A Fall of Silver (6 page)

Denise chose that moment to bring their drinks, pausing by their table
, her hips tilted toward Kethan. “You need anything else?”

“Thanks,
no,” he said, hardening his voice with finality.

After a long moment,
Denise wandered away.

He
flicked a quick glance at Quicksilver. “I was a priest, but I left—”

“Quitter,” she said,
with a dismissive shake of her had.

“No,”
Joe said.

She
looked at him, her mouth partially open in surprise.

“No
, it was a choice,” Kethan said. After swallowing the sharp edge of anger, Kethan picked up the glass of milk and drained it in one swallow. The cold, smooth liquid pooled in his belly like a ball of ice unable to quell his tension.

“Quitter,” she repeated under her breath.
“And now you’re betraying your own kind, as well.”

“My kind?”

“Humans. Or have you forgotten that you’re human? You sure don’t look like a vampire or an angel sent to save mankind.”

“Oh, I know I’m no angel,”
he agreed.

Silence greeted
his remark. She didn’t even bother to glance at him.

Joe stared at
the black square of the window as if wishing he were alone.

Kethan couldn’t blame him.
He already regretted asking his friend to attend the negotiations, knowing how upset Joe got when the atmosphere grew angry. Yet he managed to provide the oil for any troubled waters Kethan stirred up although he later paid the price with ulcers.

Well, Kethan was not unaffected
, either. He held up the empty milk glass and caught Denise’s eye. She nodded and pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

Despite his expectation
s, when she returned she did not bring his milk. Instead, she had their three plates stacked along her left arm.

“I’ll
bring your milk when I get back,” the waitress said.

Quicksilver lifted the bread off her sandwich to check it before she
cast a sidelong glance at Kethan. “If you’re not a quitter, then why did you quit? Who quits being a priest?”

“I had my
reasons.” When she opened her mouth, anger coloring her face, he continued, “My own
reasons
, not because I have an ambition to become a vampire.”

“That’
s nice. I’m sure Father Donatello is relieved to hear you say that.”

Joe
focused on her, his round brown eyes appearing even larger and sadder in his tired face. “Kethan Hilliard has nothing to prove, least of all to me. You can trust him at his word.”

“Then why is he negotiating with vampires?
Are you idiots? Or just suicidal?”

“We
’re not ignorant of the danger,” Kethan said.

“Danger?
That’s not the problem! You can’t trust them! You can’t trust anything they say.” She glanced out the window as if she expected to see a vampire’s face pressed against the glass. “Believe me, I know.”

The soft words caught at him, implying an unbearable past
, but he sensed that she’d repulse any sympathy or pity. When he glanced at her, his shoulders stiffened as he followed the direction of her gaze. Then he realized he’d expected to see the same thing: a vampire.

Joe
leaned forward, his face earnest. “Everyone deserves the chance—”

“
They need this negotiation as much as we do. Both sides have lost too many loved ones, friends…. The last few months have been nothing short of a war, although the press and general public continue to attribute it to drug-related crime. It has to stop. We’re trusting them to act in their own self-interest,” Kethan asserted in a harsh voice. He was tired of the argument and irritated at her continued hostility. She needed to learn to leave the past behind if she wished to move forward with her life.

He wasn’t
Father Joseph Donatello. He couldn’t be sweet-tempered forever and it was doubly worse when he realized that part of him feared the same thing as she did: treachery and failures.

Can I
really stop the violence? End the destruction of so many souls?

“Well, isn’t that nic
e?” Quicksilver said in a mocking falsetto. “And what if they decide it’s in their own self-interest to attack another seventeen-year-old girl?”

“Jason made a mistake
—” He rubbed his face, feeling the rasp of his whiskers. The prickling sensation against his palm reminded him of the late hour and his tiredness.

“You’re damn right he did
! And if you hadn’t been so namby-pamby, I could have made sure he didn’t attack any other kids. Kathy’s under Jason’s control, even if he didn’t bite her. She gazed into his eyes. He can influence her.”

Kethan’s
jaw muscles ached as his back teeth ground together. “He won’t bother her.”

“How do you know?
” Her voice rose as her skin paled into a stricken mask. “And I’m just as stupid! Like a fool, I sent her back to the home. I compromised the safety of all the kids living there. She’ll let him in if he asks. He’ll kill them all!” She paused before she whispered, “It’ll be my fault. I told her to go home.”

“He won’t.
Sutton won’t let him.” Kethan prayed he was right as he gave her cold hand a comforting squeeze. If he was wrong…. That prospect didn’t bear consideration. He had to be right and enforce the truce.

“
Sutton? Some master,” she said harshly. “If he is so strong, why did I find a pair of junior league vampires persuading Kathy to go down an alley? He can’t even control the young ones.”

“It won’t happen again,
” Kethan repeated, aware that he was trying to convince himself just as much as he was trying to convince her.

“Bullshit.
Sorry, Father.” She nodded to Joe, pointedly not including Kethan in her apology.

Kethan
pinched the bridge of his nose. Why continue this useless argument? All he wanted was another glimpse of her smile before she walked off into the misty darkness, assuming he could be sure she was not on her way to kill a vampire and destroy the tenuous peace.

The
night was dwindling away. Kethan felt the weight of each passing hour. Perhaps the lateness affected his mood, but Quicksilver’s certainty about the pointlessness of negotiating with vampires forced him to reassess his own motivations.

