Would he?
I didn’t have time to think about what might have happened, but it was strange to know there was a monster inside him the same as there was in me. He was a darker creature than I’d given him credit for, and knowing that made him seem more on my level somehow. Like he wasn’t better than me. We were equally fucked up.
“Can you find him?” I asked, knowing the wolf’s sense of smell was vastly superior to my own.
He snorted and let out a short growl.
“Then what are you waiting for?”
The wolf charged off, his feet momentarily slipping on the pool of blood fanning across the floor. When he got his paws back under him, he shot me a look over his shoulder that—given the violet-gray eyes—was pure Desmond.
A little warning next time.
I offered an apologetic shrug, and it was enough for him because he bolted again, chasing a scent that was beyond my means to find. If not for my supernatural speed and running stamina, he would have gotten so far ahead I’d surely lose him. Thankfully I was able to stay a few paces behind, but he had the advantage when it came to clearing pipes, and soon I was chasing his shadow back through the tunnels until we were at the metro employee passage where we’d originally entered.
Peyton stood in the doorway, turning backwards only when he heard us enter. The door to the metro was open. All he had to do was step through and he could easily disappear into the crowd of commuters. Chasing him with a bloody sword and a giant wolf would be impossible.
He looked surprised to see me.
“For a half-breed, you’re awfully hard to kill.”
Half-breed. A sad truth now known by all the rogues I’d set free. Once I got out of here, the repercussions of the night would echo through the rest of my life, there was no doubt about it. Things would never be the same for me if those vampires went to the French Tribunal and told them what they’d learned.
But I had to get out of here alive for any of that to matter.
I’d come this far, and I wasn’t leaving until my business was done.
“What are you going to do?” he sneered. “You don’t have a cadre of wardens here, girl. You have one pathetic wolf and a sword. Do you think I’m scared of you?”
“You ran.”
“I don’t like to get my hands dirty.”
Blood dripped from the blade of my sword, pooling into a tacky glue on my palms. The sword was still hot.
“I do.”
“You’ll never chain me again.” His bravado faltered, and the quiver of his words cut into his supervillain veneer. For a moment he seemed as young as he looked. He was a boy of seventeen, staring down the end of his days. In that brief flicker of seconds I imagined what his human life had been. I thought about how brutal and cruel his turning must have been to make him this way.
Then I remembered—he’d always been this way.
The sadistic, manipulative, wicked monster had been a part of him when he was human, because vampirism didn’t make someone evil.
The whispers of my sympathy vanished.
“I don’t want to chain you, Peyton.”
“They wanted me alive last time.”
“They never cared if you were alive or not. Bringing you in was meant to test my mettle or have you kill me. You’ve always been the Tribunal’s pawn, even when you went rogue.” I inched forward as I spoke, closing the distance between us. “If you thought you mattered, you were sorely mistaken.”
“You won’t kill me.” Of this he sounded so certain, and I laughed. I laughed the way vampires used to laugh at me when they thought I couldn’t execute them. I laughed until I was crying, and it was his turn to look at me like I was mad.
“Do you really think I won’t?” I asked once I caught my breath. “You think this is a symbiotic relationship, don’t you? That I need you?” I thought of the Joker again and how Batman could never kill him. But that was because the Dark Knight didn’t kill.
I was no hero.
“You—” He started to speak, but I cut him off by taking a pronounced step forward.