Part 25 (2/2)
She had gone very still, now. Her voice was very small. ”How long have you known this about me?”
”I saw it the first night I came to your apartment.”
”When you took my cell phone pictures?”
”After,” he said. ”When I came back later, and you were sleeping in your bed.”
Understanding dawned in her expression, a mix of surprise and emotional violation. ”You were there. I thought I had dreamed you.”
”You've never felt a part of the world you live in because it 's not your world, Gabrielle. Your photographs, the way you're drawn to places that house vampires, your confusion over your feelings about blood and the compulsion to let it-these are all parts of who you truly are.”
He could see her struggling to accept what she was hearing, and he hated that he wasn't able to make things easier. Might as well get everything out on the table and be done with it.
”One day, you'll find a worthy male and take him as your mate. He will drink from you alone, and you from him. Blood will bind the two of you as one. It's a sacred vow among our kind. One that I can't give you.”
He might as well have slapped her from the look of injury on her pretty face. ”You can't... or you won't?”
”Does it matter? I'm telling you that it's not going to happen because I won't permit it. If we share a blood bond, I will be drawn to you for as long as I have breath in my body and you in yours. You would never be free of me because the bond will compel me to seek you out wherever you run.”
”Why do you think I would run from you?”
He exhaled dryly. ”Because, one day, this thing I'm fighting is going to get me, and I can't bear the idea that you might be in my path when it does.”
”You're talking about Bloodl.u.s.t.”
”Yes,” he said, the first time he had ever truly acknowledged it, even to himself. All these years, he 'd been able to hide it. Not from her. ”Bloodl.u.s.t is the greatest weakness of my kind. It is an addiction-a d.a.m.nable plague. Once it has you in its grasp, few vampires are strong enough to escape it. They go Rogue, and then they are lost for good.”
”How does it happen?”
”It's different for everyone. Sometimes, the disease moves in, little by little. The hunger grows, and so you feed it. You feed it whenever it calls, and one night you realize the need is never filled. For others, one careless indulgence can tip them past breaking.” ”And how is it for you?”
His smile grew tight, more a baring of his teeth and fangs. ”I have the dubious honor of carrying my father's blood in my veins. If the Rogues are beasts, they are nothing compared to the scourge that started our entire race. For Gen Ones, the temptation is always there, drumming harder in us than in any others. If you want to know the truth of it, I have been staving off Bloodl.u.s.t since my first taste.”
”So, you have a problem, but you got through it last night.”
”I was able to hold it back, thanks in no small part to you, but each time it gets worse.”
”You can get through it again. We'll get through it together.”
”You don't know my history. I've already lost both of my brothers to the disease.”
”When?”
”A very long time ago.” He scowled, thinking back on a past he didn't like to dredge up. But the words came quickly now, whether he wanted to relive them or not. ”Evran, the middle born of us three, went Rogue soon after he reached adulthood. He was killed in combat, fighting for the wrong side in one of the old wars between the Breed and the Rogues. Marek was the eldest, and the most fearless. He and Tegan and I were part of the first cadre of Breed warriors to rise up against the last of the Ancients and their armies of Rogues. We formed the Order around the time of the great human plague in Europe. Less than a hundred years later, Bloodl.u.s.t claimed Marek; he sought the sun to end his misery. Even Tegan had a close brush with the addiction long ago.”
”I'm sorry,” she said softly. ”You've lost so much to it. And to this conflict with the Rogues. I can see why it terrifies you.”
He had a flippant reply perched at the tip of his tongue-some line of bulls.h.i.+t he wouldn't hesitate to trot out for one of the other warriors if they were presumptuous enough to think him afraid of anything. But the dismissive retort stayed stuck in his throat as he looked at Gabrielle, knowing that better than anyone in all his long existence, she understood him best.
She knew him on a level no one else ever had, and part of him was going to miss that once the time came to send her away to the future that awaited her in the Darkhavens.
”I didn't realize Tegan and you went back so far,” Gabrielle said.
”He and I go all the way back, to the beginning. We're both Gen One, both sworn in our duty to defend our race.”
”You're not friends, though.”
”Friends?” Lucan laughed, considering the centuries of animosity that simmered between the two of them. ”Tegan doesn't have friends. And if he did, he sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't count me among them.”
”Then why do you let him stay here?”
”He's one of the best warriors I've ever known. His commitment to the Order goes deeper than any hatred he harbors for me.
We share the belief that nothing is more important than protecting the future of the Breed.”
”Not even love?”
He couldn't speak for a second, caught off guard by her frank question and unwilling to consider where it might lead. He had no experience with that particular emotion. The way his life was going currently, he didn't want to get close to anything resembling it, either. ”Love is for the males who choose to lead soft lives in the Darkhavens. Not for warriors.”
”Some of the others in this compound might argue that with you.” He met her gaze with a level stare. ”I'm not them.”
Her chin dropped at once, long lashes shuttering her eyes from his view. ”So, what does all of this make me? Am I just a way of pa.s.sing time for you between killing Rogues and trying to pretend you've got everything under control?” When she looked up, tears were swelling in her eyes. ”Am I just some little toy that you turn to whenever you need to get off?”
”I haven't heard you complain.”
Her breath caught, a tiny gasp snagging in her throat as she gaped at him, clearly appalled and having every right to be. Her expression fell, then hardened into something as brittle as gla.s.s. ”f.u.c.k you.”
Her contempt for him in that moment was understandable, but that didn't make it any easier to swallow. He would never take such a verbal beating from anyone. Before now, no one had ever had the nerve to try him. Lucan, the aloof one, the stone -cold killer who tolerated weakness in no form whatsoever-least of all in himself.
For all the conditioning and discipline he had mastered in his centuries of living, here he stood, being torn wide open by the only woman he had been foolish enough to let get close to him. And he cared for her, too, far more than he should. Which made hurting her now seem all the more repugnant, regardless of the fact that last night made it clear to him that it was necessary he push her away. It was unavoidable, and he would only make it worse by trying to pretend she would ever fit into his way of life.
”I don't want to hurt you, Gabrielle, and I know that I will.”
”What do you think you're doing right now?” she whispered, a slight hitch in her voice. ”You know, I believed you. G.o.d, I actually believed every lie you've fed me. Even that bulls.h.i.+t about wanting to help me find my true destiny. I really thought you cared.”
Lucan felt helpless, the coldest kind of b.a.s.t.a.r.d for letting things get so out of hand with her. He strode over to a bureau, took out a fresh s.h.i.+rt and put it on. Heading for the door that led to the hallway outside his private apartments, he paused to look back at Gabrielle.
He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to try to make things better somehow, but he knew that would be a mistake. One touch and he would have her in his arms again.
Then he might not be able to let her go.
He opened the door, about to walk out.
”You have found your destiny, Gabrielle. Just like I said you would. I never told you it would be with me.”
<script>