Chapter 66 #3
I frowned, because he was right, we seemed at large incapable of empathy for creatures we considered beneath us.
A bird was given the gift of flight, a right to freedom, and yet we would confine it to a world so small it was denied the most basic of instinctual functions, and thus we condemned them to a life of misery.
And we would do this to them simply to fill a need as meagre as a visual pleasure enabled at our discretion. I sighed loudly.
“Does that upset you?” He looked bemused.
“A little.”
“You’re an interesting human, Amelia,” he said softly.
“Not really.” I sat up, reached across to take another strawberry and bit into it. He poured me another drink, the last one had ended up watering the grass. He laid on his side, perched on one elbow.
I took a sip, sat the glass down and tucked my knees to my chest. “Why don’t you drink animal blood instead of human?”
He pulled a face. “Why don’t you drink vinegar instead of water?”
“Does it taste that bad?”
He took a sip of champagne. “I have not tried.”
“Do any others choose not to drink human blood?”
He lowered himself to his back. “None that I know of,” he spoke to the sky.
“Why not?”
“It’s about as an appealing concept as asking you to eat a human.”
“There are a few humans I don’t really like, so I guess if I was starving, I might.”
“If the choice was to eat a human or die, you would starve to death.”
I lowered myself onto my side, propped on an elbow and stared at him, watching his face.
“Are you thirsty now?”
“I’m always thirsty, I crave blood like you would crave water if you were stuck in a desert with nothing to drink.”
“Why won’t you drink from me?”
Annoyed, he sighed. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes, I do, or I wouldn’t ask.”
“In a vampire’s world, humans are regarded as fodder and treated accordingly.”
His words shot unease into my stomach. I thought of cattle being herded into slaughter pens. I kept the disturbed look from my face, mostly. “All of us?”
His eyes scanned mine, watching with what I thought might be trepidation for my response. “Yes.”
“Oh.” I laid back onto my back and stared up at sky. I could feel his gaze on my face. I swung back to him. “So to you we are all inferior to your kind, in every way?”
“To me, Amelia, you are not, nor ever will be, food, and I will not treat you as such.”
“But you don’t think I’m equal?” I said with creeping discord.
He sat up, ran his hand roughly through his hair. I sat up beside him. He shot me a look of agitation. “Do I not treat you as an equal?”
“Yes.”
He threw out his hand in a gesture of exasperation. “Then there is your answer.”
“Well,” I shot back, “aside from when you try to boss me around, keep me confined to your house, order me to eat, demand I can’t go out.
What was it you said?” I looked skyward, pulling the memory back, “Absolutely not, Amelia, I forbid it,” I mocked his voice.
“And let’s not forget your superior vampire skills you constantly remind me of that us mere fragiles could never compete with. ”
He exhaled heavily. “And you wonder why I do not answer your questions, you cannot cope with the answers.”
“I can cope, I would prefer truth rather than lies. It’s you who can’t cope with my response.”
We eyed each other in frustration. He shook his head slowly. “I have never met anyone who drives me as crazy as you do,” he said, turning to gaze to a point in the distance.
“Likewise,” I muttered under my breath. “You really can be such an ass sometimes.”
He swung back. “Yes, I can, and yet here you are.” He held out his palm.
“I must be stupid,” I said, glaring at the ground like it was the cause of our disagreement.
“Obviously,” he agreed.
I looked up, he had a boyish grin on his face, which soothed my mood instantly.
“You have to stop doing that,” I said, with mock frustration.
“Doing what?”
“Using your powers to win me over.”
“Powers? I smiled, Amelia, that’s hardly a power.”
“It is and you know it. You use your face as a weapon to suck us mere fragiles in,” I picked randomly at a few grass strands, plucking them from the ground.
He chuckled. “Is it working?”
“Every time,” I muttered. I plucked a strand of grass, its root popped from the ground. I dug a little hole with my finger and tucked it safely back in.
“You might want to water that strand of grass, or you could be responsible for its murder, that’s quite the burden to carry.
” He grinned. The hazel of his eyes caught by the sun’s rays and the humor inside.
Feeling a little silly and captured by his beauty I smiled in return.
