CHAPTER SEVENTEEN || ELI
Alittle less than an hour later, I found myself on Nicolas’s couch, facing him.
I had showered and changed my clothes. Nicolas had taken my old ones and put them into a black plastic trash bag.
I kept waiting for shock to set in, but it didn’t.
My body felt physically fine. Better than fine, actually.
I felt stronger, more grounded—somehow more present in my own skin.
It was the opposite of shock, if anything.
When I had gotten out of the shower, Eric’s body was gone, and the foyer had been thoroughly cleaned. The smell of bleach still lingered in the air. Anyone looking at the scene would never have known what had happened here.
Though home was right next door, I felt like I might as well have been on the moon. Or maybe in another dimension. Home—stability, normalcy, reality—felt like it was a million miles away.
Nicolas watched me in silence, perhaps waiting for me to speak. There was a distinctly unhappy expression on his face. I had the insane impulse to hold him again, to make that unhappiness vanish like it had never been there at all. I had to fold my arms over my chest to keep myself from doing it.
“So,” he said at last. He seemed warier than I had ever seen him. “What do you know?”
I decided to rip the bandage off. The faster we could get all of this out of the way, the faster we could put it behind us and move forward.
“You don’t breathe. You can move faster than should be possible.
You don’t have a heartbeat.” Nicolas flinched, but the expression on his face didn’t change.
“Your eyes sometimes refract strangely in really bright light, but not always.”
I hesitated, thinking of Eric’s body—which Nicolas had already removed by himself in the time I had spent taking a shower. Granted, it had been a long one. But still.
And if Nicolas hadn’t arrived when he did, I would be dead. I had, in fact, died. “And you’re strong. Really strong.”
“Yes.”
“And you did something to Sam. Some kind of… suggestion or something. Didn’t you?”
Nicolas hesitated. Then, his eyes sliding shut, he nodded. “Yes.”
The admission was like a punch to my stomach. I let out a sharp breath. But I would come back to that. We needed to get it all out in the open. No more secrets.
When he opened his eyes again, I met his gaze. “And you healed me… somehow. You…” I trailed off, not sure how to even put it. Whatever he had done, it defied every medical principle I understood. “You took away my gunshot wound.”
He inclined his head. “I couldn’t allow you to die.”
“How?”
“I gave you some of my blood after you lost consciousness. It healed you.”
A ripple of unease tore through me. But I had the strangest feeling it didn’t come from me—it came from him. Nicolas was worried about how I’d react to this bit of news.
I frowned. “I’m not squeamish. The first year of medical school pretty much beats that out of you.” Then I paused, and it really clicked—Nicolas had saved my life. I met his gaze. “Thank you.”
His expression darkened. “You never should have been injured in the first place.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Who was he?”
“Eric,” I said, hating the way his name sounded on my lips. I shuddered. “The ex I told you about. He planned to kill us both.”
“Well then.” He flashed me another thin, brittle smile. “In that case, I suppose I’m glad he’s dead.”
More than glad. He seemed… steady.
Eric had planned to murder both of us. He would have succeeded with me if not for Nicolas. But still—there was nothing, was there? Not even a hint of unease over the fact that he had just taken a living person and snuffed his life out. No emotional reaction at all.
“You’ve killed before.”
“Eli, please don’t do this.”
I fixed him with a hard look. “Are you going to lie to me?”
The grief in his eyes was plain to see. But, very slowly, he shook his head. “No. Never.”
“It goes without saying at this point, but I know you aren’t human.
” I paused, willing myself to force the next words out.
Now that we were here, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to ask anymore—because I knew this was going to change everything.
But I had to know. I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Nicolas, what are you?”
His smile vanished as quickly as it had come, and something in his gaze darkened again. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I’m a vampire.”
I stared at him. I expected to feel disbelief or shock.
Or fear. Or maybe even anger. There should have been something.
But I didn’t feel any of that. It explained everything fairly well, didn’t it?
The impossible speed, the lack of a heartbeat, the fact that he didn’t need to breathe.
It probably even accounted for some of his immensely strange behavior, even though I wasn’t sure how yet.
But I could tell the admission cost him.
He wasn’t used to being vulnerable to anyone, was he?
And he had just made himself excruciatingly vulnerable to me.
Because he agreed with me that I had a right to know.
Somehow, I didn’t just suspect that—I knew it.
As though I could sense what was going on inside him. The CliffsNotes version, anyhow.
“Thank you,” I said.
He let out an incredulous-sounding laugh, his eyes widening as he stared back at me. He paused for a long time, as though waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, he said, “You’re welcome?”
His words rose at the end, more question than statement. As if I had confused him. Which, to be fair, I probably had.
I decided to get the other most important question out of the way first. “Am I safe with you?”
“Yes.” His answer was immediate.
I wasn’t especially surprised by that either. I knew by now that he wasn’t going to hurt me. Nicolas would never have hurt me. He had just gone out of his way to save my life.
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?” he demanded, verging on scandalized. “I tell you that I’m a vampire and you, just… what? You’re not surprised?”
