Free Blood Guilt by Marie Treanor

safe from the vampires here?” she asked abruptly. “Can they sense him? Or you?”
    “I’ve masked us both.”
    “How will I know when the threat is over?” she asked, jerking her head toward Robbie.
    “I’ll come back for him. And you.”
    She felt her eyes widen. “Let’s be clear, Maximilian. Neither of us is going anywhere with you. I will not smuggle this child out of his own country or let you take him. And do you really imagine you can deal with all those vampires on your own?”
    Unfazed by her change of subject, he gave only a faint curl of his lips in response, lifted one hand to Robbie, who grinned at him, and walked out of the room. Mihaela hurried after him, determined to quarrel some more, but the front door was already closing behind him. By the time she got back to the living room window, he was little more than a shadow vanishing around the corner of the street.
    ****
    Maximilian found he was enjoying the experience of driving, now he was more used to the way the car worked. He’d stolen it from the hotel car park at dusk, and the journey up to St. Andrews had been more of an experiment than anything else, achieved by means of little more than his own fast reflexes and a one-hour observation of Saloman’s driving during his stay in Budapest. Now he rather liked pushing the car to its limit and speeding down roads, overtaking with, to mere human perception, too little space, time, or vision of the road ahead. For this reason, he traveled to the accompanying blare of other cars’ horns, which struck him as amusing.
    He didn’t remember very much else amusing him in the last couple of hundred years.
    It felt good to be entertained again. It felt good to be thinking and planning again—especially when he sensed Gavril and the other vampires traveling as they were meant to, straight to St. Andrews.

Chapter Five
    Since there were no children’s toys or games in Elizabeth’s flat, Mihaela made do with a pack of cards and played snap with her young visitor. And while she did, she dredged her mind for a solution. Robbie could not stay with her indefinitely. In fact, he shouldn’t be with her at all. Yet to call social services and have him returned to Edinburgh would surely put him back in danger, at least until Maximilian had dealt with the vampires who were pursuing the boy.
    Which was another thing. It made her feel physically unwell to be leaving this to a vampire. To be giving anyone else the chance of killing her family’s murderer. But she couldn’t just park Robbie with a neighbor. Leaving aside the vampire danger, and Robbie’s propensity to run away whenever he sniffed an interesting presence, he’d surely been pushed from enough pillars to posts in his young life.
    Besides, rather to her surprise, she was enjoying his company. There was a rare bitter sweetness in having a child around the place. And although he provided an all too lively reminder of her secret, impossible yearnings for a normal family life, the truth was, she found she just liked Robbie himself.
    Watching his happy concentration on their game, Mihaela wondered what was really going on in his unique little head. Did he just make the most of every situation? Did he accept abuse as part of care, or believe it simply to be better than being alone? Or maybe the seeking out of telepathic beings was an excuse to be away from his carers rather than a quest for like minds.
    “You won’t run away from me , Robbie, will you?” she asked.
    Robbie shook his head, grinning shyly, and she knew with a sinking heart that if the notion came to him, then of course he would.
    “Nah,” he said. “I promised him I wouldn’t.”
    “Promised who?” she asked quickly.
    “Him. The vampire. Max.”
    Mihaela’s mouth fell open. She caught her jaw before it bounced off the floor. “You know what he is? The man who brought you here?”
    “He told me. He said the other men are the same.”
    “They are,” Mihaela said firmly.
    “But