CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO || COLE #2
I held Eli for a long time. I could have stayed there forever, listening to the sound of his heartbeat as it gradually slowed and his breathing returned to normal, soft and even.
Ordinarily, with a man like Eli in my arms, I would have been thinking about how I might go about getting either sex or blood from him.
But something had changed within me—and that wasn’t true anymore, was it?
Now, all I wanted was for him to be okay.
When it came to the late Morgan Peterson—the man I had come here to kill—the only thing I could muster about his death was a ridiculous sense of gratitude that he hadn’t managed to hurt Eli.
If he’d gotten a bullet into the doctor’s head or heart, not even my blood would’ve saved him. Eli would have just been gone.
And as for Eli’s emotions, I didn’t feel impatient in the least. I should’ve at least felt irritation with him for following me here.
Or perhaps a cold sort of admiration that he had a bit of predatory instinct himself—that he’d pulled this off without alerting me.
Or maybe even a selfish annoyance that Eli would now undoubtedly force a conversation about what I had intended to do here, and I knew I wouldn’t—and perhaps couldn’t—lie to him.
Though the fallout from that conversation was sure to be unpleasant, I was willing to give Eli whatever he needed.
I knew Eli was the cause of the changes I was experiencing. I didn’t understand why yet, but it was undoubtedly true.
When Eli pulled back at last, his dark eyes searched mine, and his expression was far more placid than I might have imagined under the circumstances. The tears had already long since dried on his cheeks.
“You’re really going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were dying.” Then he shook his head. “I thought you were dead.”
I didn’t point out that he’d said that already.
Instead, I stood up. For good measure, I stepped back as well.
Once it occurred to him that he was here—in this quiet place with no witnesses, in a confined space with an inhuman, murderous creature—he would no doubt feel some degree of unease.
Or maybe even alarm. Of course, the idea that I might ever harm Eli was unthinkable. But he didn’t understand that yet.
It would be natural for him to be afraid of me.
I swallowed, turning away from him. Grief tore through me as I realized, for the first time, how I probably looked to him.
Like a monster.
Because I was. Strange—how that had never bothered me before.
But my hands were covered in centuries of blood, weren’t they? Ordinarily, that might have amused me. But now it filled me with despair. I hadn’t even known I could still feel something like this.
“Nicolas,” Eli said, and I heard the rustle of his clothing and the bench creak—he must have stood. “You don’t have to hide from me.”
I let out a sharp bark of laughter. Heaven help me, but he sounded like he meant it.
“Don’t I?” I muttered. My gaze fell to the dead body lying next to the wall, and I felt a chill roll through me.
I had done that.
I’d done it so many times.
“Who was he?” Eli asked, his voice soft.
“Does it matter?” I asked more harshly than I intended. “He’s dead now.”
Eli sighed, then joined me at my side. “He was armed and unafraid to shoot you. He would have shot me, too. And what did he mean, that I was ‘older than his usual’?”
“You were coming at him with a knife,” I replied, unwilling to tell Eli the truth.
I didn’t want to confuse him or let him think there was anything noble about my intentions.
I had come here in cold blood to end Mr. Peterson’s life.
I had done it because that’s what I enjoyed—even if that seemed to no longer be true.
I added, “Anyone would have opened fire if they were holding a gun.”
“Who was he? Why did you go to the police department to get his address? And why the auto parts shop before that?”
I glanced over at him, feeling an odd flash of pride that he had followed me for so long.
But it wasn’t the grim, cold-edged admiration I might have expected for a fellow predator—it was hotter around the edges, because I understood Eli wasn’t anything like me.
This whole experience had cost him far more than it would have someone like Morgan Peterson.
He’d come here because he wanted answers, hadn’t he? Because he wanted to understand me. He had put everything on the line to do it. He must have known what he might find—but he came anyway.
But he’d done all of that for someone who wasn’t a real person. Who could never be a real person. I looked like a man—but I wasn’t. Not really. He deserved far better than me.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him at last.
The best thing to do would be to take Eli home.
Mr. Peterson lived alone and had very few neighbors (since most of the other houses behind us were still under construction).
Plus, we were in the basement. It was likely no one had heard the gunshots.
