I lifted my hand gingerly, and laid two fingers, as light as a feather’s touch, against his chest. I stared up into his eyes.
It was almost like I was talking to Theo again.
“You know, Byron,” I said, putting extra silk into my tone when I spoke his name, “you know everything about me, and yet … I know so little about you.” I blinked slow blinks up at him, lashes waving. Every pathetic damsel there had ever been breathed through me as I lured him in, softened his guard.
Byron caught my fingers. The lack of warmth on his skin still frightened me, but I allowed the touch. I had come too far to back down now.
Maybe he was actually buying my ruse. If I could just get him to believe me …
He laced his fingers in mine and led me over to the settee. Still gazing into my eyes, maybe trying to catch me losing my ground, he sat down, pulling me with him to his side.
A glazed look passed over his face, and he took another sip from his glass, then set it down on an ornately carved side table.
“So, you want to know about me?”
Definitely. The longer he talked, the more he got wrapped up in his memories, in feeling that he was opening up to a lover who had finally fallen for his charms, the easier it would be for me to find a break in his defenses—then whip the stake out of my messy bun, where it blended in, looking more like a chopstick than anything else, and plunge it into his chest.
“I don’t even know how old you are,” I said quietly. “I don’t know where you come from, or if you have any friends …” I looked back up at him and smiled knowingly. “I know you don’t go to my school. You just wanted to be near to me, didn’t you?”
His heavy lidded eyes gazed down at me, through his eyelashes. “I did.”
It was really hard not to focus on the fact that I was sitting next to my stalker like some sort of enraptured (read: groomed) schoolgirl. I shifted back against the seat, moving my hand onto my leg. Slowly, I could work that around to my hip, out of sight … then, when the time was right, perhaps pretend to fiddle with my hair …
Then Byron’s arm snaked around my shoulder. I tensed—at how cold it was, how strong, the way he pulled me into his chest, like we were on a date at a movie.
Relax, I willed myself.
Somehow, my tension uncoiled, just a fraction.
Still, it was impossible to avoid being aware of the fact that my stake was now effectively out of reach—which meant I needed a new plan of action. “Tell me,” I breathed. “Tell me all about … you.”
“Where to start …” Byron said, sighing heavily. “I’m seventeen, of course, but I know that isn’t what you want to know.” He squeezed my shoulder so tightly that it hurt. I wondered if he’d done it on purpose, or if his excitement made him forget that his strength outstripped mine. “I was turned in 1945. I know, that doesn’t seem right, does it? But it’s true.”
Being so close, it was hard to crane my neck up at him, so I contented myself with laying my head on his shoulder. He would like that, I knew—like it a lot.
Hard to forget too, though, that it put my neck well within striking distance of his fangs. I was like a mouse snuggled up against a hungry cat. He would be able to smell my hair, feel my heartbeat, hear me drawing in each and every breath. I hoped that it would drive him crazy enough that it would allow me to figure out what I needed to do.
“My dad was a war vet, Mom was a typical housewife. She always wore this powder blue apron with yellow flowers. Told me that my father got it for her in France. I never actually found out if that was true.”
“I’m sorry,” I said hesitantly, catching him in the subtle probing for sympathy, a small, tentative manipulation.
“It was early October. I lived in Michigan as a child. Middle of nowhere. There were trees all the way around my house. My father always believed in having ample space for my mother and us children to live. I had five siblings, by the way.”
He sighed, though I knew he probably didn’t actually need to breathe, and his tone became more somber. I listened.
“I was a senior in high school. I was the oldest and had a part-time job at the grocery store in town. I’d gotten a car as a birthday present just a few weeks before. My girlfriend at the time, Melody, was the cheerleading captain, and I planned to ask her to marry me that summer.
“After dropping off some fresh sunflowers off at Melody’s house, I drove home. My mother always insisted that we all make it home for dinner during the week, even if that made the rest of the family wait.” His eyes flashed. “Family was very important to her. No one would eat until we all were home. That night, they were all waiting for me …
“When I pulled in the driveway, I saw Father’s car, and all of the lights on inside. Without a care, I stepped up to the front of the house. I remember that I was whistling some sort of happy tune. I realized that the front door was slightly open. I thought it was odd, not because we had any fear of theft, but because none of my siblings were outside.”
I chanced a look up at him as I ran a hand through my hair—fiddling, idly, enraptured … and inches away from the stake pushed through my bun.
“The first thing I remembered was the squelch that my boot made as I stepped inside the house. I was screaming before I realized why. Red was everywhere. It coated the flowered wallpaper as if someone had thrown buckets of it against the walls. Rivers of it snaked through the entry, into the kitchen, from the living room. There was even a slow trickle from the stairs, a steady drip, drip, drip.”
I clenched my teeth, picturing it—picturing it having happened to my family. It was not impossible that I could have walked into the house this morning to discover this very scene Byron described to me now, transposed from 1945 Michigan to 2018 Tampa Bay.
“And their bodies …” Byron’s voice was grave, thick.
I almost believed him. It would have been easy to. How could anyone talk about this without getting choked up?
