Afterlight - Elle Jasper [36]
My thoughts jumped to the dead man in the alley, the distorted way his lifeless body lay, the way his flesh had been ripped open, the blood, and Eligius didn’t let go of my arm. He held it, steady, his gaze not once leaving mine. My heart slammed into my rib cage, and my skin tingled where he touched. At once, the entire room didn’t exist; only us. He’d been the one to give me straight answers, so I asked one more straight question. “What are you?” I said, my voice strong but shaky. I kept my eyes boldly trained on his as I awaited an answer, and I vaguely noticed the flinch in his expression at the word what.
“We are vampiric, but not like them,” he said heatedly, under his breath, and it was the first time I realized the slightest trace of an accent was French. The muscles in his jaws tensed, and again my eyes were drawn to his full lips. “As my father said, we made a contract with your brethren. They have sustained our lives, and we have protected the city against rogue vampires.” With his head lowered, his eyes searched mine, and his voice lowered. “But the Arcoses have been freed, and now we have a major fucking problem, ma chère.”
“Son, that’s enough,” said Elise, her voice sweet and strong at the same time. A slight shift in the air brushed across my face and made me wince, and when I opened my eyes, Eligius was across the room, leaning against the wall as though he’d never moved.
I looked directly at Gilles. “How does any of this help my brother?” I asked, then sought out Preacher, who stood quietly against the door. “How?” Suddenly, the weight of what couldn’t possibly be happening hit me full force in the chest, and I sagged where I stood, unable to breathe. “Seth,” I choked my brother’s name out, and the lining in my throat burned.
Preacher was immediately at my side, and while he didn’t say anything, his reassuring hands on my shoulders put me at as much ease as I could be.
“Your brother is in the quickening,” said Gilles, and I didn’t miss the sympathetic note in his voice. “And it takes a moon’s full cycle for transformation to complete. We feel that he and his friends, because of their unintentional aid to the Arcoses, are safe for now. Had the brothers wanted to kill them, they indeed would be dead already, I assure you.”
It was too much, even for me, to take in. My mind reeled at everything I’d been told, at what I’d seen, and no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I knew of Preacher and his beliefs, I had a hell of a time believing I was standing in one of Savannah’s prominent historic buildings with a loving family claiming to be vampires descended from France and Romania; that there were two dangerous, bloodthirsty rogue vampires loose in the city; and that my baby brother was running with them.
That he was going to become one of them. My stomach felt sick.
Everything that had happened that night at Bonaventure washed over me in a heavy, suffocating wave: the uneasy feeling I’d gotten, the absence of cicadas, and Seth’s slow transformation from sweet, lovable brother to the cold, detached