CHAPTER NINE || COLE
Ifelt oddly groggy as I swam back up from the darkness of sleep.
I couldn’t quite remember the details of my dreams, but I knew they had been about Eliott—a past lover, a man I had loved back when I was still human and capable of such feelings.
I hadn’t thought of him in hundreds of years, even though the loss of him should have broken me.
It would have, if I had still been able to care.
Instead, his death had cost me the last traces of my humanity and turned me into the creature I was today.
My brother and I had attempted to flee our maker early on—within days of being turned into vampires—before we understood any of the rules governing our kind.
Magnus had been a cruel creature and had selected us because he was interested in the prospect of twins.
Thierry and I had both objected, but when he threatened to kill my brother in front of me, I had been foolish enough to do whatever I had to in order to protect him.
Of the two of us, Thierry had always been the stronger one—surer of his actions, filled with will and conviction I hadn’t possessed.
He had been my best friend and my deepest confidant.
Of course, I could never have allowed any evil to befall him.
And when Thierry fought back and tried to lead me to freedom, I followed.
My brother had grabbed a sword from the wall and beheaded one of Magnus’s inner circle to secure our escape. When Magnus captured us, I thought he was going to kill us. Instead, he did something much worse.
Holding a wooden stake to my brother’s chest, he led three young men—all of them my age—into his private bedchamber.
Each was hooded so I couldn’t see their faces.
Then he commanded me to drink from them.
He promised I wouldn’t need to kill them; he wouldn’t force me to do that.
All I needed was a taste, and then he would let all of us go.
Had I truly believed him? To this day, I still didn’t know. All I knew was that if I hadn’t, he would have killed Thierry in front of me—and I couldn’t have allowed that.
I hadn’t stopped with just a taste, of course.
Newborn vampires are seldom able to control their hunger in the beginning.
In the grip of the frenzy that took me over, I killed all three of the young men, one after another, while Thierry watched and pleaded with me to stop.
And then, when I sat on the stone floor of Magnus’s bedchamber, frozen in the anguish and horror of what I had done, Magnus commanded me to remove their hoods.
That was when I discovered I had murdered the only man I had ever loved.
Eliott’s body had been so pale and fragile in my arms as I clung to him.
As tears burned wicked tracks down my blood-soaked cheeks, I looked down at his lifeless body and had a single moment where my heart shattered into a million pieces.
Everything human in me died in that instant, crushed under the weight of what I had done.
That was Magnus’s punishment. It wasn’t death.
It was something else altogether. And it wasn’t just for me—it was for Thierry as well.
Perhaps mostly for him. Magnus released me that night to do whatever I wished, apparently no longer interested in the prospect of twins now that one of us was permanently damaged goods.
But he hadn’t let Thierry go. He had lied—just as he had lied about the young men, the innocents who hadn’t deserved to die.
To this day, I still couldn’t tolerate liars.
My bedroom was dark when I sat up. That was the first thing I noticed. The second was that the bed was emptier than it should have been. The comforting weight of Eli beside me—his arms around me, enveloping me in his warmth and intoxicating scent—was gone.
I checked the time on my phone and saw that I had slept for eighteen hours.
Disbelief crashed through me as I stared at the digits on the screen, willing them to make sense. Vampires require little sleep, and I had already slept before seeing Eli yesterday… Yesterday? How could it have been yesterday?
I felt a flicker of fear as well.
Because anything could have happened to the good doctor in the last eighteen hours while I was here, dead to the world. The whole reason I had moved next door was that there was a murderous vampire on the loose, hunting in my neighborhood.
What if that vampire knew me?
Not impossible, given that I had eight centuries of life under my belt and hadn’t always made friends everywhere I went. What if he—or she—had been watching and realized Eli was important to me?
With that thought clear in my mind, I launched out of bed, not even pausing to make sure I was presentable. I made it to Eli’s home next door before even thinking about what I was doing.
I knocked, and Sam answered. She reeked of wine. Not surprising, given that she was clutching a glass of it in her hand.
“Can I help you?”
“My name is Cole. I’m a friend of Eli’s. Is he here?”
She gave me a glassy-eyed stare. “No.”
“Where is he?”
Her eyes narrowed—my only warning before she started to slam the door on me. I caught it one-handed.
Sam stumbled backward, some of her wine sloshing from the glass. I caught her by the shoulders before she could fall.
“Is he at work?”
Mutely, Sam nodded, staring at me with wide eyes.
Relief crashed through me. If he was in a public place, surrounded by coworkers and hospital staff, he was probably safe. But annoyance followed fast on its heels. “He was supposed to have the next several days off.”
He hadn’t left a note, either.
“He got called in, like always.” She managed not to slur her words, though they were soft around the edges.
This was far from the first time I’d seen her intoxicated.
Not exactly a surprise, given that Eli had written about his sister’s drinking problem—or, more frequently, around it—in his journal. She added, “Let go of me.”
I realized I still had my hands on her shoulders and released her at once.
“What time did he come home?”
“Why are you so interested?” Sam shook her head, her expression hardening. “Look, my brother is complicated. And if he’s giving you ‘no’ signals, do him and yourself both a favor and take them at face value.”
Well, he certainly hadn’t given me any no signals last night, had he?
“I’ll tell him you stopped by.” A colder note entered her voice; the dismissal was impossible to mistake.
Still, I had to respect that she wanted to protect Eli. After all, so did I. For the first time, I wondered if she was in any danger. Perhaps my presence in Eli’s life might put her in the crosshairs as well.
Inwardly sighing in exasperation, I caught her eye. “Hand me your phone.”
She blinked rapidly, startled. Her face didn’t go blank—I hadn’t used enough hypnotic power to put her fully under my spell—just enough that she wanted to do as I asked more than she didn’t.
Frowning, she fished her phone out of her pocket and handed it to me. I noted that vampiric hypnotism seemed to work on her, at least. Whatever strange quirk made Eli immune to me didn’t extend to his sister.
I took her phone and plugged my number into it.
She watched me without comment, her frown deepening.
“I’m making sure you have my phone number,” I said, replying to her unspoken question.
I caught her eye again and pushed just a little harder this time.
“Sam, listen to me. This is important. If there’s ever a moment when you feel that either you or your brother might be in danger, call me.
It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are, what time it is, or where you happen to be.
I don’t care. I will come, and I will help. Do you understand?”
I stopped pushing and waited.
“Yes.” Her expression went faintly cloudy for an instant but then refocused. She lost her frown, though her face remained puzzled. “Why?”
Alarm jolted through me at her question. Even intoxicated, she wasn’t a pushover. I shuddered to think what our encounter would have looked like had she been sober.
“No reason,” I replied airily, trying not to let her see how shaken I felt.
Then, without another word, I turned to leave. If there was danger, she would let me know. Though everything else felt uncertain, I knew that much to be true.
“He gets off at three,” she called after me before I had taken more than three steps.
I turned to stare at her. Her frown was still there, but a strange sort of conviction had settled in her face.
“You’re Nicolas, right?”
“Cole,” I corrected automatically.
“He smiles when he talks about you. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that. I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it, though.” Then she paused, sizing me up. Her dark eyes were hard and impossible to read. “Hurt him, and I promise you’ll regret ever being born.”
With that, she closed the door.
He smiles when he talks about me? I thought, grinning to myself like a fool.
How odd that such a small piece of information could make me feel so strangely happy.