CHAPTER 30
Cassia
“You don’t want us to go? We can get her back. Gigi isn’t answering her phone. I’m worried, Cassia,” Miranda said.
“Gigi is dead,” she replied.
“What?”
“My dear Miranda, Gigi loves me. She is loyal. If I call her, she answers. She drops everything she’s doing and answers the phone. She’s been in the middle of fucking you and has answered my call, so if she’s not answering, it’s because she’s dead,” Cassia stated as she stared at worried Miranda.
“We all love you.”
“No, not like Gigi. She loved me in a way that makes her sacrifice honorable and makes her worthy of my grief.”
“I love her,” Miranda said.
“Of course, you do. This tangled web we weave… You have loved Gigi from the start. She’s loved me and saw you as someone to sleep with.
Amy doesn’t know it yet, but she’ll fall for Zara.
Alexia and Sarah are already enjoying our newest acquisition, and they’ll all fall for someone else one day.
That’s how it works. Gigi is dead. You’ll move on.
There’s a recently turned vampire upstairs with Alexia and Sarah right now.
Maybe it’s her. Maybe you can love her. I keep forgetting her name, but it doesn’t matter. Now, leave us, Miranda.”
“What? Us?” Miranda asked, looking around the salon.
“Hello, Iro,” Cassia said and offered her love a smile. “Care to weigh in on our little problem? Gigi is dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is,” Iro said from her position behind Miranda.
The poor girl had been so distracted by the loss of the woman she loved that she hadn’t even noticed Iro walk into the house.
Then, Miranda turned to face Iro and bared her teeth, like the silly girl she was, and Iro waited because Iro was not silly.
When Miranda lunged at her, she pulled a knife, and Cassia watched Miranda fall to the floor.
“They were my favorites, you know? You didn’t have to kill them,” she said. “Three years I’ve had them, Iro. Three years of work went into making them mine.”
“They’re people, Cassia,” Iro said as Miranda turned the softest, strangest shade of blue.
“They’re dead people, thanks to you. Do you have any idea what it takes to gain that kind of loyalty?
No, you don’t, because you’ve never tried.
Now, I have to start over.” She ran her hand up and down her bare thigh and slid it under her robe a bit.
“I have to assume you’re the reason why Arwen has disappeared from my bedroom? ”
“How could you, Cassia?” Iro asked, taking a few steps into the room.
“At least, I turned her this time. I gave you something here. I thought it would help lessen the blow: she’s still alive.
If you must have her, I’m willing to compromise.
There’s a house I’ve acquired. She can live there until we’re ready to move again.
Then, she’ll have a room at the villa. Oh, she can take Miranda and Gigi’s old room.
It’s perfect, isn’t it? Space for your little toy and for us to resume our life together. ”
“What do you mean, at least you turned her this time?” Iro asked, still clutching the knife in her hand, and that hand was going white.
“I suppose it’s about time I told you. It has been a few centuries, but you’re only going to get angrier, and I’ve been very patient with you. There are several other vampires in this house that will do anything I ask of them. Do not piss me off again, Iro.”
“What did you do, Cassia?”
“Mary.”
“Mary died in childbirth.”
“At least, cowardly Zara has kept some things to herself. Mary didn’t die in childbirth.
I hit that useless husband over the head, killed the midwife that you’ll remember went missing, and killed Mary.
I didn’t like that you loved her. I wanted you.
You were to be mine, and I didn’t want to share you with her.
See how much I’ve grown since then? I have willingly shared you over and over since. ”
“You killed her? You killed Mary?”
“Yes,” she replied. “And I would’ve told you eventually, I’m sure. In the beginning, you were in such a state of shock. Then, we were having so much fun.”
“Fun? Cassia, I loved her.”
“You couldn’t have her, Iro. She was married to a man and having his child. She was never going to leave. And your father–”
“You ruined my entire life because you wanted something you couldn’t have.”
“I made your terrible life infinitely better. I’ve given you everything you could ever want, including me, and you fell for another. You fell for a human, Irabella. A human? How utterly average of you. How could you do that? After everything we’ve been through.”
“Cassia, I don’t want you. I don’t love you anymore.”
“You will in time. Now that Arwen is like us, she’ll take a moment to adjust. I’m sure she wants nothing to do with you right about now anyway.
Have Zara help her adjust to things, if you like.
You and I will fall back together, and if you must have her later, we’ll figure it out, Iro.
I turned her. I could’ve killed her. I probably should have killed her, so you’re lucky I didn’t.
” Cassia glared at Iro. “Now, I am here in my robe, and there’s a dead body on my floor.
You’d do well to take care of dear Miranda and return to me.
I knew you’d be here. I sent no one to your house to kill you or Arwen.
Yet again, showing my growth and my trust in us.
You should be thanking me by getting on your knees and making me feel good, my love.
” She spread her legs, revealing herself to Iro.
“You know you always feel better after. You know how much you want me. Even if you think you no longer love me, you love how I taste.”
