Cold Burn: The Demon Chronicles #1

Chapter 3 - Fight

          It was still hard to look at him and not think Ben Barnes. As entertaining as it was, my maker was the spitting image of the actor. The initial misconception that he was Ben Barnes is what made me approach him at the bar that night. Though the question as to why the actor would be at a club in Ohio, of all states, never occurred to me at the time; I had simply thought of his appearance there as a good turn of luck on my part. Now, seeing him in front of me dressed to the nines, as he had been that night, I wondered if he had known who I was or better yet-what I had been.

"I'm glad to see you found me and it took you less than half an hour to get through traffic," London said, his own English accent giving perfect pronunciation to each word.

A look of disbelief crossed my face. "You knew I was in Indy?" I asked.

"Of course; I suspected your father would circle the wagons."

"Then you knew!" I said crossly, taking a step forward.

London gave me a withering look. "Don't get your fangs in a twist. I suspected what you were, but I didn't know who your father was," he replied. His eyes followed me as I approached the ornately carved desk and its lion clawed feet. Sighing I let the anger slip from me like water over stone as I sat down in the chair across from him. Silence filled the air before I chose to ask another question.

"Why didn't you tell me what I was?"

A look of sympathy crossed his face, but just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. "I thought you knew," he answered simply. "But if I had been the one to tell you, would it have mattered? Would your choice have been any different?"

"No," the word was out of my mouth before I knew it and for the first time in what felt like a long time-I laughed aloud. Smiling to myself, tipping my head back, resting it against the back of the leather chair I stared up at the ceiling and its exposed, dark wood, beams.

"When did you find out about Caleb?" I asked motionless.

"When I met your mother; I saw a picture of him on the side table next to the couch. I was the one that took you home-I wiped her memory of me before I left."

I lifted my head to look at him, in his three-piece, black suit, and deep purple hued tie, with an expression of incredulity. "You left me with my mother during the turning? I could have killed her..."

London sighed and went back to his paperwork. "I made the natural assumption that she knew what your father was, and therefore, what you had been, and were thus turning into," he paused for a moment in his paperwork to look back up at me. "Don't you remember anything?"

"No! I can't recall the last three days at all!" I then proceeded to tell him about my journey to Indiana and my subsequent excursion to find him, not leaving out a single detail in-between.

"Well," he replied after all was said and done. "All that's left is for you to move in it seems."

I stared at him for a tick and then laughed. "Like my mother is going to let me move in with a complete stranger let alone another vampire!"

London gave a low, unfriendly chuckle a cold smile at his lips. "She'll have no choice," he said flatly. "I'm your maker and as far as either of your parents are concerned, in the world we live in that trumps them both; whether they or you like it or not."

-----

          The inside of the car was the best place to decompress after a meeting like that. I'd like to say that London was a nice person, that he was all about my concerns, but he wasn't. He was a Master Vampire and that required him to be calculating and sometimes cold even if aimed at me. However, now, I was beginning to have my doubts about him not knowing that Caleb was my father from the start. As I sat there, Caleb's words came back to haunt me.