Dobby stared hard at the table. “Why not just break the rules and let the High Order end it? Why live in this miserable, endless cycle?”
“I don’t have an answer for that. Certainly many have gone that route.”
He’d considered it himself many times, after the disappearance of his mate, the death of his parents. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that no one would remain behind to help the Dobbys of the world. And now? Now Jonas wasn’t sure he could court death knowing Ginny was alive and breathing somewhere. Living in a world where she existed made the darkness bearable and unbearable at the same time.
“How can this be allowed?” Dobby croaked, taking Jonas’s glass of blood and draining it, surprising a low chuckle out of Jonas. “How can the High Order punish us for drinking from humans, unless we Silence them, too?”
A familiar anger made Jonas’s jaw tighten. “To guarantee our continued existence,” he growled. “Silencing a human doesn’t always work, but the urge…it’s always there inside us. Often, a new vampire can’t help themselves and they go about Silencing in a reckless way, leading to dead humans and vampires left to face the punishment. Far more humans are Silenced, however, than vampires extinguished, leading to higher numbers of our kind. Numbers that learn through example to fear the High Order. Their contradictory rules have led to nothing but a fucked up cycle—and I’m sorry…” Jonas pushed back from the table, annoyed at himself for going off book. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
“Thank you,” Dobby said, laying a hand on the pouch, visibly uncomfortable showing gratitude. “I’m not sure…what I would have done without you.”
Jonas nodded. “It’s nothing.” He hesitated before standing. “Who was it that Silenced you?”
“I don’t know,” Dobby whispered. “I don’t remember anything after walking home from my shift at the diner.”
In other words, his memories had been wiped.
Tamping down on a second apology—apparently Ginny’s sweet, earnest nature was rubbing off on him—Jonas stood and faced the tavern, waiting for everyone to give him their attention. Most of the faces he recognized, if not from recently, then from the last time he’d been in New York. Some of them seemed to have fared well, others were sullen, their stares empty and trained on nothing. With a heavy gut, he wondered how many locals had been extinguished by the High Order for breaking the rules, their seats now sitting vacant.
“I need to know if anyone has come into contact with someone new in town,” he said, in a clear voice, watching for reactions. “An Elder.”
Murmurings commenced, along with some nervous shifting.
After all, there was no rule against killing each other and no one in Haven was a match for a vampire with the abilities an Elder possessed. Abilities that were earned by living through high stress situations, again and again, year after year. Wars, street battles, deaths of human loved ones, loss of a vampire mate. They each added to the store of energy inside of the being, culminating like a force field ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice.
In his surveillance of the room, Jonas noticed only one vampire in attendance who didn’t look surprised by his question.
The vampire waited until Jonas made eye contact, then he slowly and meaningfully looked up at the ceiling.
A loud thud overhead had Jonas retreating as quickly as possible to the alley.
Ginny.
Ginny’s skin felt layered with ice without Jonas in the car. Moments ago, she’d been secure and content in his embrace, she now sat shivering in the bottom of a well. Desperate for a distraction, she listened carefully for anything beside her own breathing and the drumming of Tucker’s fingers on the steering wheel.
At least ten minutes had passed when a door opened and closed outside the car, then nothing, save the sound of water dripping, the distant whir of traffic, a plane flying overhead. Tucker turned on the radio and Elias smacked it off, leading to an argument. Mothers were insulted quite offensively.
Jonas had been gone about twenty minutes when a door groaned opened and closed again. She longed to rip off the blindfold and see if Jonas approached—not to mention where he’d been, but she forced her hands to remain at her side.
In the blink of an eye, the energy in the car shifted.
Ginny felt it and sat forward.
“What the hell is going on?” Elias growled.
She ripped off the blindfold, blinking twice into the glare of a streetlamp, before clawing her way toward the door Jonas had exited, pressing her forehead to the cold glass.
There in a moonlit alleyway stood Jonas.
Another vampire joined him. At least, that was one way of putting it.
Was she dreaming? She had to be. No way one of the most terrifying beings Ginny had ever seen was floating down from the rooftop of the building. As if he were strapped into an invisible harness. The skin of his throat and hands was bluish white and streaked with veins, though most of him was hidden beneath a wide brimmed hat and raincoat. A gray braid of hair ticked side to side on his back, reminding Ginny of a metronome. He moved at a sedate pace, expression smug.