Yet Atreides seemed to have believed he had talked to her through telepathic conversation. None of it made any sense.
Then she realized Atreides and Iconia were having a stare down. Which meant? They were telepathically communicating. Okay, so then why couldn't Selena hear any of it? That proved Atreides was wrong!
Then she saw trouble ahead. Two hunters were approaching the two vampiresses who had been with Iconia while she was having her meltdown with Atreides. One was Cliff, the brother of the one Selena had killed. She hurried to get into place so that she was close enough to protect the two women, should the hunters threaten them. Atreides had made sure that all the women who were taking part in this manhunt were not rogues and shouldn't be on any hunter's target list.
That was all the vampires needed was to kill a hunter who was legally hunting a rogue. The two hunters were respectfully asking the vampiresses questions, not hassling them or acting threateningly in any manner.
Atreides had quickly joined Selena, while Iconia had appeared next to her friends, which she wasn't supposed to do because she could have spooked the hunters and made them believe she was coming in for the attack. But they just eyed her warily, hands on the hilts of their swords, naturally, but no one fought anyone, thankfully.
Selena heard her name mentioned, which surprised her. "We're looking for Selena Townsend," Cliff said. "We know she has been hanging around vampiresses to protect them."
Oh, great, so they already knew what she was up to, or maybe, because she'd tried to protect Charlene, they had just assumed it.
"What do you want with her?" Iconia asked, as if she was protecting her, but Selena suspected if they had a beef with Selena, Iconia would happily just point behind them where Selena and Atreides were lying in wait in case there was any trouble. Which would blow their whole operation.
"She has gone missing and a human reported that she might have been…abducted by a vampire. Then her sister has gone missing too." Cliff acted as though he cared about her safety, when in truth Selena knew he wanted her head on a platter for killing his brother.
"I've heard she and her sister are together and they’re having a great time. I'll be sure to let them know you want to hear on their status should I ever run into them somewhere, though I highly doubt I will. You might know that hunters and vampires don't generally socialize. I'm sure they'll get in touch with you and let you know they're fine." Iconia sounded arrogant, her arms folded across her chest, looking like she had no intention of "finding" said huntresses or of telling them a hunter wanted to hear about them. Not that Selena blamed her. Under normal circumstances, it would probably never happen.
Cliff nodded. "Then we'll be on our way."
"Wait," Iconia said. "Aren't you glad they're together, having a great time?"
How did Iconia know she and her sister had seen each other and were working together on this? Unless she'd just made it up.
"Yeah, sure, but I'll really be certain when I find…them. Like you said, you probably won’t be seeing them, but I still need to know for sure that they’re…fine."
Cliff didn't care anything about finding her sister, unless it led him to Selena, she bet. Then the hunters wandered off into the thickening mist. The fog had started out light, but it was getting to the point where they couldn't see anything very far away. That gave the vampires the advantage because they could still hear the hunters' footfalls even if they were trying to sneak around in the dark. All of them could see well in the dark. But the vampires could move with their vanishing act and keep ahead of the hunters.
As soon as the hunters left, the vampiresses watched them until they disappeared into the foggy night, and Iconia and her friends continued to walk.
"Do you often see this many hunters about near the vampire clubs?" Selena asked Atreides. She didn't think this was usual.
"No. I don't know whether it's because the hunters that we just saw want you dead, or if some of the others are looking into who might be hunting vampiresses. If the hunters truly don't want a war on their hands because of whoever is killing our people, then it would behoove them to help us with this. Or at least help themselves by taking down the rogue hunters."
"I agree." But about this other business—Selena being a vampire—she knew Atreides was wrong. "I'm not one of you, you know. You are mistaken."
Chapter 11
Atreides knew he wasn't mistaken about Selena having been turned. He just didn't want to upset her further about what she'd become while they were trying to safeguard the vampiresses. Unless a huntress had the rare telepathic gift, she couldn't hear vampires' thoughts when they communicated that way with each other. And Iconia had been telepathically speaking to her friends. She hadn't spoken to just them, but for any vampire in the area to hear, which meant she'd been highly perturbed with both him and Selena to air her grievances like that.
"Your friend is going to get herself killed if she's trying to protect our kind," Iconia said to Atreides in her telepathic way, but she was channeling her thoughts directly to him and no other vampires could hear her, just like she had done earlier with him.
"She has risked her life already for some of us. She's one of us now."
Iconia looked sharply back in the direction Atreides and Selena were hidden from their sight. "What? A huntress who is now claiming to be one of our clan?" She scoffed. "That would never happen unless she was bitten and turned. And you better not even think of doing that to her."
"Unless I'm wildly mistaken, she has already been turned."
Dead silence. Atreides knew that wouldn't go over well with Iconia. Then yeah, Selena would be a member of their clan, just like the huntress turned vampire Tezra was. It also meant Iconia might have some competition because Selena had already said she wanted to dance with him again. Never in a millennium would he have figured this would come about. His brother would have a fit when he heard all that had happened. Atreides’s only solution was to resolve the issue between the hunters who were out to kill their vampiresses and turn them over to the League for their disposition. He did not want, under any circumstance, for his people to attack the hunters, even if the hunters were in the wrong.
Forever, their people would stand up and fight and not back down. He'd tried repeatedly—and unsuccessfully—to convince them that they needed to just vanish if confronted by hunters. The problem was the vampires, as a whole, felt they were vastly superior to the hunters and humans. And that was ingrained in them from the time they could vanish and flee a fight, and the hunters taunted them for being cowards and not facing them in battle.
"You've got to be kidding. If not by you, then by whom? Ohmigod, the vampire who brutalized her?" Iconia asked, sounding shocked.
In a way, Atreides hoped she was one of them, but he knew Selena would be upset about it and the League and her family could have real issues with it. "Yeah, if what I believe is true."
"So why do you even think it's true? When I was aggravating her, she didn't expose fangs, not even baby ones," Iconia said.
"You were telepathically communicating to your friends on an open broadcast about wanting to kill her if she saw me any further."