“My little sisters were sprawled across the floor in the room the three of them shared. My brother, who was only two years younger than me, was lying awkwardly on my father’s armchair, his neck exposed, blood coating the front of his shirt. And my parents …
“I found them in the kitchen. Mother was bent over the sink, her head in the basin. My father was on the floor, one of his legs tangled in the legs of the chairs around the table. But they weren’t the only ones there. There were two men, tall, ghostly pale, red dripping down their cheeks to their chins, the fronts of their shirts drenched.
“‘Oh, look,’ one of them said. ‘I guess I could go for another drink.’ The last thing I remember is the sharp pain at my neck, hands as strong as iron around my body, and this pulling, as if the very life of me was being sucked out.
“They left me alive, though. I don’t think they knew that they had,” Byron said. “Maybe they had gorged too much on the rest of my family. But three days later, I was a vampire. And I fled.”
He pulled his arm back from around my shoulders—just as my fingers grazed the stake in my hair.
“That must have been awful,” I said, hoping that he would continue. I was almost ready. He just needed to get lost one more time.
I could do this.
“The fear and the rage that I felt that vampires had intruded on my life was unlike any hatred I had ever felt, you know? Well, I know you understand. It is just like the hatred that you feel toward me.”
I blinked. Hatred? I thought he was buying all of this lovey-dovey nonsense.
He looked at me with a twisted, monstrous sympathy. “It is impossible for a human to ever truly love a vampire. I have come to that realization. Which is why I have turned all of the women I have fallen in love with. No, none of you can understand. You won’t understand until you too have been turned … your destiny.
“You understand what I mean, don’t you?” he asked suddenly. “That fear that I felt. The hatred. I have never made you that afraid. Angry, of course, I know. I like your fierceness. But
Theo … he frightened you to your core, didn’t he?”
I froze, my fingers tightening. How … how did he …
He knew. If he knew about Theo, then he knew about Mill, and Iona, and the holy water, and—
“Oh, yes,” Byron said, his dark, piercing gaze fixing me to my seat. “I know everything, Cassie. Just like … I know about that stake your fingers rest on this very moment.”
Chapter 37
He was suddenly across the sitting room, standing beside the staircase, blocking my way back downstairs. He was twirling my stake between his fingers like a bored student in a boring lecture class, having pulled it easily from my hair and dismantling the messy bun barely before my mind had registered what he was doing.
The smirk on his face was poisonous. Sickeningly sweet, and expectant.
I just gaped at him, my jaw slack, my eyes wide.
He snickered. “Cassie, Cassie, Cassie. Well done, truly, a riveting performance. Absolutely captivating.” There was a flicker in his eyes as his lips straightened, leaving amusement behind for regret. “You have no idea how much I wish I could have believed you.”
He leaned casually against the banister, the lights from the chandelier creating a halo around his tousled hair, bright and golden.
“It would have made all of this that much simpler if you had just given in, instead of fighting me.”
He stopped twirling the stake, and then his face turned sour, his smile melting into a grimace—and then he snapped it in half, and then those halves into halves, each no longer than my pinkie finger.
“Iona is behind this, isn’t she?” he growled. “Hell hath no fury and all that … I should have seen it earlier.”
“She was scorned,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else.
“That’s her interpretation.” He rolled his eyes and tossed the remains of the wooden stake over the side of the banister. He locked eyes with me. “There was nothing between her and me—nothing of consequence at least. It wasn’t like what you and I have.”
“She disagrees,” I said.
“Well … I’ll have to deal with her later,” he spat, but he leaned unperturbed against the banister once more, crossing his arms over his chest. “You remind me of her, you know. Just a little. You both have a certain spunk about you. The resistance makes the chase all that much sweeter. But it’ll be different between you and I—you’re not as finicky as she is. You’re more … true. Dedicated. I can see it in the way you conduct yourself.”
My stomach turned over.
“You and I—it’ll be forever,” he continued. “It was never going to work out between Iona and me. I should have seen the signs; they were all there early. She hated me all the way through. Not like you. There was a grain of truth in your performance just now. I saw it. You’re different than the rest. Special.”
“What’s so special about me?” I asked, my voice almost at a shout. “Why did you pick me out of … everyone else, the world over?”
Byron’s brow furrowed, and he tilted his head, looking at me like I was an idiot. “I thought it was obvious,” he said. “I came to save you from the life that you hate.”
Iona’s words reverberated in my mind. She was right. He had been watching me for longer than I had originally thought.
“I first saw you at that little coffee shop near the school just after you moved here,” Byron continued. “I thought you were pretty enough.” A melancholy note suffused his voice as he added, “You had the same hair color as my Melody did.”
I grimaced. It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for him. Almost.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Iona had her eyes?”
Byron shook his head. “No. She had Melody’s wistfulness.”
“So you pick all of your victims because we remind you of your long lost love?” How … sad.
“Victims? Please, Cassandra.” Byron pursed his lips. “I figure if I loved like that once, I should be able to find it again, right? But it’s different this time, you see—you are my forever. You are the end of the line.”
