Chapter Twenty
Charlotte sat beside a statue of a woman weeping into her arms, lying over the side of a bed of roses. “Will you tell me?” she asked. “Nathaniel always evades my questions.”
“Only because he does not wish to see your face when you discover the truth.”
“What could be worse than the things I already know?”
Alexander huffed out a breath. “Nathaniel is the one who killed her.”
“His mother?” she clarified, her lips falling open.
He nodded.
She placed her hand over her stomach, kneading the area under her ribs with her fist as bile crept into her throat. A shiver slid its way up her spine, raising goosebumps at the nape.
With a glance around the statues, all posed in grotesque statements of the people he’d murdered.
They weren’t just victims, but self-portraits of his bloodlust and staples of his existence.
That’s when she spotted the woman she assumed was Gertude.
Scars covered her wrinkled face, her neck hanging at an unnatural angle, layers of necklaces around her neck.
“Why did he do it?” she asked, brows creasing. “There had to be a good reason.”
With a head tilt and a scoff, his tongue ran over his bottom lip before dragging it between his teeth. “How quickly you jump to justify his actions.”
Muscles flickered across her face. “I am not trying…I just think he wouldn’t do something like that without a just cause.”
“Yes, he would,” Alexander said with an arched brow. “However, you are right on this account, but you of all people should know what he is capable of.”
“What do you mean?”
“The bond,” he intoned. “His obsession with you grows stronger each day. He yearns for you. I’ve heard him from my bedroom, muttering your name in his sleep.”
“He yearns for me?” she asked, ignoring everything else he said.
“Your question confirms my suspicion. You are falling for him.”
“I am not.”
“Good,” he said, drumming his fingers against the stone-pillared frame of the doors. “Because that would be a mistake.”
With a tentative step forward, her next words came out in a whisper. “Why?”
I mean, she knew why. Yet, the question spilled unbidden from her lips anyway.
Alexander’s expression hardened. “Obsession is not the same as true feeling. It’s dangerous and I do not wish to see you end up dead after everything you have done to survive.”
“You don’t?” she asked softly.
“No,” he said, brows creased. “We are friends and more than that, you and I are the same. We have both brushed against death more than once and felt the sting of being dealt an unfair hand. Like you, I too know the pain of broken family bonds and being the recipient of someone else’s rage.
What Nathaniel is exhibiting begins and ends with the blood bond created when he drank from you.
Do not let your passions ruin your life. ”
Her heart stuttered. “My passions are also a result of the bond. It’s just desire. Nothing more than a physical reaction.”
His brows knitted together. “That’s impossible.”
She brushed her fingers against her throat. “It must be.”
“Desire has no part in it. Think of it as a pull to finish what we started. We feed not just on a person’s blood but on their soul too.
Memories and emotions are devoured, shared, and we become a part of our victims for that short time.
The tether breaks upon death, but when someone does not die, the need to consume what is left of them, to break that bond, becomes insatiable.
That is what Nathaniel feels. He yearns for your death, to break the bond and it is wrapped in a desperate lust to drink from you and yes, maybe there is some attraction on his part,” he added, wetting his lips, “but I have known him for centuries. Nathaniel does not want intimacy, and he certainly has never come close to falling in love. Any lust he might have for you is nothing compared to the bloodlust.”
Disappointment slid into her stomach like a heavy weight. She couldn’t assume she knew him better than his closest friend, but she swore she saw that desire in him, that he wanted something more.
She brushed her fingers over her throat, her mind turning to the bond instead of any dangerous, wishful thinking she had about his heart. “Have you left people alive?” she asked. “Nathaniel said he had not, but you speak of the bond with such familiarity.”
He sat on the stone bench across from her, where shadows of stone fingers crept over his body as a stroke of moonlight passed through the statues.
“Yes. I drank from two of my lovers without killing them, at least, not immediately.” He raked his long fingers through his blond waves.
