Demon Blood

street. Yet she wasn’t standing there looking forlorn, looking sad. The sidewalk lay empty. So she’d finally taken the hint and gone.
    It didn’t feel like he’d won.

CHAPTER 7
    Rosalia hadn’t witnessed the battle that had made Deacon the leader of the Prague community. She’d only heard the story later that night, coaxing it from a vampire who’d still been shivering in the corner of the club where the fight had been waged.
    Much of the city still lay in rubble after the American bombing earlier that year. The war had devastated both human and vampire communities; Deacon and Camille—friendly, but already distant—had traveled from city to city, helping rebuild. Taking over a community of vampires hadn’t been on his agenda, and he might have been surprised to find himself in that position. Once she’d heard how it had come about, however, Rosalia hadn’t been surprised at all.
    A vampire female had come to beg help from Marco, the community head. New to the city, her husband had been killed in the bombings, leaving her without a partner to feed from . . . and the infant that she and her husband had transformed twenty years before.
    The vampire recounting the story had wept as he’d described the baby boy the female had brought with her: curly-haired, fanged, blue eyes shining with the intelligence of a young man. Rosalia had listened, sick to her heart.
    The bloodlust created a powerful sexual drive, even in children—and the reality of feeding them was too horrifying for almost any vampire to contemplate. Every community had rules forbidding their transformation, but Rosalia still knew of a few children who’d been changed. Almost all had been sickly as humans, whose parents couldn’t bear to lose them. And although their minds eventually matured, their forms never did—and anyone who desired that form could never be an admirable life partner. Rosalia had pitied both parents and children, and had done what she could to help them . . . but there wasn’t much that could be done.
    Marco hadn’t agreed. Something could be done. And when she held the infant out to him, imploring him to help, his solution had been to strike the boy’s head from his shoulders.
    The woman had still been screaming when Deacon had challenged the older vampire. She’d screamed while their swords had clashed, as their blood fell slick on the floor, Deacon the weaker of the two but driven by fury. She’d been screaming when Deacon had stood over Marco, the vampire’s heart in his hand.
    Deacon could have chosen to leave the community to someone else. Camille had asked him to; when she finally led a city of vampires, she hadn’t wanted that city to be Prague. But he’d chosen the community over her, and his decision had finalized the break between them—a decision that had ended up being better for the both of them.
    But Rosalia didn’t think he’d planned it that way. No, if she had learned anything about him in those years between the wars, it was that Deacon acted in the moment. Not thoughtlessly, and usually with full understanding of the consequences, he decisively handled each problem as it came his way. If his people were threatened, he’d faced the threat and neutralized it. And if his people—or any other vampire— stepped over the community rules, he enforced them. But he didn’t manipulate his people or maneuver them; he didn’t sweeten them up or cajole them. Always straightforward, he told them how something should be, and then he backed up his words.
    His approach was so different from Rosalia’s. She spent so many hours planning ahead, examining her every move from several angles, trying to anticipate each outcome, and utilizing other people’s strengths and weaknesses to achieve the result she wanted. When faced with an immediate threat, she acted quickly, but she preferred a more considered method.
    Now she thought it was no surprise that Deacon both fascinated and frustrated her. He simply reacted, sometimes with hardness or anger, at other times with compassion and gentleness. And although Rosalia had suffered through upheavals in her life, her considered approach had helped her weather the bumps and keep everything around her under control. But Deacon’s volatility didn’t allow her that smooth ride, and she found herself reacting strongly in return.
    She’d always been drawn to him. But she hadn’t known that once she was close to him, the swing of her emotions would be so violent