15. FIFTEEN #2
“You’re impossible,” I growl, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any better of your kind. Self-serving to the bitter end. The rest of us are just a game to you, aren’t we?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “What is this—are you trying to discern my worthiness of humanity again?”
“As though there’s anything to prove. Your own selfish desire for freedom at the cost of anyone and anything around you is the clearly only thing your shriveled heart is capable of.”
“Don’t lecture me about freedom, much less its cost,” he fires back.
He’s still seated, but I can see the tension bundling his shoulders, desperate for reprieve.
He’s holding himself back. “At least I can recognize when I’m being used as a blunt instrument and locked in a gilded cage against my will. ”
My fists ball at my sides, nails biting into my palms. “Watch it.”
“You’re no better than a slave yourself, but you’re too thickheaded and brainwashed to see it. Those women sent you into the lion’s maw when they delivered you to me—the perfect little meal that I’d never be able to resist.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice is low, dangerous.
“Do you seriously believe they thought you could best me on your own? Isolated and hours away before backup could find you?” Dante clips out, gesturing brazenly with one hand.
“The sudden end to your correspondence would be all the proof they needed to descend upon me. What riles up an Order of slayers more than a martyr, after all? They shoved you toward an early grave and tricked you into believing that your life was worth the uncovering of one more leech.”
My hand is around the vase on the nightstand before the words have finished coming out of his mouth. I fling it at his head with a snarl. Dante ducks at the last moment, leaving it to shatter against the wall into a thousand jagged shards.
“You’re wrong!” A shout tears out of me now—other tenants in the inn be damned. “I was born for this. Corvus is my family. They trained me, gave me everything! They have shown me more love than—”
“Love,” Dante growls, “does not require a price. Did you ever once try to imagine what your life would be like if they hadn’t turned you into this?” He breathes heavily, and to my disgust, his anger simmers into pity. “You can be so much more than they made you to be, you know.”
I am speechless for a moment, teetering between despair—and fury.
With a guttural cry, I claw for something else, anything within reach. My fingers close around a book, and I hurl it across the room with all my might. This one catches Dante squarely in the temple, and he gives a sharp grunt, lunging to his feet.
“Would you stop—”
His shout chokes off as the dagger I’d placed under my pillow goes flying at him next. Cursing, Dante recoils, his hand flashing upward with those damnably inhuman reflexes. He seizes the cold edge midair before it can whizz past his head.
“What do you know of love, leech?” I snap.
“Oh, fuck you.” The silver starts to singe his skin, and Dante promptly tosses my dagger into a corner, wringing his reddened fingers.
I grope for more ammo, but there’s nothing left to throw—nothing that can hurt him.
Breathing heavily, I bare my teeth as I desperately muscle back tears. All I can see is Mother Superior’s unreadable smile as she commissioned me to investigate D’Agonisto. Over and over, I played the moment in my mind.
She knew there’d be nothing left of you to bury, and she didn’t care. The thought is sudden, cutting, all-consuming.
Hypnotism. He must be hypnotizing me again.
But Dante’s lips aren’t moving. And as I frantically scan his face in the dark, I note that his eyes are still their usual deep blue—not a hint of the pallid veil that would indicate he’s pulling on his powers.
Which means any doubt I’m feeling is my own.
Dante stands halfway across the room from me, shoulders rising and falling with cautious, labored breaths.
“You finished?” he calls over. “Or shall I fetch you some more projectiles for your little tantrum?”
Red floods my vision. The next thing I know, my feet are carrying me forward. In a few strides, I’ve closed the distance between us, putting my face right under his.
“You are the most vile person I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet,” I say through my teeth, jabbing a finger to his chest. “Even if you can be cured, you’ll be a monster as a human, too.
No one can remedy you of being a spoiled, wicked man who got too greedy for power and welcomed the curse of immortality. ”
His hands clamp around my shoulders so suddenly that I choke on my next breath.
“I didn’t ask to be like this!” he roars, shaking me slightly. “It was forced upon me—like everything else in my godforsaken life. Alessandro’s grand vision. His captive, everlasting family.”
His face is so close to mine, our furious breaths mingle—and I can see his eyes are wet again.
“You… You were forced?” I whisper, struggling for words beyond that.
We both jump as footsteps pound up the stairs. At first, I’m sure that the innkeeper is rushing to scold us about the noise. But no, there are too many urgent, masculine voices. Metal clinking and the heavy weight of armored steps.
Hunters, accompanied by a familiar, chilling voice.
“Through that door,” the owner of the voice orders. “Hurry, before he escapes.”
“Fucking Thomas,” Dante growls, releasing me to lunge for his dagger. He tosses another blade from his bag, which I pluck cleanly out of the air.
We share a lingering heated look, weighed by a fresh wave of unanswered questions. Vampire lords always initiate an invitation before turning their mark—almost every testimony and ancient text confirms it. How could Dante have possibly been forced to transform?
He’s watching me with a slight furrow between his eyes, flickering every few seconds toward the growing noise behind the wall. He gives me a faint, almost imperceptible nod, his lips parted with a breath of uncertainty, as though I might refuse and usher in his death instead.
I return the nod. Allies—just long enough to survive this.
A deep, resonant thud signals the first blow from the militia against our bedroom door. I turn from him, eyes darting for the rest of my arsenal, still stored near the changing screen.
Fine. With everything brewing within me, perhaps I can use a little more bloodshed.