Chapter Twelve #2
“The begging for me to plunder your pussy is entirely coming from you.” He laced his fingers through mine and kissed my bruised knuckles. “And I’m too much of a gentleman to deny a pleading woman.”
“You mean you’re too much of a shitbrain to be a rat bastard.”
Radu laughed free and heartily. “What does that even mean?”
My eyes narrowed on the chortling undead menace. It was wild how much a fresh dose of blood changed him. Starving Radu was bored, listless, and uncaring of everything and everyone. Fed Radu was bright, joking, and dare I say, peppy.
“Go try your lies on someone else,” I snapped, shaking him off. “I know you’re drugging me with your venom; otherwise, I wouldn’t let you touch me with a ten-foot pole. Not even if the end you were holding was doused in holy water!”
“You’re upset, sweet one, and I do so hate it when you’re distressed.
” This man had the nerve to fake pout at me.
“How about a distraction? Tell me everything there is to know about your sister and the men who took her. Even the smallest detail can help me find her.” He hummed.
“Speaking of small details, tell me everything about you, your parents, and your family history as well. It might give some insight into why, of all the sisters in the mortal world, the two of you were targeted.”
I glared fit to explode his head. “What part of I’m not telling you a damn thing about Dora do you not understand? Give it up!”
He tsked, shaking his head. “Really, Charlotte, aren’t we past this?
Think of the time we’ve spent together these past weeks.
Haven’t I cared for you? Fed you? Bathed you?
Clothed and pampered you? Haven’t I given in to your every sexual demand even though you beat me before and after?
Don’t you know I’d treat your sister just as well?
“Or do you truly believe your sister is better off in the hands of a psychotic murderer who has already killed twenty people?”
My eyes stung. No, I did not believe Dora was safe in her captor’s hands, but neither was I safe in mine.
The door may be unlocked, and my body may be free of cuffs and chains, but I only had to look into Radu’s color-changing eyes to know that it didn’t matter if I escaped hell and went back to the living world.
No matter how far I ran... he was never letting me go.
I SAT UP IN BED, READING a rather fascinating book written by a vampire author named René Boudin.
And before you believe I had the strength to do either, you’d have to know that I was only sitting up because Radu propped me up against the pillows, and I could only read the book because he was holding it and turning the pages for me.
Thanks to the greedy jerk, I was still weaker than a newborn kitten.
Even so, the book he suggested for me was more engrossing than I was ready for. It was a dark tale of a young painter who became enamored with a beautiful noblewoman. He was content to just watch and paint her from afar, but it turned out he wasn’t as subtle as he tried to be.
She had her guards drag him and his sketchbook to her. She was going to have the stalker peasant punished, until she saw his paintings. The artist didn’t paint her as a pretty, delicate object of male attention.
He painted her reading, writing, laughing with her friends, learning how to make pastries, and even playing with the village children. She didn’t even look flattering in half of them. The paintings were just her—living her life.
In the book, she thanks him with tears in her eyes, saying these paintings will be the most precious things she’ll ever own.
Then, she offers him a king’s ransom—truly an obscene amount of money for the time—and tells him the money is his as long as he takes it and runs.
Runs far away, changes his name, and never paints again.
The painter wanted to refuse, but the book said the look in her eyes when she begged him to leave... was terrifying.
He took the money, packed his things, and left that very night.
Years later, he was happily living over three hundred miles away with a lovely wife in a small, but welcoming community. He was so content, he only ever thought of his first love once in a blue moon.
But his first love hadn’t forgotten him.
I had just finished the chapter where her guards hunted him down, killed his wife, and dragged him back to her, chained up and pleading.
“What the hell?” I cried. “Why’d she do that? She was the one who told him to leave!”
“Are you asking me to spoil it for you?” Radu picked up my teacup and pressed the rim to my lips.
I slurped it down without hesitation. Why not? It wasn’t like the guy was going to poison his food.
“Yes, spoil it,” I replied, “and if it’s an insane reason, throw the book across the room for me because I can’t do it myself.”
He chuckled. “The reason she had him brought back is the same reason she sent him away. Our dear noblewoman had always been wealthy and beautiful. The two things men coveted most in her world. Ever since she was young, she’s been stalked, harassed, degraded, and seen as nothing more than a priceless object.