Even if someone had, mortal hearing is imperfect.
They might have chalked it up to fireworks or a car backfiring nearby.
The police wouldn’t come here. I could return tonight, collect the body after I’d cleaned up the scene—and after I made sure Eli was safe. Then I’d stay away from him.
Why did that thought fill me with even more despair?
Surely, I wasn’t capable of feeling any of this, was I?
Eli was quiet for a long time, as though he was thinking about our next steps too. He seemed far calmer than he should have been. But after what seemed like an eternity, he glanced around the room and then he froze, his gaze locked on the far wall.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
Then he rose and stepped over the dead body like it was no big deal and drifted to the far wall. I stood as well and followed behind him, prepared to tell him that I was going to drive him home—that I would get him out of here.
Then I saw what he was looking at.
The wall was plastered with newspaper clippings.
And photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.
The bloodied, vacant face of Joseph Goldberg stared back at us from the wall, from at least a dozen angles. Mr. Peterson had taken photos of what he’d done. They were arranged around the newspaper clipping about his murder, framing it on all sides.
There was so much blood in the pictures.
And there were others, too. Three more victims. They were all blond men, so young they looked barely out of high school. Just like Joseph, they were covered in blood and staring into the camera with lifeless eyes.
Revulsion tore through me. “Eli, don’t look.”
But as if in a trance, Eli stepped closer, his eyes glued to the wall that Mr. Peterson had dedicated to his victims.
“He was a serial killer,” Eli said at last, his voice oddly flat.
I didn’t say anything, because that much was obvious. Instead, I found myself strangely transfixed by the victims. But it wasn’t the neutral sort of professional curiosity I’d always had when looking over a monster’s handiwork.
It was… revulsion.
Abruptly, I found myself wondering who the victims had been—what they would have done with their lives. I wondered what experiences Morgan Peterson had robbed from them.
Eli stepped closer to the wall and looked at each of the newspaper clippings.
“New Orleans, three years ago,” he said. “David Applegate. He was twenty-one. Stabbed to death a few blocks from Tulane University. He was studying to become a social worker.”
“Eli, don’t do this.”
“Ethan Foster, two years ago. He was murdered in an alleyway a few blocks from Boston University. He studied business. He was twenty.”
I couldn’t hear this. Hearing their names made them real.
It made them more than just Peterson’s handiwork.
And Eli wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t want to understand.
He would believe an unacceptable lie. He would think there was something redeemable about me because of who I had always chosen to kill.
“Lucas Hayes, last year. He was found in a park less than a mile from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He’d been stabbed twenty-nine times.” Eli paused, then drew in a ragged breath. “He was twenty-two. One semester away from graduating with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science.”
“I would have made him confess his crimes to me first,” I said, desperate to make Eli stop. “And then I would have hypnotized him so he couldn’t move or scream.”
Eli didn’t look at me, but his shoulders stiffened, and he swallowed. Then he moved on to the last victim—the one who had brought me here.
“Joseph Goldberg, in Los Angeles. He was studying to become an accountant. He was stabbed forty-seven times, three blocks from the University of Southern California.” He paused, swallowing hard. His voice dropped to a miserable whisper. “A couple of days ago. He was only twenty.”
“I came here to murder Morgan Peterson in cold blood!” I stepped forward and grabbed Eli by the shoulder, spinning him so he could look at me and know I was telling the truth. “I didn’t give a shit about his victims! I wanted to kill him because I enjoy it!”
Eli didn’t even flinch, even though he knew what I was—what I did. His eyes locked with mine.
“Is it always killers?”
I fell silent. There it was. The question I had been afraid of.
“Nicolas, you swore you’d always tell me the truth.”
“It’s not what you think it is.”
“It is always murderers, isn’t it? It’s people who do things like this.” He gestured at the wall of grotesque photographs. “That’s why you had to go to the police station. You were…” He frowned, his eyebrows drawing together as he studied me. “You were what? Getting information about this guy?”
I gritted my teeth at his question, desperate to make him stop.
“Following a hungry vampire is idiotic, Eli. Antagonizing him is even more foolish.”
He snorted. “I don’t fit your victim profile.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”