“No, but none of them are.”
“She’s your friend,” I sighed and stared out the side window. “You shouldn’t have touched her.”
“You do not understand our world.”
I was getting a pretty firm handle on it. Violence was their world, a natural order among them. There were no looks of shock or outrage when the vampire had been killed. They’d all moved on as if death was a standard, everyday thing. The thought landed like a cold slap.
“Are you going to kill me, not now, but one day soon?” The words shot from my lips, no safety clip to stop them.
He turned his head to the side window, back to the road, then to me. “No,” he answered bluntly.
“But you had to think about it?”
“I did, and the answer is no.”
“What if I tell people what you are?” I persisted.
“You won’t.”
“How do you know I won’t?”
He looked at me with a flicker of frustration. “I just know.” He turned his eyes back to the road. One hand rested on the wheel, one on the gear stick. He had nice hands, tanned, sleek, long fingers. The kind of fingers designed to play a piano, or a paint canvas, or stroke thighs. There was a large silver watchwrapped around his left wrist, and on his right a chained bracelet and a large silver ring with a black stone. Immediately I wondered why I’d stop to appreciate his hands when we were talking about death—my death. Was it possible I’d detached myself from reality somehow, like an outsider looking in, asking the questions but not connecting on a deep level emotionally. Perhaps it was some kind of inbuilt coping mechanism?
“And if you did I’d kill them," he added in an unconcerned manner.
I didn’t think he was serious, but the notion was still somewhat unsettling. All of his traits were somewhat unsettling, actually. Those fangs, as sharp as blades, which appeared and disappeared at will. The speed with which he moved. The strength it took to tear a man’s head off with his bare hands . . .
‘It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe now.’
I remembered his warm hands cradling the side of my head and then images flashing through my mind, of me running along the lakes edge, through the thick entanglement of the tree’s and collapsing on the roads edge alone. Except, I wasn’t alone, and I hadn’t run at all. Karson had carried me, and then he’d tried to implant the visions in my head. God, he could mind control too?
“That seems excessive! I won’t tell anyone, but if I did, instead of killing them, couldn't you just mind control them to forget, like you did to me after the fires?”
He leaned back onto his seat, looking amused by my discomfort. “I could if I wanted to. Not that it worked on you. Now I know why.”
“Why?”
He frowned. “You’re a witch, mind control doesn’t always work on witches, unfortunately."
“Oh, Karson, that’s nonsense! I think Dahlia is a little . . .” I looked for the right word that might describe her without being mean. “Unhinged.”
“We will see.”
“We won’t see! I think I might know If I could move objects with my mind,” I scoffed.
“And yet how did you see the deer, can you explain that?” He made a wide gesture with his hand. “You could’nt have seen it from the side of the road.”
“I must have, how else did I see it?” I answered, frustrated.
“That’s my point, Amelia, how else could you see it?”
“It proves nothing, something caught my eye, I told you to stop, we did, and we found her.”
“No, you screamed at me to stop, then fled like a mad person to a deer that was impossible to see from the road.”
I twisted my hands in my lap, reaching for the ring I no longer wore, I hoped I’d be able to put it on again soon, I missed the feel of it against my finger. “Still, it proves nothing,” I said indignantly, “and if it were true, which it’s not, would it matter—given you are a vampire after all?”
His expression changed, his face was shadowed by torment, as if a thousand stories flickered behind his eyes and took on a disturbing sharpness.
