“You were a little harsh with Kelly tonight. There was no reason for that.”
“It was your idea to take her to Kyron and show her what it’s like to be out on the town with a couple of vampires, hunting vampires. Now, you have a conscience?”
“No. You could have said something to her after.”
“I did. I told her not to fuck with me. The same thing I’m about to tell you.”
“Oh, really. What makes you think I’m even interested in fucking with you?”
“Okay, I get it. Something has clearly climbed up your ass and caused a bit of discomfort, making you forget who I am…what we are. This is it. This was what you’ve been fighting to get close to. I guess you were mistaken.” I turned on my heel and shouted to him as I stepped onto the elevator which still stood open. “Maybe I’ll take Emerick up on his offer.”
The door closed to the elevator and my heart dropped out of my chest. I wanted to run to her, to pry those doors open and get her to tell me what she was talking about. How had she gotten an offer from Emerick?
Panic set in. I very well could have pushed her into choosing him instead of me. I searched for the nearest stairwell, remembering there was no other access to her floor. So, I waited for the ding of the elevator above and pushed the button to return it to me. I got on and pushed my thumb over the green scanner. When the doors closed, I cursed the damn thing to move faster.
Without so much as a knock, I pushed through her door to find Delia picking up books, and what looked like tears staining her face. My temper rose as I gave her a questioning glare. She only looked up toward the infusion room in response. By the time I’d stepped through the door, Ravana was already hooked up to the I.V. drip, her eyes closed as she lay on the conforming chair to receive her intake of blood.
“What gives you the right to demand anything of anyone?”
She almost fell out of the chair as she looked up at me.
I didn’t cross the room to her but stood in the open doorway. “Why do we all have to answer to you, huh? We all work for the same people. We all volunteered for this position, yet you seem to think you can bully people into submission.”
“How does that have anything to do with our conversation?”
“The fact that my Keeper is so shaken I doubt she’ll emerge from her room for days, and poor Delia in there looks like you chewed her out as you flew through on your high and mighty horse.”
“First off, I don’t have a horse, my steed is a broom. Second, I don’t think I’m above anyone. If it seems that way, it’s because I’ve been doing it longer than anyone in this building. I don’t do the things I do to hurt anyone’s feelings. They are human, and as such they are breakable. We aren’t. So, when I tell a Keeper she can’t go out with us at night, it’s not because I don’t want to work with them, it’s because I don’t want to see them end up in pieces…that’s how I got here.”
“What do mean? That’s how you got here?”
“I was stupid, weak, and human. I shouldn’t be alive, but a hundred years later here I am. I can’t risk anyone under my roof, my protection…ending up like me. Shattered. I’m nothing. A nobody in an ocean of somebodies. All because I was breakable, and not strong enough to stop it.”
“You didn’t die because you were breakable.” My temper soothed at her words, and I tried to choose my next ones carefully. “You were chosen. Studied because you were strong and so full of life. You were exceptional. That’s why you’re here.”
She cocked a brow and sat up. Then she fingered the needle in her arm. “He said to ask you. Ask you what it means that I was to be his mate before all of this. All of what?”
She had seen him, but where? I doubted very much that she’d tell me. I was losing my grip. Everything I had hoped for was slipping away and the moment I told her the truth she would run from me and into his arms, and she wouldn’t look back. If only she’d already pledged herself to me. I wouldn’t have been a coward then. I could just tell her without the fear of her walking away. Sure, there would have been a chance she could remove herself from loving me, but if she had…loved me, then I’d still have a fighting chance.
When I didn’t answer her, she pulled at the wire in her arm and stood up from the chair. She couldn’t go far, but there was a demand in the way she stood. I hadn’t noticed until then that she had stripped her clothes off. They lay in a pile on the floor, with the exception of a long black button-up shirt. The pants with those buckles, her red bottom shoes, and even her panties lay in the pile at her feet. She’d thrown her hair on top of her head and wiped the make-up from her face.
“Massimo? What did he mean…before?”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you. Then, I have to tell you I resign from my position.”
“Why?” She almost looked angered by that. Had she truly come to want me around?
“Once I tell you, I fear you will no longer want to see me.”
“It can’t be that bad. I know you watched me for him. Gave him reports. What else is there?”
“We had a wager.”
“A bet? For what?”
“For…wait, let me tell you from the beginning.” I’d suffered through it in my head for the last few days. The way I would start it, and now I was about to fumble when it mattered. I couldn’t. I didn’t want her to look at me the way she had that first night when we had found each other enthralled in the back of the club.
“He took me first, that you know. He wanted to change a hunter and see if he could change me back. You see, Emerick was a hunter and a vampire bit him. Turned him. Made him a creature of the night, but he didn’t want it. He wanted to be himself again. The burning in his throat, making him crave human blood sickened him, as it does you. So, with his extensive alchemy knowledge, he felt he’d be able to rid himself of the vampiric DNA. He decided to experiment with vampires. Try to make them human again. When that didn’t work, he turned hunters. When he got to me something went right, and he was able to extract some of the vampire DNA from my system. Too little to call me human or hunter, and too much to make me a vampire. I’m an in between. An unknown, I suppose.” I thought back to Delia’s definition of my category of species.
