The Greater Darkness: A Dark YA Urban Fantasy Book With Vampires

Chapter 23

The exhaustion Geoffrey had felt before at Melody's had impossibly grown even worse in the last twenty-four hours. He hadn't really had a chance of killing Gothic in a fair fight before. As tired as he was now, there was no hope of him winning, even if he did somehow manage to find the other vampire. The best he could hope for now was that if he did manage to find Gothic, that the older vampire would at least kill him out of hand rather than trying to search his mind like Imastious more than likely would.

Geoffrey was tempted to stay out and watch for Gothic despite the rising sun, but the light was starting to hurt his eyes. Besides, he was virtually positive that Gothic wasn't going to be moving around during the day.

There didn't seem to be anything left to do but return home and prepare. He would need to try and goad Imastious into killing him quickly. If he didn't then Imastious would break him to see what little tidbits he might have managed to keep to himself.

The trip back home should have been filled with despair, but Geoffrey found that he was curiously calm. He wasn't okay with how things had turned out, but he was prepared to do what had to be done to try and protect Melody. It was possible that this was what the priest had been talking about all along. Maybe death wasn't so bad, even for one like him, doomed to go straight to hell, assuming such a place really existed.

When Geoffrey finally arrived back home, Venice was waiting for him. "I was starting to wonder if you'd made a run for it."

Geoffrey shrugged, being very careful to keep his hands free. "I thought about it a couple of times, but I didn't figure I'd be able to get away with it."

Venice pretended to pout. "What, you didn't decide to stay because you love me?"

The exhaustion was still nipping at Geoffrey, making him irritable and unwilling to play along tonight. "So, is this it? Imastious decided to just have you clip me rather than seeing to it himself?"

Shaking her head, Venice pointed to the bed. "Sit down, love. I'm not here to take you out, although based on the way you're swaying it wouldn't be much of a challenge tonight."

"Why should I trust you? We both know if you've been instructed to take me down it's entirely possible this is how you'd play it."

Judging by the fire in the slender vampire's eyes, it looked as though Venice was starting to get angry, but she flashed Geoffrey another smile and slid out of her stylish jacket. The black halter top obviously left nowhere to conceal a weapon. "Look, nothing up my sleeves. All of my hardware is in my purse, so sit down and shut up while I tell you about the latest set of developments."

There wasn't anything stopping her from using her powers to call her weapons to her at need, but Geoffrey felt like she was telling the truth. That, or maybe he was just too tired to care.

Geoffrey stumbled over to the bed and collapsed into a more or less sitting posture. "Sorry if I'm a bit testy tonight. Having people deliver ultimatums and threatening to kill me tends to bring that out."

Venice shrugged. "I understand. It would tend to do the same to me, but you have to believe after all we've shared that I'm on your side as much as I can be."

Geoffrey suppressed a biting response and settled for looking at the blonde expectantly.

"Okay, essentially you're off the hook. It turns out something extremely nasty got a hold of Gothic already. He was found a few hours ago, literally torn to shreds. Imastious is confident no information was passed on to Eculdes."

Tension that Geoffrey hadn't even realized he'd been carrying drained from him, and his mind blanked for a moment as he realized that he wasn't about to die. When he finally came back he found Venice had continued talking.