Read Bloody Acquisitions (Fred Book 3) for Free Online

or not. Somewhere in the discussion, he’d become inconsequential. What she was interested in was me, or rather, if I could stop her from killing him. This was a game to her. Brains or brawn, she wanted to see what I was made of. Knowing that, I realized I only had one move left. I needed to go for a high stakes gambit.
    “I guess I can’t stop you,” I told her, but even as I spoke, I began to back away. “Just, give me a few seconds to get clear first. I really don’t want to be close enough to see what happens to you.”
    Her brow creased. This was not a method she’d been anticipating, because why on earth would she? It didn’t really make sense, but if I shuffled the facts around fast enough, she might not notice that.
    “What do you expect to happen? The hunter is down. I would easily sense if he’d awakened.”
    “Oh yeah, Colin looks down for the count. In fact, I think he needs some serious medical attention. But see, nuts as that hunter is, he’s also shown himself to be really smart. He found out what I was by staking out my blood supply. He took away my car and communication before anything else. When I ran, he kept finding me, and I still have no idea how he pulled that off. Not to mention his weapons. Silver, fire, all the classics, plus some ingenious stuff of his own.” I tapped lightly on the hook sticking out of my chest to illustrate the point.
    “I’m sure he was quite formidable, before I cracked him in the back of the head,” Lillian said. Her brow was still creased, but she was starting to grow impatient. She thought I was stalling for time, instead of building up to something.
    “Formidable, and suicidal,” I corrected. “No concern for his own well-being what-so-ever. If I weren’t . . . me . . . then there were several chances I could have used to kill him tonight. Tell me, someone like that—someone cunning and informed, with very little sense of self-preservation—doesn’t that seem like the kind of man who would booby trap his own blood, just in case he lost? One last ‘screw you’ to the vampire that brought him down?”
    That got her attention. She looked from me to Colin, to the blood slowly streaming from his forehead. “Silver is poisonous to humans as well.”
    “Not right away. They can have a lot of it in their system before it does them in. There would be long-term side effects, but that only matters for someone who expects to live through the year. And it wouldn’t take much to hurt a vampire, especially from the inside.” It took everything I had not to fidget, or break our eye contact, or give any other indication of just how full of shit I was. I had no idea how long a human could last with silver in their body, or what amount of it would get to the blood, or how it would impact a vampire who drank it. This was all speculation and conjecture, which is a nicer way of saying a complete wild guess. It was all I had, though.
    My only hope—actually, Colin’s only hope—was that Lillian didn’t know any more about the subject than I did. She contemplated him again for a while, then walked over to me, moving slowly until she was only inches away.
    “Fredrick Fletcher, you are an interesting one.” Reaching out, she took the hook poking through my chest and snapped it clean off, almost effortlessly. I’d love to say the bend loosened it for her, but the implication was clear. She’d been partaking in more blood, probably even that of other parahumans, and was
much
stronger than I was. That’s the most dangerous thing about vampires—when we drink the blood of other parahumans, we absorb part of their ability. The strength and regeneration of therians is apparently a popular favorite, and the exact reason why so many of Richard’s staff look at me with distrust.
    “Congratulations, Fredrick. You have saved this hunter’s life. I have no claim to kill him unless I am feeding, and you make the proposition of ingesting his blood a bit more than I’d like