“You had to be something,” I countered. “Why not that?”
“You’re not afraid?”
“Not of you. You’ve had plenty of chances to hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I know that,” I repeated, frowning at him. “But you can’t mess with my sister’s head.”
“She gave informed consent,” Nicolas said flatly. “It was her choice.”
“What are you talking about?”
He scowled and shook his head. Whatever had taken place between him and Sam, he didn’t want to talk about it.
Why not?
Because he was guilty? Or because he was protecting her confidence?
I watched him in silence. The little display of emotion twisted something deep inside me.
This was more evidence of what I had seen that first night we were together—and a thousand other times since.
He was far more fragile than he seemed. And there was a deep well of hurt in him, too.
I could almost feel it as though it were my own.
No, not almost.
Yes, I could feel it. Somehow, I was sensing Nicolas’s emotions. I scooted closer to him on the couch.
“Eli,” he said, still looking away. “Don’t.”
I took his hand in mine and held it. There was no pulse beneath the skin, but he was warm to the touch. It didn’t make any sense.
“Why not?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“There’s a lot that you don’t understand yet. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. And you need to know it. You need to know all of it. Otherwise this isn’t… this isn’t fair.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say. I was in love with him. Fair didn’t factor in, did it?
But I humored him. “What do I need to know?”
He looked back at me, and his expression was completely neutral. “I kill people.”
I recoiled at his words, pulling my hand free from his. My heart began hammering, and my breath hitched in my chest. Because he didn’t say I’ve killed people in the past.
He used the present tense.
“Do you have to?” I asked, doing my best to keep my voice neutral. The answer to this was important, wasn’t it? After all, if he had no choice but to kill to survive, that was a different beast. It still wasn’t great, but it was different than if he was willfully choosing to be a murderer.
“Ah, you’re afraid of me now.”
I glared at him. “You just told me you kill people! Give me a fucking second to wrap my head around that!”
He blinked rapidly, apparently startled by the heat in my voice, then laughed. “I keep forgetting that you have a temper.”
“Answer my question,” I said through clenched teeth. “Do you have to kill to survive?”
He met my gaze. His face was placid and perfect—a marble statue carved by a master artist—but his eerily blue eyes were practically on fire. And I could, for the first time, see the predator in him.
“No.”
I expected to feel fear at his admission, but instead, something inside me tore—as though my heart had ripped in half.
“If you don’t have to kill to survive, then why? Why do you do it?”
“Because I enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed it.”
I lurched to my feet, unsteady, and took a step backward. For the second time, the floor felt like it had fallen out beneath me, and I was plummeting into bottomless darkness.
My voice came out in a rough, ghastly whisper. “How many?”
“Too many to count.”
His answer turned my stomach. My eyes slid shut of their own accord.
Oddly enough, I still didn’t doubt for an instant that I was safe with him.
But that didn’t stop the sudden fury seething within me, bubbling to the surface, warring with my heartbreak.
For an instant, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to make him sorry for all the lives he had taken.
I had dedicated my career—years of my life—to saving lives. And I had literally gotten into bed with a murderer. I had let myself fall in love with someone who killed for no other reason than because he enjoyed it.
That should have—that did—repulse me.
Nicolas was a serial killer.
But then, when I opened my eyes, prepared to tell him exactly how I felt about that, I found that I still couldn’t bring myself to hurt him after all.
He looked fragile. And miserable. And… ashamed.
My stomach turned again. Then my breath escaped my lips in a sob, and tears stung my eyes. Humiliated, I wiped them away with the backs of my hands.
Another sob tore out of me without warning. I blinked, and a tear rolled down my cheek.
Nicolas rose to his feet and took a hesitant step toward me. He put a hand out, as though to take mine again. “Eli, please. Talk to me.”
I lurched back, recoiling from his touch. “No!”
He froze, watching me with an unhappy expression on his face. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Laughter burst from me, harsh and bitter. “Tell who? Sam? The cops? What would I even say?” I couldn’t stop the jeering tone in my words—or the tears that kept coming. “Please send help, there’s a murderous vampire who bought the house next door to mine? No one would believe me.”
I let out another sharp bark of laughter, but it felt like there was a molten, jagged hole in my chest. It turned out I didn’t really know Nicolas at all—so why did knowing he was a killer, that he enjoyed it, break my heart? I had been in love with a lie.
“Don’t worry. Your secret is safe, Nicolas. You can keep murdering people.”
He flinched at my words.
Somehow, seeing that made the pain even worse.
“I have to go,” I said, realizing I couldn’t be here anymore. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done this. I never should have believed that you—that we—that we could be—”
I broke off, misery sweeping through me again. Fresh tears spilled over.
“Eli, please don’t.”
“Are you going to let me leave?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“If I ask you to, will you stay away from me?”
The grimace on his face was answer enough.
I shook my head, feeling another surge of anguish mixed with fury. “Fuck you, Nicolas.”
With that, I turned and fled out the door. I had no idea where I was going, but home was out of the question—and so was anywhere near him.
Nicolas didn’t follow me.