“
You doubt me?” She turned
from him and walked across the roof, swaying to that always playing
song in her head. “I took you from your mortal life because death
was already upon you.”
“
What?”
She chuckled indulgently, as you would
while admonishing a recalcitrant, though beloved, child. “You
didn’t know? You would have been dead and rotting in the cemetery
of that church I’d found you in within the week.”
“
You can’t predict the
future, that’s not one of your gifts.”
“
But we can all smell the
sweet smell of death in a human’s blood, wafting like the scent of
carrion from their flesh.”
“
You smelled death on
me?”
“
You had just exposed
yourself to the plague, you silly fool. Caring for the poor and
sick always has its price.”
“
I would’ve died,” Luca
whispered. “You’re sure?”
“
You were already in the
grips of the fever. Do you not remember?”
Luca shook his head, “My mortal life
has faded from my grasp over the centuries.”
“
As it has for us all:
perfect recollection of everything from our change on, but our
mortal memories slowly slip from our grasps. Sad, but comforting.”
She smiled most wickedly at him. “I’d hate to remember what I was
before I was given this gift. I would probably want to light myself
on fire and perish right now.”
Luca couldn’t imagine what she’d been
like as a human. Had she actually ever had a soul?
As if she could hear his thought, her
smile turned almost sweet. “You’d be surprised.” She batted the
subject away with the swipe of her hand. “As you’d be surprised to
hear that I care about you more than any being I’ve ever met. You
are the only food I ever turned, the only thing in the entirety of
the mortal world I cared not to destroy. You should be
flattered.”
Luca was silent. The fear of Elaina
ever present, and now that she was right in front of him, he
realized that he’d felt this fear all the years he’d been with her.
It had not once abated, or faded. And he hadn’t really realized it
until now, when that constant fear came back and refused to be
quelled. But then he thought of what she had said, and he asked,
“Then why me?”
“
Haven’t I already said
this?” she groused, clapping her hands together with impatience.
“Because you were the one thing, the only thing—”
“
No. What was it about
me—what did you see in me that made me…essential?”
Elaina looked taken aback, surprise and
then uncertainty flickering across her face. But then realization
flowed into her eyes, a thorough certainty. The smile that passed
over her lips, her features, and then into her eyes was almost
human in its radiance.
“
Because you were so
good.”
“
What?”
“
There in your little
church, cleaning the pews, lighting the candles, helping those who
came to your door more than you would ever help yourself. I saw you
were a man of total conviction.”
Luca had never thought of himself as a
good man—not that he could remember. And since his change he saw
himself as nothing but the worst kind of evil. A murderer, a
rapist, a torturer of mankind…and he’d been so good at it—he’d
enjoyed it, until recently.
“
I knew that if I made you a
vampire, that once I forced you to start killing, showed you the
beauty and pleasure in the darkest, most titillating of tortures,
that you would transfer that ferocious commitment to being a
vampire.”
Luca’s head was spinning. “I don’t
understand. It doesn’t make any sense. You made me a monster
because I was so…”
“
Good
.” She sang that one word with such delight. “Oh yes. I knew
that you would surpass all my hopes. You would kill and wreak havoc
wherever you trod, with perfect impunity.”
Impunity. That was how he had felt
until recently. Until he’d been with Min. As if nothing could touch
him. No matter how vial or sadistic the kill, no matter what hurt
or torture he thought up, all he would ever feel during or after
would be ecstasy.
And here Elaina was, telling him that
had been her plan for him from the beginning.
She was suddenly beside him, her face
so close to his, her lips so close to his ear that he could almost
feel their silky flesh against him. “I made you to be the perfect
evildoer,” she chuckled. “Without an ounce of compunction…someone
in this wide world worse than me.”
Luca turned and glared at her. “I am
not—”
“
Of course you are.” She
sighed, “At least you were.” She inhaled deeply through her nose,
scenting the air around him, her hands playing lightly over his
back and shoulders.
“
And then I felt it. The
instant it began to happen. I had no idea what could cause such a
thing. After all, it is unheard of. But as you stand before me, I
cannot deny it. Your soul has been awakened, reignited anew. I can
see it in your eyes. Hell, I could smell it as soon as I got within
sight of you. It’s not just lit, your soul is burning
brightly.”
“
I don’t know what has
happened.”
“
You don’t?” She wagged her
finger at him, pursing her lips reproachfully. “But I think you do,
my beautiful boy. I think you know very well what caused it…or at
least whom.”
The fear rose up inside him, and Luca
fought to keep his face, his body language, from showing
it.
“
The witch, the gypsy—I
could smell that too.
Filthy
gypsy magick, so much worse than a Wiccan or even
a white witch of the church. No, you had to get involved with a
gypsy whore—”
“
That is enough!” Luca
roared.
Elaina smiled and stepped closer, the
glee rancid in her features. She’d finally pressed the right
buttons and gotten what she’d wanted: a reaction.
“
Don’t call her
that.”
“
So gallant,” she clucked
her tongue at him. “I wonder…if you could, would you turn and rend
me right now? End me; destroy your creator,
your savior?
Kill me and dispose of my
body, this body you have had in every possible way, dispose of
it—
of me
—so that I
would never darken you or your…lover’s door again?” She moved so
close, her hand on Luca’s chest. “Could you do it, my sweet Luca,
could you end me?”
Luca looked into Elaina’s eyes. The
crazed fire was absent, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there,
waiting just behind her gaze to turn on him. The truth had blazed
so easily into his heart: yes, he would end her in a heartbeat to
keep Min out of her clutches. Min could handle herself, of course,
but could she survive the attack of something as deranged and
insane as Elaina?
