What I meant, though, is it's going to be difficult for the Carnifex with Liu Xi in the way. She might not fight him directly, but she can sure make Vinnie really, really hard to find if she wanted to. Unfortunately the Carnifex' many predecessors gave her plenty of practice at that.





Grimpenghast also seems to have no comprehension of how much Liu Xi cares for her friends, and also how much people have taught her. It's quite likely getting her to sign a contract would lead to her finding a loophole.





See, what I thought of earlier is Lara would know that the one thing that would annoy really old immortals is if newer immortals thought they'd become more powerful by stealing from them.

The difference, she would hope, would be that if she takes the blood back and returns it to Vrykolakas, he might not like her for it, but he'd at least appreciate that she takes it seriously, unlike the WNC. That seems to be right now, since Vinnie got the same "courtesy".

It's like a thief stealing a nuclear weapon from someone else and returning it to the government - it's not like the government trusts you any more than the other person, but they'll give you a break because you took it seriously enough to return it.





It makes sense, though. The nature of Vinnie's job is that he has to hurt people sometimes, especially high-profile people like the Lair Legion. He can't convince Liu Xi to stop caring for them, so it might harm the friendship.

Or the other scenario is Liu Xi may have to purposely harm the friendship because Vinnie insists on allowing himself to be harmed to protect her or the Lair Legion.

The other alternative is that two heads are better than one - if Vinnie gets backed into a corner, since he's closer to Liu Xi and the Lair Legion than Xander was, he'll have a lot of help coming up with alternate ideas.