Immortal Memory (Iris' Atlantis 1)

25: Shards of Black Glass

You are free, Timothy. You can go where-ever you want. But I'd do it somewhere far from the Court.

Did I really want to meet the queen of vampires tonight as well? In theory, now that I had my phone, I could buy a mobile ticket for a bus and leave. I could go anywhere.

The idea hit me in its vastness.

I wasn't a vampire.

I wasn't a human.

I had a phone and a passport.

If I walked now to the bus stop, could I simply get onto a bus and leave? Would Mo chase after me if I did, or could I simply go?

And where would I go?

Did I even want to go away from the Court? Blizzard might have forgotten all our time together, but I had not. And then there was Plume. We had been stuck with each other for weeks and I had grown fond of him. And Valentina was now part of the vampire Court as well.

Plus, I owed Mo for bringing me home from the police station. Even as that had landed me inside a locked vault.

I was just about to turn my back to the bus stop and return inside, when the headlights of a silent car swept the street in front of me. I waited for the car to glide soundlessly to a stop in front of me.

The passenger seat window slid open. A pair of glowing red eyes met my gaze. Blizzard wore a thoughtful frown.

"How did you get out? That vault doesn't have a key."

I shrugged and pocketed the phone and the passport before he could clearly see either. As long as Blizzard felt he couldn't trust me, I couldn't really trust the vampire either. Trust was an odd phenomenon, it was either reciprocated, or it didn't exist in the first place.

"You want me to come in?" I asked. "Or is there something else you need before we go to the Queen?"

Blizzard eyed me for a long while. I put my hands in the pockets of the borrowed jacket while I waited. I held his carmin gaze, wondering what was going on in his handsome head. The red eyes really suited his features, his beard was red too, his hair almost orange.

"You sound and look like a vampire," he said after what felt like an hour. "And yet your breath mists in the cold and your nose drips."

He shook his head.

"It is truly a shame I don't remember you as a vampire. You must have been magnificent. Such a loss."

The passenger door opened and I sat against the leather seat with a sigh. I put my hands close to the warm air current from the fans. The car started soundlessly and made a smooth U-turn.

"I suppose you just have to remember me now, Blizzard," I said to him, as a sort of an answer to his odd comment. "I think we can be reacquainted again. Let's start again, from today."

"Mmm..."

Silence, in which we left the empty sidestreet for a bigger and better lit road leading north.

"In that case, Timothy, I am pleased to meet you. I am called Blizzard. I am a vampire."

He took his right hand off the wheel and extended it to me. I turned awkwardly, restricted by the seatbelt. Then I clasped the hand.

"I am pleased to meet you, Blizzard the vampire. You can call me Timothy."

He rested his hand back on the wheel. He had big, powerful looking fingers with thick nails that shone like polished.