And that curiosity was in danger of smoothing away the snarled edges of my terror and revulsion. I knew it would keep grinding me down until I spoke with him again.
Unless I could make myself believe that he was really a monster, deep down. Unless I could make myself want to run far and fast. Unless I could make myself believe I needed to get away from him.
Because that was the other thing: the stricken way he’d looked at me last night—halfway to pleading—wasn’t an expression someone incapable of human emotion could pull off. And even now, as I watched him go into the automotive store, I got the distinct impression I could feel him.
If so, Nicolas wasn’t feeling an urge to kill. Instead, he was feeling… conflicted.
Then again, while I was ready to believe in vampires—given that the evidence was overwhelming—I wasn’t willing to believe in psychic bonds.
Though, admittedly, it wouldn’t have been the strangest thing I’d seen in the past twenty-four hours. I had always assumed that when we die, we simply… end. We wink out of existence like we never were at all.
And that is not what happened when I died.
Instead, I had gone into a tunnel. I’d seen dozens—perhaps even hundreds—of versions of me. They were past selves. They were all me, but I wasn’t necessarily them anymore. I was still myself. Except, if I wanted to, I could recall the moment I first met Nicolas, eight centuries ago, in perfect detail.
Even as I thought this, details came to me: my name hadn’t been Elijah—it had been Elliot. I had been the son of a bootmaker. My father was a well-established tradesman, yes, but nowhere near Nicolas’s level of wealth. Nicolas had also had an identical twin who looked exactly like him—Thierry. I remembered seeing them both together, walking side by side down the packed-dirt street, feeling as though I were seeing double.
Except, I could tell them apart easily. Nicolas’s eyes were warmer than his brother’s. Softer and kinder.
If I let myself, I could remember all of these things as though they’d happened yesterday. Even though they hadn’t happened to me at all. Because what I was experiencing had to be some sort of delusion. Vampires might have a biological explanation that could make scientific sense.
Past lives… not so much.
And psychic connections couldn’t be real either. Whatever I was sensing from Nicolas was a projection on my part, wasn’t it? I was seeing what I wanted to see.
The reality was that Nicolas was a vampire, and he had confessed to me that he killed people because he enjoyed it. Serial killers enjoy killing people. Psychopaths. People with no capacity for remorse or love.
Maybe I was watching him because I needed to prove to myself that he’d fooled me.
I had thought Nicolas might be in love with me, too—that, as much as I had let myself fall, he had fallen, too.
But I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
After all, I’d met my fair share of charming manipulators. My ex had almost certainly been a psychopath, right up until the moment Cole snapped his neck to stop him from murdering me. And Eric had been able to fake human emotion quite well in the beginning.
That was just more evidence that I clearly had a type, wasn’t it?
And further proof that my judgment couldn’t be trusted. Cole didn’t love me. He couldn’t love me. Not if he also enjoyed watching other people die. Those things were mutually exclusive. He might have found me useful in some way—or perhaps he was fond of me—but he didn’t care about me. Not really.
The reality of this struck me all over again, and my breath escaped my lips in a gasp.
Infuriated with myself, I wiped my tears away. I was being foolish. I could grieve later—once I saw him. Once he proved to me that he really was a monster. And I needed him to be a monster, desperately.
Otherwise, I’d never be able to stop loving him.
CHAPTER TWENTY || COLE
“Good morning. How can I help you?”
The portly, middle-aged man behind the counter looked up at me as I stepped through the door and flashed a friendly smile. He was alone in the store—not surprising, since he’d just opened less than five minutes ago. “Anything in particular you’re looking for today?”
I closed the door behind me and flipped the deadbolt. For good measure, I turned the open sign around so it readclosed.
“Yes,” I told him, turning back around. He froze, his eyes widening. I added, “I need to see your security camera footage.”
“I can’t release that,” the man replied.
His voice didn’t waver, but his eyes flicked down to a spot below the counter. Maybe a silent alarm—or a gun.
