Chapter 27
27
W ith Cole by her side, Vanessa watched as the elevator doors opened, and Ethan and Patrick stepped out with their captive in tow. They weren’t the only ones who’d been waiting for them ever since their unit had reported that they’d captured one of the rogues alive. Her father, as well as Samson, Amaury, and Zane were waiting too. The other teams hadn’t come back yet.
The rogue vampire, who’d been identified as Mike Harris, groaned in pain. Vanessa knew instantly why. Ethan was holding on to a silver chain wrapped around the captive’s neck. In addition, his hands were shackled with silver handcuffs behind his back. His eyes were glaring red, and his fangs extended.
“Well done,” Samson praised, nodding at the two hybrids. “Bring him straight into the interrogation room.”
As Harris, flanked by Ethan and Patrick, walked past her, the bastard’s nostrils suddenly quivered, and he lunged toward Cole, the only human in the corridor.
Vanessa instantly jumped in front of Cole to protect him.
“Vanessa!” Cole snatched her and pulled her into his chest, turning sideways in the same moment to shield her from the vampire.
It turned out it wasn’t necessary, because Ethan jerked Harris back by the silver chain around his neck, eliciting painful screams from his captive.
“You touch anybody here,” Ethan hissed, “and I’ll kill you slowly and painfully.”
“Easy, son,” Gabriel cautioned.
Ethan met Gabriel’s gaze. “He butchered his own mother and left her body rotting in the kitchen. He deserves no mercy.”
Horrified, Vanessa sucked in a breath, while the others let out suppressed curses. She felt Cole pull her closer to him. When she’d jumped in front of him, he’d instantly tried to protect her, and that thought made guilt churn up inside her. She still hadn’t told him that she was a vampire and wasn’t the one who needed protection from the rogue, because she could defend herself.
“Agreed,” Samson said.
Behind him, Zane, the bald vampire who was their go-to guy when torture was warranted, grunted his approval.
“But first, we need to find out what he knows,” Gabriel said, pointing to a door at the end of the corridor, where the interrogation room was located.
As Patrick and Ethan pulled the resisting rogue along the corridor, Cole took her hand and made a step in the same direction, but Vanessa didn’t move. She knew she couldn’t take him there, because during the interrogation it would quickly become evident that the rogue’s captors were also vampires. This wasn’t how she wanted him to find out.
“Sorry, Cole,” Gabriel said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You and Vanessa can’t go in there.”
“But—”
“It’s not your job,” Gabriel insisted. “It’s mine.”
“Without me,” Cole protested, “you wouldn’t have found this guy. I’m involved in this. I only want to watch the interrogation. I won’t get in the way.”
Gabriel hesitated, then looked at Samson, who shook his head. “You know the rules.” Samson trained his gaze at Vanessa.
She knew what he was trying to tell her. He would let Cole watch the interrogation from a room with viewing windows only if Cole was made aware that she and her family and friends were vampires too. And only once he’d accepted that fact, was it safe for all of them to let him see what was really going on here.
Silence stretched over them for several seconds, and Vanessa was painfully aware that it was up to her to make a decision.
“What’s going on?” Cole asked, his eyes ping-ponging from one person to the next, only to land on her and become more insistent. “Vanessa? What are you not telling me?”
Vanessa inhaled a deep breath. Cole deserved the truth, and it wasn’t fair to keep this last secret from him any longer. She was scared of how he’d react, but maybe she was worrying over nothing. He’d accepted that he was a satyr, and she his mate. Maybe he would accept the fact that she was a vampire hybrid just as easily. After all, all she and her family and colleagues had shown him was love and respect, and he had to see that they were nothing like the rogue he’d encountered. Every species had good people and bad people, and it wasn’t any different in the vampire population.
