I understand my position very well. It’s on the bottom, where you’re on the top.” I stared at him as rage and hatred warred within me.

Pressing his lips together, his brown eyes studied me for a while. He opened and closed his mouth several times, as if wanting to argue with me but holding himself back. Eventually, he sighed. “All right. Where are the hideouts in the London area?”

I gritted my teeth and met his gaze again. "That's none of your concern."

"You are my captive, and you will answer my questions.” He stood tall, his shoulders squared, and his eyes narrowed as he took a step forward. His fists clenched at his sides, and his jaw tightened as he glared at me. “Where are the hideouts?"

I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to reveal any possible weaknesses. If the Nephilim knew all our locations, they could ambush the vampires. They’d have no warning that the safe location wasn’t safe anymore. If I told Raph, I’d endanger my fellow vampires. But what would happen if I didn’t cooperate?

I swallowed hard. "This is valuable information," I ground out. "Too valuable for just one question."

Raph's eyes widened slightly, the only indication of his surprise. "What do you propose?" He flinched as he realised that he had just wasted a question.

I suppressed my smile. “One location for one climax.”

He shook his head. “No way.”

“Then two locations.”

“Five.”

I shook my head. “Never!”

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Deal!” Raph held out his hand. Damn, that was way more than I wanted to give. I took his hand and pressed hard. Raph sat down again and raised an eyebrow in question.

I laid down a plan in my head and told him about the unimportant ones first. If the Nephilim went to look for them, then my fellow vampires, or the one who was leading them at the moment, would realise that I talked and revealed our hideouts and would move to new and unknown locations. If a clever leader hadn’t done this already.

“We have about ten houses in this area. One was the bunker you destroyed.”

“That one doesn't count.”

“It does.”

“W…” He bit his lip and closed his mouth, realising that this information wasn’t worth a question.

I told him two more of our houses, and he wrote them down. They were sparsely used and, therefore, unimportant.

“You owe me three more.”

I nodded. “Before I answer your question, I want to know what you will do with that information.”

“I’ll answer that as one of your two questions.” He waited for me to confirm before he leaned back in his chair. “We’ll place lookouts at those places and observe what is going on in those houses.”

“But you won’t attack them?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Only when we have reason to.”

“Like seeing a vampire,” I commented, but it was a question, and we both knew it. However, I wanted to know if my fellow vampires were safe or not.

“No, you know that we don’t have the manpower for that. Only when they do something where we have to interfere, like kidnapping humans or witches.”

I nodded my understanding, feeling relieved.

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