“So, I need to make sure I get what I want in return before I hand you over to the people who’ll most likely kill you.”
Dread sinks my heart.
“What?” I whisper, the panic clawing through me.
“Oh,” he says, looking mildly surprised, hand at his chest. “You’re making me feel as if I’ve betrayed you already.” He leans in. “Remember what I said before, that you weren’t scared enough? Seems like now you finally are.”
I stare at him, feeling rage run though me, gasoline chucked on a fire, flames igniting along every single limb. “You’re a monster,” I practically growl.
“I never said I wasn’t,” he snaps. Then he leans over to the bedside table and brings out an antique hand mirror, showing me my face. “But do you see now what your anger, what your drive to stay alive, is doing to you?”
I stare at my face.
At the crescent moons in my eyes.
Not just a crescent moon, a waning moon.
I remember what my mother would always say about them.
The time of change, to cut cords, to banish that which doesn’t suit us.
Why are they in my eyes?
“It’s not drugs, moonshine,” Absolon says, knowing what I’m about to think at this point. “But I can’t explain it either. Unless the rumors are true. And if they are true, then the next stages might be interesting. As such, I’m not cutting you loose, I’m not letting you go, and I’m not handing you over to the highest bidder…yet.”
Then, while he’s holding onto the mirror with one hand, he leans in and runs his finger over my top lip. I’m tempted to bite him, but from the heated, almost playful look in his eyes, I know he knows that. He probably wants that to happen.
He places his finger on my upper lip and pushes up along my canines so they’re exposed in the mirror.
I gasp.
Not only do my teeth as a whole seem brighter and whiter than they’ve ever been, but my canines are sharp. Very sharp. They don’t even feel that sharp to my tongue, but looking at them in the mirror…I look like a fucking vampire.
Something deep inside me, buried in that well, churns.
It’s a dark, sickly feeling.
Just hearing the word in my head makes me feel ill.
Vampire.
I glance up at Absolon and he’s slowly nodding his head behind the mirror. “Perhaps you should listen to the word you don’t want to hear.”
I stare at him for a moment, the ridiculousness sinking into me, then I look into the mirror, running the tip of my tongue over the tooth.
Vampire.
And now when I look at Absolon again, I know what he is.
He’s a vampire.
Which is stupid.
So stupid.
There’s no such thing as vampires. Just another thing people make up to explain the unexplainable.
But…he is a vampire.
I’m split in two, wrestling with myself, because on one hand I want to believe it, I want to indulge myself in this fantasy, because it would explain so much. The fact that he can hear my thoughts, his strength, his speed, and it would also explain other things for which I have no proof: his pale skin, his dark house, his hypnotizing stare, his penchant for blood, the fact that he once had tattoos and now doesn’t.
On the other hand, no.
No.
No such thing.
Oh, I believe in the supernatural. I do. I believe in ghosts. I believe in spirits and demons and sometimes I believe in witches, at least in the very grounded ways. But vampires? No. They are not a thing. If Absolon believes he’s a vampire, then that’s a very different story altogether. A lot of people want to be vampires so badly that they believe they are one, when really they just have a couple of screws loose.
“While you have that argument with yourself,” he says to me, putting the mirror away, “let’s try a little experiment to see if we can speed up the process. The sooner you believe it, the better chance you have to survive all of this.” He pauses. “Besides, I’m curious. It’s been hundreds of years since something captured my attention like you have.”
I stare at him. Hundreds of years?
And then he grins, showing me canines that match mine, and holds out his arm. I stare at the soft underside of his forearm, admiring the strength and purity of his skin for a moment before I notice the dark vein running down the middle of it, full of blood. I swear I even hear the blood whooshing, feel the tremors through the bed.
He reaches back and pulls out a pair of car keys, but they’re old keys, the type that belong to a vintage car, a Ford, and on the keychain is a black Swiss Army Knife. He opens it deftly, showcasing a blade that captures the candlelight.
With one swift movement he slices the blade along the vein, and I’m so horrified that a scream is strangled in my throat, because blood is spilling everywhere on the black sheets, and he just hit a major artery, is he trying to kill himself?