Luca let his eyes drop, and he tried to
fill them with sincerity as he spoke the lie. “No.” He looked up
into her eyes. “I could not.”
She smiled, and absently scented the
air again, her smile deepening with each passing second. “You’ve
gotten so very good, my sweet. I can’t even smell the lie on you.”
He took a breath to argue, to try and convince her, but she raised
her hand to him and said, in that master tone that made his will
fall to hers with immediate results. “Quiet.”
She paced around him, hands on hips.
“But I don’t need to smell it on you. I’ve seen you with her. I’ve
been watching you for almost a week now.”
A week.
The thought of her spying on him, taking in all that he had
done, all that he had done with Min, it turned his
stomach.
“
What I’ve seen is your
selfless devotion to that witch.” She caught his gaze and the
crazed fire was back. “I’m sorry, to your
Min
.”
Dear god, she knew her name.
“
I’ve watched you fuck her.
I’ve seen you turning away from those victims that would so easily
nourish you, to go pandering at a human blood bank. What, have you
been watching some silly teen movie, or some ridiculous television
show? You are a vampire. You cannot just subsist on…leftovers. I
know such technologies weren’t available for me to have taught you
about them, but I’d have thought you’d have figured it out. I mean,
just look at you. You’re so weak, and gaunt. I have not seen a
vampire that made it through his first years this immediate before.
It’s sickening.
“
She has domesticated you,
and she hasn’t even had to try. All she had to do was bat her
pretty eyes and spread her legs, and you fell to your knees. Hell,
she was holding you to her through magick, using necromancy to
control you, to make you her bloody sex toy, and you just lapped it
up like a
big, dumb dog
.” Her voice ricocheted into the night, again slicing
metaphysically into Luca’s flesh. She looked up into his eyes,
weary disgust in her gaze. “She was going to sacrifice you to a
Sidhe.”
He turned, stunned that Elaina knew so
very much. She couldn’t have been in the room, but she still
knew.
“
And still you grovel for
her affections…even after the spell was broken. I had hoped that
with it gone you would have regained some sense about you. But
instead you played nursemaid to her. It was disgusting.”
The playfulness, the insane fire, all
died away from her gaze, replaced with cool, clear nothingness. He
knew the look. She was about to pull the trap, to do whatever
horrific, terrible thing she had planned all along. And he knew
from how she’d spoke just now about her, that she was going to do
it to Min.
But the words that she spoke in a flat,
detached voice shocked him. “I could order you to kill
her.”
No.
His mind reeled and he tried with all his strength, all his
anger, to rip himself free of Elaina’s hold on him. He needed to
break free. He needed to kill her and kill her now. But there was
no way, no possible way.
“
One word from me and you’ll
bloody up that pretty little house—that soft, warm bed—with her.
They’ll be finding pieces of her for weeks. And you’ll have every
stinking moment of it to remember. I’ll be so very specific…hell, I
might even take a seat and watch, giving you little adjustments
like a movie director.
Luca looked to Elaina, beseeching her
with his eyes, for he could not even open his lips to
speak.
Elaina perched on the chimney of the
house they were atop and daintily crossed her legs, her skirt slit
high enough she showed a lot of slender, curving leg.
“
But I won’t do any of
that.”
He blinked at her.
She waved her hand in a permissive
gesture. “Go ahead, you can speak now.”
“
What…” he choked as her
control over his tongue vanished. “What do you mean?”
“
What I mean is I have no
intention of killing your lady love.” She nonchalantly adjusted the
sleeves of her dress. “I’m not going to
make
you do anything at all. In truth,
I think I’m going to steal off into the night and lick my wounds.
Your choosing her over me has cut me to the quick.” She said these
things with a languid sarcasm, rolling her slender wrist with her
words.
“
I’ve hurt you?” he said
with disbelief. Anger, hatred, cold and hot running sadism—he’d
seen all these in her aspect—but never had he dreamed she could be
hurt.
“
Well, that is what I’m
telling you. You’ve broken my heart.”
Luca felt a glacial surge run down his
spine. Sarcasm or no, whether she was acting or no, there was truth
to her words. He’d hurt her. He didn’t breathe, he didn’t move, he
dared not even think too loudly. He had hurt her, and he couldn’t
imagine that he could have really touched her in any such way. She
thought of him as a possession, a consort when she wished it, and
then as disposable when she didn’t. Anger, vengeance, rage, those
were things she felt, and lashed out with wild abandon. But he had
actually hurt her?
What would she do to avenge a wound as
deep as that? The prospects were unthinkable.
But even more than he feared her, he
felt sorrow. Not sorry for her, but guilty that he’d hurt her. It
was insane, but he couldn’t shake it.
“
I’m sorry,” he finally
said.
“
For what?”
“
For hurting
you.”
She laughed, playing it off
with a wave of her hand. “
I’ll
live.”
It was the inflection of that one word
that made him gulp.
“
What have you
done?”
“
I’ve done nothing,” she
said, looking with still, radiant eyes into his. “I’ve been hunted,
without stop, by a pack of werewolves. They are a part of the great
Hunt—a very old-fashioned concept in my opinion. And just before I
came to your little city I slaughtered the leader of the pack’s
sister. He is gunning for me in a hellbent push for
vengeance.”
She smiled devilishly.
“
I led them straight to your
lover’s house. Their leader watched as you fucked her. He will kill
her with you, you know.”