LITMIR.BIZ

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she was not taking him seriously. And although he couldn’t have explained why, it was imperative to him that she do so. He composed himself, and walked slowly back to her cell.

      She smiled as he reappeared, but he saw the last flicker of genuine concern on her face, and he was glad.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t spoken to anyone for two days. The guards don’t even look at me.”

      Then they’re idiots, Jamie thought, and blushed.

      Larissa sat down cross-legged on the floor of her cell, and waited for him to do the same. He folded himself to the ground, carefully, moving his neck as little as was possible, and then they were facing each other, no more than a metre apart, the UV field flickering between them.

      “Will you tell me where Alexandru is?” he asked.

      She shook her head.

      “Why not?”

      “Because I don’t know. Honestly.”

      “Will you tell me where the last place you saw him was?”

      She shook her head again, causing a lock of dark hair to fall across her forehead. Jamie tried not to look at it; the urge to brush it away was overwhelming.

      “Why not?”

      “Because if I tell you, I’ll never leave this cell again.”

      “I can talk to them—”

      “It won’t work. I’ll take you there, but I won’t tell you. I hope you can understand the difference.”

      Jamie lowered his head. He knew she was right. If she admitted to not knowing anything, Seward would have her destroyed; if she told him what she did know, Seward would have her destroyed. Her only chance was to admit she had information, refuse to reveal it, and hope they became desperate enough to play the game on her terms.

      He looked up. “So, you’re useless, then?” he said, as spitefully as he was able.

      She flinched, and a tremor of hurt rippled momentarily across her face.

      Good. Good. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you,” she said, sounding for the first time like the teenager she had been before she was turned. “I just won’t tell you where I last saw Alexandru. Ask me something else.”

      “There’s nothing else I want to know.”

      “Really?”

      “Really.

      All that matters is him, and my mother.”

      “You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?”

      Jamie looked at her. “Of course I am,” he said.

      “You should be. You have no idea what Alexandru is capable of.”

      A shiver ran up Jamie’s spine.

       I don’t want to hear this. I know I need to, but I don’t want to.

      “What’s he like?” he asked, cautiously.

      “He’s the second oldest vampire in the world,” Larissa replied. “He does whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He kills humans for food, he kills vampires and humans for fun. There’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

      “I don’t believe that.”

      “You need to. You’ll get hurt if you don’t. And I don’t want to see that happen.”

      She smiled at him, and he felt his stomach revolve. “A year ago a girl who was running with him killed a farmer in Cornwall,” she continued. “She came back to the place we were staying covered in his blood, absolutely dripping with it. Anderson asked her if anyone had seen her, and she confessed that the man’s family might have seen her leaving the barn where she found him.”

      “What happened?” asked Jamie.

      “Alexandru tore her to pieces. In front of everyone, he pulled this poor, stupid girl limb from limb, and laughed at her as she screamed. There were probably twenty vampires in the room, some of them old, all of them powerful, and no one said a word. Or looked away. Even when he ate her heart.”

      Jamie felt bile rise in his stomach.

      “He sent Anderson out to the farm the girl had come from,” she continued. “Anderson killed the farmer’s family, his wife and three children. He cut their throats and let them bleed out on the kitchen floor, staring at each other as they died.”

      Larissa looked at him, a gentle expression on her face. “That’s what Alexandru is like,” she said, softly. “He’s an animal. A clever, cunning animal, who delights in violence and mayhem. He’s stronger and faster than anyone on the planet, human or vampire, and he can sense danger before it appears. You can’t trick him, or sneak up on him, and you certainly can’t fight him.”

      Jamie stared at her, hopelessness filling his chest.

      “Then what am I supposed to do?” he asked.

      “That’s easy. You’re supposed to make sure you never cross his path. But that’s not an option for you, is it?”

      “Not really.”

      “In that case I don’t know what you’re supposed to do. I don’t see any way you pursuing Alexandru ends with anything apart from him killing you.”

      Larissa looked at the disconsolate expression on Jamie’s face, and sympathy overwhelmed her.

      “I’m not the authority on Alexandru,” she said, gently. “Talk to people. Maybe someone knows something I don’t.”

      Jamie looked at her, and his pale blue eyes were heavy with despair. “No one will tell me anything,” he said, his voice cracking. “They’re all terrified of him. No one will risk him finding out they talked to me.”

      “Talk to the monster.”

      “Why?”

      ‘Because all this started with your dad. And my understanding is they were close.”

      “Frankenstein said the same thing.”

      “Ask him about Ilyana. Ask him about Hungary. Ask him why he hasn’t told you about it already. And if you’re feeling brave, ask him whose side he’s really on.”

      Jamie felt a wave of nausea shoot through him.

      “Thank you,” he said, stiffly.

      She flashed him a dazzling smile, and reclined on the floor of her cell. Her grey shirt rode up, exposing a band of pale midriff, and Jamie fought the urge to stare at it.

      “Always glad to be of service,” she said.

      He knocked on the door to Frankenstein’s quarters, and waited. It was late, well past midnight, but he doubted the monster would be asleep. He had been standing in the corridor for almost fifteen minutes, preparing himself, thinking about his father, really thinking about his father for the first time since his life had been turned upside down.

      He had rejected the things Seward had told him, out of hand. The thought that his dad could have betrayed his friends and allied himself with someone like Alexandru was impossible for him to accept.

      But then he had thought about his mother, asking her husband every evening, year after year, how his day had been, and thought about his father smiling and lying to her face, inventing people who didn’t exist and stories that hadn’t happened, and his faith in the man he had loved more than any other had been shaken.

      Larissa was right: he needed to know more about Julian Carpenter, about the real man his father had been.

      There was a shuffling noise from behind the door, then it opened and a huge face loomed out of the darkened room.

      “Is something wrong?” the monster

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