Silence - By Kailin Gow Page 0,4
even just the mere mention of her name to these boys… to stir up some trouble.
Better just to talk now and wait for a better opportunity.
“You want to know about Palisor? Wel , let me sit up and I’l tel you.”
The werewolf and the half-vampire abomination let him. Pietre smiled to himself. H e would have al owed himself nothing. But what did he expect? They were barely more than children. They stil hadn’t learnt the most important lesson the world had to offer yet, which was that kindness and weakness were the same thing.
“Better,” Pietre said aloud, rubbing his injured wrist. He should probably have guessed that a dragon shifter would be that strong. He’d heard the legends, after al . “You have to understand that I haven’t actual y been to Palisor. It is a difficult place for vampires to enter, but it seems I know more about it than the three of you.”
That was it. Just play on their stupidity. Remind them of how much they needed him. Pietre went from sitting to standing, smoothly adopting the pose of a man giving a lecture to three students. The better to stay in control.
“Palisor is the source for us.”
“What does that mean?” the abomination, Jake, asked.
Pietre smiled. “I’m glad you asked that, young man.” Though he would be gladder stil with the pathetic creature destroyed as it should be. “You know that we do not fit with the rules of this world. It takes something extra, cal it magic, for us to exist at al .
Palisor is a world ful of that magic, and when the gate appears, it flows into the world.” He looked at the boy, Fal on. “Like blood into one of our kind.”
“That’s not important,” Fal on shot back, “and if that’s al you have-”
“Did I say that?” Pietre demanded. Even trapped like this, he was not going to let some barely-turned whelp speak to him like that. The abomination asked the next question.
“Do you know how do we get in now that there’s no dragon, no Briony and no Aunt Sophie?”
Pietre smiled. “That’s a good question, young Jake.” Not that he planned on answering it right away.
No, the key was to draw this out. To give himself time to recover. Pietre had to be ready for the moment this ended. As soon as they had their answers, the three boys would undoubtedly stake him, after al . At least, that was what Pietre would do in their place.
“You know that my own plan for entering Palisor focused on Sophie Edge, of course. I waited for years for her or someone like her. After that, it was relatively easy to get close to her. Once she started to change into what she real y is, the natural attraction she felt for my kind made that straightforward.”
Pietre paused, letting that sink in. He had been playing this sort of game with people decades before the young men around him had even been born.
“What natural attraction?” Jake asked.
Ah, perfect. “Why, the intrinsic attraction al of Sophie’s kind feel for vampires, even as they know they ought to hate them. It is why Sophie loved me so much.” Pietre turned his smile on Kevin. “It is why your Briony loves Fal on so much. Why she finds him so much more attractive than you.”
The glance from the werewolf to his brother wasn’t much, but Pietre caught it nonetheless. So, apparently, did young Fal on. So, Pietre was right about the young vampire…there was potential for him after al .
“Don’t listen to him, Kevin,” the boy said, “he’s just trying to cause trouble. Trying to get us to fight with one another so that he has a chance to get away. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Pietre spread his hands. “Just because I want you at each other’s throats in a particularly literal sense don’t mean that I’m speaking anything but the truth.”
“You’re lying,” Kevin said.
“Real y?” Pietre raised an eyebrow. “But didn’t dear Briony lose interest in you very suddenly, Kevin?
Didn’t her interest in your brother always seem at odds with what he was? Wasn’t she very quick to go back to him?”
Fal on took a step towards Pietre. “Shut up.”
Pietre stepped back to match it. It wasn’t the time to fight. Not yet. No. Now was the time to take a guess. “Why should I? Or don’t you want your brother to hear? Tel me, Fal on, what were you and Briony doing when you spotted the dragon?