“I’m not fucking you, Cassia. I’ll never touch you again.”
“I told you not to piss me off…” Cassia said through gritted teeth.
“I’ve let you kill two of my closest associates, Iro.
I have let Zara run off to wherever she is right now, and I haven’t even sent someone to find her.
I am willing to compromise on this Arwen you want so badly that you’re willing to toss aside three hundred years together, yet I haven’t heard you compromise at all, and you haven’t even thanked me for being kind to you, when I could have asked any vampire upstairs to come down here and kill you. Where’s the gratitude?”
“You want gratitude for killing Mary? Turning Arwen? What is wrong with you?”
“I am a product of my environment, I suppose.”
“Fifteenth-century Florence?”
“No. Another secret I’ve yet to share, and I don’t know that now is the time, but if you must know, I wasn’t born in 1450, like I told you. There is no year for my birth.”
“Cassia, if this is some kind of stall technique, it–”
“Iro, I’d invite you to have a seat, but I know you won’t, so here it goes.
I’m not stalling. I love you. I haven’t told you things about myself because they were never necessary.
You have always been mine, and I’ve always been yours.
We did whatever we wanted together, and I saw no point in telling you my trauma, but if you must know, my name isn’t really Cassia.
My name is Eve, as in Adam and Eve, although I don’t even know where Eve came from.
We had no names. Someone made them up, but you would know me as Eve from that Bible you were forced to read by that father who hated you all those years ago. ”
Iro didn’t say anything.
“Fine. Nothing? Then, I’ll give you the short version.
I woke up as a teenager. I was naked in the dirt, and there was a boy next to me.
This Adam, in this harsh world where we were the hunted, came upon me and wanted something I didn’t want to provide, so I fought him off me and ran.
He found me much later, and we knew we needed each other to survive.
We understood very little, but we knew that when we didn’t eat, we got weak.
One day, years later, we ran out of food.
We’d killed everything we could find and consumed it already.
Adam found a snake in a tree. The Bible says it was I who brought hell to paradise, but I did not touch the snake.
I didn’t take a bite of the apple, Iro. Adam killed the snake, and he then took on the characteristics of a beast. I ran, but he caught me, and he drank my blood.
I died, but he made me drink his blood, and I became what we now call a vampire.
Later, I killed him when he continued to try to take what I would not give. ”
“You’re trying to tell me that–”
“I am the first woman of the Earth, Iro. I killed the first man. We became the first vampires, yes. New people arrived, but I don’t know when or how.
I survived on my own for centuries. I survived on any animal I found until then, and eventually, I began making people in my image because I’d been alone for so very long.
If you had been the only person in the world, alive before time itself existed, and understood nothing of your own origin or reason for being, would you not crave company?
Would you not want to have people made to be like you?
Would you not surround yourself with them? ”
“You don’t have to kill people, Cassia.”
“That I do because I want to, but sometimes, they deserve it. You have to admit it. That man, attacking the prostitute in the 1800s… He deserved what we gave him.”
“Cassia, you can’t have me. I don’t want you. I don’t want this anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want. It matters what I want.
And I want you. I want you, and I want power.
I am tired of hiding in the shadows, Iro.
I am tired of letting humans run around acting like they’re the superior species when they are anything but.
I want you to rule at my side. You can keep Arwen for whatever you want, but you and I will rule together.
Fuck her every week, if you want, but it’s my bed you’ll be sleeping in every night.
I will be your love. She will be a toy you keep for occasional fun unless I decide that it’s time for you to say goodbye. ”
“What are you talking about? You can’t rule the world.”
“Oh, I can. I’ve been turning all the right people in all the right places for years, Iro.
A prime minister, a president, a king or two, some Queens as well.
One of them got down on her knees for me, promising to worship me, and this was only three days after turning her.
Yes, they only last for so long because they stop aging, but then, their children take over, or a new one is elected, and I turn them, too.
I have people in major corporations ready for my command as well, and all I have to do is tell them that it’s time. ”
“Time for what?”
“Time for vampires to rule. Humans will be food and our servants, how it was meant to be. The Earth will finally be ours, and you’ll be right there beside me to reap the rewards. I saved your precious Arwen.” Cassia stood up. “The least I deserve is your appreciation.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Cassia.”
“Of course, you don’t. I made you. It’s in your nature to protect me, not kill me.”
“Then, I have no choice but to try something else,” Iro said, causing Cassia to tilt her head in confusion. “Cassia, listen to me. Listen to the sound of my voice.”
Cassia felt dizzy, which wasn’t something she had felt in centuries, since before Adam had turned her into what she was today. Things went blurry in front of her, though, and she could no longer see Miranda’s body or even Iro. All she could focus on was the woman’s voice.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked softly.
“What I should have done a long time ago,” Iro replied.
Cassia fell backward and landed on the floor while Iro continued to talk. Cassia didn’t register what she said. Then, her eyes closed, and everything went black.