He reached over and planted a kiss against the side of my head.
“I think you should come back later and read it a bedtime story, just to make sure it’s okay. ”
I threw a backhander at his stomach, which he caught and wrapped his arms around me.
We tumbled to the ground, laughing. I pulled his head toward mine and we kissed with such tenderness my whole body quivered and my groin stirred again.
We stopped kissing and just laid there together.
My head rested on his chest as his hand caressed my hair.
After some time, we both sat up and sipped our champagne again.
I got up, stretched my arms back, my shoulder blades cracking.
I wandered down to the stream, watching as a leaf bobbled with the flow of the water.
Overhead, a group of birds sliced through the sky in unison.
This place was stunning. I could live here forever, be with him forever.
Karson followed behind and wrapped his arms around my stomach, I pressed my back against his chest, feeling a warm glow inside.
“What has Dahlia taught you?” he asked, his chin resting on the top of my head.
I felt my stomach tighten. She’d taught me how to kill vampires. I felt uncomfortable learning it. I felt even more uncomfortable admitting it. I swallowed, the sound tapping down my throat.
“A few things to deflect power, throw things, block emotions, control my anger.” In the absence of all truth I wasn’t lying I tried to console myself.
His arms seemed to tense subtly around my stomach.
He knows I’m lying. He’d know I needed to learn how to kill a vampire.
It might be vampires that come for the waters.
I should have just admitted it. Now it looked like I had something to hide. Shit.
He twisted my body to face him, holding my arms, with a serious expression. I felt my throat curl into itself. “Anger left uncontrolled is not always a bad thing,” he said.
I let out a breath of relief, if he picked up my deception it wasn’t of concern. I nodded like I understood. I didn’t. Dahlia taught me anger would get me killed, I had to fight by thought, not emotion, she’d said.
“It is what will give you the edge, anger means power, it means you can move faster, you have more strength, anger will drive you when everyone else gives up. If you ever need anger, Amelia, do not be afraid of it, let it surge.” He let my arms go.
‘He has an anger he can’t always control.’
‘That’s nothing compared to what he can do.’
Ethan’s warnings echoed in my ear. I wondered how many people he had slaughtered under a rage. The hairs rose on my arms. “Is that how it works for you?”
He nodded. His eyes drifted across the fields. “It has saved my life more times than I care to count.”
“And how many lives has it taken?” I heard the clip to my voice and instantly wanted to bite my tongue off.
He looked back, annoyed, his voice was chilled and almost challenging. “Hundreds. Maybe more.”
Hundreds. His words hit hard. I stared at my clenched hands.
Maybe more. I stared at the grass. Thousands.
I looked to the sky. I swallowed. For a long moment I had no words.
I needed to find something, anything to say.
When I looked back, he’d moved a few feet away.
He had his back to me. He was deathly still.
He was over five-hundred years old, he’d had to fight to survive, of course hundreds of lives would have been lost over the years.
I groaned silently in the back of my throat.
“Karson,” I pleaded and stepped up beside him. He wouldn’t look at me. His jaw was clenched. Eyes blistering. “Karson, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .” I grabbed his arm, his muscles were branch hard.
“We should get back,” he cut me off. He pulled his arm out from under my touch like I’d burned him. He jerked the travel rug up off the ground, and in a blink it was neatly folded. He walked with tight movements and rammed it back into the pack on the back of the bike.
I felt my temper flare. “Fine,” I snapped. Bewildered and unsettled by his response. Christ, it was a slip of the tongue, a knee jerk reaction. I apologised, what more did he need?
I fetched the glasses, throwing what was left of the strawberries out for the birds.
He reached for the glasses from my hand without a word, without any eye contact, putting everything in the backpack and onto the back of the bike.
He handed the helmet to me with a bored, detached look.
I would have preferred anger to such a blatant look of indifference.
It hurt. I took the helmet from him wordlessly.
We travelled home in silence. When he dropped me off at home, I handed the helmet back.
His eyes met mine. They were cold and impenetrable, like a dark, frozen lake.
I wanted to say something to make amends, but the hurt had turned to anger.
Instead, I turned heel and strode toward the house as his bike roared down the drive.