Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Cora
Three questions? That was it? She had a legit freaking vampire sitting next to her, and she only got three questions?
To be fair, she was genuinely surprised he was willing to answer anything at all.
He seemed pretty certain she was going to get mind wiped.
Little did he know her persuasion skills were legendary.
How else had she convinced an entire crew of film students to work for free?
Maybe it was her cherubic smile or her glowing red hair.
Or, more likely, it was that they could sense her increasing fragility.
Either way, people loved to say yes to her, and this Marquin would be no different.
In fact, Saiden had been the only one so far that seemed oddly immune to her charms. He’d fought her on just about everything. Annoying, but a nice change of pace. She hadn’t encountered such resistance since her father, but that was an entirely different set of circumstances.
Okay, three questions.
“How are you so sure that we won’t get in a crash?” she blurted out without thinking. It probably wasn’t the best use of one of her questions, but it was the most likely to have a shot at reducing her current level of anxiety.
Saiden turned to face her fully, and her heart leapt into her throat.
She wanted to tell herself that it was because he wasn’t looking at the road, but she couldn’t deny how the harsh red glow of taillights across his face really accentuated his strong features.
She knew there was no chance in hell he’d agree to be in her movie, but damn…
She would promise him just about anything to make it happen.
“It’s my Gift from Lilith,” Saiden answered calmly before turning back to the road.
Six seconds. He’d stared at her for six full seconds. Any other time six seconds would feel like nothing, but when you were doing a hundred on the freeway without looking, it was an eternity.
Cora gulped, then relaxed when she realized she had a death grip on her seatbelt. “Care to expand on that? Because I don’t really consider that an answer. An answer needs to make at least some kind of sense.”
Saiden let out an annoyed chuff as if giving her an actual explanation was more than he signed up for. “You know the story of Lilith, right?”
Cora racked her brain but only came up with characters from horror movies. “Wasn’t she a succubus or something?”
“Close, but not quite,” he corrected. “She was Adam’s first wife, originally created to be his equal.
Problem was, Adam didn’t really want an equal.
He wanted obedience and compliance. Since Lilith refused to be his little submissive pet, she was cast out of paradise, and Adam got a new wife, Eve. Needless to say, Lilith was pissed.”
“I can imagine,” Cora said, sinking back into her seat. The soft rumble of Saiden’s voice was practically hypnotizing. It was the first time he wasn’t tense or annoyed, and she could listen to him talk like this for hours.
“Consumed with rage,” Saiden continued, “she turned to the fallen angel, Samael, to help her get revenge.
She wanted Adam and all his children to suffer for the rest of eternity for what he did to her.
Since Samael had no love for the new human creatures walking the earth, he agreed.
Bestowing some of his power unto Lilith, he helped her conceive the first vampire.
“Lilith gave birth to a daughter, Sura, who became a creature that would live forever, feeding on the blood of Adam’s kind.
And because she wanted her daughter to be protected from any harm, Lilith used the power granted to her by Samael to gift her daughter the ability to see the future.
Sura saw how vicious and hateful the humans would become, so she begged her mother to give any offspring she would have their own special abilities, ensuring they could always remain superior to Adam’s kin.
Now, every new vampire is reborn with an ability that is unique to them.
Something they need or crave to be successful in their new life as a vampire. We call it Lilith’s Gift.”
The muscles in Cora’s hand started spasming, and she drummed her fingers on the window to hide the small twitches while she mulled over the story.
She quickly stopped when she remembered how Saiden reacted to her seemingly idle gesture earlier and just tucked the misbehaving appendage under her thigh.
The tale of Lilith was fascinating, regardless of whether or not she believed it.
There was probably an inkling of truth in there somewhere, but few origin stories were completely accurate.
It was a little fantastical for her tastes, but then again, so was the concept of real vampires.
She’d always assumed that if vampires existed, then it was probably the result of a genetic mutation, not a biblical rivalry.
Cora gave him an appraising look, her brain attempting to wrap itself around the one thing in his story that didn’t make any sense.
