Thicker Than Blood (Marchwood Vampire Series #2) by Shalini Boland Page A

what they should do. But sleep came for him straight
away.
    The afternoon passed uneventfully and all
Alexandre and the others could do was to wait for night to fall.
Luckily it arrived shortly after 4.30pm and Alexandre was straight
out of the door with the others close behind. Isobel was to stay at
the house with Ben and Esther. Ben wouldn’t like it, but he was
still asleep and they had all decided not to wake him.
    Alexandre took in a lungful of night air and
headed over to his motorbike, a BMW S1000RR. Morris had topped-up
the fuel tank and parked it on the driveway ready to go. The
caretaker was standing next to the bike and it looked like he
wanted to speak to Alex. He really didn’t want to waste a single
second chatting, so he nodded to Morris and made straight for his
bike. But the caretaker started speaking.
    ‘ I’ll ask around in town
this evening. See if anyone’s seen her. You never know
…’
    ‘ Thanks, Morris. That
would be great.’
    ‘ I’ll speak to ‘em down at
The Bell. If anything strange is happening round here, they’ll know
about it.’ Morris was referring to his regular haunt, The Old Bell.
Nowadays it was a luxury hotel, but it had once been a normal pub
where Morris and his friends would sip a pint of bitter and have a
chat. The décor and prices had changed dramatically over the last
thirty years, but Morris and his cronies had carried on frequenting
the place nonetheless.
    ‘ Let me know how you get
on,’ Alex said, not really listening to the caretaker and itching
to be off. He didn’t want any undue police attention, so he wore
his leathers and crash helmet like a good little human, jumped on
his bike and sped off. The others would follow in Leonora’s silver
Audi RS6 – comfortable but fast.
    As he rode, Alexandre tried not to think,
but everything flashed through his mind at once. He ripped up the
miles, avoiding the cop cars and speed cameras, taking the bike as
fast as it would allow, weaving in and out of the traffic in a blur
of shiny noise.
    During their last fateful meeting, Blythe
had told him that his ancient vampire clients wanted him and the
other ‘fledgling’ vampires dead. But why? Were they really that
much of a threat? Was this why they were being summoned? To be
killed? He would gladly give his own life for Madison’s, but he
could not give up the lives of his siblings, or Freddie’s or
Leonora’s.
    In less than an hour, he hit London and came
to a halt outside the offices of Hamilton Blythe, in the affluent
area of Marylebone. The others would have traffic to contend with.
They could call him when they arrived, but he didn’t plan on
waiting around. He would manage Blythe himself. They knew it was a
risk going into his offices after the last time. But what choice
did they have? They had still found no home address for that wily
lawyer.
    Alexandre swung his long legs off the bike
and removed his crash helmet. Then he flexed his fingers and combed
them through his hair as he stared up at the huge building in front
of him. The white mansion block was the epitome of respectability.
No one would have guessed that beneath its traditional façade lay a
state-of-the-art underground facility dedicated to reviving dormant
vampires as well as destroying them. But Alexandre didn’t plan on
going down there. All he needed to do was discover Winston Blythe’s
address and he would find that easily enough, even if it meant
coercing the information from someone.
    The offices were closed, but Alex didn’t
have long to wonder what to do as, within a couple of minutes, the
black painted front door swung open and two smartly-dressed women
emerged. Alexandre slipped past them, like a cool breeze. One of
the women shivered and frowned, but at that moment her colleague
said something funny and she laughed, dismissing the shadow she
thought she’d seen out of the corner of her eye.
    Once inside the building, Alexandre scanned
each room, until he reached the fourth floor