“It’s over now, Theodore.Good and done.Why are you so wet?”
He held both hands out at his sides and walked toward Theodore slowly, but Theo’s eyes were fixed on headless, one-armed Bernard.He was starting to tremble.
Because of the involuntary bath, hopefully, and not the dead vampire.
“I didn’t remember.”Theo spoke almost too quietly for Peter to hear.
“You don’t remember, dearest?”
Theo shook his head, his eyes finding Peter’s in the dark.“I don’t remember…anyone else.I don’t remember sleeping with anyone—”
Theo threw up right next to Bernard, some of the bile splashing onto the dead vampire.
Peter reached for Theo and held him tight to make sure he stayed upright.“It’s all right, you’re all right now.You’re safe.None of that is ever going to happen again.”
“Ah, fuck.Sorry.Sorry, I just…”
“Theodore.”Peter said it in his most commanding voice, and it got Theo to look at him.“Vampires do this and have done it throughout the ages.Compelling a human to forget they’ve slept with them and taken their blood.Compelling them to forget worse offenses.”
“Are you saying this is normal?Making excuses for him?”
Theo’s voice didn’t have the bite Peter was hoping for.He’s too shaken still.
“No.I’m telling you so you can make some sense of what happened to you.He may have planned to hurt you this way since the day he met you, and he may have done it to others before you.In fact, I would bet that he did.Men like Bernard don’t just wake up one day and start this kind of abuse.”
The humans who came before Theodore are likely dead in a ditch somewhere.He doesn’t need to know that though, not yet.
Peter had not prayed or sacrificed in a few hundred years, but having Theo here, alive, when he’d been so close to near-certain death at Bernard’s hands?Peter wanted to feed a bonfire for nine days and nights to let Odin know how grateful he was for that.
Theo stumbled backward a step, and Peter caught him, carefully reeling him back in.
“How don’t I remember?I remember I woke up next to a guy… That was when I ran away.How don’t I remember anything else?”
Theo’s cold hands dug into the fabric of Peter’s shirt.
“Compulsion and cruelty combined make a powerful tool, but ultimately, they cannot beat down compassion or break a fierce heart, Theodore.You are not what happened to you.You are whoever you want to be.”
There was a part of Peter that thought Theo might be better off not remembering what he’d been made to forget, but he would keep that to himself.That wasn’t his decision to make.
After a few moments, during which Peter feared what Theo’s next reaction would be, Theo calmed and straightened in Peter’s arms.He pulled out of the hug and looked at the mess of blood and limbs.
“He’s really dead?No coming back from this?”
“Yes.”
“Good.That’s good.I want to see his head.Where is it?”
Peter wasn’t about to deny Theo this, and the corpse was fresh, so there was no reason it should cause more vomiting.
Picking up the head by the hair was the kind of thing that made Peter sympathize with hand sanitizer lovers, but he did it and held it up for Theo to see.
“You pulled his eye out.”
“I crushed it under my shoe.”
“I…I think I love you for that.What happens now?”
“I call an old friend to take care of the corpse and the cleanup, we go home and change into something dry and not bloody, and then I’m taking you to dinner.After you brush your teeth, perhaps.”
