The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [39]
She didn’t know that everything she wrote was true. She thought vampires were just another myth. She thought her characters were just figments of her own imagination. She had no idea what Alex was.
That wasn’t quite true. He knew that Jessica had recognized him the instant she saw him. Only her human rationality had kept her from believing that Alex Remington was actually Aubrey.
Aubrey had heard of the author Ash Night through a young vampire who worked as an editor at Night’s publishing company. The vampire had even given Aubrey a copy of the Dark Flame manuscript. The news of this book had quickly spread through the vampiric community, as it had when Elizabeth Charcoal had published her autobiography.
The difference was that Ash Night was not writing about herself, but about things she had no right to know. Dark Flame was Aubrey’s own history, which no one but he knew in total. Yet Ash Night had written his past correctly, down to the last detail.
Aubrey didn’t mind the thought of Dark Flame’s being published. In his history he had almost always been stronger than those around him. However, the others who were mentioned in the manuscript came across as often weak, and in the vampiric world, there was no worse threat to one’s position than an apparent weakness. Dark Flame had earned its author some dangerous enemies.
The vampire from the publishing company had not worked with Ash Night directly, and she must not have known about the author’s first book. Seeing Tiger, Tiger in the store today had taken Aubrey completely by surprise. The cover made it strikingly clear whom the book was about. Despite the artist’s ignorance of his subject, Aubrey had instantly recognized the portrayal of Risika. He had lived this book as well — or unlived it, as the case might be. He knew what would be printed on its pages.
Aubrey lightly touched the scar that stretched across his left shoulder, which Risika had given to him a few years ago. For the first time in nearly three thousand years he had lost a fight, and he had lost it badly. Risika could have killed him in the end. Instead, she had taken his blood and let him live. The action had opened his mind to her completely; she could now read him as easily as he could read most humans.
The sight of the book was like the thrust of a knife into his still-bleeding pride.
Aubrey had been the first of his kind to search out the author, and most of the other vampires were satisfied by the knowledge that he was dealing with the problem.
Though Jessica had requested that her true name and address remain private, Aubrey had easily pulled the information from the mind of her editor. Her town, Ramsa, New York, was only a stone’s throw away from his home in New Mayhem, one of the strongest vampiric cities in the United States. Aubrey had drifted into Ramsa to see how much of a threat this Ash Night was.
What had he expected? Anything but what he found: a seventeen-year-old human who had no apparent connection to the vampire world. She did, however, have a darkness in her aura that was almost vampiric. This close to New Mayhem, Jessica’s aura was strengthened by the vampires in the area. Humans reacted to it instinctively and drew away from her, as they had from Aubrey until he had started influencing their minds.
He had tried to influence Jessica. He should have been able to reach into her mind and tell her to stop writing. With any other human the task would have been easy, but with Jessica he had been blocked completely. That fact alone had fascinated him enough to refrain from killing her the first time he’d been given the chance.
Indeed, there were many things about Jessica that interested him despite his usual distaste for humans. Foremost was her unnerving lack of reaction when he had caught her eye earlier. Most humans would have become disoriented, momentarily trapped in his gaze, but Jessica had been unaffected.
Aubrey closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath to calm himself. He stopped pacing and once