“Maybe,” I said with a shrug.
She gaped at me in disbelief. “Wow! You’re a charming one.”
I smirked. “So I’ve heard. It’s in my nature.”
She snorted and shook her head at me. “So why didn’t you just drink my blood right there and then? Why bother carrying me all the way here, cure me, and then drink?”
“The sun was about to set,” I replied in a self-evident manner. “I didn’t want to get more company than we already had. I like working at my own pace with no external pressure.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, unconvinced by my explanation.
“You drank from the others and immediately released them so that they could escape. So why didn’t you do the same with me?” she insisted.
I made no effort to hide the contempt the other two Inquisitors awakened in me.
“They were irrelevant,” I said dismissively. “They knew nothing and had nothing to offer that would help my cause. You possibly did.”
“And now that you’ve had my blood, do you still think that’s a possibility?”
“I don’t know,” I said pensively.
She raised an eyebrow. “Which means?”
“I’m debating whether to eat you, fuck you, collaborate with you, or simply release you,” I mused aloud.
Instead of the panicked reaction I maliciously hoped to elicit from her, Eleni cocked her head to the side in a similar fashion to mine earlier and studied my features as if I was a mystery she wanted to solve.
“Fancy choices,” she said pensively. “Technically, options one and two could be combined, depending on the type of eating we’re talking about.”
I snorted and stared at her with a mix of amusement and disbelief.
Totally unfazed, she continued her reflection out loud, as if speaking to herself. “Once I get to know you better, I wouldn’t object to that. But I’m absolutely onboard with options three or four.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said tauntingly. “But I wasn’t referring tothattype of eating.”
“Bah! Figures,” she retorted with a long-suffering sigh.
My brow shot up as I stared at her, incredulously. “You want me to eat you?!”
She shrugged. “Now that you no longer have the monstrous features that you displayed in the crematorium, I find you rather hot. Your kind is also reputed to have a very wicked tongue.”
I burst out laughing at the matter-of-factly way she stated all of this. “Indeed, we do. But aren’t you a cleric?”
It was her turn to wave a dismissive hand. “A cleric, yes. But I’m not a nun. Inquisitors are not required to make vows of chastity.”
“So I noticed,” I said, scrunching my face as I replayed the scene from the crematorium in my mind’s eye. “However, I doubt the Church would agree with you fucking a demon.”
The woman further surprised me by shaking her head with conviction.
“You’re not a demon. And even if you were one, not all demons are evil. They are just a different breed of people,” she said calmly.
“Iamevil,” I retorted, a hint of threat seeping into my voice.
Totally unfazed, she shook her head again. “No, you’re not. You certainly can be if you so choose, but you’re not intrinsically evil.”
“Says who?” I challenged, my curiosity piqued by the certainty with which she spoke.
“Your actions,” she replied in a self-evident manner. “You saved me when you could have just read my thoughts before discarding my dying body in the crematorium to be eaten by those monsters. You let the other two women go when you could have also killed them or left them to be devoured by my side. Someone evil would have reveled in our demise and maybeeven made it last for his own sadistic entertainment. You made certain to make me comfortable while you drained all the poison out of me, even making it enjoyable. So no, you’re not evil.”
