“Come on now. Killing me won’t bring Bryce back.”
“Oh I know that. But it’ll feel bloody fantastic.” It wouldn’t bring me peace, but it was the next best thing. “Just how does it feel to know you’re the reason you’re best mate’s dead?”
“He wouldn’t want this. He wouldn’t want you bitter like this, he loved you, he -”
“Oh do me a favour and stop with all that.” I shook my head; amazed at his nerve. “Do you know what, Clark? I told Bryce not to go to you for help. I told him I didn’t trust you. You know what he said to that? He said he’d known you all his years as a vampire, that you were his best mate and you’d never betray him, and that he trusted you with his life.”
Clark’s face was even paler than before. I doubted I’d ever reach the tiny conscience he had, but he was getting the lecture all the same. Clark was like Victor in many ways; he was good at politics and manipulating people. He would know exactly what you would want to hear and then he would tell you just that. If you had a compassionate side, he would appeal to it. If you had a weakness he would pounce on it. If all else failed, he would barter.
“I didn’t betray him. It wasn’t like that.”
“He went to you for help, for somewhere to hide out for a couple of days, and you handed him and me over to Victor on a silver bloody platter!”
“I had no choice, Victor would’ve killed me if he’d found out I was hiding you and Bryce.”
“Bryce wouldn’t have gone to you if he’d thought you’d have been in danger because that’s the kind of person he was. Was.” I spat the last word. “Now get up.” I allowed my whip to fade away, freeing his ankle, and watched as he struggled to get up.#p#分页标题#e#
“What’re you going to do?” he asked.
“We’re going to duel. There’s no sport in just killing you outright.”
“I can’t fight you, Sam,” he said, shaking his head.
“Why’s that?”
“I can’t hurt you. Bryce loved you, I can’t hurt you.” The words couldn’t have been more false. The people around me sensed that too, a part of my brain registered.
I snorted. “It wasn’t five minutes ago that you threw a fireball at me, and then you legged it like a rat up a drainpipe. I think what you really mean is that you don’t think you can defeat me, and now you’re just saying all this shite in the cause of self-preservation. Well you’re only stalling the inevitable.”
Backing up a little, he said, “Sam, it won’t bring him back.”
“Yeah, I believe you already said that.”
“I’ll leave here. We don’t have to duel, I’ll leave The Hollow and I won’t come back. You’ll never see me again, I swear to you.”
I had to laugh as we reached the bartering stage. “I know that if I let you walk off now the second I turn my back there’ll be more fireballs coming at me.”
He looked exasperated now. “Okay, we duel,” Clark finally said, snarling. His expression was so different now that he had dropped the fake crap. The innocence and fear had all vanished from his eyes only to be replaced by the callousness and spite that usually resided there.
Apparently Clark had no intention of duelling, however. He hadn’t even fully turned before he abruptly swerved, hoping to catch me off-guard, and launched more deadly fireballs at me. I absorbed the energy of the natural element air, releasing it as a forceful wind that not only sent Clark careening backwards but sent his pretty fireballs with him. When his back reached the wall of one of the buildings he crashed to the floor. His fireballs then crashed into him and he disappeared, screaming, in a large ball of black fire. A black fire that was meant for me.
Both mine and Clark’s suspicions were right; his death hadn’t made much difference to how I felt inside. Bryce was still gone, he had still been betrayed, and it still hurt to even think about. But the whole thing now seemed more balanced. The people responsible for his death weren’t living the life that he should have had. Victor had once told me that it wasn’t anything personal to Bryce, that he’d just had to die because he loved me. ‘Wrong girl, wrong time,’ Victor had said. But Bryce had met me and loved me before Victor even knew me. By loving me and wanting to be with me, Bryce had been living exactly as he should have been, and exactly when he should have. It was Victor who had wanted the wrong girl at the wrong time, and it was Clark who had made it possible for Victor to get what he wanted.