A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire #21)(57)

“Uncle.” A voice spoke. A deep male voice. A voice that sparked a chill at the back of my neck. It sounded eerily familiar.

I strained to see who had spoken, but although it came from only a few feet away, a rock near my head blocked my view. Then I didn’t need to strain myself. A man holding a wide umbrella leapt on top of the rock and gazed down at me.

So this is Jeramiah Novak. My nephew. He looked less like his father then I’d expected—with long, dark hair tied up in a bun—although he shared the same cold, harsh eyes and hard, square jawline. He certainly had the height and build of a Novak, too.

I glared up at him, uncertain of how even to respond. Hello? Nice to finally meet you? I knew almost nothing about this man, while he had never met me, and yet he stared down at me with such hatred that one would have thought I’d been his enemy all his life.

“Nephew,” I replied in kind, clenching my jaw.

He leapt from the rock and landed near my head, still gazing down at me with a calm expression on his face, though his eyes glinted dangerously. I knew those eyes. I’d seen them before in my own brother. They were the eyes of a man who had nothing to lose.

“I’ll admit,” I said, glaring daggers up at him, “this is not the way I’d hoped our first meeting would go.”

His lips parted slowly from the hard line they had formed. “On the contrary, this is exactly how I’d imagined it.” I could see that he was being careful not to cast any of the shadow from his umbrella upon us.

Sofia began to stir. Her eyes lifted open and she grimaced, then groaned in pain. She couldn’t even turn over on her stomach to at least hide her face from the sun.

Time was running out for Sofia and Aiden. The clock had started ticking the moment Jeramiah had placed them in the sun. While one thing was abundantly clear—I had to maintain my calm around this vampire—it was hard with my wife and father-in-law being tortured just a few feet away from me.

Even I, in my human form, found the sun’s blaze to be unpleasant. There were no clouds at all in the sky, and although midday had come and gone, the sun was still glaringly bright.

As my eyes shifted back to my nephew, his stubborn jaw locked, I was struck by a wave of déjà vu. It had been almost twenty years now since I’d had to deal with my brother, but now, as his son stood over me, I found myself sliding into exactly the same mode I had always tried to assume with him. While Lucas had been the one to try to spark an argument or fight, I had tried to avoid it—it was only when he’d pushed my hand too far that I’d snapped. I realized that I needed to take the same approach with his son, who appeared to be made of the same fabric.

Lucas had reveled in conflict and evoking a reaction in me. I wasn’t going to give the latter to Jeramiah, and I was going to do all that I could to avoid the former.

“And what else did you imagine for this meeting?” I asked, maintaining a steady voice.

As though he had not heard my question, Jeramiah glanced away from me and fixed his gaze on Aiden, who, like Sofia, was also just beginning to come to. He left my side and walked over to him.

“Amaya,” Jeramiah called.

A witch appeared from nowhere and stood by my nephew’s side. She was tall and thin, with sleek black hair and sharp, elongated facial features.

“Keep me in shadow,” he ordered.

She took the umbrella from him and held it up over him.

Now, with both hands free, he bent down and gripped Aiden by the throat. Aiden—his eyes still drowning in mourning over the loss of his lover—grunted, unable to fight back, as Jeramiah lifted him up and pinned him upright against the side of the rock.

“No!” Sofia gasped. “Let go of him!”

Jeramiah turned his back on us and I could only imagine the expression on his face as he stared at Aiden Claremont.

Just like Lucas. He never was interested in a fair fight.

The way he was holding Aiden reminded me of the way Lucas had once held Sofia—helpless and pinned up against a wall—while he had assaulted her in my Sun Room.

“Pray tell, vampire,” I spoke up, even as it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain an even tone, “what exactly are you seeking to accomplish by all this? Apparently not a family reunion…”

Jeramiah threw a cold glance over his shoulder at me, and this time, his poker face broke and a scowl spread across his stony features.

I wasn’t sure exactly what was going through his mind as his hold abruptly loosened on Aiden, causing him to collapse onto the sharp rocks, but I was glad that at least I had managed to cause a distraction—however fleeting it might be.

At this point, it felt like I was dancing on hot coals, trying to figure out how to get through to a man I’d never met, going solely by the instincts I had developed while dealing with my brother.

He returned to my side and bent down, his knees jutting out and almost knocking my shoulder. Amaya followed him, continuing to provide shade.

His sharp blue eyes fixed on mine, and I held his gaze, unflinching.

“A family reunion would have been welcome, actually,” he said, in a softer voice than I had expected from him. A voice that didn’t quite match up with the harshness of his gaze. A voice that even quivered, ever so slightly. Perhaps he was not as closed off from emotion as he made himself out to be.

“In fact,” he continued, clearing his throat, “it’s what I had been hoping for the day I discovered that I was not the first Novak to be turned into a bloodsucker.” His jaw twitched. “I suppose you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that my father had been murdered by a member of my own extended family.”