“Don’t say it. I don’t want to think about you being dead again.”
“Neither do I, but from what little we do know about this poison, it doesn’t appear to be lethal to Ancients or older vampires. At least for now… there’s always the possibility that Luca will alter the poison and make it stronger now that he knows what it’s capable of.”
“You’re probably right. Tonight was probably just an experiment.”
I reached over and put my hand on Arie’s knee, giving it a squeeze to remind him I was here and didn’t plan on going anywhere.
“Let’s just go home. There’s nothing we can do right now. Hopefully whoever Tessa contacted will find Luca and we can destroy his work before any more of the toxin ends up in the wrong hands.” I paused. “But what was with the code and Tessa’s phone call? The person on the other end is a hired killer, aren’t they?”
Arie’s expression turned grim. “The Circle of Slayers…the Slayers are assassins who work for the Legacy. Each member of the Legacy has a code to activate a Slayer in times of peril. They are only dispatched in times of extreme urgency. In this case, I think defending our species against an unknown toxin that can nuke us from the inside out qualifies as a matter to be dealt with extreme prejudice.”
I swallowed. “Are Slayers vampires?”
Arie tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“No, they were engineered and created solely to serve us, to kill at our command. They are without souls. But they pass for humans and can shift into human form as if it were a second skin, which is good, because you wouldn’t want to see them in their true form.”
“Their true form?”
“Slayers bring death. Just imagine how death would look. Slayers are winged creatures with serpent-like tails. They are covered in scales that are as black as midnight, with eyes like onyx, and they smell of death. It clings to them, and then it clings to those they slay as they consume their life force into their bodies.”
I gulped. This made me think of Victoria feeding on psi instead of blood. “Consume their life force. Psi? But it doesn’t have to kill their victims, right?”
“It’s different than how we can feed from psi, if that’s what you’re thinking. Slayers have a forked tongue and they seduce their victims while in human form and then shift during sex. They use their tongue to inject their victims with venom that paralyzes them while they finish them off,” Arie said, his voice cold, dispassionate.
I gasped. “You mean they’re like succub—”
“The first three Slayers created were actually the origin of the succubus myth.”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t believe it.”
It was too much for one night, and I didn’t think I could take any more.
“Holly, folklore and mythology reads a lot closer to supernatural history than you’d think. You just need to know what to look for,” Arie said. He reached across to clasp my hand, knowing instinctively that this was a lot for me to absorb. “Trust me, if a Slayer winds up on your doorstep then you probably did something for it to get there.”
There was a vast collection of books that took up an entire wall in Arie’s loft. I remembered that many of them were folktales and mythology, but I’d never given it much thought. Until now.
“That’s why you have so many books about legends and myths. How much of it is real, Arie?”
Arie’s mouth curved into a grim smile. “More than you could ever imagine. It was a way that people could explain the supernatural and make sense of it. It makes the unexplainable a little less scary if they’re just stories made up to entertain children.”
I bit my lower lip. “Things that go bump in the night.”
“Precisely.”
“They’re really real.”
I shivered. What a bleak existence those creatures must live. All they ever knew was violence, killing, and blood. They would never know joy or laughter. They would never know the
“Neither do I, but from what little we do know about this poison, it doesn’t appear to be lethal to Ancients or older vampires. At least for now… there’s always the possibility that Luca will alter the poison and make it stronger now that he knows what it’s capable of.”
“You’re probably right. Tonight was probably just an experiment.”
I reached over and put my hand on Arie’s knee, giving it a squeeze to remind him I was here and didn’t plan on going anywhere.
“Let’s just go home. There’s nothing we can do right now. Hopefully whoever Tessa contacted will find Luca and we can destroy his work before any more of the toxin ends up in the wrong hands.” I paused. “But what was with the code and Tessa’s phone call? The person on the other end is a hired killer, aren’t they?”
Arie’s expression turned grim. “The Circle of Slayers…the Slayers are assassins who work for the Legacy. Each member of the Legacy has a code to activate a Slayer in times of peril. They are only dispatched in times of extreme urgency. In this case, I think defending our species against an unknown toxin that can nuke us from the inside out qualifies as a matter to be dealt with extreme prejudice.”
I swallowed. “Are Slayers vampires?”
Arie tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“No, they were engineered and created solely to serve us, to kill at our command. They are without souls. But they pass for humans and can shift into human form as if it were a second skin, which is good, because you wouldn’t want to see them in their true form.”
“Their true form?”
“Slayers bring death. Just imagine how death would look. Slayers are winged creatures with serpent-like tails. They are covered in scales that are as black as midnight, with eyes like onyx, and they smell of death. It clings to them, and then it clings to those they slay as they consume their life force into their bodies.”
I gulped. This made me think of Victoria feeding on psi instead of blood. “Consume their life force. Psi? But it doesn’t have to kill their victims, right?”
“It’s different than how we can feed from psi, if that’s what you’re thinking. Slayers have a forked tongue and they seduce their victims while in human form and then shift during sex. They use their tongue to inject their victims with venom that paralyzes them while they finish them off,” Arie said, his voice cold, dispassionate.
I gasped. “You mean they’re like succub—”
“The first three Slayers created were actually the origin of the succubus myth.”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t believe it.”
It was too much for one night, and I didn’t think I could take any more.
“Holly, folklore and mythology reads a lot closer to supernatural history than you’d think. You just need to know what to look for,” Arie said. He reached across to clasp my hand, knowing instinctively that this was a lot for me to absorb. “Trust me, if a Slayer winds up on your doorstep then you probably did something for it to get there.”
There was a vast collection of books that took up an entire wall in Arie’s loft. I remembered that many of them were folktales and mythology, but I’d never given it much thought. Until now.
“That’s why you have so many books about legends and myths. How much of it is real, Arie?”
Arie’s mouth curved into a grim smile. “More than you could ever imagine. It was a way that people could explain the supernatural and make sense of it. It makes the unexplainable a little less scary if they’re just stories made up to entertain children.”
I bit my lower lip. “Things that go bump in the night.”
“Precisely.”
“They’re really real.”
I shivered. What a bleak existence those creatures must live. All they ever knew was violence, killing, and blood. They would never know joy or laughter. They would never know the
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