“What’s happened?” he asks.
My temples throb as the images of Haven, battered and barely alive, float back to the surface. I’m sure they’ll haunt my dreams for the rest of my existence. As will my guilt.
Where do I even start?
It hurts to retell everything I’d seen in Henri’s room, but I manage to get through it. From Keagan and Cornelius’s roles in it, to my new second position, and Haven’s barely breathing state. When I finish, my heart’s racing, and I run a trembling hand over my face.
“I didn’t want to leave her that way, but what other choice did I have?”
Lysander, who has remained silent the entire time, sheaths his weapon again. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
I pause. “Wait, you aren’t?”
He shakes his head. “Avrum, you must understand. You and I—and Henri—we aren’t human anymore,” he explains, glancing up at the dark sky. “The night we are changed, we die. Our human lives end, and we are turned into something else, something greater than what we were before. You are still young and new to all this, but you will eventually see. The older you get, the more godlike you become. You no longer age. Food and drink cannot sustain you. Things like death, pain, and love mean nothing.” He stops for a moment, and his eyes close. “Some of us lose our human selves entirely.”
“That can’t happen to all of us…” I refuse to believe it.
“I wish I could tell you it didn’t.”
“But it did not happen to you.”
Lysander glances to the woods. Sadness engraves itself into his porcelain features, but he doesn’t say anything more about it.
After a long moment, I ask, “Whatarewe exactly?” I’ve never had a name to explain what we are before.
“I have pondered this question for many years. You could say I became obsessed with it,” Lysander replies. Placing his hands behind his back, he begins to walk with me along the forest’s edge. “It has never been explained to you? What you are now.”
I shake my head. “Henri told me nothing of names.”
“Have you ever taken blood from a human?” he asks.
My stomach cramps at the thought. “No.”
“It seems Henri has kept you in the dark lot more than you realize. Our kind has been around for centuries, before Christ. We have been called many things. Devils, demons, gods. More recently, literature and lore have given us yet another name—vampire.”
“Vampire.” I roll the word around on my tongue.
“Resurrecting after death. The need to drink living blood to keep our own hearts beating. The unnatural beauty and nocturnal nature. The predator-like instincts.”
The more truths Lysander lists, the more I realize he’s right. We aren’t human anymore. We’re something else entirely.
Still, for me, that doesn’t seem like a proper reason to hold someone against their will and torture them. That is inexcusable.
I stop walking, halting Lysander.
“I would tell you to take your sword and kill me now ifI was destined to become like Henri,” I tell him, and I mean it. “We should use this new power to protect those who can’t help themselves. Not to harm them.”
A sad smile flickers across his face. “You’re still so young and naïve. It’s common to start with similar grandiose ideas, but they fade after time.” He sighs. “I never said it’s moral or just, but unfortunately, my friend, this world is full of men yearning for greatness who are willing kill for just a taste of it.”
“I need to help Haven,” I say. “I can’t help but feel like this is partly my fault.”
“Henri would have stolen the girl regardless of you being here or not.”
“Maybe, but there had been signs. Ones I refused to see. If I’d known sooner—”
“You’d be in the same predicament you’re in now,” he assures me, and touches my shoulder.
Regret sits like a boulder in my gut. He may be right, but it’s not what I want to hear right now.