“But you, you came out just right. He planned it for months. To have the right host. He saw you fighting with your brothers in the town square. We’d come from a little village. Not more than five-hundred people lived within it. Once he’d managed to get me stable, he employed me. The rest he’d either killed or released out into the wild, but he said he saw something in me. He wanted me to be your brother, his as well. To start a family was his full intention. He didn’t want to be lonely forever.”
She looked intrigued, but I could tell she was fighting the urge to take back control and demand to know about her family. She didn’t know she had one, couldn’t remember any more than I could.
When she finally sat down and pulled the I.V. from her arm, noting the empty blood bag, I knew I could continue. I paced the room, my hands clasped behind my back.
“You were raised as a hunter; trained with your three brothers as a boy, not a girl. At first, I couldn’t tell the difference. Your hair was long, and you were lean. Too lean for a woman of twenty. You hardly looked like you developed at all. Emerick said it was the sign of a woman who’d been too physically active in her lifetime. Training to be a hunter amongst a family of nothing but men would do that to any female. He said it made you a prime candidate.
“He’d come to the village to see you once. Fell in love at first sight. He’d spoken to you. It was evening, and you were sneaking from your home to attend a meeting with friends at a pub. You’d tripped over the hem of your skirt and he helped you up. The look in your eyes…well, I’d never seen you look that way at anyone in the village. Yet, there was something hidden in them. A sadness I couldn’t put my finger on.” I shuffled to the door where she had shown me the supply room. I leaned against where I knew the door was and took a deep breath.
“When h
e moved back into the shadows after you left, he told me to watch you further. I was never to let you see me. Never allow you even a small glimpse. When I asked why, he didn’t say. Just said he didn’t want you to see me coming when the time came. He wanted to know your likes and dislikes. Wanted to know how you lived, and about your family. He asked about your friends and whether you were attached or had any children.”
She shifted uncomfortably until I shook my head. “You didn’t. I don’t know if he’d have still gone through with it if you had, but you didn’t.”
I watched her for a moment before continuing. She looked uncomfortable with the conversation, but I could see it in her eyes that she wanted to continue. I combed my fingers through my hair and pushed it out of my face looking up at the ceiling.
“When I woke, I remembered nothing. I didn’t want that for you, so I told him stories of disobedience, stubbornness, and that you had on more than one occasion been promiscuous with the gentleman in the pub. He didn’t buy it though, and I was beaten within an inch of death.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t want him to harm you. I’d spent so much time watching and learning about you that I’d grown to care…and I didn’t want this life for you. In the end, I wasn’t strong enough to stop him.”
“Thank you.”
“For what? You’re still here, still like this.”
“For caring. For telling me about my life…before.”
He kept speaking in a low tone, never getting anxious, or showing his anger for what Emerick had him do. I could see it in his eyes though. He was furious about it. Though, something kept them sad as well. Like he truly believed I would abandon him after he’d done all he could to help me.
“Can we take this to the living room? I’d like a glass of wine.”
“Sure. I think I’ll have one as well if you don’t mine.”
I looked at him, eyebrow raised. When was the last time he’d fed, food or otherwise?
“What? I like wine.”
“Ok.” I padded barefoot into the apartment. My discarded clothes left in a heap on the infusion room floor. The new cleaning lady would arrive in a few hours and I didn’t want her thinking she would be able to slack in her duties. I planned to make her life miserable until she quit. One more person rummaging through my apartment was not something I was happy about.
Massimo moved to the cabinet where the glasses hung by the stems over the counter. He pulled two down and I popped the cork on my favorite sweet red. When they were full, we moved to the sofa, glasses, and bottle in hand. I took a sip, smelling the intoxicating aroma, and nodded for him to carry on. I was finally getting the answers I’d been after for too many years. There was no way I was letting him stop now.
He moved the hair from his face took a large mouthful of wine from his glass and fingered the stem as he thought about his next words. I could tell he was having some kind of internal struggle with himself. I just couldn’t begin to think of what it could be that would make him think I would turn him away from me at this stage.
“One night, while you were heading to visit with your friends again, I stopped you in the ally. I never told Emerick, because nothing much came of it. I was too confused to figure it out until much later, but you’d said something to me that gave me pause.”
“What was it?”
“You’re dead. That’s all you muttered before you passed out. I caught you and brought you home. A few weeks later we met again in the same pub. He was with you, but you left him when you saw me enter and sit at the bar. I hadn’t paid much attention to my surroundings. I didn’t see the two of you in the corner at a booth. When you came to me…I was startled.
“You were hurt, shortly after, and you were grieving. Your mind had given up, though the doctors said your body was healthy. You were in danger of dying, but Emerick was mad with worry.” Massimo shifted, but continued.
