“Right now, Slate Quarter is looking like a much more preferable option than my current circumstances.”
She laughs. “Yes, I suppose it does.”
“You can’t be satisfied with this life either, Veronica, forced to flee to the demon realm, stuck here in these wastelands.”
“Oh, it won’t be forever, darling. I’ll be back.”
Is that true? Or is she as deluded as ever?
“But this isn’t the life you were promised,” I continue on, “or was the man who changed you a little more accurate with the truth than you were with me?”
She wipes her hands on her cloak, removing the remaining smudges of blood. “He lied to me,” she says bitterly.
“How did he lie?”
“He said he loved me. He said I was the only one for him. He said he wanted us to be together forever. But they were all lies. There were other girls, other women. I was just a passing interest.”
I wonder why I never asked her this before. Why, when she was whispering sweet nothings in my ear, persuading me to lether change me, I never asked her about her own changing. I know she is much older than her vampire looks betray – forty, fifty years old. Relatively young for a vampire but not as young as me.
“What Quarter were you from?” I ask her.
She pulls her cigarette case from the pocket of her cloak and snaps it open. She spends a moment surveying the row of finely crafted cigarettes, before plucking out the middle one and lighting it with a flick of her fingers. She brings it to her blood-stained lips and inhales a long slow breath.
“Onyx, darling, of course.”
“You already had powers, then.”
“A little, nothing like they are now.” She blows out smoke, sending it in my direction. “I was a little desperate to have more, and a lot in love. He was older, sophisticated, intelligent, and very charming.”
I scoff. That sounds familiar.
“I was a young innocent who had never been touched before.” I scoff a second time. It’s impossible to imagine Veronica was ever innocent. “He taught me so many things, unleashed a side of me I never knew existed – a ravenous, hungry side.” She slides her fingertips down her throat, the tip of her cigarette glowing red like her eyes. “He said I had the prettiest neck in the realm. He said if I let him bite me it would be an ecstasy beyond compare.”
I close my eyes. I’ve tried to banish that memory from my mind, the memory of that first time. Her cold mouth against my hot skin, the cut of her razor sharp fangs through my flesh, the suck of her lips and then that ecstasy – truly devastating, truly addictive. One bite and there was no hope for me.
For a brief moment, I feel sorry for her. It must have been the same for her as it was for me. Convinced and fooled by someone with more life experience, with a better understanding of theworld and therefore the skills and know-how to trick, befuddle, and convince. Then, a slave to that blissful sensation until she couldn’t handle it any longer and she succumbed, begging to be just like him.
However, that sympathy lasts fleetingly. Veronica has embraced the wicked life she’s been given, thriving on her need to seduce, maim, and kill, indulging all her worst vampiric urges. She could have turned away from it as I have. She could have chosen a different path.
No, the woman, deep down in her core, is evil and I suspect the man who turned her saw her for what she really was. I suspect that means he was as evil as her.
“Who was he?” I ask, my curiosity distracting me from the hunger and the pain that’s ravaging my body.
She takes another drag of her cigarette, eyeing me as she inhales a lungful of smoke, then twirling the little stick between her fingers.
“You don’t know, darling? And yet, I always thought you suspected.” She smiles slyly, her tongue curling behind her teeth. “He taught me everything I know.”
“Why would I know? I never gave it any thought before today.”
She huffs out smoke through her nostrils in irritation.
“I know everything there is to know about you, Fox. Do you realize that? From the little hovel you were born in, to every girl you ever fucked. I’ve made you my study.”
“You don’t know me, Veronica.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“Because you have no heart and that means you’ll never understand mine.”
