Free Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones

with a barb, he now backed away to examine its effect.
    Nodding thoughtfully, he continued. ‘Then you find out the truth of what you are. And what is that exactly, Leah? Some would say a monstrosity. A bastard half-breed. Neither fully one thing nor another. The hosszú életek may have welcomed you into their fold, but they don’t fully trust you, do they? You must sit awkwardly with them.’
    ‘What can you possibly know of that?’
    ‘You’d be surprised. But what I want to know now – what I insist upon knowing – is why you’re here tonight.’
    ‘I’m sure you heard what I told your father.’
    ‘I’d like to hear it directly, all the same.’ He spun the gun through another revolution, and even through her fear Leah cringed at the sound of the metal scratching a groove into the flawless mahogany slab.
    He stared at her a moment longer, and she saw the violet striations once more begin to feather his eyes. Silent, he pushed the weapon with his fingertips. It slid across the table towards her. Leah caught it under her hand.
    ‘Come with me,’ he said, standing.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    Ignoring her question, he disappeared through the arch beside the skeleton of Ursus spelaeus and into the unlit chamber beyond. The darkness gloved him in an instant.
    The gun doesn’t make you safe. It’s a test. Nothing more.
    Leah picked up the Ruger. On her feet now, dismayed by a trembling in her limbs that made the floor feel as if it undulated beneath her, she followed.
    It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and then dark shapes began to coalesce from the shadows. The chamber resembled one section of a quartered pie. Its curved wall, like the larger living space at her back, was constructed from floor-to-ceiling glass. Through it, across a dark canyon like a crack in the earth, she saw the three towering megaliths of the Bernese Alps, their snow-frosted summits suffused with a spectral glow. Studding the sky above those peaks, instead of the miser’s dusting of stars Leah might have witnessed from town, she saw a galaxy of twinkling lights, so many that it seemed as if a magician’s purse had been spilled across the heavens. Even as fearful as she was, their beauty awed her.
    Her chaperon stood to her left, the floor beneath his feet like a slab of polished black glass. ‘They say there’re as many as four hundred billion stars in our galaxy,’ he murmured. ‘And our galaxy’s just one in perhaps five hundred billion others. That’s about seventy each for you, me and every other human who walks the earth.’
    Unable to decide how to respond to an observation like that, Leah risked a question instead. ‘Will you tell me your name?’
    Keeping his eyes on the night sky, he replied, ‘You can call me Luca. Luca Sultés.’
    ‘Is that your real name?’
    ‘It’s as good as any other.’
    ‘I seem to have upset your father.’
    ‘He has a long memory. And he’s not as trusting as I.’
    ‘You trust me, then?’
    ‘No. I don’t.’ Sultés turned towards her. ‘Why did you come, Leah? Why are you here?’
    ‘I told you. I want your help. Your father’s help.’
    ‘You want us to divulge the details of every kirekesztett woman alive who’s managed to scrape out an existence while avoiding the attentions of your Merénylő .’
    At his mention of Merénylő , a word that referred to the hosszú életek leader’s assassin, a role that had existed for centuries, she shook her head. ‘He’s not my Merénylő . I’m a monstrosity, remember? A bastard half-breed.’
    Sultés was silent for a while, considering her. ‘You know, the original building plans for this house refer to where we’re standing as the sun room. But I’ve always called it something else – the fainting chamber. Because so many of our visitors, when we reveal its secret, do exactly that.’
    He smiled, but little humour resided in his expression. His eyes were predatory.
    Such a dangerously compelling face, she thought.