I didn’t take my eyes off of him the entire time he spoke. I was too afraid he would stop if I did.
“He had everything ready by the time I’d gotten you to the Manor. Your family wasn’t with you. They didn’t visit, nor did they plead with anyone to save your life, so taking you was easy. I thought Emerick was better for you. Then after he turned you and left you strapped to the surgical table to wake alone, I became angry, more than I’d ever been. You were an impressionable young woman; scared out of your mind. You screamed for an hour before he returned to you.”
“I remember. Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I was never allowed to roam free. He trusted me before you came to the Manor, but once you were there, he locked me away. I never did figure out why. Not until fifty years later.”
I sipped from my glass again. His eyes were changing. I could see the red orbs pushing through. “Maybe you should feed. I can add a bag to the wine.”
He blinked, and the red was gone, but the anger and sadness stayed. “I’ll be fine.”
“Very well, continue.”
He nodded and shifted back on the sofa, more relaxed, and further from me. “He tried to train you to fight with sword, dagger, bow, and arrow. The bow was his preferable weapon. No noise, but great for long range. You were a mess. Inconsolable. Your memory as it was, you were afraid you’d left others behind. That they would be worried as to what had happened to you without a body to bury.”
“I remember that as well. I felt hopeless. Unsure of my very existence. Afraid of what I’d become. I could remember fighting creatures of the night, but nothing about who I was. It was as if I were suffocating.”
“That’s when we spoke of it. Emerick and I. He’d made a claim that you were his. A mate for all of eternity, if only you would awaken to your true self, and learn the ways of your new world. When I argued with him, he thought me ungrateful. Told me I could have you. To leave and take you with me never to return. When I tried, he laughed. He locked us both up. Drugged you so you could hardly remember where you were or what you were. He wanted a strong mate and blamed me for your indifference.”
“Because I was strong, and knew how to fight before?”
“Yes, and he wanted you to be that way again…by his side.”
“Jokes on him, huh?” It wasn’t really a question, and I figured Massimo knew that, so I didn’t elaborate. Instead, I took a drink and set my empty glass down to refill it and gave him a nod to carry on.
“He came to me in the night. Said he had perfected what he’d done to you and administered the concoction on himself. He asked me if I wanted the same formula.”
“Why didn’t he give it to you?”
“I told him I didn’t want it. I’d rather be the monster he made me than be fixed to fit into his idea of a family.”
I took another sip, noting his first glass was still full. “What happened?”
“He made a bet with me.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes.” He stood and started pacing the living room then walked over to the kitchen island with his glass. He shot it back in one swallow and placed the glass on the counter. “He’d caught on to the fact that my feelings for you had grown.”
I didn’t speak. I knew he said it before, but the idea that he’d gone head to head with Emerick, our sire, was stifling. I looked at him and he seemed to be struggling with his thoughts.
“He’d told me if I thought I could win your heart that I should try. I could tell you how I felt and wait to see if you would develop feelings for me. The bastard knew the whole time that your room was unlocked, and he’d made sure your meds were lifted the day before. You were escaping the Manor while he spoke, and he knew it. He let you wander out into the night all alone, and unaware.
“I told him I wouldn’t. That I’d leave you alone. That’s when he told me in order to save you, I had to convince you to be with him.”
“What?” My face grew flush. I could feel the effects of the wine pushing toward the surface.
“He said if I didn’t convince you to train, an
d be his match, his equal that he would kill you.”
“You agreed to that?”
“No.” He stood tall, but his head hung low as he spoke. “I told him I couldn’t. He got up and left the room, he said he was going to kill you right then and save us the agony of having to fight over you. That he valued our friendship. I didn’t cry out to stop him. I sat still in the darkness of my room and wept for you. For five years I thought he’d killed you.”
What was I supposed to say to that? I didn’t move. I didn’t let so much as a breath escape me. I was on the edge of the sofa as it was. If I had moved, I would have fallen to the floor. Instead, I watched him. The room shrouded in a silence that was staggering. I almost jumped when he started speaking again.
“He came to the manor one day, elated. He’d found the woman that was rumored to have taken down a Toreg demon. Little did I know it was you. When he told me as much I was furious. We had an argument. He said he would keep his distance from you. Allow me time to make you love me. I found you and lost you in that same week. Then I lost track of you again. I’d thought I found you a few times. Rumors were told, and stories heard…that’s how I ended up here. Now, I know he’s been following you all along. He’s always known where you are.”
“The arrow?”
“Yes. His favored weapon. His signature white arrows.”
“So, you’ve been biding your time till I fell for you? I swear men are all the same.”
“No, no. He said if I could win your heart, he’d leave us alone. If not, he’d take you back. Change you to feel as he does about the world. He doesn’t care how long it would take. He’d sway you to be with him…be just like him. He hates everything.”
“That’s the same thing. Either way, the two of you have decided my fate based on one of two scenarios. Am I’m just supposed to fall for one or the other? There is no other choice for me?”
The Darker Side of Me (Ravana Moon Book 1) Page 12