I bit the inside of my lip. My only weapon gone, and Mill’s gifted weapon already used, I didn’t see a way out of this. I had to buy time, though, to at least think …
“How’d you find me?” I demanded.
Ego got the better of him.
“I overheard you talking with your Mom on the phone that day in the coffee shop. I could smell the tension between you—the deep-rooted problems there. And so I started following you.
“You lived inside your own head, and it made me long to get inside of it. Your own world in there … so deep, so fertile. Look at how easily you spin lies. Yours is a brilliant imagination. So … I waited … until that night when you walked home from school. “
My stomach twisted sickly, remembering the phone call.
He grinned again and took a few steps toward me.
“Oh, Cassie. If you had just been like every other girl your age, and swooned at my attention, then things would be so different right now. You would be in love with me and unharmed, you wouldn’t be a murderer … and your parents wouldn’t be locked in the wine cellar. “
Bingo. He let it slip. I felt my eyes widen momentarily, but I quickly hardened my gaze.
“I’m not a murderer,” I said.”
“Is that so?” Byron asked with a trace of amusement.
“Theo was already dead. And I killed him in self-defense, anyway.”
Byron flashed his fangs at me in a wide grin. He reminded me of Lord Draven with that smile. “You aren’t fooling me. You feel it, don’t you? I can tell. You’re sweet—you have a conscience . It prickles, like the thorns of a rose.”
I licked my lips, my eyes darting around. I had to get away. But how was I going to? I was out of options. He’d figured me out, knew that I wasn’t there to be wooed by him after all. And my only weapon lay in pieces on the floor of the foyer.
“I enjoyed learning about Theo, to be honest,” Byron said. “News spread like wildfire that a vampire was killed at a peace gathering.” He laughed heartily. “I never liked him, either. Too egotistical, too reckless. He lacked the patience that most vampires learn with time. Not his fault, of course. He was only turned a few years back.
“But don’t worry. I kept your secret from Lord Draven. Your ferocity just made me crave you that much more.”
His last words came out in a low growl.
“I’m going to give you one more chance, Cassie,” Byron said, his voice even, coated in honey as he advanced again. “To start our relationship off on the right foot. Let me give you the gift, let me turn you, willingly … or I will go downstairs right now, and kill your parents.” His eyes flicked toward the stairs. “I want us to be together … for you to feel my love … and if that means I have to bring you low, to make you feel as I did on that day in Michigan so long ago … I will do it.” He smiled tightly. “But … I’d rather you give of yourself, freely.” His smile turned somehow warmer … and yet still left me cold. “It will make everything … sweeter, if you just … give in.”
Almost out of time, damn it.
I had to make a choice—make a break for it—now. You beat Theo, I told myself—or a disembodied voice that sounded like my own, but came unbidden, alien to my mind. You had no idea what you were doing, went completely on instinct. You can do it again.
Could I?
You don’t have a choice.
No. It was win or lose—kill or be killed.
Slowly rising from the settee, I wiped my face clear of every emotion, every tell.
A sense of calm passed over me. My breathing steadied. And I accepted my fate. Gaze locked on his, I hoped, prayed, that this time he bought it. Hoped that he would see the defeat that I actually did feel deep in my bones, the inevitable fate that had finally caught up with me, after having been staved off since that first night he fell into step beside me.
I crossed the distance between us.
Tears drew hot tracks do
wn my cheeks.
Was this it? Were these the last moments that my heart would beat against my rib cage, trying desperately to remind me that I was very much alive? Was the blood that was flowing through my veins about to satisfy one of the most wicked creatures to walk the earth? Would I wake, cold and dead, but conscious of my life shattering into brittle, insignificant pieces around me, forever doomed to walk the earth?
I reached him. A grin hitched up on his face.
I laid my hands on his chest. His cologne was strong and musky, like old wood and leather. His flesh was cold and hard beneath his shirt.
He stared down into my face.
Slowly, I leaned up toward him, stretching my neck out. Gently, I pulled my hair aside so that the pale, soft skin of my neck showed under the refracted light bouncing from the chandelier’s many hanging crystals. Byron’s eyes lit.
“There we are,” he whispered, fangs extended. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I took a deep breath, my hands returning to rest on his chest.
He put his hands on my hips, and his gaze broke from mine as he slowly lowered his lips down toward my neck—
I shoved with all my might, pushing him back—
And over the railing overlooking the foyer.
He shrieked, a surprisingly heartrending sound, as his body tumbled over the banister, knocked against the chandelier—and fell through the open air to the ground below.
I was running before I heard the resounding thud of his body slamming against the wide wooden planks.
Chapter 38
I tore around the corner of the nearest hallway and hurtled down it as fast as I possibly could. My palms were sweating, and my chest heaving. It had worked. Somehow, I’d suckered him in.
It would only buy me a few seconds’ lead, though. It was imperative I put it to good use.
I picked a room and threw myself inside, slamming the door behind me. Byron screamed in rage from the stairs.
My fingers fumbled with the lock on the door. Crouched low, I listened, breath held. He thundered up the stairs.
No One Will Believe You Page 20