32. Confrontation
Confrontation
“Have you been to the underground passages?” I ask Zora.
She jumps, having not noticed my approach.
There is no need to pretend to be human, is there?
I might have dropped some defenses around Zora, but habit kept me as human-like as possible in public.
I walked at the speed of a human, I did not sneak through the shadows. I did my best to look like I belonged.
Why bother now?
Zora puts a hand to her chest and sighs, shaking her head. “Melinoe! I did not hear you coming.”
“Does that make you a good teacher?” I ask.
“It does,” Zora says, her smile fleeting. She holds the fake bag at her side like she did the old satchel, her fingers digging into the straps. Is it so she would always have a stake at close range? To kill me?
“There are limestone quarries,” I continue. “Below the city. Have you been?”
“Once or twice,” she says.
“Then you can show me,” I tell her.
“Right now? At night?”
“Is there something to fear?”
“Thieves? Murderers?” she lists off.
“So…us?” I ask.
“Murderers? Hardly,” she scoffs.
“All the better. Will you show me?”
“Yes, I suppose,” she sighs, nodding toward the street for me to follow.
I fall into step with her, studying her out of the corner of my eye.
She’s worn a hole into her lip from chewing it, her blood a sweet smell on the air.
Has her blood always smelled so appetizing, or is it the promise of revenge for her lies that makes it so?
I will find out soon enough.
Zora ducks through the streets, finding the closest entrance to the tunnels, the one I’d hoped she’d use to enter it. She grabs a lantern from in front of a shop to light the way. We drop into the tunnels. I look around, pretending to be impressed.
“It’s too dark in here,” she mumbles, fumbling with the strength of the lamp.
“Come,” I say, grabbing her hand to drag her down a tunnel to our left.
“Melinoe! Where are we going?” she protests, trying to slow our march. I don’t loosen my grip, instead I dig my fingers deeper into her.
“I’ve something to show you,” I say.
“Show me? I thought you’d never been in the tunnels…” She tries to jerk away now, her heels digging into the packed dirt below our feet. She gets no purchase, especially against my stronger pull.
“Just a little farther,” I say.
Her heartbeat speeds, her hand grows clammy. Good. I want her afraid, I want her last moments to be filled with fear. It’s what she deserves.
I let go of her in a small antechamber. The corners are alight by lanterns and candles, casting shadows over the small space. In the center of the room lies Zora’s satchel. Her eyes widen at the sight of it, her gaze darting to me.
“That’s my…”
“Ah, so it is yours. Including this?” I ask, holding up her book.
“Melinoe…wait,” she says, lifting her hands in a motion of surrender. She takes a step back toward the tunnel we just came from. I picked this room for this exact reason—there is only one way in and one way out. I circle her to stand between her and her exit.
She is stuck underground with the very thing she was raised to hunt. She will not come out of this alive, and she knows it. She darts for her satchel, pulling out the cross and brandishing it at me.
“Stay back!” she yells.
I step toward her. She matches every step I take with a desperate one backward until her back is pressed into the wall. I take the cross from her hand, considering it. “What was your plan? To bash me over the head with it?”
“I-it’s…” she stammers, her eyes wide on the cross in my hand. “It’s supposed to harm you.”
“Why should it?”
“It is a symbol of the Church!”
“I am older than your church,” I say, raising the cross over my head. Zora covers her face and cowers. I embed the cross into the limestone to the right of her head, driving it as deep as I can.
“Do you think me stupid?” I ask. My voice catches and I hate myself for this weakness. I must keep my anger, otherwise the betrayal will flail my skin from my body. I hold my anger tightly, stoking it with reminders.
She lied. She wants to kill you. She wants to kill me. She was pretending to be my friend.
The last one has my bottom lip trembling, so I ignore it in favor of the other three.
“No! Let me explain…”
“So you can lie some more?” I ask. “So you can pull another item from your satchel to kill me?”
“The cross did not kill you,” Zora protests.
“You didn’t know that!” I yell, my voice reverberating back at me. Each echo is more pained than the one before it, trembling more than I wanted it to.
“Why did you steal my bag?” Zora asks.
“You are in no position to ask questions,” I hiss.
“Did you suspect? Is that why?”
“You are in no position to ask questions,” I repeat. If I admit that I had no idea, that another told me, I damn Le Sang Bleu. I don’t mind that so much as I mind letting her know there are other vampyrs here. That could lead her to you.
