14. Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
She keeps her back to the brick and two arm-lengths of road between us. Smart. I stay near the far end of the side street, with the glare from the avenue shining on me, and I don't move toward her.
"You saw the truth." A couple drifts past the opening, laughing about something, and I wait until their voices thin into the traffic. "I won't insult you by pretending it wasn't."
"Say it." Her palm is flat against the wall, like she needs something solid under her hand. "Just tell me what you are."
So I do. "A vampire. The man at the event, the one whose mouth was—" I don't continue that part because she knows.
"Also one. We're not many. But we're old, and most of the time, careful.
We've stayed hidden for centuries. Living inside humanity.
Hospitals. Banks. Boardrooms. Normal places that no one would like twice at. "
"Centuries." She tests the word like she's deciding whether it will hold her weight. "You expect me to—"
"I don't expect anything. You asked. I'm answering."
Her eyes go to my mouth, quick, then away, like she's caught herself doing it. I don't interrupt it. It's the most honest thing she's done since she ran.
"How many of you are there?" she asks.
"Enough to need rules. We govern ourselves in clans—families, more or less, held together by blood and money and grudges that outlast nations. Above that sits a Council. It exists for one reason: to keep humans from learning we're here. They settle our wars quietly. They erase our mistakes."
Her gaze flicks to the main road, where taxis crawl past and people keep laughing into the night.
Ordinary life, untouched. I watch the realization reach her in pieces: every bright window, every hospital wing, every bank vault suddenly becoming a place where monsters might sign forms and smile calmly at reception.
"And you?" Her chin lifts. "Where do you sit in all that?"
"I built the machine that does the erasing."
She goes very still.
"Crowe Technologies isn't a cover story, Jasmine, but it isn't only what the press releases say either.
Underneath the products there's a network.
When someone feeds where he shouldn't and a phone catches it—the network finds the footage before it spreads.
A witness account. A leaked photo. A line in a database that connects two things that should never be connected.
We bury it. I created that. I run it. I have for years.
Moving when people notice I haven't aged.
Changing the name as I set up a new business. "
"You—" Her voice climbs, then she clamps down on it and checks the avenue beyond us. When she speaks again it's barely above a whisper, and it's worse for being controlled. "People see something. They try to warn each other. And you make it vanish."
"Yes."
"That's the company I work for."
"Yes. And I should have told you what sat underneath it."
Now the anger arrives, the fear giving her enough room to find it. "Do you have any idea—" She stops. Starts again. "Have you fed on people? Off them. Like he did."
"No." It's the one answer I never have to weigh.
"Not in a very long time. I take what I need through controlled channels—medical supply, screened, given willingly.
There's a physician who arranges it. That's all I can say about her, because more than that puts her at risk, and you because my world doesn't take kindly to humans knowing. "
I watch her decide whether to believe me. I don't help. Belief I argue her into is worthless.
"Then answer this." Her arms come around herself, and not from cold. "Every late night. Every car you sent. All those months alone in a room with you, and I never knew what you were. Was I ever safe? Even once?"
"You were never in danger from me." I hold her gaze for the piece she deserves most. "Which is its own strangeness, and you should know why.
The first time you walked into that interview, I knew you.
Not your name. Your body. I could hear your heartbeat before you entered.
I still can. Your warmth changes how the air sits around me.
From that first moment, I realized that I would stand between you and everything that could ever hurt you.
It's strong enough for me to feel everything you feel.
I don't hear your thoughts, or your choices though. "
"How is that possible?"
"A bond. Rare. Old. You and I didn't create it. Vampires didn't either." I don't soften what comes next. "My kind call it a mate. Basically, you're mine."
She presses back into the brick. "So I don't get a say. Some—biology decided, and now I belong to—"
"No." The word leaves me too hard, and I pull it back down.
"Listen, because this matters more than the rest. The bond is there, but isn't a leash I get to put on you.
It doesn't give me your body. I can't choose anything for you.
It doesn't make you owe me anything. It just tells me when you're in danger before you know it yourself.
It makes leaving you nearly impossible for me. "
"And if I walk." Her eyes are bright and furious. "Right now. Out of that company, out of your life, and I never look at you again."
"Then you walk." Saying it is like losing a piece of me. "I won't follow to punish you. I won't cause a problem. I'd let you go, if that's what you truly want."
She studies me like she's analyzing everything she just learned. Deciding if I'm a man she can be around or a man she should expose. For a moment I'm certain she'll go. Her weight shifts toward traffic, toward the light, toward home.
She doesn't.
"I need time." Her voice shakes. She moves, then turns back, and what she gives me is harder than her fear. "Soon. No gaps. Every choice you made that involves me. You're going to admit it all."
"I will."
"Right now, I just want the truth."
Then she's gone, into the light, and I stay here where I belong, and I remain where the streetlamp doesn't reach.