Chapter 7 #2
“I don’t want to talk to you or anyone else,” I snap, and attempt to move around him again. He meets me toe for toe, and I grunt in frustration. “Just let me go, Avrum.”
“You and I both know I… can’t.”
My fury runs wild now. “Like hell you can’t!”
“Haven, please,” he says with even more gentleness. “You must listen to me. I did not know what Henri was doing to you. I had no idea.”
I shake my head, refusing to hear any of his pitiful excuses. “It doesn’t matter. You know now.” I step to the right, he follows me, frowning deeply. I shift left, and he does the same, refusing to let me get any further from the manor.
His gaze drops to my wrist, and he reaches out to touch it but I jerky away. “Don’t touch me!” I yell, breathing hard. “Don’t you dare touch me. You left me there, tied to his bed like some kind of animal. I saw you and you left me!”
He looks away. Ashamed. “There was nothing I could do then,” he mutters, his voice wavering. “I was frightened.”
To my own surprise, I find myself wanting to believe him, but the soreness of my muscles and the throbbing of my wounds are a constant reminder that I can’t trust him. Not even a little.
Problem is, the fury I felt before is dissolving quickly. And although I’m trying desperately to hold onto it, it’s changing into something else entirely. Empathy. Instead, my heart is aching for him.
What is wrong with me?
“I regret my fear,” Avrum continues immediately, as if he’s talking to himself more than to me.
“I was a fool. A complete and utter fool. I cannot believe I didn’t see it sooner.
I would have never brought you back here if I knew.
” Finally, his eyes lift to meet mine, and sorrow and remorse are the first things I see. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“Forgive me for not trusting your kind,” I reply.
“I understand,” he sighs. “I do not trust my kind either. Not anymore, at least.” He reaches out for me again, but this time, I don’t flinch or move away. Instead of touching me, he lowers my hood.
“Has he… touched you…” he starts, but struggles with the words. “Has he—the very thought of it turns my stomach—”
Knowing exactly what he’s referring to, my cheeks flame. “No. Not yet... but I’m sure he will soon. Henri is mad. He calls me Linna. He thinks I’m in love with him.” It all comes rushing out of me.
His brows rise in shock. “What? Who is Linna?”
“I don’t know. But he’s convinced I am her,” I say. “This is why I have to leave Greystone. I’ve been fighting him, but he grows impatient. I know I don’t have much longer before he… before he…”
“I know,” is all he says.
“Then you understand why I’ve been running away.”
“I do.”
“But he’s your lord,” I reply. “He’ll expect you to support him no matter what.”
His gaze locks with mine so tightly, I feel my very heart constricting with it. “Not anymore.” The words pain him to say.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Believe what you want, but I can’t let you go to the city.” I open my mouth to argue, but he holds up a hand to stop me. “I’ve been removed as your caretaker. Henri has appointed Keagan instead, and when he discovers you are gone…”
Any of the remaining hope I had left vanishes with the mention of that name. Keagan. The slimy guard from the lake who’s always groveling at Henri’s feet and trying to sneak a feel whenever I’m around.
He must’ve read my expression because he says, “Yes, exactly, and that’s why I can’t let you go, knowing the punishment that would await you.”
A chill runs up my spine, making me shiver. I pull the cloak tighter around me for warmth, even though I know it’s not the cold that’s making me tremble.
“When I found you there in the corner of the room… heart barely beating, I…” Pressing his lips together, he pauses.
He can barely speak. Anguish contorts his face.
Genuine concern and worry for me. I can see it clearly now, and it causes something inside me to spark to life.
It begins at the bottom of my belly, and like a candle’s flame, the warmth grows in size and power, stretching upward into my chest and settling at the center.
Right then, I want to tell him that I understand his fear. That pain. It’s something I even struggle to talk about.
Is it possible that Avrum actually has a heart, and that he does want to help me? If so, that means that Emma was right. Avrum does care about me.
More importantly, what am I going to do now that Keagan has been assigned to me? I’m not joking when I say I’d rather die than be Henri’s pet forever.
Maybe I can’t do this on my own…
“Help me,” I say suddenly, realizing it’s my only option to get out of here alive. “Help me leave. You can help me now. Together, we can get to my father, and we—”
His disheartened expression cuts me off.
“You can never go back to your father,” he replies. “It will be the first place Keagan and Henri will look for you.”
My mind whirls from his words, and I’m suddenly dizzy. What is he suggesting? I can never see my father again? That’s impossible. I’d never just leave him, even if it means my freedom. There has to be a way for us both to get out.
“You can bring me and my father somewhere safe,” I blurt out in desperation. “Please, there has to be some way. I can’t stay here.”
Avrum’s eyes drift over my shoulder to where the manor lay quiet and still. He inhales deeply. “You have been bitten,” he says.
I take a slight step back. How could he even know such a thing?
“I saw the wounds when I found you,” he replies to my perplexed look. “Your blood is now entangled with Henri’s. For as long as they are together and flowing through his veins, you will be connected to him. He will know where you are, no matter how far.”
I gasp, my hand flying to the place on my chest where the two puncture wounds lay. “How do you know this?”
“It is something we all learn when we are first changed.”
“Have you ever killed?” I ask, but then hesitate. I’m not sure if I want to know the answer to that question.
“No,” he replies. “I haven’t taken blood directly from humans, besides Henri, when I was first turned, but none since. Now, I drink from a stock supply of human and animal blood in the manor cellar.”
The thought of consuming a person’s blood has nausea spinning in my stomach. “Can you ever stop? Never drink it again?”
Avrum lets out a short laugh. “I have asked the same questions,” he says. “I still have to be reminded that I’m no longer like you. I can’t stop drinking it because I’m no longer fully alive. The living blood replaces what I lost during the change.”
“What are you, exactly?”
“We are called vampires.”
I can’t speak. I never heard the name before, but for some reason, my voice freezes in my throat.
“With your blood still coursing through Henri’s veins, you can be tracked.
I need to get you back to the manor before he wonders where you are and realizes you’re gone.
” Avrum holds out a hand to me, but I only stare at the open palm with wide, fearful eyes.
The skin there glistens against the amber lights from the manor’s windows, and is marked with faint, overlapping scars.
“We keep the scars we have earned as humans,” he tells me, as if reading my thoughts. “I have many of my own to bear.”
For some reason, his words make the warmth in my chest grow even more, and the pains in my body ease. I stretch my own hand out, the raw marks around my wrist standing out against the paleness of my skin.
He offers me a tender smile—a smile that’s meant to tell me that, this time, I’m not alone.
“Come back with me,” he says. “I will protect you with everything I am. I swear it. Please…”
I hesitate for a moment, our hands hovering close. In the space between them, all my doubts and fears linger.
Can I really trust him? He is one of them after all. A vampire.
Taking a step forward, I suck in a lungful of icy night air and place my shaking hand in his.