“Cole, there’s something I need to explain,” Vanessa started. “Let’s go somewhere private.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed, and she could practically see the worry and suspicion that rose to the surface. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
She took his hand into hers and ushered him down the corridor. Nervous energy prickled off him, and she could hear his heartbeat accelerate. By the time they’d reached her little office a floor higher, and closed the door behind them, her own heart was beating against the lump in her throat.
Alone with Cole now, Vanessa let go of his hand. “Maybe you should sit down.”
“I’d rather stand.” He broadened his stance as if bracing himself for bad news. “Out with it. What is it you want to explain to me?”
Vanessa swallowed twice, but the lump in her throat didn’t budge. This was harder than she’d imagined. Her brother Ryder hadn’t had any trouble making Scarlet accept him as a vampire, even though she’d found out the hard way: seeing Ryder’s vampire side without warning.
“I want you do know that what I’m telling you now might come as a shock to you.” Fuck, she was stalling. “But please remember that I love you, and I would never hurt you.”
Vanessa’s declaration of love was both welcome and strange. Welcome, because she was actually telling him what he’d hoped to hear from her since the moment he’d laid eyes on her, and strange, because of where and how she was declaring her love to him. At any other time, he would have swept her into his arms and told her that he loved her more than anything in the world, and that he couldn’t imagine life without her. But he knew instinctively that something wasn’t right.
“Why do I get the feeling that there’s a but coming?”
He scrutinized Vanessa’s face, and saw that she was battling with herself, and he was tempted to put his arms around her and tell her she could tell him anything. But something held him back: an odd sense of foreboding. As if he’d suddenly developed a sixth sense.
“Cole, my family and I, we’re not just satyrs like you. We’re different. You’ve met them, and I want you to remember how kind and helpful my father was to you, and that my parents are over the moon that you’re my mate, and—”
“Damn it, Vanessa, out with it! What are you trying to say? Just say it, because the suspense is worse than whatever you are trying to tell me.” He let out a shuddering breath. At least he hoped the suspense was worse than the news she was trying to impart.
Her green eyes bored into him, and their gazes locked.
“My family and I, we’re vampires.”
For a second, his brain couldn’t process the words coming out of Vanessa’s mouth. It felt as if fog was clouding his brain, making him unable to understand anything. He felt as if he was standing outside his own body, watching a bizarre scene he wasn’t part of. It was too surreal, like a waking dream, a nightmare of sorts, a nightmare during which he was awake.
His body did what it had to. He shook his head as if he could shake off the words his brain was now processing and giving meaning to. “No.” He kept shaking his head. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
Vanessa remained still while she spoke, and he ran his eyes over her. Shreds of memories came and went. Memories of the vampire attack, and of Vanessa killing the rogue. Memories of Vanessa dragging him to his condo, even though a woman of her size shouldn’t have the strength to move his heavy body.
He could still feel the fangs of the rogue in his neck, still felt the pain and horror. It all came back to him in vivid color. A cold shudder crept up his spine and settled in his nape. Disgust rose from his gut and wrapped around his heart.
“Cole…” she murmured, and stretched out her hand.
When she touched his arm, he recoiled from her, stepping back in horror.
“You’re a bloodsucker like that rogue who attacked me.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice, nor expel the disappointment from his heart. “How could you keep that from me? How could you lie to me about what you are?”
Inside him, disappointment, pain, and disgust collided, and he wasn’t sure which emotion was stronger. It didn’t matter. The woman he’d fallen in love with was a violent creature living off the blood of humans, hurting them, killing them.
“Cole, I’m still the same person. I’m not like that rogue. I love you.”
He shook his head and tightened his jaw. “You can’t love anybody! You kill people! You attack them and feed off them!” A creature like that didn’t have a heart.
He ran a hand through his hair, and realized it was trembling.
“I don’t hurt people. We don’t attack them… we don’t kill them. Please, Cole, just let me explain everything,” she begged.
“Don’t! I don’t know how I could have ever felt anything for you! You deceived me from the moment I met you. What was your plan, huh? Gain my confidence? And then what? Keep me locked up somewhere so you could feed from me whenever you wanted blood? How could I have been so stupid?” He glared at her. “I wish I’d never touched you!”