N
o one could deny that Martyn Sutton desperately needed the respite of a treaty. Rebellious whispers surrounded him. Some said Sutton was too weak to be their leader. They needed someone strong to protect them while they rebuilt their scattered, decimated ranks after the death of their previous master.

T
hey couldn’t withstand the pressure from the humans like Quicksilver, who took advantage of the destabilizing situation to hunt and slaughter the undead. The only thing that had saved them thus far was the public’s belief that vampires did not exist. There were few humans who knew otherwise and generally, they didn’t live long enough to convince anyone else of their existence.

But that fact wouldn’t protect the clan for long, and t
he two forces, vampire and human, were set to crush Sutton between them like a rotten walnut.

Not that he cared about
Sutton one way or the other, but the vampire had occasionally shown rare traces of mercy. Those small signs encouraged Kethan and convinced him the negotiations would be worthwhile if they guaranteed peace. However, he needed Sutton to maintain control of his clan and stop preying on the young to fill his diminished ranks.

Teenagers
didn’t understand the significance of trading their soul for immortality. They saw only the glamour of everlasting youth.

Kethan knew the seduction of that promise only too well
. He had succumbed himself and spent what seemed like an eternity regretting that impulsive decision. He couldn’t escape from that cold, empty existence until he’d traded his life to save Father Donatello.

A few moments of agony
, the brief emptiness of death, and Kethan was reborn. Grace granted him a second chance. Now, he felt driven to provide others with the same opportunity to reclaim their souls or what remained of their souls. Not every vampire kept hold of the tattered shreds of his soul after conversion, but a few did.

A few, very few, experience the miracle of rebirth
, and that second chance could only happen if this endless war ceased and the vampires were granted the time to discover their own path to salvation.

Kethan
studied Quicksilver. She didn’t seem to notice his brief descent into doubt. Instead of pressing her argument, she moved on to less controversial topics, granting a grudging truce long enough to enjoy her meal.

Twice
, she laughed at one of Joe’s small jokes, the lame ones he reserved for children.

Her laughter was light and breathless
, and it ended in an odd hitch, as if she were unused to joy. Each time she giggled, she cut it off with a sidelong glance at Kethan from beneath her lashes, her fingers hovering in front of her mouth, her cheeks flushed.

In that
uncertain, fractured sound, he sensed something soft and yielding beneath the brittle glaze of hostility.

What had happened
to cause that boiling darkness beneath her silvered surface?

“Quicksilver
.” He folded his napkin.

She
drained her soda noisily, her eyes watching him over the rim of her glass. “What?”

She
pushed the tumbler away and moved restlessly, rubbing her hands against her thighs. Her eyes roved continuously, always alert. Even as he opened his mouth, she turned to stare out of the window. Her reflection frowned in concentration as she studied the darkness.

“
Why do you hate vampires?” His casual tone didn’t quite hide his curiosity and need to know what drove her, understand her and what made her who she was.

The key to any negotiation
lay in identifying what each party needed. At the moment, his needs included convincing her to stop killing.

Her gaze caught his. The flicker of cool amusement in her eyes told him she’d noted his interest.
“I do it for the sheer pleasure of putting to rest things that should already be dead.”

“No one is paying you, then?”

She shook her head, her fingers nervously playing with the ends of her hair.

He glanced at her expensive white leather jacket
. The weapons she kept tucked into the small of her back were custom made items, as well. There was money somewhere paying for all the vampire hunter trappings.

“Y
ou’re independently wealthy?” he persisted.

“No
—I’m an instructor.”

“What do you teach?”
Joe asked, his thin, gray brows rising in friendly interest.

“Krav Maga.
Self-defense. I have a school across town.”

“I’ve never heard of Krav Maga,” Kethan replied.

She shrugged and pushed her straw through the ice in the bottom of her glass as if trying to make it melt faster. Her tongue flicked almost imperceptibly over her upper lip. She frowned and pushed harder at the ice. When she tried to take another sip, air bubbled through the straw and made a slurping sound.

The noise
irritated him. Catching Denise’s eye, he snagged Quicksilver’s glass and held it up. The waitress disappeared through the kitchen door and reappeared moments later with a pitcher.

“What is Krav Maga?”
Joe repeated Kethan’s question.

T
he two of them fell into their roles effortlessly. Kethan broke the conversational wall with brute force so Joe could ease into the gap and charm the answers from even the most reluctant conversationalist. Not quite as obvious as good cop/bad cop, but just as effective.

“
Like I said, it’s a form of fighting. Self-defense.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “More practical than that other crap they teach women. The Israelis developed it.” She pressed her forearms against the edge of the table, her body telegraphing her increasing restlessness. “You use whatever techniques work best for the situation. Aikido, Karate, boxing, whatever. There’s nothing set. I just train my students’ natural reflexes so they can handle whatever comes at them. That’s it. Simple.”

“Sounds useful
.” Joe leaned forward, matching her posture and body language while exuding curiosity and openness, inviting her to talk.

Kethan had watched him a thousand times before but he was always impressed with Joe’s frank
ingenuousness. He honestly liked people and trusted them and for some reason, even the most hardened criminals responded in kind to him.

As far as Kethan was concerned, Joe performed miracles every time he opened his mouth.