A few moments later, the young woman enters the hall and goes to the reception desk. The only sign that she's had sex is her still-flushed cheeks. She smiles sweetly when she sees us and asks for our names. She picks up a phone and speaks intoit.
"He'll see you now," she says, and leads us past the desk where the two had sex and points to an office with an impressive leather chair and ornately carved mahoganydesk.
He enters the room from an adjoining one - the bathroom, I suppose. He's wiping his face on atowel.
"You caught me at a bad time," he says, a smile on his full lips. "I was just washing up." He raises his eyebrows suggestively at me. Did he know I was thereearlier?
I saw something strange – wings. Could they have been justshadows?
He finishes drying himself off and throws the towel onto a table before sitting down at his desk, motioning us to be seated aswell.
I sit in a chair with Michel standing behind me as if to claim me. Soren sits with his palms held together almost inprayer.
Is he mocking us? I can't suppress ashudder.
"Cut to the chase," Michel says. "You wanted Eve here. Here sheis."
Soren smiles. He gets up and comes to stand directly in front of me, just a foot away, his hands on his hips. He's so tall and powerfully built and beautiful in an unnatural way, the way Julien's manuscript described him. Every feature is perfect, symmetrical, as if he were a Greek statue come tolife.
Behind me, Michel leans closer and rests his hands on my shoulderspossessively.
"She's mine," hesays.
"Technically, she's no one's seeing as you're too pure to claimher."
"She's Natalia'sdaughter."
"And she was meant for Julien," Soren says. "But I just wanted to see her for myself. You're willing to fight forher?"
"You know I can't beat you, but I will fight you even if Idie."
"Relax, Michel," Soren says. "I just wanted to see her. Get to know her. After all, there's been so much to do about her. I wanted to make sure she's worthit."
"She's gifted," Michel says. "But she's not trained. We'll train her, get herready."
"I'm sure you will." He turns to me. "How's Julien?" he says and smiles down at me. "I hear you've met both brothers. How to choose between them? That must confuseyou."
"Leave Julien out of this, " Isay.
"Ah, so sweet that you care about a vampire's well-being, given you want to kill them. Isn't it so sweet? I especially love it when humans fall in love with vampires. So tragic. Why, I bet you could love them both. Identical twins? How could younot?"
He steps closer, and Michel's hand tightens on myshoulder.
"I said relax, Michel. I'm not going to take her. At least, not yet. I just want to see what all the fuss is about." He tips up my chin so that I'm forced to look in his eyes. "She's pretty. I like petite blondes. You remember Marguerite, Michel." He reaches out his hand to me and Ihesitate.
"Don't touch her," Michel says and his voice islow.
"Don't even think of threatening me, Michel," Soren says. "I could kill you all in the time it takes you to take a breath. I'll do what Iwant."
He holds his hand out, palmup.
"Stand up," hesays.
I stand and he pulls me towards him so that I'm about five inches from him, our handsjoined.
Then a wave of something rushes over me, a sense of a powerful questing mind searching out my own, looking for something, but I can't tell what it is. He goes all the way back to my childhood in Europe, to Budapest and the salon where I took music lessons. I'm sitting there in the ornate building at a grand piano, playing for my father and his colleagues. It's the year before my mother dies. The year before we moved back toBoston.
Then, he's at that day, and I'm sitting in the corner of my mother's office at the university, reading National Geographic magazines while she works in the lab that adjoins her office. I hear a commotion, hear glass breaking, hear a muffled sound, and then I go into the room only to find her on the floor and there's blood on her neck and it's frothing out of hermouth…