Read Online Fang Girl by Helen Keeble - Free Book Online Page B

Bellefleur. Now, I am simply Ebène de Sanguine.” He bowed deeply, sweeping back his long, black frock coat with perfect grace, as though this was his customary attire. “I would be pleased if you would call me Ebon. I have come to bring you home.”
    The best I could muster was a heartfelt “huh?” I was lagging about two minutes behind the conversation. I kept thinking of that horrible crunch through my hands.
    “I must deeply apologize from the bottom of my soul that it has taken so long for us to send one of the Blood to welcome you,” Ebon said, somehow managing to enunciate the capitalization. “I must confess that we were unprepared for your Transfiguration”—onceagain I could hear the capitals clanging into place—“but I can assure you that you will be a treasured jewel among us. Now, ma chérie , we must make haste.” His face turned serious, and he held out a long, white-fingered hand. “This place is not safe. As you have discovered, the hunters are closing in. I will protect you with my very life, but I cannot hold this place secure for long. You must come.”
    I struggled to get my brain to concentrate. “Come … with you? Where?”
    “To your true home,” he said—and suddenly his face was only inches from mine. I froze, transfixed by the pale blue of his eyes, as clear and cool as the light at the heart of a glacier. “Come, Xanthe,” he murmured, shaping the hated sound of my name into something beautiful and wild. “I long to teach you. To show you who you are, and the power you will become. It is time for you to learn everything.”
    I stared at him, and he didn’t become any less real. There was an actual gorgeous vampire aristocrat in front of me, vowing to lay down his life in my defense. All I had to do was take his hand.
    “Okay,” I whispered, my throat dry. “First let’s hide this body somewhere, and then …”
    “And then?” he whispered back, his breath cool on my lips. His pale eyes gazed into mine, wordlessly promising to whisk me away from all my troubles.
    Or, to put it another way, a very strange man with predator’s teeth wanted to get me alone.
    “And then,” I said firmly, taking his hand, “you’re coming home to meet my parents.”

Chapter 9
    I had to admit, Ebon was somewhat less cool in our living room than he had appeared when dramatically posed on top of a car. What had been an elegant, model-slender physique in the starlight was now the slightly stretched look of a teenage boy who’d hit his full height too quickly, leaving him with gangly limbs and gawky wrists. Sure, his pale blue eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones could have launched a thousand boy bands, but put him in jeans and a T-shirt, and he’d easily have passed as a student at any high school. As it was, the wildly spiked hair, leather trousers, and velvet coat gave the vague impression of a teenager dressing for Halloween as the bastard love child of Edward Cullen and Dracula.
    With Ebon seated on the sofa and the three of us arranged opposite him on dining chairs, the whole scene had the air of a job interview. Ebon perched gingerly on the very edge of the cushions, spine perfectly straight, as though afraid the sofa might eat him if he leaned back. His eyes flicked from me to Dad to Zack and back again.
    “So,” Dad said in a horrible fake-hearty voice that made me cringe in my chair, “you’re a vampire, are you?”
    Ebon inclined his head stiffly.
    “See?” I hissed to Zack, who was staring at Ebon with unreserved interest. “I told you so.”
    “I still think he could be a zombie,” he whispered back, loudly enough that Ebon would probably have been able to hear it from the next room. “He looks awfully rigid.”
    Zack had a point. Ebon’s bony hands were clenched on his knees. Rigor mortis seemed to have set in.
    Mum came in, carefully balancing a tray. Despite the fact that it was one in the morning and she was wearing fuzzy, leopard-print slippers, her hardwired sense