Lies in Blood by A. M. Hudson Page A

the scroll, blowing out the hard breath that almost became a really loud scream when I saw the familiar face. “Blade? You scared the living hell out of me.”
    “ Oh, good.” He pulled up a chair and sat beside me. “If there’s no hell in you, maybe I won’t find you so hot anymore.”
    “ Huh?” I issued him a dumbfounded stare.
    “ You know,” he explained, rolling his hand around as if I might get the joke. “Because Hell is hot.”
    “ Oh. Right.” I looked back at the pages. “Well, sorry to burst your bubble, Blade, but you’re bound by the Curse of the Original Lilith. You’ll love me until you die.”
    “ Or until I fall head over heels for someone else.”
    “ Good luck with that,” I said. “Not too many worthy female counterparts around here.”
    “ Anything’s gotta be better than you .” He nudged me with his elbow, flashing a toothy grin.
    “ Yes, considering I may be destined for death-by-evil-vampire.”
    He leaned in and peered at my sheets. “Hm. Tricky stuff, huh?”
    “ Yeah.” I dumped the pages on the desk again and rubbed my face. “You got any ideas what all this means?”
    “ A few.”
    I turned my head to look at him, but he sat there, his face straight, hands in his lap, looking distracted or maybe bored. “Blade?” I said loudly, slapping his wrist.
    “ Okay.” He laughed, snapping out it. “Couldn't resist torturing you a little.”
    “ I think I’ve had enough torture for one lifetime.”
    “ Ah ha!” He laughed, pointing at me. “Funny.”
    “ More like distasteful.”
    “ Nah, it was actually funny,” he said in that well-articulated English accent, drawing his chair a little closer to the lip of the table. “Right. So, prophecy or contract? What is the answer?”
    “ I think it’s a contract.”
    “ As do I, pretty queen,” he said distractedly, his eyes moving over the words. “But, for what, exactly?”
    “ A child.”
    “ Yes. A child conceived with a firstborn nobleman and a pure Lilithian.”
    “ Yes.”
    “ And then again, we could be wrong.” He looked up at me.
    I sunk back in my seat. “Yes.”
    “ So, why the big deal about all this?” He held up the scroll in question. “I mean, what does it matter if we find the truth or not, really?”
    “ It doesn’t.” I took the scroll and rolled it up. “I guess I just don’t like questions being unanswered.”
    “ Well, Princess Sherlock—” he stood up and pushed his chair in, “—you won’t find the answers by looking at the same sheet you’ve been looking at every night since David arose from the dead.”
    I frowned at him, tucking the scroll under my arm. “You’ve been following me?”
    “ It’s my job.” He spread both arms out and took a small bow.
    “ Not at night.”
    His lip curved into a sharp, sideways smile. “I am your eternal servant, My Queen. I am never off duty, especially when I know that you know you don’t have a guard on at night.”
    “ Why should that matter?” My lip turned up. “What did you think I was up to down here?”
    “ Nothing bad. That’s not why I followed you.”
    “ Then why did you?” I pushed past him and walked into the storage room; the musty smell of lonely pages was stronger here, closed in by the narrow aisles at least two vampires tall and twenty meters long, the shelves crammed tightly with scrolls and parchments.
    Blade leaned his forearm on the doorframe above his head. “I was worried.”
    “ Worried?”
    “ Yes. About you—about how you’re feeling right now.” He folded his arms. “I actually thought you might be coming down here to cry in privacy.”
    I gave a mock pout, grabbing a pile of scrolls. “How sweet. But I’m not that into you, Blade, not enough to cry.”
    “ Ha-ha.” He stepped aside to let me pass. “But, seriously, I thought you might be upset about David.”
    “ What about him?”
    “ About the way he’s been treating you,” he said suggestively.
    I stopped walking.
    “