I must keep her from you.
“Then let me explain!” Zora protests.
“Explain what?” I press. I want her to say it, I want to hear it from her lips. I want to know that I am not misled, that she is truly what both Caterina and I think she is.
Will she admit it?
“I…” she starts, then stops. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I am a kresnik.”
I wait. The shadows from the flames flicker across her face, outlining every sharp feature. Her cheeks are no longer sunken, but full. Her under eyes are still dark, though not like before. The jut of her jaw is less severe…but there is a sadness there. A resignation.
She knows I will kill her.
Good.
“We are hunters of your kind,” she finishes.
“My kind?” I ask.
“Vampyrs. You kill humans and drink their blood to live. At least, that’s what I thought.
That’s what I want to tell you! I was raised as one, my entire family is.
We are a line that was cursed or blessed, depending on who you speak to, to carry out this ancient pact to rid the world of vampyrs.
” She speaks quickly, her gaze raking my face, trying to read my expression.
I school it as best I can, though every word is a confirmation of the fears I’d harbored for the last few hours.
“So you pretended to be my friend so you might kill me?”
“No! Well, yes—at first. Please, Melinoe, let me explain…”
“Then get on with it!”
“I was raised with that book! My parents are hunters, as are my brothers and sisters. They raised me to believe vampyrs exist, that they hunt and kill humans, that they are creatures of the devil. I did not want to be a hunter, I had other ambitions. I wanted to leave our village. My parents hadn’t killed a vampyr since my oldest sister was born, and my siblings had never even seen one.
I thought they—you—were all gone. I thought it a figment of their imagination. I thought it…hysteria.
“I tried to convince them to leave our village! I wanted to see the world, I wanted more. I told them the only way to find others was to leave. They saw through it, and I was…” She trails off, shaking her head.
“I was sent to Paris because there were rumors of vampyrs here. It was my opportunity to prove myself, to use the skills I was raised with. They know nothing of the world outside our village, and the money they gave ran out quickly, and I took to stealing to survive. I tried to return, but they were explicit that I shan’t return until I’d found the vampyrs here.
“After a few years without finding a single one, I knew they did not exist. That my parents lied, wanted an excuse to send me away since I was not their ideal daughter. It was just as I had that realization that I saw you. I saw your eyes and…something happened in my chest. It was a buzzing, like some part of my intuition was warning me. Something deep inside me knew what you were, and that’s when I realized my parents were not liars.
“So yes, at first I thought I could overpower you. I just needed the right opportunity, when you were unawares and I could drive a stake into your…” She trails off, looking away. “I thought I could kill you.”
I grind my teeth, my fingers clenched at my side into fists. But I do not interrupt her, because I need to know everything she knows. I must know if she knows about you, if she told her family what she found in Paris. I need to know what danger we are in.
“But as I spent time with you…I…” She swallows, looks up at the ceiling. Her face is pained, but it is another act. Just like her act of our friendship. Just like every other lie she’s told me.
“I realized my parents were wrong, that book is wrong.
You are not evil, at least not in the way they claim.
I watched you feed and let humans go, still alive.
You do not kill them, do you? They are still alive.
And I watched them for weeks after you fed, they are none the wiser.
Then I began to question what else they had wrong.
“And as I got to know you, I…considered you a friend.” She laughs bitterly and shakes her head.
“I enjoyed our time together. In my village my family are pariahs, outcasts. They have trouble getting work outside of hunting because of it. My only friends as a child were my siblings, and even then we were not particularly close. I thought them delusional, they didn’t like my indifference.
“I thought I could tell you one day. I tried to, in my own way. I tried to talk about my family, to show that I was not like them. That I hadn’t spoken to them in quite some time, that I hadn’t told them of you. And I thought, maybe…” She shakes her head again.
“You hadn’t told them of me?” I ask incredulously. I turn to a page near the end, to the cramped writing in the margin that mirrored the writing of the last name on the inside of the cover. “Red eyes that glow. Persuasion? Makes people do things they don’t want to,” I read off.
“I took those notes the first day I met you!” she protests. “I haven’t written those words anywhere else!”
“I’m supposed to believe you? That you are not lying to me now, as you have for months?”
“And you were not lying to me?” Zora protests.