"Some civilians of my race found me just before dawn. They took me in, but only for a day. The warnings…" He tapped his temple. "The warnings on my face and my body did what my father wanted them to. They made me a freak to be feared. At nightfall I left. I wandered alone for years, sticking to the shadows, staying out of people's way. I fed from humans for a while, but that just didn't sustain me for long enough. A century later I ended up in Italy, working as a hired thug for a merchant who dealt with humans. In Venice there were whores of my kind who would let you feed, and I used them."#p#分页标题#e#
"So lonely." Jane put her hand to her throat. "You must have been so lonely."
"Hardly. I didn't want to be with anyone. I worked for the merchant for a decade or so then one night, in Rome, I ran into a lesser who was in the process of killing a female vampire. I took the bastard out, but not because I particularly cared about the female. It was… See, it was her son. Her son was watching in the shadows of the dark street, crouched next to a cart. He was like… shit, definitely a pretrans, and a young one at that. I saw him first, actually, then caught the action across the way. I thought of my own mother, or at least the image I had made up about her, and was like… hell, no way was this little boy going to watch the female who'd birthed him die."
"Did the mother live?"
He winced. "She was gone by the time I could get to her. Bled out from a throat wound. But I promise you, that lesser got shredded. Afterward I didn't know what to do with the kid. I ended up going to the merchant I killed for, and he put me in touch with some folks who took the boy in." V laughed in a short burst. "Turned out the mother who died was a fallen Chosen, and that pretrans? Well, he ended up being the father of my brother Tohrment. We got a small world, true?
"So because I saved a kid of warrior blood, word got out, and my brother Darius ended up finding me and introducing me to Wrath. D… D and I had a certain connection, and he was probably the only one who could have gotten my attention at that point. When I met Wrath, he wasn't into being king, and he was no more interested in ties than I was. Which meant the two of us clicked. Eventually I was inducted into the Brotherhood. And there… shit, yeah, there you have it."
In the silence that followed he could only guess what was going through her mind, and the idea that she pitied him made him want to do something to prove he was strong.
Like bench-press a car.
Except instead of going all soft on him and making him feel even more rattled, Jane just looked around, even though he knew she could see nothing but the two candles that were lit. "And this place… this place means what to you?"
"Nothing. Means nothing more than any other."
"Then why are we here?"
V's heart rate spiked.
Shit… Standing here with her now, after spilling his guts, he wasn't sure he could go through with what he'd planned.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-nine
As Jane waited for V to speak, she wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to throw a whole lot of very sincere, ultimately lame words at him. She wanted to know whether his father had, in fact, died in flames, and she hoped the bastard had.
When the silence continued, she said, "I don't know if this will help… probably won't, but I have to say something here. I can't stomach oatmeal. To this day, it makes me sick." She prayed she wasn't going to say to wrong thing. "It is okay that you're still struggling with everything that was done to you. Anyone would. It doesn't make you weak. You were violently maimed by someone who should have protected and nurtured you. The fact that you're still standing is a miracle. I respect you for it."
V's cheeks went pink. "I, ah… don't really see it that way."
"Fine. But I do." To give him a break, she cleared her throat and said, "You going to tell me why we're here?"
He rubbed his face like he was trying to clear his brain. "Shit, I want to be with you. Here."
She exhaled in relief and sadness. She wanted a goodbye with him, also. A good-bye that was sexual and private and not in the bedroom they'd been locked in together. "I want to be with you, too."#p#分页标题#e#
Another candle came to life over by a bank of curtains. Then a fourth by a wet bar. A fifth next to a big bed with black satin sheets on it.
She started to smile… until the sixth one lit up. There was something hanging off the wall… something that looked like… chains?
More candles flared. Masks. Whips. Canes. Gags.
A black table with restraints that hung down to the floor.