“I became tormented by their very existence. All I could think about was draining their blood and consuming their essence. Of course, there was feeling there once, but the bond dissolved it all. I was consumed with the need to kill them. Eventually,” he said, eyes darkening as the stars were swallowed by dark clouds overhead.
“Fantasy was not enough. I hunted them down and slaughtered them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? My murdering people?” he asked with an incredulous smirk.
“For the supernatural pull to kill when it is clearly not in your nature.”
“It is in my nature, Miss Lovett,” he said.
“I mean your personality. Call me insane, but I don’t feel as if you are a bad person.”
“I’ll try not to be, to you anyway,” he promised and shifted his position.
“Nathaniel hasn’t tried feeding from me since,” she said, raking her fingers through her hair, recalling every lingering touch from the moments they found themselves alone.
“Yet,” Alexander intoned. “The desire will grow stronger, and he won’t be able to stop himself. Even if he wants nothing more than to let you go.”
Her mouth dried. “How can I stop it?”
“Just keep your distance until the ritual. Once he is mortal, the blood bond will break too.”
“If the ritual doesn’t work, for any reason, would I have time to run?”
“There is nowhere you can go that he won’t find you, but do not concern yourself with that. It will work and until then, just don’t be alone with him. He has incredible restraint, but we all have our limits. If you must be near him, I will be with you so I can try to stop him if he loses control.”
“Try?” she emphasized.
“I am not as strong. He is the first vampire and therefore got the full breadth of the curse. For every vampire in his line, the abilities are diluted.”
Charlotte’s stomach churned. Even if she did ever escape, she would have the equivalent of an obsessed bloodhound on her trail for the rest of her life.
Her thoughts turned to the witches inside, and Nathaniel’s plan to kill them.
Even with their powers, there were four vampires in attendance that night which she hadn’t counted on.
Surely it was enough to overpower the Avery family.
“Do the other two vampires know of your plan?” Charlotte asked. “Zachariah and Irene?”
The bridge of his nose creased. “They do, but they are unaware of the whole truth.”
“Which is?”
“That the ritual will undo not only his curse, but all of ours. I would not open their eyes to that deception,” he cautioned when she pressed her lips tight.
“Your being alive is all that stands between our becoming mortal and staying vampires forever. If you tell them, they will snap your neck in a heartbeat. Many of us do not wish to return to the banes of mortality.”
“Do you?” she asked, shuffling herself forward.
A rustle of leaves skittered between them, forming a line on the moon-brushed path leading to several more veiled statues.
“I did not ask to become a vampire, but I cannot pretend it does not come with its perks,” he said, smoothing a thumb over his pointed chin.
“There is an exhilaration that comes with being untouchable, with never having to fear another person, disease, or death.
I enjoy life and all the beautiful things it offers.
The only downside is I cannot choose to end things in centuries' time, when I grow tired of it all.”
She pursed her lips. “When did you become a vampire?”
Blowing out a long breath, he dropped his hands in his lap. “Almost three centuries ago.”
“You’re almost as old as Nathaniel.”
“We are but thirty years apart,” he said.
“Why did he turn you? You said he saved you before, how?”
“It all started with my father, you see. He was the Earl of Derby and I was the youngest of nine. I hated the brute,” he said, the bulb in his throat bobbing.
“After my mother and brother died from the sweating sickness, I fled him and came across a troupe of performers. We went from town to city performing various plays. I took to the stage like a fish to water. I loved to entertain, to slip into a different skin each night and to feel the applause. After the pain of losing my family, I found another.” His eyes gently shut.
“It was exhilarating until the plague hit a small town we were performing in. The other players all died, and I too was on death’s door.
” He glanced at the sky, the stars melding into the blue of his eyes.
“That’s when I met Gertrude. She was a noble’s wife, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw her working in the hospital, tending to the sick.
It was no place for a lady, but unlike many others, she was never afraid of coming close to the diseased. ”
Charlotte’s heart skipped a beat, sending a wave of numbness washing through her limbs.