He snorts softly. “Eternal…if only,” he murmurs and looks to the window, wrinkled and cracking lips slightly parted to display his horrific fangs. Am I to believe the vampires are not long-lived?
“Why am I still alive?” I ask pointedly. “Your kind has always been very good at killing mine.”
“I’m willing to keep you alive long enough to let you leave.” That gives me pause. “If you agree to help me.”
“Help you?” I echo. “What could a vampire possibly need a human’s help for?”
“Vam-pie-err.” He sounds out the word slowly, echoing me with a bit of a sneer. “You humans butcher our kind in name and body.”
“Are you not a vampire?” I don’t know why I’m asking. His nature is as apparent as his yellowed teeth, all-black eyes, and withered flesh.
“We are vampir. Va-m-peer.” The word jumps from his lips with a flourish I’ve never heard before. It’s softer, more rounded. As though the sound comes from the back of his throat and then fades softly off the tip of the tongue. It’s a more elegant sound than I would’ve thought he could produce. “Vampire is a human mispronunciation.”
“Ah, but you’re still life-draining monsters, regardless of name.”
He’s at my side faster than I can blink, looming over me. “We are not the ones who drain life,” he snarls. “If you want to know who the monsters are, you should look no further than your precious hunters. You saw what they did to you.”
“What you did to me,” I insist.
He scoffs. “I met you in the state you were. You saw yourself in the mirror. Your precious hunters turned you into an experiment. If anything, what I am offering to you is a kindness by comparison.”
I ignore his remarks. He’s trying to confuse me—to turn me against my own. The mirror in the hall must have been tricked with vampire magic. After all, it had made his hair look silvery white, not greasy and clumped as it is.
“Forcing me to serve you is not a kindness,” I say.
“You will serve me in one area alone.”
However that is, I’m not sure I want to know. Yet I ask anyway, “And that is?”
He levels his eyes with mine. “Help me break the curse. Do so and I will free you.”
Curse?I’ve never heard anything about curses. “Inventing curses is quite the elaborate way to convince me to your cause.”
He scoffs. “I’m shocked you don’t already know.” He leans away, looking down on me. “I speak of the same curse that your hunters placed on us and that has plagued my people for centuries.”
“And you think I can break an ancient curse?” I decide to play along with his delusions. He’s keeping me alive because he thinks I might be of use to him. But if the hunters actually possessed the ability to lay a curse on the vampire, they would’ve done so long ago, with an affliction far worse than whatever he thinks is ailing him.
“There is a door, deep within this castle, that can only be opened by human hands. I need you to get me inside, for within is the anchor of the curse.”
“Very well.” I continue to pretend as if I know what he’s talking about. Why would the anchor of a curse be within the vampire castle behind a door that only opens to human hands? How does he really think that, after all he’s done to my people, I’d actually help him? I don’t have the answers, but if I allow this ruse to continue long enough, I might find a way to kill him or free myself in the process.
“Very well?” he repeats. “You’re going to help me?” He’s cautious and on guard. Perhaps I should have shown more ignorance. Perhaps I should have hesitated more. I’m not made for this and am leagues out of my depth.
Drew would know what to do, my mind laments. Drew is— Don’t even think it.
“I’m rather fond of breathing and if helping you is the only way to continue doing that then consider me your new assistant.” It’s partly true. Partly a brave face. I knew I was dead from the moment he took me.
“Do you think I will take you at your word?” He dips his chin slightly to look me better in the eyes. His gaze is shadowed, two gleaming orbs set on a night sky. Relaxed and outside of battle, he looks at me with the eyes of a much younger man; they’re striking, even. But painfully juxtaposed on his ancient visage. They’re the eyes of a man in his prime, brimming with masculine prowess trapped in the body of a walking corpse. I find myself unable to look away.
“You must want to, or you wouldn’t be talking to me right now.” I speak around the lump in my throat.
“I want many things I do not have,” he says solemnly. The words are as heavy as stones sinking to the bottom of a well, echoing with a dull note of yearning. “But I cannot let wants cloud my judgment when the fate of my people hangs in the balance.”
“Then what will you do with me? If you cannot trust me, what’s the point of any of this?”
“That is something I have been debating while you slumbered and healed. And I think I have come up with a solution—solving one problem with another, as it were. I do not know if I can trust you. Rather, I know I can’t trust you.”
The feeling is mutual.