Reuben laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Oh, Simon. They really got to you, didn't they?"
"No one got to me."
"A vampire who doesn't drink blood? Who faints at the sight of it?" Reuben shook his head. "That's exactly the kind of deception they'd use. Make you think they're harmless. Different. Special."
"Heisdifferent."
"No vampire is different!" Reuben's composure cracked, real emotion bleeding through. "They're all the same underneath."
He moved to his display of weapons, running his fingers along an ancient crossbow.
"How many vampires have you killed for me, Simon?"
Simon didn't answer.
"One hundred and seventeen," Reuben supplied. "I keep track of all my hunters, but especially you. My best. My greatest success." He turned back. "Tell me, if vampires can be good, what does that make us? What does that makeyou?"
The question cut too deep for comfort.
It was what Simon had tried very hard to avoid thinking about ever since he'd met Charlie.
He'd eliminated so many vampires, left behind so many dust piles.
Had any of them been like Charlie?
Scared, confused, trying desperately to hold onto their humanity?
No. They couldn't have been. Because if they were...
"They were all threats," Simon insisted.
"Every single one," Reuben agreed. "Just like your present target. Whatever act he's putting on, however convincing it might be, he's a threat. He'll always be a threat."
Reuben returned to his desk, pulling out the familiar prescription bottle. "You've been skipping again, haven't you?"
Simon's silence was answer enough.
Reuben nudged the bottle toward him. "You know what to do."
It wasn't a request. Simon took the bottle, shook out two of the dark red pills. They sat in his palm like drops of crystallized blood.
Would taking these cut his link to Charlie?
They were supposed to suppress the monster inside him after all, and it was his monster that had bonded with Charlie, that had become a sire-substitute to a fledgling vampire.
"I'm watching," Reuben said.
Simon looked up at his mentor and dry-swallowed the pills. They went down hard, scraping his throat.
"Good." Reuben sat back. "I'm giving you one more chance, Simon. One. Eliminate that vampire within the next twelve hours, or you'll undergo correctional training."
Correctional training.
Every muscle in Simon's body tensed.
Initial training had been hard enough.
Without wanting to, he remembered the medical chair in the sub-basement, the leather straps cutting into his fifteen-year-old wrists. They'd pumped his veins full of anti-vampire chemicals that burned like acid, made him smell vial after vial of blood until his fangs descended against his will.
