Chapter 12 #2
It was a convincing performance, Bastian had to give him that. Perhaps Matteo had even convinced himself that he had nothing to do with Luna’s death. But there was no hiding that lethal glint in his eyes.
Bastian was becoming fiercely aware of the daylight pressing down on him. He was beginning to feel weak from the exposure, and he knew he couldn’t take on Matteo and his friends like this. Not alone.
“Listen,” Bastian said, glancing around for an exit. His head was beginning to feel foggy. “We’ve clearly got off on the wrong foot here. Let’s catch up later. Sound good? Wonderful.”
He began to walk away, hoping that the mob would think twice about giving chase, but their voices followed at his back.
“Get back here!” Matteo yelled.
“Murderer!” another man cried.
Bastian clenched his jaw. He rarely lost his temper nowadays, actively avoided conflict for that very reason, but he was tired, still reeling from the encounters with the mayor and Salvador.
He’d got a handle on the hunger triggered by the goblet of blood, but it was still there, buzzing just beneath his skin. And the sun was making him so tired.
This was meant to be his holiday, for crying out loud. He should be sipping an Aperol spritz on a veranda somewhere, not defending himself against a mob. Not accused of murder when he was clean. He was good now. He was calm.
He turned, hands raised.
“Look, kid,” Bastian began, but the waiter cut him off, brandishing the stake.
“You’re a filthy parasite. And we’re going to stop you before you kill again.”
“That would be murder, too.”
“You can’t murder the dead,” Matteo spat.
“Yeah!” his buddies cheered, and a couple of them had their phones out, recording the encounter.
Bastian realized he was backed up against the wall.
Beyond the wall, the cliff fell into nothing, all the way down to the rocks at the harbor’s edge.
Waves lapped the rocks, snagging on their sharp edges, hissing as they tugged free with the tide.
In all his years of loving the sea, Bastian had never noticed how painful its whispering waves could sound.
He pictured foaming fingers clawing the sand as the undertow dragged everything it could reach into a cool, dark embrace.
“Listen, Zappa junior—” Bastian began, but Matteo rushed him.
“Assassino!”
Bastian stopped the stake just in time. Matteo’s full weight bore down on Bastian’s arms, the weapon between them. It dug into Bastian’s chest, and with it came a surge of anger as Matteo pressed into him, his eyes bloodshot with hatred.
“Show your true face, vampire!”
Bastian felt twin pricks against his bottom lip and realized his fangs had unsheathed. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to bury his teeth in the waiter’s neck. Show Matteo what it really felt like to face a monster.
The rage was there again.
The rage that had controlled him once.
For years, the only way to defuse that rage was to kill.
To take out his anger and pain on the kind of people who had made him feel small and wrong when he was alive.
The bigots and the homophobes. The people who sneered and pointed and spat.
The ones who wanted to crush anybody who was “different” in order to reinforce their own fragile sense of self.
Matteo was just like them. A bully. Monstrous in his own way.
And it would feel so good to show him how powerless he really was.
Bastian opened his mouth, freeing his fangs, preparing to sink them into soft flesh for the first time in five years.
But then he saw the terror in Matteo’s eyes.
The kind of terror Bastian had seen so often in the moments before he killed. And it made him think about Whitby.
Whitby who loved him. Who saw the good in him. Who helped him.
Guilt knotted his gut. The same guilt that was always there when he thought about the people he had killed.
Despite everything, Whitby had been a good friend to him.
She was there for him during some of the toughest moments of his life.
They knew each other on a subcutaneous level and, at some point, they had only started making sense when they were together. They were connected, now and forever.
In that moment, he felt Whitby’s absence like he’d lost his shadow. A piece of him had been torn off. He needed her to help him feel calm. One backhanded compliment from her and he’d be laughing instead of thirsting for Matteo’s blood.
He probably tastes like cat food, Whitby would say, and the thought caused the rage to shrink. It retreated to the back of Bastian’s mind, and he remembered that he wasn’t a killer.
He wasn’t a monster.
He was calm.
And he had to get away.
He brought his arms up quickly, breaking free from Matteo’s grip. Matteo yelped in pain, but Bastian didn’t acknowledge him, because he was free. Free!
He didn’t hesitate. He flipped up and over the wall, then plummeted, reveling in the sensation of air rushing over him, pulling at his shirt, whipping through his hair.
He didn’t fall like a human, but with controlled grace.
The air held him all the way to the harbor below, and when he landed, he sank to his knees, feeling the weight of the past few hours pressing down on him as unforgivingly as the sun.
This was getting dangerous.
Maybe Whitby was right, and they should leave Vernazza. Forget that it made him look guilty. Forget what the vampire council might do to this place. Bastian’s life was at stake—literally.
He stared about the harbor, knowing he had to find Whitby. He was about to start making his way back to the town, but then he smelled it on the breeze. Sharp and metallic.
Blood. Again.
Nervously, he went to the harbor wall and peered over at the rocks, suspecting what he’d find, but still shuddering at the sight because it was bad news.
Really bad news. Faintly, he wondered just how long he had wandered the dark alleys after that goblet of blood.
It felt like mere moments since he had fled the mayor’s office, but then he’d run into Salvador, followed by Matteo, and however long it had been, it had been enough time for the killer to strike again.
A body sprawled amid the rocks. Limbs bent. Neck torn. Blood leaking into the water.
Bastian recognized the blond hair, the Micio Micio uniform, and he closed his eyes in sorrow.
Emilio, the cute blond waiter and L.O.V.E. ambassador, was dead.