Chapter 45
Forty-Five
You close your hand over my trembling one, steadying the stake I have pressed against your chest.
“That is how you remember it?” you say.
“That is how it was,” I say. “So you see now why I must do this. Why I cannot move on until I am rid of you.”
“It is my fault,” you say, and I am unsure if you are mocking me. My fingers tighten on the stake, trying not to trace your hand over mine.
I will not be talked out of this.
“Dione once asked you a question,” you say quietly.
“Don’t change the subject—”
“I am not. She once asked you a question, when she learned about our power to compel. Do you recall what she asked?”
I scour my memory for that night she followed me to hunt. At first it was to watch, unaware that I’d seen her. The tavern where I found a human and compelled him to follow us. The reverent look on her face when she realized what I could do.
The final question.
“Does it work on others like us?”
“Does it?” I ask.
“Would you like to remember?” you ask.
“How dare you? How dare you—”
“Remember Delphi,” you say.
I am a temple mouse among many others.
We laugh and cry and clean together. At night we sneak food, huddle close, keep each other warm in the winter. In the summer the humid breeze rolls through the open windows, and sometimes we sleep outside.
They were my friends, my sisters and brothers, as we are all orphans.
You find me in the garden. I know of the goddess that walks the halls of the temple. I know not to look at her. But she is quiet, sneaky, and sometimes I do not realize she is there.
Like now, as I sing in the garden, trimming the flowers.
“Your voice,” you say, and I quickly stand.
“Don’t stop,” you tell me.
I sing and you listen.
You come back the next night as I am finishing up my chores.
“Sing, little mouse,” you say.
I do.
We walk through the gardens at night. You coax me from my bed, and for a year we spend the evenings together. You tell me stories of faraway lands. You ask about the temple, about my life. I have so little to say next to you.
I fall in love with you.
You show me what you are one night. You’ve warned me, in ways that are like the stories of the gods and goddesses around me. Ageless, immortal, cannot die except by the sun.
You tell me of your strengths and weaknesses, of what it means to be like you. You ask if I’d like to join you.
“What if I say no?”
“Then you will forget I ever existed, psiche mou. You will live in this temple until you outgrow it, or it outgrows you. And you will age and die, your voice and beauty will fade.”
“If I say yes?”
“You will live forever, by my side, as my lover and companion. Do you know what that means?”
I answer you with a kiss. The kiss grows until we fumble with our clothes, pressing our naked bodies to each other. You bite into my wrist and drink my blood and I soar. The ecstasy of the bite sends me over the edge, my body answering to you like a prayer.
“Yes,” I tell you.
“Tomorrow,” you promise.
Tomorrow comes, and you lay me on the altar. You drink me until I am almost dead, then you give me your blood. We feast on each other, our blood joining, our bodies one.
And then someone screams.
One of the other mice, out of bed when he shouldn’t have been. I did not see his face, only the blood thrumming in his veins. Hunger like I’d never felt before tugged at me.
I leapt upon him, my small body throwing him to the ground with the force of my new strength. I bite into his neck, but I didn’t have the teeth yet. I wasn’t fully made. I gnaw and gnaw while he screams and tries to fend me off.
At last, the sweet rush of blood, and I drink until he stops moving.
More screams—the rest of the mice.
I chase them through the temple, one by one, too ravenous to think or feel. These are not my friends, they are meals. They are the answer to my hunger.
My hunger quiets eventually, once they are all dead. Once all their bodies lay strewn across the floor, unmoving.
You watch, your red eyes tracing me as I stare over them, understanding dawning too late.
“Did I…?” I say, choking on the blood in my mouth.
“Yes,” you say.
“But…they were my friends.” Tears fell down my face, leaving tracks in the blood that coats it. Now that I’d stopped I realized I was covered in it, my body one sticky mess of it.
Blood on the altar.
Screams in the air.
“I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t become this! This is monstrous!”
“It is not always like this. The first feed is the biggest. The more you eat, the stronger you are. You will be so strong, psiche mou. You will be unlike any other.”
“I don’t want to! I can’t! If this is what I’ve become, I’d rather die!” My body shakes, my mind reeling.
“Look at me.” My head snaps to you.
My memory starts to pulse, to fade. The edges of it go black.
“You were born on this altar. I fed of you, you fed of me, and you became eternal. We are eternal.”
