32. Confrontation #2
“You expected me to tell you I was a vampyr?” I ask.
“You expected me to tell you I was a kresnik?” she retorts.
I cross my arms over my chest.
“I never lied,” she says, softer now. Defeated.
“Everything I told you was true. That my family is part of a dying trade, that I was sent here because I am an outcast, that I no longer believe they know the whole truth. I want to tell them they are wrong, or at least misled. Do you see? I am the first of my kind to investigate, to sort through what I was told and question it! If I can tell what remains of my family about you—but not your name, or where you are, or that you exist…just the truth of you. If I can do that, maybe the hunting can stop.”
Her chest rises and falls rapidly, her wide eyes searching mine for understanding.
“I do kill humans,” I tell her, baring my teeth. “Often. As do the rest of us.”
“So there are more of you?”
I clamp my mouth shut so hard my teeth nearly crack.
“I don’t mean it that way! I just, I want to know. I was going to…saints.” She rubs the space between her eyes, digging into the bridge of her nose with such force I worry she’ll break it.
“You were going to hunt us all down? Bring our ashes home so your family will accept you?”
“No! No. Doing that to get back in my parents’ good graces…
it would be worthless. I don’t want to go back to that village.
I don’t want to spend my whole life chasing demons that don’t exist. I want to explore the world, I want to see it all.
I want…” She trails off, her gaze flickering to me, wanting understanding.
I will not give it to her. I need her to say it.
Despite her lies, despite the anger that simmers in my chest…I want to believe her. Dangerous hope that I shouldn’t entertain. I should kill her now, this is the only confession I will get. This is the affirmation I needed, that she was not in contact with her family.
If it is a lie…well. I will dispose of her body in a way that makes it seem like a theft gone wrong. Her family will have no reason to think a vampyr killed her.
“I want to become like you. I want to be a vampyr. I want to travel the world, I want to see what is out there. I want to never die, to never be sick, to never know illness. I befriended you to hunt you, but after a short time you became my friend and I wanted more. I want more. I want you to turn me.”
The words settle in the air. They are words I’ve wanted to hear, but didn’t know how to approach. It is the secret hope I’d harbored, that Zora would be a companion. Not in the way you and I are, but something else. An equal.
“I understand what I’m asking,” she continues, her voice low. “I understand more than the average human does.”
“But you do not. You claim I don’t kill—I do.”
“I don’t have to.”
“But you will. When you are young, there is not much control.”
She has nothing to say to that.
“You will give up the sun. You will sleep in a grave. You will kill humans, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not.”
“I will be ageless. I will have time to see the world, the entire world.”
“You would trade your life for countless others’?” I ask, tilting my head.
“Do not act so sanctimonious, you have killed.”
“I chose this life with my eyes wide open,” I say, but I do not know if that is the truth. I do not remember fighting you. I remember only the sweet release of death, of singing, of an altar slick with our blood. I remember only joy, elation, a thirst finally sated.
“Then kill me,” Zora snaps. “This is what I want. I do not want to be a hunter, I do not want to wear chains to a cause I do not believe in. I want to be free of the curse of my bloodline. I want to be a vampyr. If I cannot, then it is best you kill me.”
I roll my eyes. “Kill you?”
“Yes,” she hisses. “I will find another vampyr. I know there are others in the city, I can feel it in my bones. It’s an ache, a knowing. I will hunt them down and have one of them make me.”
“They will kill you on sight,” I say.
“You told them about me?”
“I didn’t need to,” I say.
“Because you didn’t know,” she concludes after a pause. She tilts her head back to rest it against the wall, looking up to the limestone ceiling. “You needed me to confirm it. That’s what this is.”
I say nothing, because I hate the truth of it. I was so blind to the truth of Zora, picturing a vampyr companion at last. I chased what I thought she was, not her truth.
“Think on it,” she says. “Please. Keep all of that if you must,” she says, nodding to the book. “I’ve no need of it. I will never hunt a vampyr.”
“Yet you carry weapons to hunt one.”
“I did. I never used them.”
“The stake has blood on it.”
“I used it on a man who got too familiar with me in an alley,” she says.
And I believe her. I hate myself for it, but I believe her. I believe that she wants to be vampyr like me, I believe that she no longer wants to be a hunter. I know Zora, I know of the restlessness in her that mirrors mine. It is why I thought she’d make the perfect companion.
Will I be made the fool again?
“Tomorrow, in this room. I will be here if you decide to change me. If you are not here, I will assume you have left Paris, and I will never see you again.” She takes a step to the side, edging around me, heading for the exit to the tunnel.
“I do not think this is goodbye, Melinoe. I think I will see you again.”
I say nothing as she steps into the tunnel. She gives me one last look before turning to run down the tunnel.
I let her go.