Hunted (Belle Morte Book 3)

Chapter Six

Ludovic

Roux was gone by the time Ludovic came out of the bathroom, but he could hear her voice on the other side of the door, out in the corridor. Renie and Jason were with her, and Ludovic paused for a moment, listening. He didn't want to invade their privacy but he'd heard his name mentioned, and even vampires were subject to human curiosity.

Roux's friends were worried about her, and Ludovic didn't blame them. He was confident that he could easily deal with the Five but he also didn't fool himself into thinking that at least some of them wouldn't fight back. They'd come into their vampire lives knowing that they'd have to fight, and they wouldn't give up easily.

Things could, and probably would, get a little bloody over these two weeks, and Ludovic could handle that. But he didn't want Roux getting involved.

There was only one person in the world he was used to talking to about anything like this. Crossing the room, he opened the door. Roux and her friends stared back at him, and blatant surprise registered on Renie and Jason's faces.

Self-consciously he lifted a hand to touch his knitted hat and the tousled hair beneath it. Even when he was human he hadn't looked like this, and it made him feel like a stranger in his own skin.

"Do you know where Edmond is?" he asked Renie.

"I think he's in our room," she replied.

Ludovic nodded and strode past her without another word. He could feel their gazes on him as he walked down the corridor, but he didn't look back.

Edmond was, as Renie had said, in the bedroom that they now shared in the north wing. The door was open but Ludovic hesitated on the threshold, suddenly unsure. At any other time in the ten years that he and Edmond had lived here, he'd have walked in without a second thought. But this room now belonged to Renie, too, and Ludovic wasn't sure if he could still walk in uninvited.

Finally, he went for the safe option and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe.

Edmond, straightening out the bedcovers, looked up, and a flicker of confusion passed across his face. Ludovic was sure Edmond was going to ask why he was knocking when he didn't normally bother. But Edmond didn't ask and Ludovic was relieved. That wasn't a discussion he wanted to get into just yet.

"Are you alright?" Edmond asked, slowly looking him up and down.

He'd only known Ludovic as a vampire, so this human look was as new to Edmond as it was to Ludovic himself.

Was he alright? Ludovic didn't quite know how to answer that question. In almost no time at all he would leave the place that had been his home and safe haven for the last ten years, and go back out into the world. He'd already left Belle Morte a few days ago, and had travelled to Fiaigh in Ireland, but that didn't really count because he and the others had been running for their lives. He hadn't had time to actually think about much beyond staying alive and planning to reclaim Belle Morte.

But the past decade had changed the world outside. It was a foreign place to Ludovic now, and he didn't know how to begin to understand it.

"Ludovic?"

He looked up and realised Edmond was standing in front of him, his expression concerned. "Are you alright?" Edmond repeated.

"Am I doing the right thing, letting Roux come with me?" Ludovic said.