The Vampire's Reflection Read Free

pain, but Charlotte could have sworn she saw a small smile play at the corners of his lips. He loved the struggle of hunting things that met his power more evenly than a mere human did. She knew how it excited him.
    The fairy continued to thrash, screeching in frenzy as Valek finally overpowered it. Charlotte watched as he found his opportunity and plunged into the beast’s throat. Ink-like blood spilled out around his mouth, seeping into the snow. Valek clung to the creature, the sick, sticky slurping sound continuing as the Fae’s thrashing slowed and slowed until there was one eventual, last nudge. The thing stilled beneath him, and she knew it was finally dead.
    Valek sat up, running the back of his hand across his dripping chin to wipe away whatever was left over. Charlotte watched as the blacks of his eyes shrank back to the center until they became the eternally illuminated blue again.
    Valek looked at her, grinning, his teeth already licked clean of the blotchy stains. Despite the immense blood spatter across his vest, Valek looked like a gentleman that day, with his long hair restrained by a satiny, black ribbon, his shoes shined and slacks finely pressed. He had always taken good care of his personal grooming, but no one could ever beat Sarah’s housekeeping abilities. Charlotte barely wore a wrinkle anymore, which never used to be the case. The Witch made quite a difference since she’d been living with them in their large home at the end of the town square of the southernmost Bohemian Occult City.
    “Does that…taste good to you?” Charlotte grimaced as she watched Valek lap up some leftovers from the heel of his hand. She couldn’t imagine how it could.
    Valek laughed once and looked down at the gray skin of the fairy corpse beneath him, making a face. “Do rotten eggs taste good to you?”
    “No.”
    “But you would eat them if there was something you needed desperately as a result from doing so?” He straightened up, his tone dropping a few octaves to seriousness. He turned his face up to the faded, winter daylight.
    The way he looked at the sun was like nothing Charlotte had ever seen before—not even matching the way he looked at her. His admiration for it went far beyond anything she believed she could ever experience as a human, and she wondered what the intensity of those feelings must be like. As she gazed up at him, she could only just imagine.
    “I suppose,” she murmured. Quietly, Charlotte padded through the snow, up to her tall, drawn Vampire, careful not to nudge the stinking fairy corpse as she toed over it.
    Chuckling, Valek laced his fingers between hers and crushed his lips to her forehead, an action that easily painted a smile on her face.
    She could understand how special something might have seemed when you thought it had been taken away from you forever. It would be something you would never take for granted again. She smiled to herself, happy that Valek could at least temporarily restore one thing about his human life that he missed so much.
    “I don’t understand. The Fae are from the light?” Charlotte continued to pry. She lifted her eyebrow. “That’s not what I would have guessed. It seems to be such a dark sort of creature.” She wrinkled her nose at the carcass. Her memory flashed to a night when she was very young and a Fairy had come into Valek’s practice with a raging headache. Valek had been completely unaware of the benefits of Fae blood at that time.
    “They are. They are light because they are most active during the day, and because their loyalty rests with the light….” Valek trailed off. He was still distracted. “It’s a long lesson I’ll tell you about one day.” Quickly glancing over his shoulder, he seemed eager to take leave of the clearing.
    Charlotte knew why. Being outside of their house always raised suspicion and fear. Aiden, or whoever he’d become now, could be lurking behind any corner.
    “Aren’t you afraid someone might find