My head swims and I sway, ready to collapse.
“Come, the sun will rise soon.”
“I took too much of your memory, but what were you? Not human, not yet made. It broke my heart to see you so upset, to have your first memory of this life so horrible. So I took it.”
My mind reels, the holes filling in once more. That time is no longer a patchwork of memories, but a linear moment. A beginning and end.
“How dare—”
“Remember Alexandria.”
I rise just as the sun sets to find I am alone.
Where are you? I’ve never awoken without you. You are always here, the first and last thing I see. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
You slip into the room, the door closing quietly, and freeze when you see I am sitting upright.
“Where were you?” I ask.
“Fixing something,” you say, kneeling next to me in the grave.
“Fixing something?” I ask. “What?”
“A mistake I repeated, a mistake I said I would never make again. I will tell you one day of the cost of being elevated to a god.” You lift your hand to brush my hair from my face. The back of your hand is burnt, leathery from the sun.
“Aletheia!” I cry, grasping your hand to turn it over. “What happened?”
You lean forward and kiss my forehead. “There is only you and I, psiche mou. You are my moon and my stars, you are my past and my future. You are my greatest creation. Every time I forget that, I suffer. I will not have you suffer with me.”
This close, you smell of dirt and something sharp, something acrid. There is dirt all over your dress.
“Go to sleep,” you say, and my eyes grow heavy. “And forget you woke without me.”
“This next one will hurt.”
“What else have you taken from me? What other memories have you stolen?”
“This will hurt,” you say again.
“I am no child.”
“Remember Paris.”
Today I will meet Zora and turn her to a vampyr.
I have made my decision. I will drain her until she is too weak to fight me, and then I will tell her the truth of it all. What it means to be one of us, what her life could be like. Her strengths, her weaknesses. I will tell her the truth of it all, and once she knows, she can make a decision.
If she says yes, I will complete the transformation.
If she says no, I will kill her.
It will hurt. I do not want to kill Zora, but it is the only way to keep us alive. I cannot compel her, she is immune. So I must dispose of her, find a way to keep her from hunting us down. If this is a ruse, it is a practiced one.
I must be cleverer than her.
I meet her in the limestone tunnel, beneath the world of Paris. She is already there, her hands clasped before her. Her heart races, she smells of sweat and dirt. Her eyes are red-rimmed.
“Have you changed your mind?” I ask.
“No,” she says, her voice firm. “This is what I want.”
“First I will drain you,” I say, circling her. “Nearly to death. My bite will be…confusing. It will evoke feelings akin to a lover. You must ignore it, for I have only one love, and it is not you.”
“You’re not who I fancy,” she says.
“Have you a lover?” I ask.
“No,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve never had the freedom. But if I did, it would not be you. Take no offense.”
“I don’t,” I say, and it is true. My love for Zora is not as my love is for you. It comes from somewhere else, from a part of my soul that longs for a companion. An equal. Someone to share my life with but not my grave.
“Then, when you are nearly dead, I will feed you my blood. You will die, and when you wake I will feed you a human, and the transformation will be complete.”
“Does it hurt?” Zora asks, her voice quiet.
“No,” I say, though I cannot remember. I remember only ecstasy, though it is lost behind a fog I cannot lift.
“So…shall we start?” Zora asks.
“First,” I say. “Empty your pockets.”
Zora grins and removes several items from her pockets—stolen jewelry, some bread, a silver cross with the tip sharpened to a point. “Just in case you mean to kill me.”
“You will be dead, in a way,” I say. “Your heart will not beat, you will not need air or food.”
“Just blood?”
“Just blood.”
“Human blood?”
“I’ve known some that took of animals, but they were weak.”
Zora nods and rolls up her sleeve, offering her wrist to me. I take it delicately in my hands, looking up to her. “Are you ready?”
“No. Yes. No.” She laughs and shakes her head. “Just get on with it.”
I bite into her flesh and taste her blood. The rush is unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It is no mere human blood, it is exquisite. Every draw is intoxicating. My veins buzz with it, my stomach clenches, wanting more.
More.
More.
Zora moans, her head rolling back. A few more draws and she sways, falling to her knees. It takes all my control to release her wrist and stop from drinking her dry. I help her onto her back on the floor. Her tan skin is pale, her lips parted.
“You cannot ever be in the sun again,” I say, my mouth near her ear, near her neck.