Page 32 of Vampire so Virtuous (Boston Vampires #1)

“What brings you out here?” Antoine asked, as the woman beside him groaned and clutched her stomach.

“That was going to be my question. I sensed you and half expected you to visit me. When you didn’t, I decided to visit you instead.”

So she’d been thinking about him.

“You came looking for me?”

“I thought you were coming for me. Do you know you’re about a mile from where I live?”

All that time spent looking for her, and she lived right near where I first found her.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“What’s the matter with her?” Cally asked, flicking the light back onto the new thrall.

The woman completed her conversion in that moment, standing abruptly. “Command me, Master.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“As you command.”

“‘Master?’” Cally looked at him in disgust. “This how you get women, Antoine? Use your mind tricks and have them call you ‘Master’?”

Antoine shook his head. Wonderful timing . “Go to this location,” he ordered, addressing the new thrall, and sent her off with a mental image. The rest of her instructions could wait until Cally wasn’t glaring at him.

The new thrall wandered off, and Cally watched her go.

“Care to explain?” she said, turning to face him.

“Not particularly.”

“No need, is there? It’s pretty obvious: you’re building a harem.” Her tone was cutting and her steel-gray eyes flashed. “I’ll leave you to your most pleasant evening.” She turned to leave.

“I’m recruiting thralls, if you must know.”

She turned back, disdain in her eyes. “Thralls? Sounds like slavery. Like you’re possessing people against their will to obey you. Now, I’m sure you wouldn’t do that, so why don’t you tell me what a thrall is?”

He forced himself to hold her gaze. “You summed it up pretty well.” Of all the times for her to seek me out. There was no escaping the judgment in her eyes.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, turning away again. “I knew you were a monster.”

“I need thralls to defend my territory,” he said to her back. Why am I explaining myself to her?

“Whatever.” She walked off, back the way she’d come.

“It’s necessary, Cally.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Minh has thralls,” he said, his voice pitched low. The quiet of the night made it easy for her to hear. “And some of them might be coming after you.”

“I’ve already dealt with some of his thralls, or had you forgotten?”

He hadn’t. And yet she was still walking away from him. No chattel—especially no marked chattel—had ever walked away from him. Run screaming, once or twice. Never walked.

“Why did you come out here?” he asked, as the distance between them grew.

She didn’t answer. Just kept walking.

It would be a simple matter to catch her up.

A simple matter to pin her against a tree to make her listen, or to feed from her again.

Hell, every single one of the thralls he’d bitten had tasted so much worse than she did.

Not even a little bit worse, but significantly worse.

Like she’d single-handedly spoiled him for everyone else.

She was his marked property, his own chattel, and yet she was ignoring him. Walking away from him.

Judging him, and finding him wanting.

Merde . Almost three hundred years as a vampire, when hardly anything ever changed, and now she was introducing him to new experiences on an almost-daily basis. Shame he could’ve done without some of them.

He shook his head as he watched her leave. She did have a very nice ass.

“Noah .” He reached out through his mental link.

“Antoine?”

“New task. Track and observe this woman.” He sent a mental image of her. “ Keep your distance, but her safety is your top priority. I’ll send you Zoey and Diego too. Also, ascertain where she lives.”

“On it.”

Noah seemed pleased to be given such an assignment, and at least ‘On it’ was a significant improvement from ‘Yes, Master.’ The thralls, he’d discovered, had retained much of their personalities—once they got past their initial ‘Command me, Master’.

He’d given them as much freedom as possible, and they had—as far as he could tell—appreciated it.

It was difficult to know for sure when compliance to his slightest whim was a given.

Maybe they were trapped in a living hell of subservience, aware and hating every passing second.

Antoine liked to think not, to think that Noah responded as he had because he approved of his new instructions, but it was impossible to be sure.

Precisely why Antoine had avoided thralls for so long.

Eleven, and still no strain. How many more did he need?

He checked Marcel’s names. He’d ticked off all on the first list, and there were five more on the second still to find. That would bring it up to sixteen, eight from both Allston and Brookline. If he could do that, without feeling a strain, it would suffice.

Surely Minh couldn’t have as many, not at only a century of age.

He turned away and leaped into the air.

Beneath him, Cally walked out of the park. He could already see Noah and Diego converging on her.

They can deal with her instead.

Thralls were useful for some things.