House of Kings(15)

“You are a most excellent hunter,” Cyrus observes. “In that, you are indeed like Sevan.”

But his words are background noise. I pull. One long drink after another.

“And you certainly have picked a beautiful specimen,” he says approvingly. He walks around the two of us. And as my belly fills with the blood of this person, the heady fog fades from my brain. I feel my animalistic side begin to ebb. The predator is satisfied. The humanity in me returns once more.

My fangs instantly retract. The individual I’m holding onto collapses to the ground as I let go and take five horrified steps away.

It’s a woman. She’s young, probably no more than a year or two older than myself. Her eyes are closed, blood running down her neck from the two puncture wounds. Her face is beautiful, yet intimidating. Harsh cheekbones, a square, sharp jawline. Long brunette hair, lighter than my own, falls around her in soft waves.

“You need not feel ashamed, my dear,” Cyrus says as he crosses to me and pulls me into his arms. “This is what our kind does. It is our instinct and without following it, we experience something worse than death. Do not be regretful for what you are.”

But my eyes stay staring at the woman, wide and horrified. This is my third victim, the second I’ve killed. And I can’t seem to help it. My thirst takes over and I kill.

I kill innocent people.

I watch as all the color leaves the woman’s face, she grows white and her lips look blue.

“Come,” Cyrus says. He releases me, but holds onto my hand and pulls me toward the door once more. “Let us finish the delicious meal you prepared for us and think of this no more.”

And perhaps it’s a survival instinct that makes me follow Cyrus. Leaving behind a body. Leaving behind an innocent victim.

I do not remember the journey home. I do not remember eating the dinner I made. It’s all a blur, done in automatic motions.

“My dear,” Cyrus says as we put our dishes in the dishwasher together. “You must move on from this. This is your life and it isn’t going to go away.”

His tone is firm and borderline harsh. I look up at him with anger and surprise. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten because you’ve been what we are for so long,” I say. My voice shakes. “But these are people we are feeding on. These are mothers and daughters, husbands and grandfathers we kill when we drain. They are people. And we are responsible for their death because we drink their blood. You’ll have to forgive me if I feel despair over that.”

Without another word, I turn and leave the kitchen. I cross the ballroom. I force the door to the veranda open, pushing aside the mountain of snow building up outside. I make my way through the two-foot deep snow to the tiny graveyard down by the river’s edge.

Here my tiny family lies. My uncle, killed by the people of Silent Bend more than a hundred and forty years ago. Staked through the heart and then hung up in a tree for all to see.

My mother, killed in such a human way after living such a human life. She had no idea what she was doing when she got involved with my father for one night.

And the very man. The man responsible for my being in my current state. Henry Conrath. The recluse. The man who wished to reject his state of being. The man who wrote me a letter before his death, begging me not to get involved with the King or this world.

My father may have been a great man, but he was also an ignorant man. He never could have kept me from this.

I imagine my life, if my mother never would have told Henry about my existence. I would have stayed in Colorado. I would have kept working in the bakery, making little more than minimum wage. I would have stayed in my tiny, worn-down apartment. I would have stayed poor and human for a long time.

Maybe I would have found someone to love eventually. Maybe I would have gotten married, had children. I would have taken them to school and gone to piano lessons or soccer, or any of those other things moms do. I would have had a normal life.

Until something eventually caught up to me. Some illness. Some accident. Old age. My family would have buried me, only for me to resurrect four days later.

Maybe I might have been like Jasmine. I might have searched after the ones I love most when I woke, only to be unable to control my thirst. I might have attacked my husband, too. Or worse, my child. Drained them until they died.

Maybe my mother saved me from an eternal lifetime of heartache by doing what she did. Maybe the life I’m idealizing, the one I’m currently feeling robbed of, never really existed in the happy bubble I’m blowing.

I’m learning that now. There are no true happy endings. Just happy moments, with the ominous to be continued.

There is no black and white.