“So every vamp gets a super cool ability, and your Gift was precision driving?” she asked.
“I gotta say, if other vampires were getting things like the ability to see the future, then it kind of sounds like you got screwed.”
“My Gift is not precision driving,” Saiden bit out, his hands tightening on the wheel.
“My Gift is threat awareness. I get a feeling when something potentially fatal is about to happen. It lets me direct all my attention to my surroundings so I can discern the extent of the danger before it happens. It’s what makes me such a skilled rogue hunter. ”
“Oh! You have spidey sense,” Cora blurted out.
Saiden cringed, and his eyes squeezed shut for a second. “I’d rather you didn’t compare my Gift to that of an insect-obsessed comic book human.”
Cora scoffed. “I mean, I thought it was a compliment. Spiderman’s a literal superhero. He saves lives.”
Saiden didn’t say anything for so long Cora thought he wasn’t going to respond.
Then he replied, so quietly that she almost missed it, “That’s not who I am.”
They both said nothing for a long moment, and Cora stared out the window, watching the freeway exits pass by in a blur. She didn’t mean to offend him. His Gift was fascinating, and she couldn’t deny that it did calm her fears about his driving.
“Thank you for letting me know,” she said, needing to break up the awkward silence. “I guess if I got a heads up about any potential crash with enough time to prevent it, then yeah, I’d also drive like a bat out of Hell.”
Realizing what she just said, Cora slapped her hand over her mouth and whipped her head to look at Saiden. She rushed to formulate an apology, but to her surprise he… laughed.
Saiden threw his head back and let out a full blown belly laugh. “You should see your face,” he choked out through guffaws.
She frowned. So much for apologizing. She thought her words had been insulting, but apparently not.
“In that case, for my second question I want to know about all the vampire mythologies that aren’t real. I’m guessing by your amusement that you don’t turn into a bat nor were you born in the bowels of Hell.”
“The bowels of Hell?” he repeated, giving her a patronizing look. “Where do you humans come up with this shit?”
“Movies and books, mostly. But spill. What else is made up?”
Saiden ran a hand through his messy dark hair, then absently rubbed at the shaved side. She wondered if that short bit of hair was soft or prickly. Not that she would be running her hands over his scalp anytime soon, but she could still imagine.
“Let’s see,” he said thoughtfully. “You already know about the no flying thing. Garlic is also not an issue. I happen to really like it on pizza. And yes, we do eat food. It doesn’t keep us alive in the way that blood does, and oftentimes I will go days without it if I’m busy.
We enjoy the taste and the experience of dining with others, though. ”
“So, you do drink blood then?”
“We do,” he confirmed, his voice lacking any evidence as to his thoughts about that. She must have visually tensed because he quickly added, “from blood bags, not people. If it can be avoided. Our bodies would not function without it, and we are incapable of making our own blood cells.”
“What happens if you go without?” she asked, realizing she hadn’t seen any blood bags in the McLaren.
“I think we are moving past your original question. Would you like that to be your third and final one?”
Cora bit her lip. She wanted a second to analyze her thoughts. If she only got one more question, she wanted it to be good. “No,” she replied finally. “I haven’t decided on the third one yet. So that’s all the vamp stuff that’s not real? Everything else is true?”
Waving a hand dismissively, Saiden changed lanes without so much as a glance behind him.
“No, there are other inaccuracies. We do not sleep in coffins, and we can and do go out during the day. Though we tend to be more sensitive to the sun than humans, so you won’t usually find us on the beach.
” He paused for a second, then added, “And to harken back to your original question, no, I am not dead. Well, not anymore. I died as a human and was reborn as a vampire, but any medical examination would classify me as alive. So long as I consume blood, my heart beats just like yours. I breathe just like you. And I am not cold and clammy as the stories love to portray.”
She should have resisted. It would have been the smart thing to do. But damn if she wasn’t a slave to her impulses.
Cora reached out and ran her hand down his bare arm.
He wasn’t cold and clammy, that was for sure.
Not even close.