“Doing something like telling a white lie and sucking someone’s life out of their body are not the same thing,” she snapped. “I’ve never killed anyone. Or forced them to do something against their will. You can’t tell me all those comatose bodies are here because they agreed to be.”
His head tilted, and he suddenly looked very … other. Not that he ever looked quite human to begin with, but this was strange on a different level. “Wrong is wrong, Alice,” he said coolly. “It doesn’t matter what it is you’ve done. If it wasn’t moral, then you shouldn’t have done it. Correct?” He didn’t give her time to respond. “You are no different from me. I’ve just lived longer, which has given me much more time to accumulate wrongdoings. Do you think I’ve always been this man?” He pointed to himself.
Alice bit her lip. To be honest, she’d never considered the fact that he had to have been human at some point in his life. He wasn’t born a vampire. She tried to imagine Cain as a human, but it was difficult to reconcile that with the creature that stood before her now. “I never thought about it.”
He walked over to a pair of chairs and held out a hand, indicating for her to sit. He took the other chair and waited.
Alice just wanted to call her dad, get the bitching out of the way, and then go to bed. At this point, she didn’t even care whose bed she slept in. She threw down her arms and stomped over to the chair before dropping unceremoniously into it. Her lips pursed as she looked at him and held her hands out, palms up. “Let’s hear it.”
Cain rested an elbow on the arm of the chair and perched his chin on his fist. “I know what it’s like to have your choice taken from you.” His voice was low. “I didn’t choose to be what I am. Who would?”
“Umm, a person who enjoys having power over those weaker than themselves.” she scoffed.
He gave a slight nod of his head in concession. “That wasn’t the type of man I was when my village was attacked by a nest of vampires.”
“Village?”
He used his left hand to point at himself. “Old. Remember?”
Alice shrugged.
“Once upon a time, I was a young man who’d just come of age to take a wife and move out of my parents’ home.” His eyes looked past her, as if his mind was in another place. “I’d been courting a young woman who lived in a settlement a couple of miles from ours. That might not seem like a big deal today. But back then, a couple of miles was a lot of walking every day to see the object of your affection, especially when you had a job, chores that your family depended on you to assist with. Not to mention, traveling after dark wasn’t exactly easy to do. No streetlights.” He smirked. “As such, I only saw her sporadically, twice a week at most.”
Alice noted the affection in his voice, even after all this time. She didn’t know how much time that was, exactly, because she still didn’t know the vampire king’s age.
Cain swallowed, and his eyes moved back to her. “The day she said yes to my marriage proposal was the best day of my life.”
“You loved her.” It wasn’t a question, but Alice found herself shocked this creature could be capable of the affection she heard in his voice.
His chin dropped a little before he lifted his head again. “I adored her.” His lips lifted in an almost-shy smile. “She was lovely. Kind. Giving. She never complained about anything. She didn’t care how much or how little we might have.”
“You were poor?” She couldn’t reconcile poverty with the finely dressed man before her.
“We had enough, but we weren’t high society, so to speak.” He lifted one shoulder. “Alice didn’t care.”
“I’m sorry, what?” she spluttered. She knew the puzzled look on her face was probably comical.
Cain gave a sardonic smile. “My betrothed. Her name was Alice.”
“Is that why you’re so interested in me? Or is it the gypsy healer thing?”
The vampire’s grin slowly vanished. “No, your name is simply one of life’s odd coincidences. For starters, you look nothing alike. Where you have hard features with a serious brow, she was gentle. Her face always wore a smile, and her eyes showed compassion. She had long, radiant blonde hair that glittered when the sun touched it, and she was a very petite girl.”
Alice’s lips compressed into a tight line. “Good to know that despite our shared name, your Alice was an angel, and I’m a wicked, fat Alice with dull, dark hair.”
He chuckled. “That’s your interpretation. I said you didn’t look like her. I never said she was more attractive than you.”
“Did you ever consider that I have hard features because I deal with you all day long? Or that my serious brow is because the life of a young girl, as well as the other people you’ve taken, is in my hands? Am I just supposed to go around frolicking and picking flowers to give to everyone?” Alice cringed at the tone of her voice. Why did she care if he thought she wasn’t beautiful? She balled her fists and tried to hide them from Cain.
“No, but I have thought that this version of me would be much too difficult for her to comprehend. She would love me regardless, as it was in her nature to do so. But I would have ruined her. She’d start as a beautiful rose, but over time, all she’d have been left with are the thorns.” He twisted away from her, and the lamplight illuminated only half of his face, the rest hidden in shadow. Alice thought the sight fitting—a reflection of his conflicting character, part light and part darkness. There was much more to Cain than she’d thought. Though she should have known better, considering his age. People change over time.
“How old are you?”
He kept his face turned from her as he answered. “I was born in the year 1690 anno domini in a small village in Serbia.”
“You have no accent,” she said, and then realized how stupid the statement was. Cain was over three centuries old. He’d no doubt lived in countless places. Of course he could lose the accent over time.
When he spoke next, it was in another language and with a heavy accent that must have been Serbian, though she wouldn’t have known it from Russian or Romanian. If she hadn’t heard him speak before, she wouldn’t have thought there was any way that he could speak without an accent from his homeland. “What did you say?”
