“I leave you alone for five minutes and you just had to get into trouble,” exclaimed Gwen, who, of course, chose that moment to return.
I wiped my mouth before turning with a shrug. “Sorry. This douchebag was harassing his ex-girlfriend so I asked him to stop.”
“He certainly won’t be bothering her again,” Gwen grumbled.
“I didn’t mean to kill him. He broke my nose and I kind of lost control.”
“You don’t say,” she sighed. “Anyone see you?”
“His ex-girlfriend saw me but she ran off soon as he started smacking me so she doesn’t know I killed him.”
“We’d better get the body into the trunk and get out of here before someone spots it and calls the cops.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I fucked up.”
“Not really. I’d have done the same thing,” Gwen stated as I helped her heave the body into the trunk and slammed it shut.
“You would have bit him?”
“No,” Gwen chuckled for the first time. “But I would have probably taken his ass out. I can’t stand abusers. Reminds me of my dad.”
“He beat you?”
“Me, my siblings, my mom.”
The stark admission had me exhaling, “Damn. That sucks.”
“It did, but the day I finally said enough was the one that changed my life for the better.” She got into the car and I joined her.
“What happened?”
“I was seventeen and my father came home drunk out of his mind. Me and my brother and sister knew to stay in our rooms and not make a sound, but mom couldn’t escape him when he went to bed. He started punching, and mom started screaming. Something in me snapped in that moment. I ran into their room and started hitting him.”
“That was brave.”
“More like stupid. He outweighed me by like a hundred pounds. Add in the booze rage and I didn’t stand a chance when he started pummeling. He probably would have killed me if my mom hadn’t jumped on his back. Next thing I knew, he’d tossed her into the mirror over the dresser which shattered and cut her really bad.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Fucked is right. While he was slamming her body into the broken glass, I grabbed the gun he kept under the bed and shot him eight times.” Gwen’s admission emerged low and fierce as she made a left turn.
“How did you not end up in jail?”
“Oh, I spent time in the clinker. Cops arrested me even though they knew it was self-defense,” she spat. “I was sitting in a cell, waiting for trial, when Cillian busted me out.”
I frowned. “If Cillian knew you well enough to rescue, then why didn’t he do something about your dad?”
Gwen shook her head as she gunned the car when the light turned green. “We’d never met until the day he rescued me from my cell. He’d read about my story in the newspaper and for some reason decided I was worth saving. He freed me and gave me a choice. Leave the country to avoid prosecution with enough money to start over, or come work for him.”
“Seems like you made a good choice, seeing how you’ve been with him what, at least ten years?” I surmised given she looked to be late twenties.
“Actually, it’s been forty-three.”
I blinked. “But you don’t look older than thirty.”
“There’s advantages to working for a vampire.”
And apparently a more compassionate side than I would have expected. It explained a bit better why he’d come to my rescue. Cillian had a hero complex. As for why he made me into a vampire and not Gwen or the others? Given the extent of my injuries, I’d have died without his intervention.
