Why did it feel…wrong?
Maybe it was because it wasn’t by her hand that he was dying. It wasn’t because of her that he was suffering. She hadn’t been the one to get revenge, it’d been his mother.
Maybe it was because he was probably lost in the haze of whatever blood-starved madness had consumed him. He couldn’t understand or appreciate what was happening to him.
Both of those things could be true.
But if they were? Neither of them would explain why she was crying.
“Ivan!” One last hope. One last chance.
Silence.
Nothing except the ragged gasps of a dying vampire, and the scrape of his nails against the wood floor. Raziel was going to die…
…if she didn’t feed him.
But if she let him feed from her?He would kill her.He wouldn’t be able to stop. He was a wild animal. He’d rip her to pieces, tear her open, and drinkherdry.
One of them would die in the next fifteen minutes.
Shutting her eyes, she let the tears run down her cheeks, unchecked. It’d be a mercy to him to put a bullet in his head and end his suffering. How many people had he killed in the same way? How many people hadshekilled in her life? He deserved to die.
And she wanted to kill him.
But not like this.
So…she would let him starve to death in front of her? That wasbetter?To let an animal with a leg caught in a hunter’s trap bleat, and cry, and scream until it died, rather than just snap its neck and end its suffering?
No. No, he had to die.
This wasn’t revenge, this was a kindness.
She lifted the gun and pointed it at Raziel’s head with a trembling hand.
The expression on his face shifted. Just slightly. Just a flicker of something that might have been recognition in those rabid, crimson, glassy eyes.
He lowered his head. And the clawing stopped. The animal was accepting its death at her hand…
Then, she heard it. The noise. Through the gasping, dying rattle of air in his chest…he was crying. But vampire cried blood, didn’t they? And he had no blood to weep.
She couldn’t. She justcouldn’t.Flicking the safety back on the gun, she placed it down on a nearby table.
She couldn’t kill him.
She hadn’t been able to kill him back at Braen’s estate.
And she couldn’t let him die now.
Staring down at her palms through the hazy blur of her tears, she wondered what had become of her. What he’d done to her. She should have listened to Luciento—she should have escaped into the Wild with her uncle the moment she had the chance.
But she’d chosen the path of revenge. She’d chosen to stay in the metropolis and hunt the Nostroms. She’d chosen not to disappear into the Wild and find a new life.
She’d chosen death.
And she had let himin. She had let him get into her soul and twist something around his fingers. She had let him poison her in a way she didn’t know was possible.
Yet… here she was.
