Adrian had made a lot of questionable life choices—dating his ex, choosing to major in art history, eating that suspicious convenience store sushi—but getting into a car with a vampire who'd just murdered three other vampires definitely topped the list.
Yet here he was, sitting in the back of a luxury sedan that probably cost more than his entire education, trying very hard not to think about the fact that the beautiful, terrifying man beside him wasn't human.
"So," Adrian said, because silence made him anxious and anxiety made him talk, "vampire. Real. Cool, cool, cool. What else is real? Werewolves? Ghosts? The Loch Ness Monster?"
"Werewolves, yes. Ghosts, complicated. Nessie is just a plesiosaur that survived extinction." Kieran didn't look at him, his eyes fixed on the Shanghai streets flashing by. "And before you ask, no, we don't sparkle, yes, we drink blood, no, we don't sleep in coffins."
"Do you die in sunlight?"
"It hurts, but it won't kill me. Not anymore."
There was something in the way he said it—not anymore—that made Adrian's skin prickle. "How old are you? Like, actually?"
Kieran finally turned to look at him, and Adrian's breath caught. In the dim light of the car, his eyes looked almost silver, ancient and haunted and infinitely sad.
"One thousand and twenty-seven years old."
Adrian's brain short-circuited. "I'm sorry, WHAT—"
The car pulled up to a glittering skyscraper that seemed to pierce the clouds. Kieran was out in a flash, opening Adrian's door with an old-fashioned courtesy that would have been charming if Adrian wasn't currently having an existential crisis.
"Welcome to my home," Kieran said. "You'll be safe here."
Adrian looked up at the building, then back at the vampire. "And if I say no? If I want to go back to my shitty apartment and my normal life?"
Kieran's expression softened, just for a moment. "Then Viktor Volkov's vampires will find you, and they'll use you to start a war that will kill millions. Your normal life ended the moment you were reborn."
"Reborn?" Adrian's voice rose. "What the hell does that mean, reborn?"
But Kieran was already walking toward the entrance, and Adrian, against every instinct of self-preservation, followed.