“Don’t say that, Cole. I would never hurt you.”
He made a step to the side and glanced at the door behind her. “Then let me leave.”
“Please, stay, and let me show you that my family and I aren’t the bad guys.”
“So you’re not gonna let me leave, is that it? Well, I guess that proves my point. You’re just as bad as that rogue.”
He steeled himself for the inevitable. When would she attack him? Would it be as painful as when the rogue had sunk his fangs into his neck? Would he feel a second time how his life was slipping through his hands? Would he feel that same helplessness again? Or would it be worse, because he would die at the hands of the woman he’d loved and trusted?
Vanessa suddenly stepped away from the door and trained her gaze to the floor. “You’re free to leave. I won’t force you to stay with me if you don’t want to.”
Her voice sounded different now, resigned. But was it a trick? He hesitated, but Vanessa didn’t move. He walked to the door and opened it. She didn’t stop him when he left the office and walked to the elevators to get out of the building. He reached his car in the garage without anybody running after him or stopping him. Still, his nape prickled, and he felt like prey.
When he drove out of the garage and merged into traffic, he kept looking into the rearview mirror, but from what he could tell, nobody was following him.
On the drive home, he felt as if he were in a trance. He got lost twice, before he found the right street that led him toward his neighborhood. Every word of his conversation with Vanessa replayed in his mind.
So many things made sense all of a sudden. Yet, so many other things didn’t. He’d seen Vanessa walking outside during daylight. Did that mean that vampires didn’t burn in the sun? He’d also watched her eat regular food—though not a large amount. When she’d saved his life that night, she’d killed the rogue with such precision and nonchalance that he had to assume that this was nothing new to her.
How could he have been so wrong about her? He’d seen her as an innocent, a vulnerable, caring woman, yet she was a bloodsucking monster, a killer without a heart. Just like the rest of her family. Now that he thought back to his interactions with Gabriel, he understood so much more.
The good genes Gabriel had claimed were keeping him looking young were nothing but a lie. He was a vampire, and therefore didn’t age, just like his wife and Vanessa herself. No wonder Gabriel hadn’t been worried about Vanessa going out patrolling at night. More like prowling! After all, she was a predator. They’d dished up so many lies, and he’d eaten them up. Why? Because he didn’t want to see the truth. He wanted to live in the fantasy that he’d finally found a woman he could be happy with—only to be proven wrong. He couldn’t be happy with a vampire. What kind of life would that be?
By the time he reached his condo building, and was back inside his place, his mind was spinning. The tangled sheets of his bed reminded him of making love to Vanessa. He’d made love to a vampire. And he’d loved it, and still craved it, craved her. What did that make him? An idiot? A hypocrite?
Even now, as he sat down on the bed, his head in his hands, he wanted nothing more than feeling Vanessa pressing her body to his, their lips locked in a passionate kiss. At the thought of it, he felt both his cocks rising. Fuck! How could he get hard at the thought of fucking a vampire? It only proved how perverted he was, how desperate to fulfill his sexual need. Was he condemned to long for Vanessa because she was his mate? What if he had no choice because they were meant to be together? Or was he using this argument as an excuse, because deep down in the recesses of his mind he still wanted her, no matter who or what she was? Just like he’d wanted her when he’d thought she was a prostitute. Had his heart really made its choice? Or would the love he felt for Vanessa dim now that he knew the truth about her?
“Goddamn it!” he cursed and looked up toward the ceiling. “What other trials do I have to pass before I can be happy? Isn’t it enough already? What have I done to deserve this?”
There was no answer.
“Dad?” he murmured, tears welling up in his eyes. “If you can hear me, Dad, please help me make the right decision.”
To leave San Francisco now and never come back, or to stay and accept his fate: to let Vanessa turn him into a vampire so they could have a life together.