“And then, one terrible day, she was kidnapped and raped by a drunken, loutish count who thought that defiling her would mean that no other suitor would want her, thereby forcing the girl’s father to give him her hand in marriage.”
“My goodness,” I breathed, heart twisting. “Did her father...?”
He shook his head. “Her father killed the brute. Ran him through right where he stood, but unfortunately, the count had powerful friends. No amount of money could make the incident go away, so her father was arrested and executed,” he said.
“After which, the title passed to her little brother, who was no more than a year old. As long as there was a male heir, the noblewoman’s homes, position, and wealth were safe.
She had no need of a husband to smooth her way.
“Which is why the other bastards who desired her and her money schemed to kill her baby brother.”
My jaw dropped. Who knew the oral tale was just as captivating as the written version? “They were so obsessed with this woman and her family’s money they plotted to kill an innocent baby?”
He tipped his head. “They didn’t just plot. They hatched a plan and carried it out. One day, her mother and the nanny took the baby out for his daily stroll through the square, when a carriage driver suddenly lost control of the horses and crashed the carriage into them.
“The nanny and baby survived, but her mother was killed.”
I swear I gasped.
“Obviously, when the carriage driver took the bribe, he thought he’d get away with it by bleating that it was all an accident, but for the crime of causing the death of someone above his station, he was arrested and tortured.
In the midst of this torture, he spilled everything,” Radu said.
“He told the authorities all about the scheming suitors who paid him to kill the young, innocent heir.”
“Were the suitors arrested?” I blurted.
“They were. Again, such a bold and brazen assassination could not be covered up. It all came out, and the young noblewoman learned that her kind mother was killed for the sake of men’s lust and greed,” he said.
“After this, she still feared for her little brother’s life, so she sent him and the nanny away to the countryside where he could hopefully grow up in peace and safety.
“By this time, she was only fourteen years old.”
“Fourteen?!” I would’ve clapped my hand over my mouth if I could lift it. “Only fourteen years old, her parents are gone, she’s separated from her only sibling, and she’s under constant threat from pedophilic monsters?”
“It is a childhood plagued with horrific traumas, sweet one,” he said softly. “Which is why, as told by the author, a dark seed takes root in her soul.”
“Dark seed?” I found myself whispering right along with him.
“Just so. The noblewoman not only comes to fear the attention of men, she starts to despise it with a homicidal passion. In the time our noblewoman and painter met, there was an unknown serial killer haunting the streets of Paris, killing men and making it look like an accident.”
My jaw dropped. “So that’s why the author mentioned the blacksmith who fell on his tools, and the docksman who slipped on the docks and drowned.
Wow. He was so subtle about it, I didn’t think it had anything to do with the story.
” I dropped back on the pillows. “So it was the noblewoman the whole time?”
He nodded. “In her mind, there was nothing more dangerous than male attention, so any man unwise enough to even whistle in her direction—met a grisly fate,” Radu said to my wide eyes. “So just imagine what she had in mind for the young painter following her around?”
“She was going to kill him.” I had no doubt in my mind. “The day she had her guards drag him to her, she was going to run him through where she stood. But then... she saw the paintings.
“She saw herself as he saw her, and realized that he didn’t view her as an object—as something to be possessed and locked away. She saw something pure and innocent in his love. A pure innocence she once thought didn’t exist.
“But,” I dropped, “our girl’s a serial killer, and I’ve seen enough crime shows to know the kind of obsession that drives a killer to kill. The kind of... dark seed... that takes root. She feared what she’d do to him, so she sent him away to save him from herself.
“But time, and obsession, caught up to him in the end.”
He hummed, smiling at me. “It seems you already know this story. I needn’t have suggested it to you.”
“Oh, I know why you suggested this to me. It’s because”—I peered at him through my lashes—“you wrote this book, didn’t you, Professor?
A story of a killer so helpless to their urges, compassion and mercy can’t stand against their bloodlust.” I raised a shaking finger and tapped the pages.
“This isn’t the story of a traumatized young woman. It’s the story of a vampire.
“It’s the story of you.”