Doesn’t matter. He is weak and he is hurt, and I will not be the monster Seamus forced me to be. Never again. Roger cleared his throat and took a step back. If Vincent realized how close Roger had been to giving in to his hunger, he didn’t show it.After a quick pause, he continued putting away the bottles they wouldn’t need, leaving one out.
“What of my reputation?” Roger asked.
“You want to know what the coven says or what Seamus was saying behind your back?” Vincent held up a bottle. “Give them one of these every six hours.”
“Can you get me a glass of water?” Roger said. He’d left Vincent’s question unanswered on purpose. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know either answer after all. Before the attack, he would have needed to know both. He would’ve turned to Takashi and wondered if he could confirm whatever Vincent had to say.
But he was on his own.
I should have worked with Dmitri. I should have struck in the middle of the day and burned the bastard to ash. Roger knelt beside Kit and turned off the water. The water had risen over their hips. Not wanting to soak the stitches, he let a little of it out before hunting down a washcloth and a bar of soap.
Vincent returned with a glass of water, and Roger coaxed Kit into taking the pill.
“So which do you want to know?” Vincent asked, once more hanging on to the doorframe rather than standing in it.
“Fuck it,” Roger replied. “Fuck the coven, and fuck Seamus. I don’t need to know.”
“Can I … can I say it?” Vincent’s voice dropped to a whisper.
Roger frowned. “Say what?”
“Fuck …you know.” Vincent leaned his head against the doorframe. “You seem cool, but he’s your sire.”
“He’s my nightmare,” Roger said. “The only good of becoming his sireling has been immortality.”
“Really?”
As gently as he could, Roger began to wash Kit clean of the blood clinging to their skin. “I didn’t realize until tonight how utterly I had been fooling myself, but it’s true. He … he forced meinto the worst version of myself. While I don’t hate everything about that side of me, at least not tonight I don’t, I can see him for what Zack named him in the Chateau. Abuser. Rapist. Murderer. And so much more. Nightmare is the only word that sums him in entirety. I intend to wake up.”
“But you like being a vampire,” Vincent said.
“I do. I have watched the world evolve and yet can trace some things back to their roots within my own experience. I have been able to nurture artists and witness technological advancements that would’ve seemed like magic when I was a mortal. And I could be much more than what I’ve been.” Roger frowned to himself as he continued cleaning Kit. Though he’d begun to write his long life down in a journal, he hadn’t opened his emotions like this, not even to himself. The truth of his words felt like a ray of sunlight, but he had lived in the dark too long for that to remain comfortable. “Anyway, yes. You can say fuck Seamus. You can wish him ill. You can tell me how you’d love to stake him down in the middle of the desert, douse him with holy water, and then stand back while the sun slowly rises to fry him inch by inch.”
“Thrown into a vat of molten silver blessed by a dozen different religious leaders, which is then used for solar panels,” Vincent replied quickly. A bead of desire—a pressure of a will for vengeance and violence—rolled out from him. It was compressed and small despite the eagerness in Vincent’s voice.
God, why had Roger never cared about what happened to those outside of his care?Because you were too busy guarding your own.He cleared his throat. “That’s a good one.”
“Should I have not said that?” Vincent asked.
“It’s not you.” Roger sank onto his ass, his back hitting the toilet. The bathroom was tiny, not much larger than a coffin, really. The weight of the night, of his life, continued to press on him. No wonder Dmitri had struggled with his depression. Thereality they’d both lived in had no beacons of light, only the joy they made.
A joy that was often ripped away.
What were Seamus and Anton doing to Zack and Takashi? What did they have planned? Were they going to kill them? Takashi belonged to Nell’s bloodline, and though she had released him from her coven, she still cared for him. Would they use that? Or would that protect him from the worst?
For Zack, the answer was too easy. He was descended from two lines of infamous vampire hunters, the Wrights and the Gladwells. If Seamus wanted to hurt Roger and Zack and all those hunters, he would turn Zack into a vampire. Force the blood upon him. Zack had told Roger that he never wanted to become an immortal. What if he didn’t have a choice?
But that lacked poetry, and Seamus always looked for the severest cut. He had taken Zack and Takashi to punish Roger for his humiliation. He would hurt them in order to continue hurting him.
“Fuck Seamus,” he said because the only rope he could hold on to in this storm was his anger. His rage. His grief would swallow him and leave him inactive. He’d spent too long waiting for the right time, the right action, the right idea. He couldn’t afford to waste more.
“Are you … all right?” Vincent asked slowly.
“I’m weaker than I thought.”
“Nate’s got some blood in the fridge.”
“He’s Nate now?” Roger asked with a wry grin.
