“Oh. Okay.” Itried to keep my voice casual.“I have a question, too.” I paused until he gestured for me to go on. “When was your first unnecessary kill?”
“A while ago. It wasn’t anything serious. It was the guy who bound me when I was seventeen. He killed my family, then bound and turned me.I don’t remember my family much. Not at all, actually. I assume he fucked with my memory somehow, but I never figured that part out. What Idoknow is he wanted complete loyalty. Someone he could control. So I killed him.”
It took a moment to realize he was waiting for my reaction.
“You can keep going,” I said. “I’m not scared this time. I know you’re not gonna kill me.”I was confident he would never hurt me now, no matter how much he purposely—or naturally—freaked me out sometimes.
“Good.”He seemed pleased by my response.“I killed him withfire.”
“Withfire?”I made a face at the mental image. What a way to go.
“Yeah. The same day he turned me. Right after I did my first three kills. I woke up again and he told me his plans. Basically for me to become his lackey. Do his bidding. Typical vampire movie shit. I was planning to deal with it for a while and see where it led until I found out he killed my family. That changed things.” His voice was careful. Too controlled. I couldn’t tell if he was suppressing emotions, or not feeling any at all.
“Did you kill his family, too?”
“No. Just him. You’d think he’d see it coming, but the guy was an idiot. I set him on fire and watched him burn. Then I sliced a few parts and let him bleed out.”
“You didn’t get arrested for it?”
“No.” He shrugged. “The evidence must’ve burned down. I went home and never heard about it again. I inherited everything from my family, plus my parents’ life insurance and a trust fund they’d apparently left me. So I moved on with life on my own. I never stopped doing unnecessary kills. I enjoy them.”
“Is that why you’re so obsessed with burning things and that lighter?”
“No. As far as I know, I’ve always been a pyro. Fire soothes me.”
“Do you regret any of your kills?”
“No.”
“Oh.”I frowned, unsure how to take his emotionless response. It wasn’t a pleasant answer. Not that I’d expected a different one. Honestly, I wasn’t surewhatI’d expected.
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you,I’m not a good person.”
“I can’t imagine you being a genuinely bad person,”I said, more to myself than anything.“So you said that guy bound you and you killed him the same day, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you only ever get one bind. And we’re bound. So how does that work?”
“If the vampire who bound you dies or undoes it, you can choose your own bind. But if you’re the one who did the binding and it’s undone for whatever reason, you can never choose again and no one else can bind you.”
“Huh.”Itilted my head, trying to decide how to feel about this. It seemed like there was too much human and vampire property going on.
“Because there is. I told you, you’re my property.”
“Not this again,” I groaned. “Stop calling me your property.”
“Basically,”he continued over me,“if you ever wanna choose your own bind, you can if I die.”
“Don’t say that!”I looked at him in horror. “You’re not dying. You’re not allowed to die. Stay alive. Undead. Stay undead, but don’t actually die.” I giggled at my clever choice of words. “Tell me more about yourself.” Ipulled my legs from his lap to perch on my knees.“I wanna know about you. Like really know.”
“I tell you things all the time.”
“About being a vampire, but not aboutyou. Tell me something,”I said.
“My favorite color is red.”
“Really? I thought it would be black.”
